Nonqaba said ...

How do you know a country is well-developed? When it cannot take care of its sick and elderly. Freelance nurses fly in and do that. Photo Credit: online pic. Health care workers are working tonight, while we apply make-up, getting ready for New Year’s Eve parties, all over town. I’m a coward. That’s why being a nurse never crossed my mind. I’m scared of my own pain. Therefore, I cannot imagine tending to someone whose internal organs are weak, survived a fire, building or car accident. I want life to be rosy. That’s why I appreciate nurses. Doctors are great I guess but they are not hands on like nurses. They are specialists. They touch here and there and send you to caves full of Star Wars machines for a digital diagnosis. When you regain consciousness you are back in the ward, so that nurses can continue with the real health care, the human touch. Who takes care of nurses when they are sick? We never thought about that in 2020, when COVID-19 made a rude entry. We were selfish. We exp

I see! The champagne is on ice for midnight, when 2023 passes the baton to 2024. “It’s all yours brother. Good luck!” Pubs and private halls are all decked out with balloons and ribbons, ready to party, but did all those people empty their handbags and backpacks? Probably not. Why should they? To sort out all the junk we carried around in 2023, especially if you are a one-handbag woman. You’ll be surprised what you find in there: salt and pepper sachets from take-out food, broken nail clippers, holiday brochures from two years ago, keys from your previous apartment, print-outs from your previous bank, old cellphone covers, unfinished bag of nuts, the list is endless. What is spring cleaning? I has nothing to do with the spring season, just a proverb that means sorting out things, not only cleaning the garage, but your handbag as well.  We never spring clean handbags because of intimacy. They are very close to us. They are like a companion. They sit on our lap in the car and the bus. We

Happy New Year to me and myself. I should clean up my act for the brand new 2024. I will do my best but there are areas I have no control over, like my financial situation. Banks and the government monopolize that area. They are always coming up with tricks to weasel out money, from our bank cards. However, there’s something I can do for me, myself and I. I can bet on myself in 2024. Fred VanVleet, who used to play for the Toronto Raptors, left Canada and went back home to America, where he signed with the Houston Rockets. He sent a little goodbye message that he was betting on himself, as he should. Jordan Seaton, a football player and top offensive lineman in the U.S. asked himself a question  “Why not bet on myself? ” He did and Coach Prime was his best bet. That’s why he signed with Colorado Buffaloes on 22 December 2023. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always bet on myself, but not completely, because no man is an island, says the proverb. That’s why humans have friends and family, but t

Rain is a photographer's friend. Colors come alive. Shoot early morning or late evening.  Avoid shooting at 12 noon.  That's when the sun is harsh and unforgiving. I smiled the first day I bought conditioner for my face at a cosmetic counter in London, England.  I was in back space mode, remembering how Ma used Vaseline on our faces and legs. Not too much. You don’t want to be shiny. The rain is a great conditioner. Farmers can attest to that. It conditions the soil so that food would grow. The hippopotamus loves it because it can get a full bath after a long drought. Rain can also flood rivers and streets. We dash home when it starts to rain. Photographers don’t. Photos taken in the rain or immediately after, are soft to the eye. Green is green, red is red with no shadows. Photos taken at 12 noon on a sunny day are harsh, have a silver tint. You’ve seen it in movies. When cinematography still mattered, directors shot scenes early in the morning and in the evening before the su

Before we got here, drought spelt doom for the human race. No rain meant crops withered and died from thirst, so did animals. Rivers dried up. Babies stopped smiling. Water was the source of life in agrarian societies in all corners of the earth. There were ceremonies to request and thank rain. Kids shone like the sun playing with the rain and in the rain. Here we are in 2023, with Wi-Fi as the new water.  It spells doom if it goes for a walk.   We lost the   connection.   Systems are down .  We are off-line . Panic. All of them mean life is disrupted, even if it’s for 30 minutes.   That 30 minutes feels like a day because we cannot reach people and things that make our life worth living. Especially people. People we live with do not give us any joy because of persistent complains about our real life: time we spend online. Even kids know the drill. No Wi-Fi means parents  turn into wild dogs, barring teeth and barking at them. It’s sad when rejection deflates kids. Their tears don’t me

