True ............. or False ??

First, a question ??
How many emails would you say on average you receive in a day that are total crap - and by 'crap' I do mean the ones from 'unknown' senders or those with spectacular names such as godimfullacrap@yabloodyhoo.com and such like ?? (Not those ones that we receive from the boss that really should be filed under the same heading - but sadly you have to actually carry out their wishes first - that is of course if you want to get paid, and seeing as today is the 30th July - best do whatever he says today for tomorrow your paycheck may go missing!)

Anyway as for the random 'crap' messages that you get. Let's take the average week's company email. We start with at least 3 a day 'wishing to be friends' - not that some of them can even spell the word however but still, it seems they have been waiting for this moment all their lives and your email conveniently appeared (as a vision no doubt), and now this is 'karma' that you must now become live long buddies......... Yea, right.

If you're lucky (as I am at least 5 times a week let me tell you - it's OK, you can leave the fan mail / god I'm jealous mail in the comment box once I've finished posting this), .... where was I? .. Oh yes, now if you're lucky not only will these smashing people wish to be friends but lots of them will want to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to your bank account as they've nicked it from somewhere (perfectly above board you understand), and now wish to give half of it to you for just being their new 'friend' and conveniently giving out your entire life history so they can in turn rip you off!!

Then of course, there's always a ton of those emails with smashing offers such as; offering generous libido enhancing drugs; enlarge your penis in 10 minutes; and loose 35kg of your body mass in one breath!

And then finally when you sift out all that crap (and the bosses email of course - star that one just in case you delete it by mistake whilst you're too busy catching up with your mates on Facebook), then we are left with my favourite ones, and that is all the scandals, hoaxes and jokes that come through on a daily basis.

Those are the only ones worth reading - they show how much time half this world has on their hands. Like the one I received yesterday on Jamie Oliver's *new* cookbook - that is of course, er, NOT ! But it's fun reading don't you think? And don't joke, it has 120 odd pages - all with lovely piccies of the delicious meals you may poison yourselves with. I mean, who has the time to write all that??

Mshairi left a comment on that post directing us to a website where you can go and check out the real vs. the unreal. It's called snopes and is really quite enlightening! It is also though, in some ways, incredibly disappointing. I so wanted that mobile phones cooking the popcorn and boiling an egg thing to be true. I carry two mobiles around with me at all times just in case I get stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere with no power and a raw egg, and now it looks like I shall have to think again on my 'survival pack' as apparently *in the real world* 100 mobile phones sitting on top of an egg for one hour didn't even warm the damn thing up!

But at least now I am full of crap myself and can do lots of "Did you know .....?"


I have useful information on board now such as;
Coca Cola did not invent Santa Claus, (can you bloody believe it!)
Coca Cola is not an effective spermicide, (so stop chucking all that fizz about!)
BUT, BUT, BUT,
Coca Cola DID once contain cocaine and did not become completely cocaine free until 1929.
(Can I say that explains a lot as to why my Granny was such a diva until the age of 89! She had a good 30 years of drinking that stuff !!)

Anyway this all got me thinking that I should set up my own "true or false" site with regards to politics in Kenya. But then of course I realised that sadly ALL of the most ridiculous and unbelievable things that happen amongst our Members of Parliament and the like, are totally TRUE, and how depressing would that be having an entire website dedicated to our disasters that they call "Politics in Kenya"??

I think I shall ditch the idea and save the Samaritans a bunch of depressed Kenyan's phone calls as they are all about to launch themselves off their fridge freezer as life will be too dismal to continue with. I also don't want The Samaritan call centre in India to get too excited when a bunch of truck driving Kenyans start calling up .......

Depressed Kenyan (DP): "Is that The Samaritans?"
The Samaritan Hotline redirected to Calcutta (SH): "Most certainly, and how can I help you?"
DP: "Life is tooo depressing with our politicians stealing all our cash, I just can't go on.
I am thinking of killing myself. What should I do?"
SH: "I'm very sorry to hear that. However, I don't suppose you could help us out and drive a truck?"

Sshhhhh .... keep this under your hat!

Thing is *whispering* I just got an email through with the entire text of Jamie Oliver's new cookbook. Rumour has it (and don't we Kenyans just lurve a bit of a rumour *He He*), that some chap in the publishing house emailed a copy to one of his mates and some smart arse hacked into his emails and sent said text around the web !

See this ......

I shall NOT be telling you where I got this little bit of golden information from - as that will of course mean I shall have to kill you all, and that would just be far too messy and I've got a bit of a full schedule on this week, so instead I shall just make you all slightly jealous with words such as;

CHOCOLATE
TARTS
MOUSSE
SESAME SNAPS
FRAGRANT CHICKEN
SALMON FILLET
ASIAN MARMALADE
SEARED ENCRUSTED CARPACCIO
STUFFED BABY BELL CHILE PEPPERS

and even a ...

