I find it worth mentioning that this is the tail end of the year. I’m certain we all have had some events worth remembering in the previous months. The days between christmas and new year’s celebrations are sure weird days, while some are on road trips, concert and party hopping, some unconsciously use these days for all manner of evaluation—from business to daily living.  That being said, the highlight of today’s post is to jog both our memories regarding the highlights of the year for us as individuals. Often time, we find it easier to recognize the hundred-and-one things that didn’t go our ways in the course of the year. In the same light, we find it rather convenient to forget times when things went awfully right in ways we couldn’t have possibly fathomed. Usually, focusing on all that has gone wrong or that which is still yet to be deprives one of the joy from the seemingly little victories and blessings. It leaves us without much gratitude.   Now, cast your m...

   Ever heard the saying: "if one could survive in Lagos, one could survive anywhere"? Some days, I feel this was coined with Lagos traffic in mind. Truth be told, Lagos is a real busy place with millions of people and, traffic is one of the craziest things one would encounter in Lagos. Unlike some other places that could have the traffic concentrated in certain areas, in my mind's eye, there's traffic in every area of Lagos (mostly the major routes) from the mainland to the island and the "other places". That is not to say the city is ridden with traffic all day long however, one could spend precious productive hours in the legendary Lagos traffic. The traffic situation ranges from standstills to slow but seemingly steady movement stemming from varying things like bad roads, absence of traffic control at notable points (and the impatience of commuters), not that many alternate routes, diversions due to road repairs and ultimately, RUSH HOUR. ...

 Lagos is well known as one of the most populous cities in Nigeria and is definitely one of the top 20 mega-cities in the world. Taking into account the increasing population of Lagos, the city is bound to have some crazies. I don't necessarily mean actual crazy but i believe you'd get a hang of what i mean as i continue this series. I was born in Lagos and no matter how much I may have been conditioned to love Lagos, there are certain days all I want to scream is " I HATE LAGOS ". Trust me, Lagos is as much fun as it is annoying or is it the other way round? Anyways, this series is just me writing about my experience in Lagos, past and present and Lagos on a whole. I earnestly hope you enjoy this recurring feature on here. DISCLAIMER : This is essentially just for the kicks but it's needless to say that the articles for this new feature would hold mostly truth no matter how much i try to make light of things.    Now that the intro is over, I guess you dese...

  Hello y’all, how has the month/week been? Good? Sure y’all remember my adulting post slightly over a year ago…if you don’t, click here , don’t be shy. My very good friend and I were talking a while back about how things seem to be moving so fast right before our eyes, you won’t believe it all started with an episode of fresh prince of bel air (we are dynamic like that). I don’t think any backstory can put it as aptly as these six words do: WE ARE ALL GETTING OLD, DAMMIT. Soooo, I’m back as you might have guessed already to share more of the realizations/struggles of adulting－whatever you decide to call it. Independence : pseudo-independence in my case. Realizing that you are absolutely responsible for your actions and you have to call most of the shots can be at times tiring and on other days slightly overwhelming. If things don’t go as planned, you often time have to shoulder most of the consequences. Do you --they say-- and yup! You are totally responsible for “the you”...

“The ivory towers and alleged repository of knowledge. Oh, how much my big ears have heard and my spectacled eyes beheld. Does that ring a bell?”   source Anyhoo, the university space can be likened to a small community on its own where you get to meet and mingle with a pool of people with different character traits and backgrounds, and different stories to tell. What has the varsity environment taught me? The list would likely turn inexhaustible in a couple years’ time but for now, Read on to find out. Tolerance : this would likely top anyone’s list as varsity can be likened to a confluence point of freshwater and salt water. In the university environment, one would inevitably have to learn and eventually master the skill of tolerance. From people with non so pleasant attitudes to the proud and loudmouthed and whatever might complete the list for you, tolerance is something you get to learn as you grow in the aforementioned environment. I have learnt and am still lear...

   At this point in my life, I’m rather used to being the last to the party and it might be very valid in this case. You might ponder what party I’m talking about now… well, I’m referring to the ‘listening party’ of Ed Sheeran’s NO 6 COLLABORATION ALBUM. Released officially for the ears of the whole world (stans, fans and haters) on the 12th of July 2019, No 6 collaboration projects is the fourth studio album of Ed succeeding “＋,× and ÷” and some would have thought the next album to be something along the lines of “ － or √ ” but welp, we’ve got a very collaborative fourth album from Ed. Might I add another *very* to that collaborative? Needless to say, people have been vibing seriously to various tracks on this album. SEE ALSO: Byebye old school    Prior to the release of NO. 6, I’m certain most would’ve heard a couple of songs off the album including I don’t care (with Justin Beiber) and Cross me (with Chance tha rapper and pnb rock) being the firsts I hear...

