...A Nigerian National...Citizen of The World...

Yes! I can finally pride myself of being a Citizen of the world, if you think it's easy, try living in 3 different continents out of the 7 that exist. Yes! I'll be heading to the Ice Hockey Country real soon!
each time I think of It, I have goose pimples all over me, come to think of it, the temperature goes as low as -30(I'm not really scared of Low temperature but not as low as -30, I can't even imagine what it's like), I'll be about $3500 away from Home(round trip Nigeria - Canada) about 1000Euros away from Italy where I now have a lot of friends.
I'm going to a country the only thing I know about is that it is extremely diverse, so diverse that you can not even tell who's Canadian and who's not by the physical features! Anyway, like the saying in Igbo(my mother tongue) goes, ''it's the supreme being that scares the flies away from a cattle without a Tail'' All these have increased my level of suspence. That feels interesting!
I putting on my seat belt, the ride will start any moment from Now!!!!

Napoli...Embodiment of Italianism

While thinking about the perfect way to discribe Naopli, the 3 words I came up with are 'Embodiement of Italianism'. When italy is mentioned, some of the several thoughts that'll flood your thoughts include Pizza,Coffee & Cappuccino,Pasta, Mafia,Europeans with slight African Inclination,Extroverts, the catholic church, fashion etc. Napoli is an extreme case of all these insignia of Italy.
It wouldn't be an understatement to say that the best Coffee,Cappuccino, pasta and of course Pizza on the face of this earth is made in Napoli.
The Mafia does not have a major presence in Napoli however it hosts the national seat of Camora which is the same evil bearing a different name.I've been to Sicily and other notorious Italian Cities but I've never seen any where the security system is so preferencially sporadic, I guess the breakdown and corrucption which Mafia drives is most evident in Napoli.
However the people are very happy, outgoing and fun loving, they do not let their troubles to bother them, in practical terms, I've been in Napoli for 9days, there's never been a day I went to bed earlier than 3am, they have a very good breed of nite life, I attended 3 beach parties, a disco nite, an arcade nite etc in just 9days, I bet you can imagine what exactly I mean by being happy now.In the contrary, there is almost no one that speaks excellent english here, actually I can count the number of people who speak Good English on the fingers of one hand, generally this is because of a lazy attitude towards learning, which cuts across what ever serious thing a Napolitan is involved in, they have a lackadaisical attitude towards work. This is evident in the type and level of economic activity you have in this city which continiously reminds me of Lagos because of the incessant traffic jams.
Their streets are always very narrow, you really need to concentrate otherwise you could mistake a street for a corridor of a building. It's almost impossible to walk for 5 minutes without runing into a catholic church, I actually heard that there are 153 catholic churchs in Naples, that's more than the number in Rome.
My Stay here has been fun filled, there was never a dull moment, I actually was able to find people I could connect with, that's really strange, after 13 months in Italy, I only found this on the verge of my departure.
Anyway unlike my trip to Genova, I had Mariano and Dante both waitig for me at the train station, they actually got there at 6:15am, the lousy train I took arrived 3.5 hours behind time, anyway I had a remarkable welcome, they guys were really happy to have me as their guest! I got the extreme VIP treatment, you can immagine getting a VIP treatment from Napolitans, by normal standards a Napolitan O level treatmet equals VIP in any other part of the world.
Within the 9 days I spent in Napoli, I stayed in 4 different homes, getting a very diverse range of Napolitan Hospitality. A Napolitan can do any thing to make his or her guest happy, you can quote me anywhere anytime!
I really want to come back to Napoli some other day, but I still do not know what my future disposability and availability will be like, I really hope I can! It has been really great in Napoli! I doff my hat for O'Pollac(Claudio),Mariano,Dante and his entire family,Ferruccio,Diego and all the guys that in one way or the other made my stay in Napoli a very memorable one! Like the Spanish say, Mi Casa e Su Casa! You are always welcome without any boundaries!I really hope I can reciprocate your extremely kind Gestures!

World Cup Celebration

Yesterday, I witness what will be one of the historic major events in this history ladden country, a coutry where almost everything you see, or touch has a huge historical relevance, who knows, Maybe Julius Cesare once took a shower in the place where my house is.
Anyway yesterday the Italian team defeated France to win the World Cup.Despite the fact that it was their fourth time, they still did not leave any stone unturned in celebrating it, it was like the first time.


We all headed down to Duomo The City Center.. Just a second, I just realised something, all the churches in the city centres of Italy are called Duomo!! The one in genova, Napoli,Pisa are all called Duomo(Dome) anyway back to my story, we got to the city centre which had already been turned to a bottle Carnage from just half an hour of Jubiliation, it still beats my Imagination why they still sell drinks in Bottles instead of plastics in such an event.

Anyway, I have never seen a thing like this before, Thousands of People continiously surged in from all the corners of the centre apparently bringing in their own flavour to the already diverse celebration, I was at Notte Bianca which paraded at least 20 top Italian singers, I attended the last music festival which had Black eyed Peas, Metafix and Sting Performing, I was in milan when U2, Metallica, Craig Davids and countless of other popular artists performed but I never saw a crowd like this in the city that is obsessed with coming out to the centre at the slightest provocation.