HOT AND FRAGRANT RUB - although I think you might have to actually buy the book to get the full effect of that one though!!

We have a solution .... CLOSE THE SCHOOLS

Well things are now quiet on the Secondary School front, and how was that achieved? Well, the same way they solve every education crisis round these parts – CLOSE THEM DOWN INDEFINITELY! (They love that word ‘indefinitely’ – it just means they can all have a jolly nice long holiday and will reopen if and when they ever feel like it!)

This is favourite sport over here. If we can’t control it, then just shut the doors and hope the problem just ....er, well, goes away actually!

They do it with the Universities all the time, and now its the Secondary Schools. Not surprising the level of education in this country is so low. How on earth are you supposed to learn anything when you’ve got people in charge like the good old Prof Wangeri full of useful ideas that get us nowhere?

Anyway, enough of them, because we’ve decided that actually all they need is just need a jolly good beating and then they’ll be well behaved and disciplined and all the problems that those naughty school children have will just miraculously disappear in a puff of smoke. - I’m sure that education minister thinks he’s some kind of fairy godmother and he’ll wave his wand, conveniently made of cane, and ...... *Poof* ...... everyone will get an ‘A’! .... Oooh, perhaps that’ll be a B. Oh, oh, gosh, sorry, think you’ll find that’s a C-.

I’ve been watching the international news this morning and headlines every 15 minutes is “Formula 1 boss’s ‘secret’ S&M dominatrix has a bit of an interview on Sky News.” For goodness sake, how on earth can this be “World News Headlines”?? Does anyone really give a flying fart what Max Mosely gets up to in his spare time, and the fact that his “Mistress” is terribly, terribly sorry about the whole thing and is really very upset about the fact that her video recordings of the whole event made headlines in the “News of the World”, even though she made tons of cash, and, and, ..........

So what are we thinking??? Why are we worried about closing the schools and wishing all our problems away. In the UK, it seems you don’t actually need an education, just do something incredibly stupid and you'll get paid a fortune!

All is not lost ....

Damn, they're clever these politicians ....

I stand in awe.

Parliament sat yesterday and had a jolly loud debate about what to do about our striking students. And what did they decide was the solution, (besides of course their bright idea of bringing back caning - because of course those annoying "human rights" fellows won't like that one bit!), so no, no, the smashing Minister of Education, the ever so clever "PROFESSOR" (no less) Sam Ongeri announced 'new regulations to stem the wave of unrest in our Secondary Schools' as follows .........

1. No secondary school student will henceforth be allowed to carry a mobile phone to school, and
2. Purchase of school buses with TV sets, DVD players and music systems have been banned.

Phew - glad you've sorted that out then. Don't you worry about those kids exams or the fact that you totally and utterly screwed up the KCSE results for last year. As long as none of them carries a mobile phone or listens to any music on the way to school, all of course shall be well!!

YAY, ALL HAIL THE PROF !!

Today's view

.... and according to all of our newspapers this morning, apparently if we bring back caning, then we can reverse this process :)

"Spare the rod, Spoil the child!"

The goalposts got shifted ......

In the last few days, the children in a lot of the Secondary schools in Nairobi have gone on strike.

"You What!" I hear you cry, but yes you heard it correctly - the students have gone on strike and slipped into riot mode. Windows have been smashed, classrooms vandalised and even dormitories burnt down. In one school here in town a student was killed when they got themselves trapped in the burning dormitory, and now half the schools have had to be shut down .... and all for what?

Well, the story that has come out is that their mock KCSE exams which were scheduled to start today are just too hard! (The KCSE exams are the equivalent of the GCSEs in the UK, but here in Kenya the mocks are always known for being much harder than the actual exams set by the government bodies themselves.)

I was listening to the news this morning and they were interviewing Secondary school kids who had been turned away from school and they asked them why they were striking. They came out with the exam story to start with, and when the interviewers seemed totally unimpressed as that as a reason for missing school, they then changed their tune to "Actually, the sanitation isn't up to much and our school meals are atrocious!"

Moving on and then interviewing parents about what should be done about the situation, there seemed to be one steady stream of answers and they all spelt out D I S C I P L I N E. All those adults interviewed agreed (including the presenters I might add), that 'in their day', they would never dare to do anything as wild as strike from school as the consequences would be too harsh, and these consequences would always involve a severe caning.

