Nonqaba said ...

Vintage car used for weddings. Before Hollywood and its romantic dinners and engagement rings, magazines featuring the rich and famous, Nigerian movies, South African soap operas and Instagram, Africa had traditional wedding customs. Step #1. There’s the introduction. Man and his father or uncles go to woman’s place with a keg of palm wine to state their intention. In recent times, it has been replaced by drinks from Scotland. Her father calls her. Do you know these people? Step #2. Once she says yes, her parents prepare a list of things required by tradition. By tradition, we mean items symbolic of marriage. In the olden days, everything came from their land, the palm wine, yams, goats etc. The man’s family accepts the list and starts collecting them. A SHORT PLAY Obina has Baba Obina and Mama Obina worried. He shows no interest in getting married. Obina loves his parents and doesn’t want them to have heart trouble, so he prepares a list for them. 1. I don’t have money for romantic di

May 30: Donald Trump found guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. June 27: President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump television debate. July 1: Supreme Court grants Donald Trump immunity for acts he claims were official. July 4: national holiday in America, independence day or day of mourning this year, 2024? July 15: Donald Trump chooses J.D. Vance as his running mate. July 19: Shirley Jackson Lee Congresswoman for the Texas 18 th  congressional district passes away. July 21: Joe Biden leaves presidential race and passes the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris. August 6: Kamala Harris chooses Tim Walz as her running mate. Nonqaba waka Msimang Blogger Without Borders

Bad press like Donald Trump's criminal cases and defamatory statements affect business. Are tenants of this building staying put or are they moving out to avoid second hand smoke? What do occupancy stats say? What is a prestigious business address? It’s an office building a few men deemed important, and attached a dollar value to it. Trump Tower for example. The problem with such an address is its multiplier effect. All office buildings around it become ‘prestigious’ which results in a supply and demand scenario as more businesses want to rent office space there.  I’m wondering if the $355 million penalty Judge Engoron slapped on Donald Trump for defrauding New York State will have an effect on Trump Tower. Will the ‘prestige’ be tainted like the owner’s reputation? The ‘prestige’ is man-made, bank-made because New York State is humongous with tentacles like Brooklyn and Queens, but office buildings there are not as prestigious as Manhattan buildings, like Trump Tower. New York Cit

Tim and Gwen Walz with kids Hope and Gus. "It's the honour of my life to accept the nomination  for  vice president of the United States." 22 August 2024. Tim Walz, is a full circle guy who is a leader in more ways than one. Great jubilation in Minnesota in July when Kamala Harris named their governor, her running mate for the 2024 presidential election. Tim Walz was a high school football coach and that is interesting for people born in the other parts of the world. Firstly, why do Americans call football (dribbling the ball with your feet and heading for the goal post) football? Ha! Ha! Now I know, because I spent some time in the U.S. as a student. To avoid confusion, I no longer call the game played by Lionel Messi  of Argentina, ‘football.’ It’s soccer. I’ll call it football when I’m in Birmingham, U.K. This brings us back to Tim Walz. He was a football coach and the DNC in Chicago had COACH purple banners. Shout-out to event planners of that convention. People born

" I have everything I need to vote.” “Un-polled” voters like the woman driving the bus and her usual 5.45. a.m. load have other things on their mind, like the cut and paste their bank accounts can accommodate. She dreads that her daughter, a qualified nurse might take the nursing offer in Dubai. She ran the family restaurant since graduation, while the mother drove to bus to get a regular income for the basics, after the steel factory moved to China. The restaurant has closed permanently because of customers that are not into greasy food anymore. Those that that are not picky, order a bowl of soup and sit there for two hours romancing their phones. That is why the bus driver and her passengers are not thinking about the up-coming debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for the simple reason that: “I have everything I need to vote.” It’s not new winter boots or money to fix the roof. They mean information they need to vote. They are not going to vote for what’s right or wrong

Michael Cohen finally saw the light and refused to warm Donald Trump's grave. Sidney Powell, another former Trump lawyer decided not to throw away her life for a man who has one allegiance, himself. She will testify against him in the State of Georgia v Donald John Trump criminal case.  It is only Donald Trump who thinks rubbishing the American justice system is a good investment for the 2024 presidential election. Common sense sees it as suicide, so I looked it up. “The action of killing oneself intentionally.” There’s even a proverb about it: digging your own grave. This obsession with suicide is so intense, he does not adjust gears to accommodate road and weather conditions e.g. 30 May 2024, and the unanimous jury decision to deliver a guilty verdict on his head for falsifying business records, to interfere with the 2016 election. A normal guy with common sense will press the clutch and engage a lower gear. Not Donald Trump. He prefers cruise control to oblivion, using Truth S