Liz Cheney lost her Wyoming seat in 2022 for a higher cause. Democracy. Her book title,  Oath and Honor  is spot-on for these times when her Party is held hostage by a modern Samson who would rather pull down the whole house, if his personal aspiration are not met. Below is old post 15 August 2022 before the Wyoming election.  Wyoming is not about the GOP race between Liz Cheney who currently represents Wyoming in Congress and Harriet Hageman, who wants that access card. It is about life beyond the Berlin Wall, which is now a tourist attraction in Germany. Obviously, the State of Wyoming does not have a ‘wall’ because it is in a country called United States. It’s easy to believe it can never happen there because the system of government is synonymous with democracy.  It did. That is why school kids in all countries colonized by Britain learn about the American Civil War 1861-1865. Armed conflict begins with an idea. It was slavery during that war. South of the country regarded black pe

Cellphones. They are indispensable during emergencies. That’s why kids have them at an early age, to call parents if there’s a problem. Unfortunately, we also use phones as a tracking device. Where are you? What are you doing? I hear voices, who’s in the car with you? You wrong Nonqaba. We use phones to show how much we love our husbands and boyfriends. What wives and girlfriends don’t know, is we know they are are calling. How? Irritation, men’s faces collapse like souffle. Some male co-workers complain about the frequency. Example. 1. The traffic is bumper to bumper. I think I’ll be late to the girl’s night out.  6.05 p.m. 2. I’ve just parked. I’ll take the elevator to the restaurant.  6.15 p.m . 3. I’m here now and guess what? Joy and Bree are not here. I’m not the only one who is late.  6.25 p.m . 4. We are having drinks while waiting for our food.  6.35 p.m . 5. Honey, I left a plate in the microwave oven for you  6.45 p.m . 6. Oh! My! God! Honey, guess what? You don’t want to gue

It's not normal, black woman speed skating? It is.  This is Erin Jackson from Florida, the 2022  Winter Olympics champion. What is normal to me might be abnormal to you. That’s why we must be careful what we say around small kids. They embargo things in their mind. We only know what’s in there when they let it out one day: Dad, she’s weird. What is normal is purely subjective and mostly territorial. What is normal in Saudi Arabia is not normal in LA and vice versa. What is normal in KwaZulu, South Africa is not normal in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and they are in the same continent. Example.  In South Africa, girls become women at a certain age. Until then, they are kids, and dance without anything on top. The British called it bare-breasted. It was to them, because they saw sexual objects. Not in South Africa, what gets men going is something else. What is normal is largely determined by culture, religion, urban or rural upbringing, money in the bank and language. The internet has mash

Technology drives our lives but it has never been an election issue in both Canada and the U.S. It is seldom on the national stage. That is why Americans probably miss ed  the news that might affect them. Hong Kong. November 8. Reuters report ed  that ByteDance is offering to buy back shares from its employees outside the U.S. for $160 per share. What is ByteDance? It’s the Chinese company that owns Tik Tok. Last December, the U.S. banned Tik Tok from cellphones, laptops and other devices used by government workers. Why? Because it believes China was extracting information it could use to put the United States of America in danger. ByteDance CEO  Shou Zi Chew  appeared before Congress and U.S. Senate and denied the allegations. American presidential elections have standard issues like the economy, taxes , immigration  and abortion, but not technology. It is unfortunate because it is responsible for many problems. Workers lose jobs when one machine can do the work of ten men. Internet b

Pic: Nonqaba waka Msimang. Parents want kids to study Law. Kids are into technology. P arents have no idea about this ‘tech’ thing and what kids are doing online. Maybe it’s better that way. They might be digging their own grave literally, if they knew because they might have a stroke. Parents might want kids to be lawyers so that one day they could be the U.S. President like Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. Kids might be on another trail altogether, fingers glued to their laptops, dreaming of apps that can be bought by Mark Zuckerberg  or Elon Musk. Parents want kids to study law because of reality. There is a law for every breath we take starting from where and when a child is born, schooling, work, taxes, marriage and death. There are even laws about nature misbehaving, like an exuberant tree, whose fall leaves litter the neighbor’s lawn. Parents want kids to study law so that they can settle the case, while kids want to develop an app on how the two nei