So there you have it, the kids go on strike, and instead of taking any notice to their actual grievances, all the adults seem to just go with "Bring back Caning", and that will solve the problem!


But hold on a second there chaps, has anyone actually listened to what they have to say.

Yes the sanitation in most of the schools is awful, the food pretty crap and the mock exams known to be utterly impossible, but hey instead of saying; "Well, in my day, that's just how it was and you should put up and be beaten for it, or just shut up", surely we should actually wake up to the fact that these things - as much as they may have been the same in our day - should surely warrant some kind of change actually!

Listening to these secondary school kids more closely, it turns out that the reason they even started all this nonsense is that they were told that as the government totally cocked up the KCSE exam results for last year, they have decided that this year they will use the mock results instead!

Considering the mocks are not standardised from school to school, are internally marked, and as I'd mentioned earlier, are much more difficult than the actual exams themselves surely seems slightly unfair to say the least, and it really isn't surprising that these students are a little bit upset! Seeing as no-one wants to listen to them, it seems they have decided that the only way to get yourselves noticed and perhaps listened to, is to do what their peers have all done in the last few months - Riot and burn!

But tell me this, is bringing back the cane really the way forward in all this??

Bring on Mrs Darwin perhaps ... ?

Not sure how many of you have been keeping up with the world news but there's this very bizarre case that came up of a man who canoed out to sea some years ago, never to be seen again, who turned up at a police station in the UK at the end of last year - for reasons known only to himself.

This is now the story of the court case surrounding the bizarre fraud incident .....

Canoe wife 'acted out emotions'



The wife, lovely lady that she is, 'stood by her man', and when he 'returned from the dead', she was overcome with emotion!!

..... BUT .... turns out she had been standing by collecting the insurance and hanging out in Panama with him all along, and the most fantastic thing about the whole story is that she is currently in court and says she's innocent !!

Er .... Right lady, that's the way to do it !!

- You see, you don't need to be a politician to lie through your teeth. You can just be a little old housewife. But my goodness, she did it so well and for 5 years, and it was only the husband who blew the whole thing out of the water it seems.

You see, that's a serious case of a missed vocation in life - she could have been a lecturer in Politics at some top Kenyan University.

Our politicians this end need someone like that to brush up on their 'downright lying' techniques! In fact, Mrs Darwin could be extremely useful as the spokesman for our Parliament right now don't you think?

Just in the last 7 days, we've had our Finance Minister dumped in the big sticky stuff and consequently shuffling to the side, swiftly followed by the Immigration Minister who has been jolly naughty issuing work permits when he was told not to, and then today it's Uhuru Kenyatta's turn of being accused of dodgy nominations when he was briefly ensconced in the Minister for Local Government posting.

Meanwhile out of the office everyone is gearing up for the 2012 succession - and why not indeed.

We are not yet 6 months into this one and it's turning out to be a complete disaster with lots of grown men bickering and throwing mud pies at each other and absolutely nothing actually being done, and I don't suppose it'll get any better in the next 4 years so "Hell Yea", let's start campaigning for 2012 and until then, the country can all go and rot!

It all seems to be about HOT potatoes ...

PARLIAMENT, INQUIRY COMMISSIONS OR COURT CASES

Please note that if you are involved in ANY of the forementioned gatherings, please make sure that under NO circumstances should you plead GUILTY, and that wherever possible you should hand the blame to the closest person to you!


I have set out some examples for you to follow for those who need clarification;


PARLIAMENT

- Someone somewhere will inevitably catch you handling vast amounts of rather dirty cash at some stage during your tenure in parliament. If you are caught with such before getting teh chance to get down to the drycleaners and give it a quick launder, then just tell everyone that you know nothing about it being illegal and (if all else fails), "BUT, the Prime Minister knew!" (- that is if you are from the ODM camp). THose from the PNU camp must replace that line with the following;
"BUT, the President knew!"
Then you shall categorically state that you would die first and then resign, and the following day you can stay home stating you have "step aside for the good of others" but - TAKE NOTE - "have NOT resigned!"


ANY COMMISSION OF INQUIRY

- Whatever questions are asked of you, and in fact even if none are asked at all, you must repeat this phrase;
"It was most definitely ALL the authority's fault!"
If of course, you happen to be from said authorites, go with the alternative;
"I knew absolutely nothing about it, but BE ASSURED I shall look into it and make sure the perpertrators are taken to book for it."
(no matter what the inquiry has been set up for by the way, the same phrases apply)


COURT CASES

- Most especially those involving colonial aristocrats being tried for murder.
Try the following sentence to completely divert everybodies mind, change the game plan, and of course get someone else to take the blame (after two years of going in and out of court);
"I couldn't possibly have done it. The only other witness to the event, who has of course stuck up for me all this time, but can I say he just hasn't been to visit enough, therefore HE obviously did it !!"