Initiallty it was like a sing along party with just 2 songs though, the first is Poooh Poh Ropoh poh poh pooh pohhhhh….siamo campioni del mondo! Which literally means ''we are the world champions'', that’s actually a popular rock track forcefully changed to the Fan song of The Azzuri(the Blues) as the National team is called.The second was a typical Italian song which I already blogged about(they use it to cast aspertions) Francia Di Merda,abbiamo Francese di Merda and so on which literally translates to ''France is shit, the French is shit''. After about half hour the party moved to the next level where people climbed the monuments which were about 50 metres high, the police tried to prevent this but at somepoint hey gave up the idea, people actually swam in the fountain as well, at this point the party was about who will make the loudest noise, people had several types of noise making vessels ranging from manually driven to aerosol driven wistles and trumpets. Some people actually brought frying pans and spoons which where turned to drums and drum sticks respectively.

Almost every one had a flag, if you don’t have one there were many fast paced buisness people who had huge supplies of it, actually the prize of everything except cigarettes which could only be gotten from the machines went up 2 folds,Almanacs of the team, an obituary announcement of the french team, a poorly printed black and white shirt which had Campioni 4 del mondo writen on it was selling for 20 euros, on a good day I wouldn’t even take such a shirt for free, however considering that they had just 30 minutes to print them I’ll accept them.

When it got to 12pm, the party went to the next level, a combination of all sorts things they people couldn’t do when sobber, ranging from shaking the life out of police cars, Girls showing their boobs, the men striping down to their under pants, breaking of more bottles etc

In the end I had to find my way home because the party was getting a bit violent, Most of the players of the french team were blacks, so I could be eaily be mistaken for a french and the harm this could cause me would be more than the harm Osama has caused United States.

Actually one of the drunk teens approached me shouting ''Lui e’ Francese''(he is French), I thought it was a joke, but this tall but skinny or more like malnorished( not in the sence of not having enough food rather have just cigarette and a shot of rum for a meal) teen hit me so hard with the flag he had that, all my violence tendencies became fully manifested in a split second, they other members of his group were already approaching to mob me when I threw a hard punch at him with all the strenght that the Pasta Carabonara that I had for dinner could muster. The punch hit him squarely, I think it broght him back to his sences because for about 10 seconds he was out! The other members of his group were sobber enough to know that who ever came next was going to get just what he got and one thing they knew for sure(despite being drunk) was that it did not feel good! That was my saviour, I headed home immediately because the next group my be so drunk they wouldn’t know that the punch hurts until it hit them.. that might entail hitting many more people and getting hit myself, I did not want that to happen!!

Italian Media

It’s been a very long time since I wanted to write about this but each time it is over taken by some other thing.
In my first days in Italy, it was always fun to take a drive around the beautiful streets of Milan, I never missed an opportunity to do that, not just because the streets were beautiful, but also because I got a bang out of looking at the boards on the streets which were always very big with high quality prints.
At this point I couldn’t understand any Italian so most of the message I could get out of these boards were gotten from the pictures they had.

However I was always not able to get the right message or rather I was always getting a message which made no sense to me. Actually in a good number of cases I got a message not related to the message at all. Maybe I am being too fluffy here so I’ll get practical. I saw a Big board in the waiting areas in the underground(Metro). When you look at this board, the first thing you will notice(which is actually the most outstanding thing about the board) the picture of a very beautiful girl with water splashing on her from behind. she had a very good shape and skin with a very beautiful bikini covering it. She’s probably a Miss Italia from some years ago, this picture will keep you occupied for at least the first 5 seconds you see this board, the second thing you will notice about the board is the bold test in Italian ‘rinfreschi il tuo inglese ‘ Quest’ estate e gratis’ this simply means refresh your English ‘ this summer free’. When you think about the water splashing on the model, you could see some sense in the word refresh, but when you finally get close to this board, your imaginations will be let down because it is only an advert for a summer English teaching class! Take a look at the picture I’m talking about

Probably a thousand things will cross your mind before you can think of an English programme that is of course without thinking of the Text, at first sight, I thought it was an Advert for Bikini, secondly I thought it could be one of those feminine products like bath gel or stuff for the hair or the body, thirdly I thought it was a beach or a holiday resort but I never thought it was about learning English.

This might sound strange but 80% of the advert boards that you will see in Milan, the worlds capital of Fashion are like this. I’ll give you a second example, there is a certain TV lottery show called ‘Mercante in Fiera’ this programme has a very prolific presenter who is actually responsible for most of the successes the programme has seen. How ever there is also a second person running the show with him, who up till now, I can not think of a reason why her contribution is not redundant. She is tall, dark complexioned(not exactly black), I guess she has a Latin American origin, very tall (about 6ft), she wears this 6 inch high healed shoes and a custom made Leather wear which was deliberately made to expose her entire back and the embarrassingly big boobs or cleavage, I guess she did a boob job.
This programme runs for an hour and her role during this long one hour is just to sit/lie around a glass platform(I guess specially made for her) and at some point in the game she will take a box containing some special cards to the presenter, she takes this box to the presenter doing something that she will call a cat walk which looks more like an extremely lousy Duck Walk. That’s all the role she plays in the show! Up till now, I still can not rationalize what her role in the programme is. Several TV shows have redundant roles like this one just described. This brings to mind some really extreme things about Italian TV, this happens every where so Italy is no exception, but it is kind of extreme in Italy, before you can show your face on TV as a presenter, you got to be young, blonde(if you’re not, you should be willing to always use some peroxide to make your hair blonde) sizeable boobs and Hips and above all good looking. Even if you are a dull brain or horrible at talking, as long as you have satisfied these requirements, opps sorry, another important one, you should always be willing to flaunt these features of yours. If you satisfy all these….you’ll definitely be more popular than Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell put together.. Only in Italy of course…