Law students will always have jobs as criminal lawyers, labor, immigration, constitutional, medical, financial, technology or environmental lawyers. Their future is guaranteed.  The internet is here, either as a saviour or serpent. Law will remain standing after it has completely bitten subjects such as Journalism, Theology, Anthropology, History, Archeology, Tourism, Music, International Studies etc. Donald Trump aside, law as a college subject will survive because deceit, ambition, greed, frivolity or family hatred are human traits that are here to stay. Law is also needed because of human error in all aspects of life and nature’s wrath like floods with its impact on property and humans. Twitter made Journalism extinct, but we need law because there’s always somebody who is aggrieved. We saw that in the 2022 U.S. Midterm Election where losers said they did not lose. In Georgia, it was the Senate Run Off Election. Brad Raffensperger tried to stop early voting on Saturday after Thanksg

Deion Sanders and Tracey Edmonds. It was flirting at first sight. Ha! Ha! They told the story in a video on August 9 his birthday. There’s a lot of flirting going on in the world. That’s why we have no time for kids that disturb us when we are punching our cellphones, with smiles that outshine the sun. But that’s not flirting, because the dictionary says it occurs between two live human beings. Woman : It’s a pleasure to meet you. Man : The pleasure is all mine. The man’s response is press the clutch, then move car to first gear. Any well-raised man will say: Me too, pleased to meet you . The pleasure is all mine man has things on his mind about what he sees and the hand he doesn’t want to release. He’s on future hand-holding mode, like Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle. The car is in second gear when the woman smiles at the fine, pleasure is all mine. Flirting happens in a crowded place, where other people are mingling and greeting. It is flirting because these two seem obliviou

We are in trouble if we cannot say the word slavery. What next? We cannot say Holocaust. We cannot say apartheid. You and I disagree most of the time, but we agree on basic things like, I woke up this morning. That presupposes I slept. I cannot wake up if I didn’t. Nurses and security guards on night shift live a different reality of sleep and wake up but it doesn’t change the fact that they do. The baby is crying. We agree on that. We get hungry, eat, and run to the bathroom when nature calls.  Agreement solid. That is why we lose out when we slap labels on our disagreement. I don’t understand many terms we use to describe political opinion. 1. Far left 2. Left wing 3. Centre left 4. Right wing 5. Far right 6. Right wing extremist 7. Liberal Conservative 8. Neo Liberal 9. Woke These terms incinerate common sense enshrined in proverbs. Take the English proverb, we don’t see eye to eye for example. I don’t speak Spanish or Tagalog but I’m sure they have an equivalent. The problem with p

Undecided voter watching the photo shoot. Below is old post 5 November 2022 about polls. Count down for America’s 2022 Midterm Election. Three days to go, if we don’t count 8 November, the actual date. People who voted early are smiling. They won’t spend hours standing in line, waiting to cast their vote. Early voters also knew who they were going to vote for. The target now is undecided voters, which is hard to understand how anybody is undecided about their future. Voting is like deciding schools for your kids. Some parents walk them to neighborhood schools built by local taxes. Others drive an hour away, for reasons best known to themselves. Also, the internet is like a store, with clothes on hangers and sale bins where we fish out 80% markdowns. A jacket might have a missing button or a shirt with lipstick on the collar. Political parties use lie bins to hook undecided voters. One lie bin are ‘polls.’ I used to be careless and allowed headlines to grab me, only to realize that they

