rebelr.

You gotta love technology, computers, gadgets. Anything with an electronic chip embedded anywhere in it is automatically my best friend. My phone is an HTC, one of the best phone brands in the world currently. Says the rebel. It is an HTC Touch Pro. A great work of art. I’ve had it for 3 years and some (by my calculation, that’s 90 years in human years). Lately, it has been falling apart piece by piece. It’s only natural with gadgets. One fall too many and it begins to give way. I must confess that I have used that phone well. And I mean well! At first half the screen wouldn’t respond to any form of stimuli from either the stylus or my finger. Only recently, a little perspiration found its way in between the screens it and has decided to stay forever. I’ve let it out to dry it out in the sun. Nothing. It just won’t budge. I’ve been trying to do it small-small until I save up enough cash for my iPhone! (Yes, I’m also a Macaddict) but the phone is showing me paaaaa.

I figured since I had a slide QWERTY losing the screen wouldn’t be a big deal. I was wrong! Just because it has a slide out QWERTY keyboard doesn’t mean it does magic tricks.

As a result of my inability to communicate with the phone through its screen, some annoying pop up keeps…popping up and I can’t get it to stop. At least once every minute it pops up, draining my battery juice. So I decided to lock the phone to get rid of the sounds it makes, at the very least. I did that and it worked. All I need it to do to regain control of my phone is to simply eject the stylus from its slot. It unlocks the phone granting me access to a little bit of the phone. So in essence with a locked phone minus stylus, equals useless phone. It might as well be a 6-inched hollow brick.

Now here’s what happened.

Long story short, I lost the stylus while the phone was locked. For four full frustrating days, I was unable to       access any feature on the phone, save answering calls. I tried every trick I could come up with and I just gave up.

My Eureka! moment came at dinner one evening when a friend feeling the pain of my frustration suggested that I try her stylus. I didn’t think it would work ‘cos it was way bigger than mine, but it did. Surprisingly. Later I decided to try a toothpick. That too worked! Laughable. I know. Still bemused by these facts, I decided to try my fork and by goodness it worked!!!  I could not believe it. I cracked up. It was too funny. I had spent hours moping over this for nothing. A fork. A fork. Can you imagine? A fork? I laughed so hard my face was contorted. Out of all the possible options the answer was in a piece of crockery.  was all that was it took to unlock a sophisticated windows mobile device! Think about precious days I went by all the seconds and minutes I spent behind the phone trying to figure out a way to troubleshoot this snag with the most complicated of tact and skill.

I have uploaded a video demonstration for your viewing pleasure. By all means have a laugh.

Hey folks, this is just a post to announce that I will be updating this blog infinitely soon…

There was one time when I was riding a bike and I turned around the corner of the street too sharply and nearly came head on with a parked car. I was so startled that I lost control of the bicycle and fell. In between the time I realized that I was going to fall and the time that I actually fell, I tried really hard to compose myself on the bike and not fall. A few seconds before I hit the ground, I gave in to the fall and made sure that I fell graciously to the ground. If you’ve got to fall, you at least have to make it look good, right?

Another time I went downstairs to iron my shirt. On my way back I miscalculated my step and fell down to my knees at the stairwell. The security guard on duty at that time run up to me and said “Oh Madam, you tumbled?”. I could have kicked him in the nuts at that time if my knee didn’t hurt so badly. Tumbled? Seriously? I didn’t even try to answer him and I just limped my sorry self away.

I’m certain that at one point in time or the other you have suffered a set back (or set down) or two when gravity took hold of your stability. When I was back in Wesley Girls’ we called it “Koto” (as in, “wakye koto”), which translates to “he or she has caught a crab”. In this, the act of falling down is likened to a person who is catching a crab.

Over time, I have perfected the art of tumbling. Matter of fact, I think I can hold lessons in tumbling for the inexperienced tumbler. For real guys, from grace to the ground. But it’s funny really, think of how many people have fallen in their lifetimes and how they fell. Even the most dignified of people have at several points in their lives fallen down in very undignified ways.

A cursory glance at the many trotros and taxis about the streets of Ghana will reveal unthinkable and hitherto unimaginable secrets of life, love, religion etc. It is a complete philosophical library of unintentional riddles, accidental parables and mind teasers that would make the theories and postulations of Aristotle and other great philosophers child’s play.

There aren’t very many reasons to support this – truth is, I know of none – but, according to the meager mathematics of a taxi driver (and possibly, his owner), the sum of the numbers seven (7) and two (2) is eleven (11). Whether or not you agree with him is not his concern. As he declares on the back of the taxi, that is none of your business! (see picture below).

I chewed on this for a while and came to the conclusion that the taxi driver probably had an argument with a passenger over change and perhaps, an onlooker came in to mediate the situation. The result of this mediation, may not have gone the way of the driver, hence his evident dislike for other people’s opinions on matters he deems to be right. To ward any future Samaritan off, he decided to declare this statement at the back of his taxi, just to let them know that he can handle his business. There!

Think about this for a second: “My Egg”. Now picture it in big bright yellow lettering. Does that put it in some perspective for you? Now imagine it at the back of a taxi.

If you saw this on your way to work one morning, what is the first thing that’ll pop into your mind? With all faculties of my brain engaged, my foremost guess was breakfast. But I was wrong, or so the traditional taxi/trotro convention dictates. All five of my subsequent attempts failed to take the cake as I moved further and further away from the truth. So my desperation, I turned to someone who specializes in this art form. An expert, if you will, on the taxi/trotro philosophy. The one person I know who has studied and developed an uncanny ability to discern from a distance the deep meaning behind these simple stated, yet, sagacious statements, my mother, the sage.

My Egg as she explained refers to the precious nature of the attachment between the driver/car owner and the taxi. In just the same way as you hold an egg gingerly, he will treat his car as such and he hopes that the rest of the world would too.

Friends and comrades, this brings me to the end of today’s edition of taxi truths. Until same time, some other place, please be safe out there on the roads; it’s a jungle out there.