Read more?
There is a good reason why I'm always weary of stock market numbers. They can be easily manipulated. Especially the most followed indices. In this case, this would be the Dow Jones Industrial Average consisting of stocks of the 30 largest corporations.
If you take a look at the daily volume, you will notice that there is usually a spike in the last few minutes of trading. Take for instance today, the DJIA closed up 1.83% after after struggling to stay positive for the most part of the day.
As impressive as the gain might be in the face of an economic slowdown, the general market fared worse. Declining issues outpaced advances by a ratio of almost 2:1 at the NYSE with 13% of the total issues hitting 52-week lows.
Bottom line, don't focus on the tape. Buried deep in the headline data is the true market data.
At the Tandaa Content Conference, Ian Fernandes suggested that if Africans were more proactive about telling their own story, we'd be talking about projects like the Inga Dam Project, a plan to build the world's largest and most powerful dam yet, projected to begin in 2014, rather than rehashing the same old story about conflict in the DRC.This is Africa’s resource curse: The wealth is unearthed by the poor, controlled by the strong, then sold to a world largely oblivious of its origins.
The bloodshed and terror have always been driven in part by the endless global thirst for Congo’s resources...
It's my window, but I don't own the view.The Human Rights Project, seeking to move people 'from apathy to activism' has developed a beautifully illustrated full-color book called The Trouble with the alphabet.
Written and illustrated by artist Caryn West, the book features the world from A to Z, with each letter corresponding to a country in peril. In turn, each country is connected to a charitable organization that is working towards alleviating the suffering of children in the region. A portion of the proceeds from the book will go to support the featured organizations, and all purchases from [www.thetroublewiththealphabet.com] come with the option of choosing which charity receives the proceeds.The Trouble with the Alphabet is more than a catalogue of charities and global ills; it puts a face on the horrors that some of us can only imagine.
Paying your first dowry installment via the internet?
It is possible, with Mama Mikes….you HAVE to watch this video!
People are truly creative.
I watched a young boy and his uncle on an evening. The boy was about 4 years old and had eyes that see everything and drink it in with the same urgency that fire fizzles up a strand of hair that falls in its flame. The uncle was in his thirties and his eyes were on his little nephew with an understanding in them that could shelter the boy like an oversized umbrella during a rain storm. And yet, both sets of eyes were glued on the TV. That is until the winged insect flew into the room through the open door and settled on the folds of the curtain hanging next to where the older man was seated.
The boy was startled and he suddenly became alarmed since the bug landed close to where his uncle was seated. He shouted out to his uncle saying ‘Dudu! Dudu!’, in order to alert him of the imminent danger. Calmly, the uncle reached out and carefully scrapped the bug from the cloth and it fell on his open palm. The bug seemed more startled than even the boy and started clawing frantically with its many legs as it helplessly lay upside-down. The uncle then picked up the bug deliberately and without a care in the world, placed it at the top of his head. “Shriiieeeeeek!!”, the little boy went looking horrified, and “Bzzzzzzzzz!” the bug went as it tried to find its feet through the thick canopy of tough, unkempt black hair.
When the uncle bent his head towards the little boy, the youngster’s first instinct was to scramble off the sofa, but then he seemed to gather his wits when the uncle make some incredibly comforting sounds. And when the uncle asked the boy to touch his face, then his hair, and then the bug trapped in the hair, it was with a lot of jitters and many more shrieks. And as they repeated the procedure over and over again, it turned from raw nerves to excitement. When the dazed bug eventually flew away, the duo watched it go with some hint of disappointment.
I was later to think to myself, “Will the little boy ever be afraid of bugs again?” But then I realized that the lesson would perhaps be that it is possible for us to be weaned off our fear by watching someone we trust deal fearlessly with it, or if we may, ask for that person’s help in dealing with it.
Good old wisdom tells us that if we come across a wall, better to find a way to walk around it than to fight it. If you ever tried to learn Karate, you might have felt adventurous at one time and punched a concrete wall. When that happened to me, I realized that my Karate was more in my head than anywhere else, since the pain was just as much as if I had never taken up Karate.