Reality TV is a television concept, not real life. Donald Trump created it with the Big Brother series, lived it all the way to the White House on the back of American democracy. Below is an old blog F ebruary 22, 2024  about reality TV. It is not real life. Donald Trump is having the time of his life, playing ‘reality TV’ with a whole country, that used to have democracy as its fourth initial, after U.S.A. -------------------------------- I don’t mind waiting. I’ll let you think about it. No. No. I can’t think about anything. I have too much on my plate right now. It’s incredible how common sense took a sabbatical and never returned. That is why thinking is such hard work. The very thought induces migraine, which explains why we call fiction, reality TV. There is nothing ‘real’ about it. It is staged, planned well ahead because there are cost and insurance implications. It should be called documentaries because there’s a director that tells cameras when to roll and stop. Cameras captu

Donald Trump does everything for the camera. He doesn't care about the feelings of families affected by his actions. He raised fists at his July shooting, to demonstrate his 'invincibility', but two men lost their lives. He gave a thumbs up sign at Arlington National Cemetery. Donald Trump is Donald Trump, therefore he’s predictable. Expect the worst because he has the propensity to come up with original and destructive ideas: destructive as in loss of life and American public property, like the Capitol. Here are two examples. Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) 26 August: Donald Trump visited the resting ground of soldiers that left the U.S. on their own two feet, and returned in a box draped with the American flag. Apparently, Trump’s handlers ‘pushed aside’ one of the workers trying to enforce the Cemetery’s rule of decorum, including no photos. Trump posted pics where he gave the camera a big smile and the thumbs up sign. That was Donald Trump paying homage to ‘losers’ as

  Joe Biden, current U.S. President. I  say I love the rain, but subconsciously I hate it. Sometimes I feel it’s not a slip of the tongue when reporters for major TV networks address Donald Trump as ‘Mr. President.’ It is what they believe subconsciously. It means: 1.  They do not recognize Joe Biden as the sitting U.S. President. 2.  They believe Donald Trump when he says the 2020 election was stolen. 3.  They believe that he was justified in desecrating the Capitol on 6 January 2021. Hold on. You are blowing things out of proportion. Am I? It is just a slip of the tongue when reporters address Donald Trump as ‘Mr. President.’ The man on the bus and the woman driving the bus, could be forgiven for saying it. Maybe they voted for him, not public messengers. Reporters are supposed to ‘report’ who, what, why, where and when. We, at home tend to believe them because they are objective. It’s a job requirement. A slip of the tongue? Not in 2024. It would be understandable if it was 2021 or

Workers are men and women who take the 5 a.m. in order to be on time for the 6 a.m. shift. Labour Day in Canada and U.S. is always the first Monday in September, but what is labour? It has always been about soiled hands: to pull spinach from the ground, mine gold, sift riverbeds for diamonds, repair roads or throw nets into the sea to catch fish. We can also define labour by identifying who wakes up at five a.m. Men who bought the land and built the factory wake up at 9, go to the dining room where someone has cooked breakfast. After that, they sit at the back of the car while someone drives them to the office. Labour on the other hand, woke up at five to catch two buses or two trains to work. The lunch box holds both breakfast and lunch. By the time the boss arrives, labour has made half a million dollars for him in three hours. Labour changed. In some continents, men still mix cement and pour concrete. In other countries, they use prefabricated walls, pipes, roof everything, which di

Photo Credit: Online pic. May 2023, television writers' strike. It is no secret that I don’t understand the alleys and steel corridors of artificial intelligence (AI), but I’m convinced that it is legalized theft. Remember the Writers Guild of America strike that started in May 2023? Probably not, if you are not a writer, but I do. I followed it a bit and got to understand that it was about television production. Before the internet, most people had their favourite comedy, sitcom, crime shows etc. But few cared about how a show is born. It starts with an idea. Writers flesh it out by writing lines to be spoken by ‘characters’ that have been determined. The show becomes popular. The television station makes money and pays writers. Before the internet, some shows were repeated, over the years. I believe they are called re-runs and they generated more money for television stations obviously. Writers also got something: residuals. Writers Guild Strike  The strike was also about ‘stream