Often times, we hear news that we just mark it as one of the news items but could be devastating to the receiving party. Some time in 2017, I made a post about depression and that has been on of the my personal faves since then. As a kind off spin-off, I’d be addressing the occasional baby of depression….SUICIDE.   source For the past two years--give or take--there has been a notable surge in suicides and attempted but failed suicides (down here in Nigeria at least). One doesn’t often feel the gravity of such things until it hits near to home, maybe not by the doorstep but a couple minutes walk away. And it’s moments like that you relate to the gravity of it, the brevity and volatility of life, how even the externally happiest can be the most likely to go through this means. It’s moments like that, you remember someone that has fallen off your radar or you have drifted from and sincerely hope to the heavens that all is well with them. It’s times like these you realize and reaf...

   Done with my last exams for the semester, sitting in front of my screen trying to release canned up stress from the back to back exams and then an argument ensues. What started as a discussion turns into an actual brouhaha, war of words and battle of…. could I say wits?    You might wonder what the argument streaming into my ears right past my earbuds was about?? Y’all definitely have heard about the advance fee fraud guys (YAHOO BOYS), yes? That is what the centre of the argument was. A major fraction of the arguers were legit defending the place of these scum of the earth  guys.    A residual part of my brain already takes this generation as a bunch of entitled kids and this argument then makes me realize the materialistic nature of most in this generation. A summary of all the "BS" that was said during this argument: “ A good name is better than riches ” The argument spanned from legitimizing the craftiness of the fraudsters on the b...

   Hey beautiful people ~dancing in like I never left~, its been more than a moment. As some of you might have guessed, school dragged me away from y’all. It sure does feel great to be back even if it is only momentary. Life this past three months has been a sort of roller coaster cum calm in the storm kinda thing and on most days, I’m a mess by Ed sheeran would typify how I felt there and then. Oh well, I think it appropriate to let you know, what's reality lately and no, not the Jon bellion song: Eating : too much carbs, too much bread. I’m sure all the bread I’ve eaten can see me through a whole year without carbs. Source Discovered : some people just refuse to have sense no matter how much you try (probably harsh but true). Rediscovered that most times, upbringing shapes our perspective on life. I’ve been typified as serious. I’m kinda predictable (more than I would like to admit). That I probably have claustrophobic tendencies. Learning : some lot about history...

Not too long after the start of the new year, I got a hold of “After the fire” by John Lockley. Ordinarily, I would have done a review but I have decided otherwise. This time around, I would be highlighting some of the truths in the book that resonates with reality. A general idea of the storyline would be necessary so, here it is.   As a result of some little mistake that was suspected to be easily overlooked, a rat gets electrocuted and trips of the electricity supply to a refrigerator holding bacteria cultures in a laboratory. That was the beginning of an epidemic in the city of London. The bacteria got out, being extremely contagious, many people got infected. The mutated nature of the disease which was dubbed Legionnaire ’s made an infected person unaware till about 5-30 minutes before the bacteria killed them. Professionals advised Londoners to stay put and have minimal contact with people. An antibiotic was also said to be able to treat it. As expected, people to...

   I recall sometime two years ago, whilst roaming the “streets of instagram”, I stumbled upon the cover art for this book and it somehow was relegated to the back of my head. Thinking about it, the book was yet to be released then. Fast forward to last year November, I see feeds about this book on one of my social media, I gloss over the post, remembering the book from sometime before. Once again, I don’t particularly go all out to search for this book. So, come December, I’m surfing the web and find this book staring me in the face once again. After coming across it for the third time now, I obviously couldn’t avoid it and went ahead to get it. As I had some other books I was reading, I didn’t get to reading it till January this year. Down to the actual review. Overview Note: I doubt an overview can give you enough insight into the happenings of this book but I’d go ahead nonetheless. Ada is the second child and first daughter of a Nigerian (Ibo) father and a Malays...

