Only a few serious ones are genuinely working from home o. Just say you are resting small and I will understand. How can you effectively work from home when your vono mattress is smiling at you and your wife is walking in front of you with a small towel around her waist after having a shower and bending down to pick something from under the bed? Ei, Yawo!
Some people have just decided to take advantage of the ‘working from home’ thing and doing their own things. Okay. Fafa, you said I shouldn’t come and say it here but you know my mouth; if I don’t say it I will not feel fine. Okay, you, I won’t say it. The only thing is that don’t tell me again you are working from home when you are busily buying kokonte flour, wele and mormorni at Madina market on a busy working day. If you continue to deceive yourself that you are working from home when you are sweating it out buying kokonte at the market, you are on your own. I saw Fafa trying to test the freshness of some okro and I asked her what she was trying to do and she said she was typing a memo. Only Fafa can do this…working from home! I am still wondering why there is so much traffic congestion on the Kasoa road yet Fafa is working from home at Madina market. Ei!
Fafa is a very good friend who never liked Mathematics as a subject. Those of us who were a ‘bomb’ in Maths often take consolation in the bragging right that we loved literature when we were in school. It’s a scam just to feel good. Did we have a choice? Abeg, make I hear something o. You can’t lose here and lose there but trust me, there were still those who were neither here nor there. Give them the answers next to the questions, yet they would still find a way and manage to fail at all cost. I don’t know how they do it but for them, failing is like a calling. They won’t feel fine if they don’t fail but they never give up too; they are like cartoons – you kill them a thousand times, they would rise up in equal measure. They are just talented in failing. In fact, failing is their hobby! They do it with passion and for fun and I am one of them. Hahaaa!
Otherwise why is it that in the exam hall, everybody is using a calculator and me alone I kept wondering which part of the question paper required the use of a calculator. Have you had this experience before where you are so prepared for an exam that you are asked to start work and you look at the questions and so happy you are going to butcher the paper? At that point you are likely to be looking round to see if everyone else is as fulfilled as you and then some unnecessary fidgeting be like that to show that you dey form. But hey, wait a minute, it’s not everyone who is looking around who is excited about the questions o; there are some direct opposites; they look at the questions and keep looking round wondering why the duration of the exam is so long – 3 hours? Doing what? Give some of us ten years to write that paper; don’t expect anything different!
The ‘BP’ part is when you expect that the paper had rocked everyone and they come out of the exam hall and you ask them: ‘charlie, how was the paper?’ and they respond: ‘cool’! where cool means what? That is life itself; while you are struggling with your Maths, your ‘literature time’ will come wae.
I wrote an economics paper at vars in 1997 or so and over-confidence nearly killed me. The Professor’s first degree was in Physics before he continued to read Econs up to the PhD level. The approach to all his questions were ‘Physics Economics’ – very hard! Even where he is asking a question on the demand curve, you are likely to see kinetic energy in it. The worst part was that the questions were objectives – if you are wrong, you are wrong; no court matter.
I was in carried away, finished the paper and left the exam hall, of course in excitement.
40 minutes after I’d left the exam hall and about 5 minutes for the paper to come to ‘pens down’, no one else came out from the exam hall so I was wondering if it was the same paper we were all writing. Something said I should look at the question paper again. Lord God have mercy! There was a section B! I did not see it. Over-confidence o! Pass mark was 50% and knowing how hard this lecturer’s exams were, how was I going to pass after failing to answer section B which alone carried about 25 marks! After 3 long months of sleepless nights for the obvious fear of failing, the results came and together with the mid-semester exams, I scored 59%! Pass (grade C)! The sigh of relief was huge but I learnt my lessons well because the low pass mark reduced my CWA (GPA) from a first class to an upper even though I’d passed. My brother, never rush; not even when everything seems to be going your way. Take your time and humble thyself o, yooo!
Talking of exams reminds me of the skill of designing acronyms after ‘chewing baba’ (cramming) to go and write exams. Some are just funny. Imagine E-CAPTSIM-CAD just to make you remember some important points. I recall the day I wrote in my head the acronym ASWHIDWA (Auntie Serwah What Have I Done Wrong Again). If you did not know this strategy, it would be difficult to pass some exams. Another one is AIMSOH (Aoo, I Am Sick O, Hmmmm – AIMSOH). Don’t worry; they are all important points you want to remember in the exam room in order to pass your exam. Finish! Forget the rest and go home, Massa. But this skill is not easy; you must be super brilliant and academically disciplined to get it going in there. Not responding to greetings is one important strategy. That is the reason when some of us are entering exam hall, we don’t expect anybody to greet us because in responding, we may forget the points. The last professional paper I wrote, the acronyms that excited me were ‘DR MR WHEATR’. This is just the summary of about 3,000 words expected in the answering the question.
The advice I have for younger people is to ensure that they obtain a professional qualification before age 35! After age 40, you will never know that you have been talking to yourself unnoticed until you install a CCTV camera in your house. I didn’t believe I was captured on camera recently talking to myself. I am sure it was all about money for brake fluid and corn dough and how I was planning it in my head and then started talking to myself. Talking talking talking…as if possessed! The problems plenteyy! Na in make we all torch torch for here! That’s why I have a problem with those who commit suicide. We all have problems and then you alone you think you are the only one. Come let’s stay in it like that; if the problems don’t go away, we will go away…some day! Don’t be in a hurry to go now. Take it easy, my brother. If it hadn’t happened before, it wouldn’t have happened! No be so?
After this age, the way it is hard to pass exams er. Hmmm! As you are preparing for an exam, that is when your wife will come asking you for money to buy plantain, the fufu one and koobi! You can’t concentrate. In the exam hall, just when you remember a point, thoughts of rent mommo for funeral will cross your mind. Do it now o because you would eventually need to do it any way as aptly put by Bob Marley or so: ‘He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day”. Don’t worry, if you fail; go again, you would eventually pass. The failure is to make you better so long as it is not your hobby like some people I know in my neighbourhood. Their heads are just there representing them but inside the heads? Puin!
It’s Fridayyyyyyy and no holiday in sight until Farmers’ Day December 4th and then we vote on Monday December 7th. That is the day I will vote in the morning and go back to sleep and tell my boss I’m still in the queue waiting for my turn to vote as I am working from home. Case close. Nothing really gidigidi doing at work on an election day yet it’s not a holiday!
Don’t sleep too much because while you are asleep, two forces hover over you – wizards and angels. You have to stay awake and pray pray pray…e go better. putuuuuuuu!…. ahahahahaha!