Right, so, we all sorted then chaps??
Whatever happens do not DROP the potato, just pass it on as quickly as possible!!

I've been UUd ...... apparently

Now it seems I have been tagged with a UU - not quite sure what a UU is but it's probably not dissimilar to being hit with a YoYo, as it seems just as painful!

Anyway this is how it goes; the UU must list the three things their husband (or wife) (or significant other!) (could be a pet, in lieu of all of the above.) (no pet? got a plant?) (if you have none of the above, you should go get one.) knows about them. The rules of this UU are that at the end of the post, the player then tags a randomly chosen number of people and posts their blog names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged. The comment must end with the word 'pthththth'.

Weeeelllllll, am I bovvered??
Well, yes actually, totally, I must say.
For a start my significant others are all dogs who, when asked, what they knew about me seemed to have nothing more interesting to say than the odd snuffle, grunt and the odd fart!

I suppose that pretty much sums up my life, but really I thought I could at least get a little more sense out of them. Failing that, and all my pot plants who are totally UNinterested (to say the least), I thought I'd ask my son. I mean he's had to live with me and my madness for the total 8 years of his life and if anyone knows me (because I can assure you that my ex-husband certainly didn't), it'll be that small boy.

So what did he have to say??


1. I love my horses
2. I love our dogs
3. I like to kiss him and am happy when he does chores, like washing the car or doing the washing up!!

I'm quite perturbed by number 3, as I never realised how miserable I must be!! The amount of times my son has helped with cleaning of the car OR doing the washing up I could most probably count on the one hand. Surely that means that I could count the number of happy times in the last 8 years of my life also on one hand!!

Nah, that's not true - I really am quite a jolly character most of the time - except of course when I'm not, and the little chap's right - I'd be bloody ecstatic if he did decide to wash the car or do the washing up!

And now, everyone look right, and if you see your name on my list of "FAB blogs", you can consider yourselves officially UU'd, so pthththth to you all .........

(PS. All complaints to be addressed to Belle at 'Diary of a Housewife' - as she got us ALL into this. :) )

Oooooooh .........

Yesterday our Finance Minister, the dear and honourable Amos Kimunya (who I understand is - funnily enough - Kibaki's nephew!) told the press "He would rather die than resign his post"




Today news just in HOT off the wire .......

'FINANCE MINISTER Kimunya "steps aside" after consultations with Kibaki to allow for investigations on Grand Regency sale;'

read more here

Don't suppose he's feeling quite so well this morning then !!

Federer should take a leaf .....

Perhaps Roger Federer should take a leaf out of the bestseller;

"HOW TO GUARANTEE YOURSELF A WIN" by Uncle BOB !

Perhaps I should get out more ….

As you may have gathered, I do rather like a bit of a chat, and do find it extremely difficult to keep my mouth on hold. It seems that even when I have no-one to talk to, I never let it slow me down!

Yesterday I went to do my weekly shopping and instead of sticking to the usual supermarket that I always go to and where I know exactly where everything is situated, my son wanted to try out some new play centre that’s been put in at another shopping centre from our usual, so I was left with my customary weekly list as long as your arm, braving aisles that I hadn’t a clue what was down them.

Well, I don’t know about you lot, but surely I’m NOT the only one who likes a spot of conversation with the stock in the aisles? But can I tell you, I got some very strange looks wherever I went.

Perhaps it was because I was so disorientated as to where everything was in the shop that I chatted more that usual to the inanimate objects on the shelves. I mean how else are you supposed to find the disinfectant if you can’t ask the bleach???? In my concerted opinion of shelf-stacking (which I know absolutely nothing about!), surely the bleach should hang out somewhere near the disinfectant as I would have said they were related. Turns out in this store, the bleach hangs out with the kitchen roll and the disinfectant is opposite the fabric softener – now please people get a grip, how does that make any logical sense.

I think I’ll start a supermarket “arrange your aisles logically” course. I will of course make a damn fortune, but I’ll give you all a heads up on my ideas, and before I get marketing and make myself a millionaire and ditch you lot, first of all I shall take full advantage.

