Nonqaba said ...

Online pic President Biden’s Infrastructure Plan can be likened to a lion’s face: hairy and resolute but doesn’t smile. The Plan’s announcement was indeed massive and hairy, received and continues to get positive vibes, but there will be no smiles if its implementation excludes minority contractors. The money allocated for the construction of homes, schools, roads, bridges and other infrastructure, promises greener pastures for the U.S. economy. Mega construction companies are looking forward to counting the greenback, not minority contractors who might not have the financial capacity, but are good in what they do, but are under-paid. There are many hurdles, but the first excuse is that they don’t have the experience for mega projects, which is ironic because slaves built America for free. In the South, they built roads, stores and  prisons where they were thrown in for non-existent offences. They also built their own homes and places of business. Slavery was just the beginning. Early

Kamala Harris, U.S. Vice President gets a vaccine jab. March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announces that we have a pandemic. It recommends that countries should  trace, isolate and treat the virus.  Unfortunately, it led to a blame culture that certain countries are responsible for variants, while others are squeaky clean. This good and bad guys attitude comes from how countries interpreted WHO’s advice. This how Dr. Tedros  Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General put it in 2020, when Covid-19 exploded across the world. “You can’t fight a virus if you don’t know where it is. Find, isolate, test and treat every case to break the chains of Covid transmission. Every case we find and treat limits the expansion of the disease.” WHO did not limit ‘find’ to outside sources. It meant finding internally and externally after all, it’s one virus, that’s why all countries have it. Then came ‘test.’ A handful of countries tested and found what is known as variants. They reported thei

Meghan Markle has been on T.V. her whole life, but she also doesn't have promo pics for her Spotify podcast. Bloggers still need them. Always have promo pics for your digital content, even if it's a music video, short film or skit. A podcast is a film production. That’s why it needs promotional pics. Once upon a time before Covid-19, film sets were huge, all those people lugging tripods, light stands, cables, fabric, carpets, pulling clothes rails, wigs on foam core heads and industrial make-up boxes. In Bollywood, sets could also have the chai wallah , bringing tea in glass cups. Photographers are part of film production and producers factor them in the budget, including travel and hotel costs for out of town or overseas shoots. Black Panther  for example. Ryan Coogler, the director shot some scenes in Busan, Korea. Canada is also popular with American producers because they can shoot ‘American scenes’ cheaply in Toronto, Winnipeg or Vancouver. Pics are for the movie poster, w

Don’t tell the people. The boy’s club that rules the world in the form of presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, supreme commanders etc. have that agreement. They call it state secrets or classified information. During the day, Canada, U.S. and U.K. pretend not to like China that much, but at night they sign all kinds of trade agreements that are evident in your kitchen, living room, bedroom, home office, home gym, car, workshop, your laptop and the phone you carry. MADE IN CHINA  is the sum total of all your possessions. My old phone acted up last year so I put on my mask and headed for the mall, before the March lockdown. Camera, that’s my #1 priority in a phone.   The saleslady suggested a Huawei device. She felt it had a very good camera, one of the best in the business. I passed. I’ll rather stick to the brand I know, to avoid tech hypertension. Huawei the company, has been in the news since 2018, because Canada arrested its Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, for Donald Trum

Is Luther, the character Idris Elba plays in the BBC television series Luther ,   black enough? Miranda Wayland, BBC’s Head of Creative Diversity , feels Luther is not, because he doesn’t have black friends and doesn’t eat Caribbean food. Where does that come from? So many things determine food choices. 1.  What we ate on mother’s lap. 2.  Where we grew up. Immigrant parents have stories to tell about kids not liking food from the original country, because they want to fit in. 3.  What we acquired along the way. Pizza for example, I first tasted it in New York. I also met brusssel sprouts, said hello and left them right there on the road. Sue, my friend from Hong Kong introduced me to many things in New York, including sushi and we’ve been friends every since (sushi and I, that is). 4.  What we can afford e.g. macaroni and cheese in a box, noodles, pasta, baked beans on toast 'for tea', corn porridge, yam flakes, cabbage, potato soup, pork pies or ham hogs. How about rack of la

Sridevi Kapoor Bollywood actress, died thru drowning  in a  Dubai hotel bathtub in Feb 2018.   Because of the internet, rich women have sympathizers when they get depressed, sometimes to the point of committing suicide. The depression comes from the belief that they are entitled to happiness. That belief is compounded by money. They have all the things money can buy, so they don’t understand how they can be unhappy. No depressed, because unhappy applies to ordinary people, not celebrities. Rich women’s depression is compounded by social media, the stage for playing out perfect lives. Depression comes into play when the mind is exhausted from going back and forth between what is, and what is not. What is not, is a perfect life, a fact women and men from all corners of the globe understand. Depression is a rich women’s lot because they feel that despite fame and fortune, something is ‘pressing’ them down. Women who don’t have a harvest, because rain took a rain check and the sun torched