Alina Habba, one of Trump's lawyers on call. Based on common sense, it should be clear to Donald Trump supporters that immunity is a TRUMP ONLY right. It is the Supreme Court of Trump. You know how it is when you are lost in a building, looking for a conference room or the washroom. You see signs STAFF ONLY or NO ADMITTANCE. The Supreme Court is like that. Only Trump is considered, cleared and set free. This is a reminder for Trump supporters that are busy with the second insurrection or something worse. They love Donald Trump so much, they killed common sense and the tombstone reads:  Sacrificed for Trump . My common sense is alive and well therefore, here’s a reminder for MAGA operatives. 1.  Their intention to disrupt the November 5 election, is criminal. 2.  That intention is important when their case goes to court. 3.  JD Vance does not have immunity. His last name is not Trump. He is fermenting something sinister on behalf of his master, forgetting that he will be arrested an

Erin Jackson, the 2022 speed skating gold medalist from Florida. 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 mashed it all up, to come with its own ‘normal’ called trending.

Kamala Harris should avoid physical contact with Donald Trump at the beginning of the debate. He will try to hug her, treat her like a 'woman.' She must fold her hands in 'namaste' style. Why? Because he regards her as a plaything, and not the U.S. Vice President. Michael Tyler, Communications Director for the Harris/Walz campaign must clean his headphones, find a comfortable chair and review tapes of the debates between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump when they were running for president in 2016. This will enable him to give Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party nominee for president, sound advice about how to handle Donald Trump’s sexist antics on 10 September during their television debate. His advice might even be redundant because she knows how Donald Trump feels about women. He regards them as ‘playthings’ for men. It’s unbelievable that in the year 2024, Donald Trump can respond like that when asked about how other heads of state would react to Kamala Harris, shoul

Kamala Harris must have dates, facts and figures about the border deal Donald Trump sabotaged. When  politicians  lie, it means three things.  They don’t think they will be caught, despite living in the digital age, where there’s no place to hide. They think voters do not have a grain of intelligence. They regard them as empty vessels, like people at a rock or rap concert. There is no music. Musicians prance around the stage holding a microphone, while the D.J. plays some cuts from an album. The crowd goes wild when musicians point the mic at them and they sing along. Pure genius. They buy tickets to listen to musicians sing, but end up doing the work while musicians wave the mic like a conductor’s baton. When candidates lie on the campaign trail, it means they have no respect for electoral road maps, that make democracy possible. They have no iota of fair play. Elections are about give and take. Candidates promise to deliver certain milestones. Voters in return expect candidates of in

Politics divide the river. The destination is the same. The market. Somebody had a good corn harvest. She kept some for the family and stored some in the granary. Now she is going to the market to sell the surplus. She doesn’t like the goat-seller because he denies his rogue goats trespass in her cornfields. She also doesn’t like the palm wine seller because her husband is a standing customer, but it’s market day. All three are on the same road to the market. It is always disappointing to see political parties destroy the road and turn the market - a public trading place - into a personal backyard. It might not be a big deal to some Americans but it is, to outsiders that have never known a proper road. Potholes maybe, but not a real road to the market, football stadium, schools, hospitals or concert. Our main problem as human beings is mental vacation. Life is so easy, we don’t connect dots. The common road is everyday. When police seal off part of the highway in search of crypto curre

Black Eyed Peas is a music group associated with the Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign. Songwriter will.i.am wrote YES WE CAN, he crafted from Obama's famous speech. Black eye peas (beans) is an acquired taste courtesy of a friend from Trinidad and Tobago. We grew up with red and white beans in Africa. We also helped grandma harvest them although we didn’t appreciate it at the time. We thought it was hard work. I had cooked black eye peas for this recipe because it was in the fridge, where I store cooked red, white, mung beans or chick peas. Mama believed in using beans to make food ‘stretch’ for her kids and our cousins.   1.  Cook onion and tomato in canola oil for 6m 2.  Add Jamaican jerk sauce or spice mix 3.  You can also use your own spice mix 4.  Add lean ground beef, cook for 5m 5.  Add fresh garden peas or frozen ones 6.  Cook for another 5m 7.  Add chopped carrots and the tip of small chilies 8.  Cook for 3m, then add cooked black eye peas 9.  Slow cook for 10m for