Nikki Haley, 2024 Republican presidential candidate was born and raised in U.S.  by parents from Punjab, India. She is a former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. What does Nikki Haley have, that Hilary Clinton didn’t have when she ran against Donald Trump? It’s a question prompted by polls that she is the next favorite 2024 candidate, after Donald Trump. I should not be entertaining this question because I don’t do polls. I don’t believe in guesswork. How polls collect information should not be a yardstick for making decisions about politics. Hilary Clinton . Democratic Party 2016 presidential nominee. Wife to former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Nimarata Nikki Haley . Republican Party, one of the candidates trying to bag the 2024 presidential nominee. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, during the Trump administration. What could Haley have that would make her the first female U.S. President, something that eluded Hilary Clinton? I’m sorting this out in my head because they are bot

Doctors are sad, a very sad symptom, for a doctor.  Fortunately, they have done a self-diagnosis and came up with some culprits. l   The internet. There are thousands of online ‘doctors’ that never set foot in a hospital ward, let alone an operating theatre.  It’s like those mummy blogs by women who don’t have even half-a-kid. l  Pharmaceutical companies. Their ads go like this. “Tell your doctor to prescribe  Back Fix Tablets  for your aching back.” l  Drugstores/Pharmacies/Chemists. Knowledge that used to reside exclusively in doctors’ heads is like autumn leaves: it’s free online and comes in different colours. That is why some people are using drugstores more and more for aches and pains. Doctors meet from time to time to discuss their dilemma and reminisce about med school and student loans that are hard to pay off, since patient numbers are dwindling.  What dominates conversation every time they meet is the nagging fear of regret.   Was spending more than six years in med school

We all wish we never end up in court before a judge, but we cannot predict tomorrow. Only Donald Trump can. He has cloaked himself with solar and lunar powers. That’s why he believes he can rise like the sun and the moon. 1. He will be the Republican Party 2024 nominee. 2. Americans will vote for him and he will become a double-digit U.S. President (45 th  and 47 th ). We don’t have the ability to predict the future, like him. All we know is that we don’t wish to be in court for any reason, because it is like a foreign country and treats us like foreign nationals. The court system does not recognize job titles. That’s why it’s not moved by Trump’s attachment to the title: president. The court freezes job titles and give us labels.   Accused Defendant Plaintiff Witness Litigant Appellant Respondent How about witnesses? They can be people with job titles that denote their expertise, like doctors. Yes, they are, but they are presented to the court as witnesses, period. Their titles will b

Donald Trump can still settle for second best and represent the United States (become a diplomat) in some country. The position comes with something very dear to his heart. Which is? Diplomatic immunity. First of all, tables will have to be turned I guess. Here is a hypothetical situation. Nimarata Nikki Haley will be elected the 2024 Republican nominee. She will run and win against Joe Biden or whoever will be carrying the Democratic Party banner and become president. She, in turn will appoint her mentor Donald Trump to be America’s United Nations Ambassador. Mentor? Yes, when Trump was U.S. President, he appointed her to that U.N. position. It will be a matter of one hand washing the other, so to speak. DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY When Trump becomes ‘His Excellency’ representing the U.S. internationally, he can do as he pleases because of diplomatic immunity. What is it? It’s a gentleman’s agreement that diplomats abroad represent their country therefore, they cannot be accused of criminal a

Below is an old blog 16 November 2023, about bullet advertising. SKIP AD. Advertisers have a new ploy to force us to watch ads selling vehicles, cream to stop wrinkles, shampoo, hamburgers, movies and everything else. It’s irritating when we’re watching online videos, so we hit SKIP ADS. I noticed recently that the interruption message has been changed to  ‘video will play soon ’. There are still ads that tell us how long they are: 20 seconds, 30 seconds or a minute. At least they give us the option to decide if we want to watch them or not. This new ploy ‘ video will play soon ,’ is dictatorship. We don’t know how long the ad is. No choice. Watch it. It will end soon. It’s interesting that advertisers realize that the word ‘ad’ is bad news, so they removed it.  ‘Video will play soon’  is supposed to be reassurance to the viewer. Will this replace  video will play after the  ad ? Probably, because it has ‘ad’ in it. Aversion to ads is caused by their frequency. How do advertisers justi