  Prinsessan Madeleine, father King Gustaf of Sweden. Read before re-tweeting. I smiled the first time I saw that message. Love the tweet? No problem. Click the little heart. Re-Tweet? Stop right there. The system suggests that I should read the news item first. It makes sense. How can I share something based on headlines, which might be misleading? Fine, but who has the time for reading? That’s the problem. We don’t want to admit it, but reading’s expiry date is almost here. We postpone the inevitable by posting the good news, that we finished the first draft or pose with the copy of the book, but how many people will read it? It’s not personal, far from it. The World Health Organization (WHO) has daily briefings about COVID-19, but we don’t have time to read about something that has turned our life upside down, killed millions. Fiction and non fiction used to be the preserve of a certain class whose members were encouraged to write, “Darling, your dinner parties are absolutely divine

Bed bugs are illiterate, but they are business savvy.   They have effective strategies not taught at the Goethe Business School Frankfurt , Wits Business School Johannesburg or London Business School, Dubai campus. 1.  Bed bugs don’t have competitors. There’s no demand for human blood, so there are no start-ups to put them out of business. We can’t count the Red Cross and other Blood Transfusion Services because they want only one pint. Bed bugs take a gallon. 2.  Bed bugs do not declare profits. They are a secret society like drug cartels, diamond merchants in London England and cult societies like the police. 3.  Bed bugs work 24/7, day and night. Yes during the day too, because we haven’t made our beds or changed sheets since the pandemic invasion last year. 4.  Bed bugs don’t diversify. They have no intention of branching out to include human hair. 5.  Bed bugs don’t keep armies of corporate lawyers because their business is legit. 6.  Bed bugs don’t pay taxes because their busines

Cats have nine lives. Billionaires have two: as an industry and as a foundation. I’m no mathematician but this is the formula.   Slave wages + profit + taxman = foundations Billionaires collect wealth through different strategies, like paying  gold and platinum miners in African currencies, but trade those minerals in dollars. Billionaires also make money by robbing the poor, paying them peanuts. Workers are not poor by birth. They’re poor when billionaires don’t pay them a living wage. Workers need it more because they pay cash for food and shelter, unlike billionaires who acquire wealth with collateral and borrowed money called lines of credit. Unions try to fight for members, but they can’t win because billionaires padlock factories and move offshore where the concept of a minimum wage is heresy. Tax Havens Called Foundations Billionaires only care about profits, but there’s one problem: the taxman. The more money they make from exploiting workers, the more money the government coll

Online stock pic. Pandemic fatigue or exhaustion is trending. Maybe it has always been there. I just never noticed. What is missing from the malady is ‘home’. Loosely defined, COVID-19 fatigue comes from being at home and not outside, in places that give us joy and peer validation. It’s easier to blame the virus for the frustration but we know the truth. Home is not fulfilling, despite the corner house with a pond or penthouse condominium, expensive furniture, German automobiles,  gadgets for every vegetable and electronics. Home is just an airport where we refuel while waiting for the next flight out of Toronto Pearson International Airport, Berlin Tegel Airport,  LAX, John F. Kennedy, London Heathrow, Ministro Pistarini  International in Argentina, or Cairo International. The pandemic has exposed us like the frog’s butt, to use a Zulu proverb. Staying at home dismantles the fallacy that it’s a warm place, with people we love and who love us back. One year of Covid-19 is a stark remin

Fish pedicure in Japanese spas.   Tired is khathele  in Zulu. You pronounce it like cartel. Wonderful! The translation fits to a T. Mama used to be tired after work, so we put warm water in a basin and she would soak her feet. No, she did not belong to the pedicure class. Lockdown is still around. Drivers miss work but they used to get tired of bumper to bumper traffic and lane closures, because the city was upgrading pipes and grid lines. Human beings get tired of each other and get a divorce. This happens a lot in so-called developed countries because two people rely on each other for absolutely everything. It’s worse for women. They have cars, car seats and money but raise kids alone, which is not natural. Women in so-called poor countries have many resources including grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins and older kids, who take care of younger ones. Kids have chores then go out and play football or cricket, swim or climb trees. Feeding mothers therefore, have birth pains but are

Short-changed by America.  American veterans went to war because they believe their country is the ideal, to be emulated by the rest of the world. That flame was even more vibrant for African Americans despite the rot. Their parents and grandparents had slavery and lynching scars. They themselves joined the army because they couldn’t get an education and jobs at home but, they still went abroad to protect democracy. It was one of the reasons they believed America could be salvaged. Soldiers born and raised in the south know how Jim Crow prevented them from voting but they still believe that you can choose who you want in city hall, state legislature, White House, House of Representatives or Senate. There are two sets of veterans. Veterans that still have all their faculties and limbs despite what they experienced in the trenches. The second set has half limbs. Both still believe in the U.S.A. so they vote in local and federal elections. Voter suppression laws in Georgia  will singe tha