Like a naïve Karate trainee that keeps punching a concrete wall in order to prove that he is learning, we do not have to keep hurting ourselves through making the same mistakes to prove that we can do better. Karate is not about punching concrete walls just as life is not about perfecting the art of failing. So what can be done about the walls that we encounter in our lives all the time? I suppose the most important thing is to realize what a wall is: that it is just a barrier that communicates to us that we need to take a different approach.
A wall has nothing against us. Although a wall might seem unfeeling, it is not totally inconsiderate; walls have a door or a window through which a person can slip through. Other walls that you might encounter might give you the opportunity to practice on walking to where the wall ends, or to use your skills as a climber in order to scale the wall. All these options are available and do not require us to hurt ourselves by hitting the wall with bare fists.
I really have nothing against Alex and I consider him one of the finest people that I know. And yet on more that one occasion, I have fought him with so much ferociousness that if he had fought back fairly, we most probably would not have talked as we did this morning. Alex owns a business next to my office and once in a while, he calls me to sort out his company’s computer problem.
In our last fight, I was going home after a hard day, part of which I had spent figuring out a disgusting computer virus infection in the network. While stuck in a traffic jam, I remembered that I had given him a call earlier and he had promised to respond within 10 minutes. It was now over 2 hours later and I had just remembered that he didn’t call. And so, I turned to him and accused him of taking my work on his computer network for granted, otherwise he would have called. I even remembered several other times the same thing had happened, and I felt some real anger building inside me. And as I reminded him of all those incidents, I remembered that I had forgotten to ask him for 1,000 shillings he owed me from a past engagement. Being broke, that added to the heat of the moment and I was really going at him with all the intensity that I could muster. Fortunately, I reached where I was going and I had to disengage from fighting Alex and do something else.
All the while, Alex did not respond - just like all the other times I had fought him. And like those times, I didn’t hear his defense. Did he forget to call like I had forgotten that he was supposed to call me? Did he forget to pay me just as I had forgotten to ask for my money? I would not know until the next time I meet him and ask.
The reason why Alex did not defend himself is because I didn’t allow him to. You see, all that fight was happening in my head and Alex didn’t even get to know about it. As I think about it right now, I laugh at myself and think that Alex was lucky since if it were a few years ago, it might have been a big spectacular fight that would have involved punches, bruises, and the cops. Talk of a storm in a teacup! When the mind is idle, it can take a route – all by itself – that we might not even be aware it has taken. The path might be petty, debilitating, annoying, even dangerous; but how can we control it?
A lot has been said about taming and disciplining the mind – including by all religions - , and I believe that this is a venture that each one of us should undertake seriously. The effects of a rogue mind can be summed up by the following quote by Mark Twain: I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
If you live alone, one the important lessons that you learn is that when you leave your sink piled with dirty dishes before you go to bed, you will most certainly find the same mess when you wake up in the morning. What if you make breakfast and still do not clean up? It means that when you get back to your house in the evening, you will have a greater pile of dirty dishes to clean. Unfortunately, things do not get better since you might realize that the dirty dishes have started to smell. The longer you choose to leave the sink unattended the worse the stink becomes and the more unhappy you become with your home.
And so it is with our hearts and the sin that accumulates there. At first it appears small – even harmless – and can easily be ignored. However as days go by and if more is added, the burden becomes murkier and heavier and makes our lives more miserable each day. What is the remedy for dirty dishes? You should preferably clean them after every cooking to ensure that you keep an orderly kitchen. What is the remedy for sin? Reconnecting with God as often as you can so as to clear any disorder that you have inside you.
Like every kid at one time, I thought that sugar was the most important thing in life. As a result, it became almost a full time job for my mother to prevent me from getting my hands inside the bowl of sugar. However, I was very adamant about my right to sweetness that I cried ‘tears of a cup’ even when she gave me food without sugar.
One day, while I was eating my salted food with tears in my eyes, my Mom did what was rather unexpected. She unlocked the top drawer of the cupboard and pulled out the carefully hidden jar of sugar and set it before me. She then gave me a clean tea spoon and told me that I could add as much sugar to my food as I wanted. I could not believe it! As much sugar as I wanted in my food? Yes!