Photo: store display. Dinner tables used to be round, like the  sun and moon. There are no country flags billowing on these circles because they belong to all of us. This doesn’t mean that politicians are not scheming behind closed doors to cut them up into blue, red, green, black, and purple flags, to form the United Nations of the Sun and the United Nations of the Moon.  There is no equality in tables because most of them are rectangular: the dinner table at home and the boardroom table in the office. There is something called the head of the table, which equates to the head of the family.  The Chief Executive sits at the head of the table, and the Assistant Chief Executive cannot wait for him to break his leg while skiing in Colorado, so that he can run the company for a few weeks, sitting on that  chair . Who sits where in meetings is just as stressful as who has the corner office and the one next to the photocopying machine. The rectangular table is also injurious to your neck bec

  Ryan Staub, former Colorado Buffaloes' quarterback, was treated with kid gloves in 2023. What last season's coordinators did to Shedeur Sanders was so blatant, some players transferred to Colorado in 2024 with one resolve.  PROTECT SHEDEUR. Attention CU play callers: 1.  Robert Livingston, Colorado Buffaloes, defensive coordinator 2.  Pat S hurmur, Colorado Buffaloes, offensive coordinator These two go way back when. They are career friends. Shurmur recruited Livingston to Colorado Buffaloes. They have their reason for being in Boulder, but the only reason that matters is Deion Sanders’ vision. He is the Head Coach therefore, he represents the University of Colorado’s football vision. These two coaches must not try to sabotage Deion Sanders in any way. Why do you say that? Shurmur knows the facts. He was there last season. First of all, Travis Hunter was brutally attacked by Colorado State. Secondly, Ryan Staub was the quarterback in the Colorado Buffaloes game against Utah,

Producers are also responsible for getting film production permits from City Hall. This whole street is full of trucks, driving ordinary drivers bonkers. It is next to the hotel where cast and crew eat and sleep. I stumbled upon this film shoot yesterday. Can you see the blue gels in that yellow cart? They come in different colours to create mood. You need smaller ones for your Tik Tok skits or home photo shoot. Go to any photography store for more advice. Film production brings a lot of money into the city where the movie is shot, because producers must buy, rent, borrow or steal everything the director needs. Production Trucks Shooting a movie involves transporting things from Point A to Point B. What is in those trucks? Cables. Cables as thick as roots of a tree. They will be hooked to generators these trucks carry, because the film production company cannot steal electricity from the hotel or street lights. City Hall will arrest producers and throw them in jail. Because of generato

Donald Trump and Guiliani, best friends forever, are we?  Below is an old blog O ctober 25, 2023 . I thought Rudy Giuliani will flip. --------------- It will break Trump’s heart when Rudy Giuliani calls District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia and says   ‘Let’s cut a deal .’ However, Trump’s broken heart won’t stop him from calling his bosom friend unimaginable names, and even denying he knows him, the way he denies Sidney Powell. Somebody denied Jesus three times, according to what we were taught in RELIGIOUS STUDIES. Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump are joined at the hip in this RICO Act case. How? Both have 13 counts which are almost identical. An interesting one is the  conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree . Giuliana might flip because of what he knows now, and didn’t know then. First of all, he was on board with the stolen election lie because he thought Fani Willis was bluffing for the following reasons. 1. A small town District Attorney will never indict a former U.S.

David Shafer's mugshot. He is the Georgia Republican Party chairman and Trump's co-defendant in the RICO criminal case accusing them of trying to steal Georgia's 2020 election. Donald Trump, trying to steal the 2024 Georgia election through the State Election Board, are we? Below is old post 14 April 2024  about Georgia’s control of both House and Senate. ------------------------- The 6 January 2021 desecration of the Capitol by Trump supporters was just the lava. It brought to world attention an existing volcano, of men who pay lip service to democracy, but violate it on a daily basis because of their majority. Georgia is a case in point. The Republican Party controls both the House and Senate. They are part of the entity called the U.S.A. but they are notorious for ‘ that’s how we do things around here .’ They do things their own way and dare anybody to do anything about it. That’s why Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, David Shafer and the rest of Trump’s co-defendants devised