Now, what do you think of this;

Milk, (and other such milky things including butter and yoghurt), onto eggs, then bread, jams and honey (so breakfast is over with), then moving swiftly onto veg, meats, followed by tinned stuff. Oops forgot cereals. They better hang back in the egg aisle. Moving on… where was I? … ah yes, canned goodies, then accompaniments such as sauces, etc. then we can have biscuits & snacks followed by pasta, sugar, flour, rice, and baking sort of stuff. Keeping smelly stuff away from foodstuffs is always good (not like in the supermarket I went into yesterday where bleach is actually on the corner with rice on the other side. Mmmmm!) So we should move onto tissues, toilet rolls, kitchen towels, cloths, etc. then we can have cleaning stuff (INCLUDING disinfectant), and at the end is the toiletries and hair pieces – we always have a full aisle of hair pieces in all our supermarkets!!

TA DA ….

So what do you think?

I was even thinking that I could move upstairs to have the wheelbarrows next to the welly boots (which seems bloody sensible to me, because yesterday I found them after the toy section and opposite all the fitness equipment!) AND, AND, I would even suggest labeling the shelves with the various sizes available so that I didn’t have to strike up a separate conversation with every shelf of the welly boot aisle asking them what size they may be, as the only place you can find out this information is picking up the blighters and checking on the sole. (As you can imagine, it can get quite tedious when the size 6’s are parked next to the size 11’s – especially when you’re looking for size8!)

Anyway after all that stress of the supermarket, and the people in it who kept leaping out of my path as if I had some contagious disease, the highlight of my day was a brilliant slanging match with all the chaps on my TV set yesterday during the most awesome Wimbledon final in history.

Mind you, I admit, I was home alone, and the dogs are used to me screaming at inanimate objects, so they didn’t even twitch a whisker between them.

However, I’d like to put a challenge out there to everyone who watched that final last night between Nadal and Federer that absolutely every single one of you spoke to your TV set more than once – even if it was only to go “AAAHHHHH” or “OOOOOOOOHHHHHH” at the amazing shots played and not to slag off the commentators or shout at Federer to get his finger out!

You see, I am not so mad after all. You’re all at it – chatting away to inert objects.

So why am I the only one who gets the strange reactions when I strike up a bit of banter with the things on the shelves in the supermarket??

It must be the weather

You know over here in these parts, winter has truly set in with temperatures dropping to 11 degrees in the morning (Shocking isn’t it I know), and actually I am sure that one of these mornings I shall awake to snow falling on my roof.

I'm sure all of you out there in the West are shouting at your screens just now, going; "Christ Alive, these people have NO idea of the meaning of the world 'cold'!", but hey, It’s the same every year here. We always complain of the cold at this time of year, and that we can’t believe how shocking it is, BUT then it’s the same again next year, and funnily enough the year after as well!! That’s the thing about weather I suppose – it never seems to be ‘just right’!! (although I must say I definitely hear less complaints when it’s nice and warm.)

Anyway, this cold seems to be freezing the brains of our politicians not only in Southern States such as Zimbabwe where Uncle Bob is still skipping about whistling a care free tune, although it seems he has slightly changed tack, i.e. He’s ready to talk to the opposition about some form of coalition government, (after last week telling them all to “Go Hang”).

I’m sure however this is only because he’s seen how it works here, Kibaki is still the President, he has his own chosen sidekick at number 2, and Raila is relegated to third in line, which seems to mean that no matter how much he jumps up and down and makes noise only Kibaki’s decisions count in the end.

So down in Zim, its business “as Unusual as always”, and here in Kenya it’s pretty much the same.

Our dear Minister for Finance, the Honorable Amos Kimunya has got himself into a spot of bother with the whole Grand Regency Hotel deal. Apparently the hotel was sold last week to Libyans for 2.8Billion, and then …..Oh, no, apparently that wasn’t QUITE right and it was sold to some Kenyan registered company (known as Arab African Investment) for rather a lot less, namely 1.85Billion.

Mmmmmmm ………

Meanwhile back in Parliament, a motion of ‘no confidence’ was carried last night on Kimunya ( – I really am not sure that releasing his “Transparency” report on procurement and disposals procedures was such a good idea at the beginning of the week when his very own procedures outline the fact that in matters such as the disposal of an asset such as The Grand Regency Hotel, he had stated that more than one valuation must be done,

(and he, er …., seem to have, er …. Forgot?)

…. and today news is just in says that the Kibaki has called off the cabinet meeting scheduled or this morning, "with no reason given", that had promised to clarify EXACTLY what in the hell happened with this whole deal of the Grand Regency, so nothing's changed here either.

Looks like our Mr. Kimunya might just have the right qualifications for a hot position in Mugabe’s government, so I shouldn’t think he need worry too much !!

La, La, La, La, La, .......

Well, here we have it then.

Uncle Bob votes ...

he wins ...

he’s sworn in ...

and then he toddles off to the AU summit and everything is just fine and dandy!

La, la, la, la, la ……