   You may remember me reviewing the prequel (AKATA WITCH) a while back and mentioning the existence of a sequel. Anyway, I laid my hands (went looking for it in literally) on the sequel named above and with the experience with the prequel, it wasn’t hard getting into the groove. I believe I have said all that could be said prior to reading the book with the other review, so, I’d just hit the road running. OVERVIEW    As said earlier AKATA WARRIOR by Nnedi Okorafor is the second installment of the AKATA series (I guess I can call it that), a fantasy book series. About a year after the defeat of a kidnapping menace and ritual killer, Black Hat Otokoto and battling Ekwensu back into the wilderness, Sunny begins to get more acquainted to leopard ways. She’s found to be growing stronger physically as well as in her knowledge of leopard things. Her family is getting used to her disappearing and reappearing at odd hours of the day and no longer question her much abo...

  Hey people! Trust the previous week went well. Remember my previous post on my love-hate relationship with social media (ICYMI, find it here )?  As everything under the sun has a good and bad view, so does social media. As promised, today’s post borders on the pros of social media.  Platform for entrepreneurs to sell themselves: leveraging on the fact that the world is turning more and more to a global village by the hour, popular social media apps serve as platforms for business owners and entrepreneurs to reach a wider client base. Varying people with a myriad of needs use social media actively and from time to time. It would come as no surprise that one’s prospective customers could be found in a corner of one of these platforms.  News travels faster: Some 20+ years ago, the only access we had to news and current happenings in other parts of the world were the news (radio/TV) and newspapers. Even with these within easy reach, they carried the most i...

Hey people!!! Feeling lost? Trust me, you took the right turn and are in the right place. This is still yours truly on mixedbaggy though it all looks different from what you probably saw the last time you stopped by. Well, well, I made some minor changes to how everything looks just for you (?). What are the latest blog edits.   Honestly, I didn’t change much. The theme, which is responsible for how the blog looks on a whole  is still the same cos I like how easy it is to navigate. If you are one of the earlier readers of this blog, you’d reckon this is my third blog edit (if I’m correct). It had a black and orange themed background before switching to that which most of you are used to seeing here now.   In the course of the month, I stumbled on a very helpful app (I hopefully should get to that some time later. *fingers crossed*) and that inspired me to add a bit of a personal touch to how the blog is presented to y’all. Down to the personal touches, I am a lover...

  Seeing the hashtags of ending bank frauds and gross negligence trending on twitter yesterday, I have decided to weigh in on the trend (that's what yesterday's post was about if it got you confused). I am fairly sure every Nigerian with a bank account has had their share of this negligence being spotlighted right now. Some are fortunate to get it rectified whilst others are forced to swallow the losses due to complacency and the unbothered nature of the banks and time spent chasing the case can at times seem too much for just a “little” sum. In the light of this, I’d be sharing my experience with banks as well.   Sometime last July, a Friday night precisely, there happened to be some odd deductions from my account with United Bank of Africa. I’d call them odd because I hadn’t performed any transaction after an ATM withdrawal that same day. Apparently, someone somewhere, anywhere was using my card’s (that was still in my possession, mind you) details to perform some online tr...

   It’s the 23rd of October 2018, Kazeem wakes up with a fuzzy feeling in his head, picking up his mobile phone to check the time, he realises he has very little time to get ready for work. There are loads of messages and E-mails on his cellphone, attempting to quickly sift through the vital ones, he is more than alarmed to notice a string of unexpected deductions mainly from his bank. Kazeem has had it up to the neck with Nigerian banks. A new day, a new issue, from double deductions on Debit cards, to unwarranted deductions owing to unsolicited texts.   Kazeem sits back, briefly soliloquizzing, asking himself “How long do we have to bear all of this nonsense? How long till all of these big brands do what is right rather than continue extorting money from customers?”   He uneasily gets up, still grumbling over the most recent deductions and prepares to freshen up for work.   Kazeem is just one in millions of Nigerian citizens who face this daily plight whi...

Howdy mates!!!! Over the past week, I found myself brainstorming on what to write next for this blog. Honestly, blogging the way I do (writing articles) can be much of a work at times. Some days, I just sit in front of my screen, staring blankly, with no idea on what exactly to write about. Other days, I could have numerous ideas floating in my head, sometimes, I’m lucky enough to get most of them down and fleshed up, other times, I get to just a couple and the rest fly away or just don’t seem as interesting as the initial thought. Today’s post is several years old but it still rings true and possesses the same initial vibe it had. And, guess what? It is not as particularly serious as my last couple of posts have been--just something on a lighter note. I currently stand somewhere between  5ft 9’ and 5ft 10’ and by NBA standards, I’m nothing near tall (probably been seeing too many NBA games of recent). Away from the giants and back to the real world, I’m somewhere above averag...