And so I scooped sugar from the jar and added it to my food. I was careful to pile up the spoon just in case my mom changed her mind before I had the chance to add the next spoonful. However, she just looked at me patiently as I added the several spoonfuls and then mixed them with my ‘githeri’ until the brown soup almost turned colorless. And then with much anticipation, I tasted the first spoon. It was the worst tasting food I have ever encountered in my short life!
When I attempted to push the food away, my mother put on her stern look and carefully informed me that unless I finished my sugar syrupped ‘githeri’ I would never eat anything else. I can’t quite remember how much time it took for me to finish the awful tasting food but even my crying ‘tears of a bucket’ didn’t move my mother. After that incident I learnt that sometimes, salt and not sugar is required to make something palatable. Needless to say, my mother and I never had any sugar related disagreements after that.
As grown ups, the scene plays up often when God presents us with what we need, and we throw never-ending tantrums because it is not what we want. And often these disagreements come as we assert our rights to what we consider to be the sweet life. But the sweet life is not the only thing that we need. Sometimes we need some saltiness, some heat, some spice, and even some bitterness in order for us to grow as human beings. And as we go back to gladly accepting what he gives us, we realize that God always knows what is best for us at any one time.
Today is ‘Terrific Tuesday’ at Nandos Pizza Inn in Nairobi. That means for every pizza you buy, you get one for free! This sweet deal usually has pizza lovers queuing at the Nandos Pizza Inn’s Moi Avenue outlet till late at night.
I can’t quite remember the first time I tasted pizza, though it is not very many years ago. I remember looking at it and observing that the legendary pizza that I had heard so much about is simply a bread-like crust covered with seasoned tomato sauce, cheese, and other toppings such as sausage or olive. However, I clearly remember the taste of the pineapple pieces embedded in the Hawaiian pizza, and my surprise that such an ingredient could be used in cooked food.
Since then, I have often wondered, “What would pizza be without the bread-like base?” The answer to that question usually comes in a very unexpected way. Have you ever seen or heard of a person who seems to have everything – wealth, beautiful spouse, bright kids, enviable career – and yet appears deeply unhappy? That person would seem to be missing something that in not visible to the naked eye. Something that only he or she can feel, and that has been ambiguously described by many people as a ‘hole’ or ‘void’ or ‘emptiness’.
What is it that misses in the ‘hole’, ‘void’, or ‘emptiness’? I tend to think it is love. The kind of love that I am talking about is the one that is so basic that it is easily ignored, yet so important that we cannot really appreciate life without it. It is that which makes us love ourselves, love our neighbors and love God. It is that which enables us to accept ourselves unconditionally no matter what our external circumstances are. It is that which enables us to accept our neighbors no matter how different they are from us. It is that which enables us to accept God’s grace and appreciate the myriad of things that He has done for us. This love is as critical to life’s fulfillment as the bread-like crust that creates the base of pizza.
“What would pizza be without the bread-like base?” It would be ingredients – cheese, oregano, egg, sausage, salami, garlic, capsicum, olive – and not pizza. A relationship without this ‘love’ is simply a red hot sack of passion that burns itself out sooner or later and leaves the couple wondering how they ‘fell out of love’. Wealth without this ‘love’ results in the kind of money that can buy a ‘Bed but not sleep Food but not appetite A house but not a home ‘. A career without this ‘love’ results in a cranky larger-than-life boss who is very alone at the top of his corporate ladder. A family without this kind of ‘love’ results in a violent parent parent; one that causes the kids to sneak into their rooms in suppressed terror as soon as he gets home.
And yet with this ‘love’ it does not matter whether we have ‘someone’ or not, whether we are wealthy or not, whether we have a job or not, or whether we fit in the society or not. Neither is it the kind of love that you can find…especially not from someone else. If you find the ‘right person’ and you lack this ‘love’ inside you already, the relationship might be as illusory as having a pound of mozzarella cheese and no bread base and still expect to come up with pizza.
With this ‘love’ we are bound to have a terrific Tuesday whether there is a Nandos Pizzeria in out town or not.
Have a terrific Tuesday!