Below is an old blog 27 June 2022, about ads. Who am I? I’m just a pawn in advertisers’ chess game. Microsoft and I are in a relationship. Sort of. That is why it sneaked in a message that I should help it tailor some advertising. Should I? I mulled over it. The mulling stopped when I remembered the tail end. ‘ This data is never associated with your device. ’ Are you kidding me? Of course it is. Everything is. You’ll think that your date of birth is harm less. It isn’t. It’s an advertising pawn. They also want to know my phone number. For what? It’s not in the public domain but advertisers still call me from Ontario, India, Malaysia, all over the globe. Chats? How do these people get my number? Chats? My foot! Talking about my feet. Sometimes I get on the bus, to go and pick up warm bread from the bakery. Guess what? I now get ads from a restaurant on the bus route. How? I’ve never been there before. I rest my case. Now, I never worry about technology because it is pointless, like sho

We are bottled up human beings. We don’t have control over our lives. The government makes the rules and deduct taxes. Banks take our money by force and charge us if we withdraw $10. These two are in collusion so there’s nothing we can do about it. They are legal highway robbers with full immunity from prosecution, something that makes Donald Trump green with envy. It is what he wants for himself: immunity. Skip ads is the only thing we can control. Once again, we are not told anything. Some people somewhere decided we should be forced to watch ads if we need information online or if we want to watch movies. We pay for internet service. The company cuts it off when we lose our jobs. Once again, there’s nothing we can do about it. We must pay, if we want to be online. We will continue to skip ads because we pay for internet service. Some ads no longer have the SKIP AD option. No problem. We close whatever we are watching. It’s the only power we have. Banks, the government and ads try to

This is too big for small kids. Break it into 4.  Learning to share at a young age. They will share limited resources when they grow up. Family values.  They mean different things to different people. They are nothing but, how things are done to bring up kids to prepare them to live in harmony with a harsh world, with people who share the same outlook on life, or not. Sharing for example.  It makes school easier if kids are used to sharing and helps them with their subjects. Tobi is more likely to understand what the teacher is saying about quarters, if it reminds him of home. I’ll cut this orange into four quarters so that you can share with your three sisters. This muffin is too big for you.  Let’s cut it in half. From time immemorial, immigrants in Canada and the U.S. had a history of sharing. They settled well and adopted ways to show their affluence: over-spending and overlooking the mine, mine, mine song kids sing in a new country.  Sharing is often shunned as old country values.

Before Twitter, before Elon Musk X, before Oprah Winfrey, before social media, was the typewriter. The Library of Congress is in the United States of America. The whole world knows about it, because that country inherited many countries from its mother, England. We are ruled by America, so we learn about it in school. Education is the conqueror’s history, present and future. Community, school and university libraries are in trouble, because of a little upstart: the internet. That’s why I’m wondering how it affects bigger libraries, like the Library of Congress. I wonder what they keep in those shelves. Books probably. It’s a library isn’t it? How about library cards? Do congressmen and congresswomen have them? Presidents are exempt I suppose. The Head Librarian knows them, so they don’t swipe any cards, and they are not subjected to electronic body searches. Aah! Talking about librarians, the Library of Congress should have assistant librarians that manage the various departments. I wo

Cycling to work is a great idea but, be considerate to people you work with, because you are sweating.  Fitness centers have the stationary bike. Somewhere at home is a bicycle or bicycles. In cold countries, people who want to make a contribution to arresting further climate change, cycle to work as much as possible. They welcome the summer because there’s no impediment on the surface: snow. Co-workers might applaud the effort to lessen emissions from cars, but dread personal hygiene. There is body odor which clings to clothes and wafts in when co-workers lean over during meetings. In extreme cases, somebody passing by results in nostril damage. That is not good for the company if clients also experience it. That is why it is a good idea to keep a wash cloth, deodorant and a change of clothing in the office, if you cycle to work. Shirts and T-shirts can be peeled off and stored in a bag and emptied at home. It’s easy if you have your own office. Workers that don’t, can change in the b