...Hibernating…

Today is exactly 5days after the end of my MC term, I’m still applying for internships, I’m still being short listed for some and turned down for others, I’m still having interviews, I’m still waiting to hear from companies. The necessary implication of this is that I still do not have a more concrete info about my next move, however by some mathematical prediction(which lacks some fundamental basis) I will know about it real soon.
Anyway in order to give the new team some space, I decided to take the advice of my predecessor who experienced exactly what I am going through now. He advised me to travel around Italy, it’s a good way to keep body and soul together, importantly is a good way to psychologically prepared for the upcoming days and experience. That’s more or less like hibernating, the only difference is that this time, the hibernation will cost some money. Given the options at my disposal, it appears to be the most viable so I’m taking it. I have already made a list of places to visit, this was done bearing in mind the cost requirement and availability of an ‘ACTIVITY’ oriented host.

Bearing this criterion in mind, my first destination had to be Genova(Arturo) second Napoli(Mariano)…. This is not exactly a coincidence but I happen to get along quite well with the activity oriented LCPs, actually I am an activity person, you will agree with me that it is just a case of ‘birds of identical plumage congregating in the same proximity’ All my team mates who heard about my trip plan marvelled at the list of my hosts. Besides the identical plumage thing, I got close to these guys because if you have to understand a mad man, you might have to operate in the same frequency with him, that way you can make him realise the cons of his madness, if you are not in the same frequency, you will only be making a fundamental miscalculation because you do not understand anything about madness so you will not understand the rationale behind his madness. This is more or less like a metaphor, I am not calling anyone mad, especially not my host and potential hosts, I am just saying that ‘he who was not there when a corpse was buried normally digs it up from the end where the leg is(which I do not know the reasons for but it is fundamentally wrong to dig up a corpse like that). So in literal terms, I am only trying to be present when the corpse is buried. So I can dig it up from the right side.
That's Arturo my very Good Friend,This is Most probably one of the things that Earned him his popularity in AIESEC Italia
I arrived Genova 2 days ago, Arturo was not at the train station to pick me up like we agreed, I called him and he said he sent me a text message(Which apparently I did not receive) explaining that he will not be able to pick me up because of an emergency. I was not disappointed, I kinda expected a thing like this to happen so I was prepared, the worst thing that can happen to you when you deal with an individual with uncertainties as regards agreements is to bring a knife to a gun fight, however I was surprised by something else, while I was speaking with him on the phone, he said his house was quite close to the train station, he actually started to give me directions about how to get there but he suddenly stopped and said Oh! You don’t have the keys to my flat! How on earth could he imagine that I had the keys to his flat????? This is a really high level of confusion

Anyway I had to go the a bar to see the Italy-Germany Semi-final match, it appeared that Arturo like I knew was not as confused and unfocused as most people thought. I actually don’t blame the people who think this, a guy that gets drunk in a good number of the parties, always the last to go from the parties and always the only one sleeping in training sessions the next day in a conference does not exactly connote focus or the charisma expected from an LCP. I must say he is a great guy, more focused and resourceful than most AIESECers in Italy, maybe the part that people who think he is a push over miss is that he necessarily did not buy the idea of being an LCP to achieve the national or MC plan but some other plan, so as a recommendation, I think the MC current should focus on selling the proper LCP focus to him, if he buys it, he’s got potentials to be one of the best.
It all turned out that Genova was not as cheap as I Imagined, It was more or less like Milan, a small bottle of Becks set me back by 3.5 euros, I had to pay 3euros to watch the match which was televised by RAI 1 a national TV that is received in all the nukes and Cranies of Italy even without an antenna, that was a high level of business and mental uncivilization in a country like Italy.

Anyway I did not mind paying it, I was trying to buy time until Arturo came back from work, it served the purpose quite well so I do not mind. The only cause for regret that I had was the people I saw the match with, most of whom were Italian low lifes(This is not about wealth or standard of life but about civilization), their minds were so shut to reasoning that they completely lost site of the fact that the Football game has rules, all they cared about was everything going in favour of the Italian team, they were completely devoid of any Sportsmanship spirit. The climax of it was that 80% of What ever trash that came out of their traps(without any sort of exaggeration) were swear words which were both for praising and castigating their poor subjects.

For a second time Genova exceeded my expectations, the level of economic activities were quite higher than I expected, the city might be a small one when compared with Milan, Turin and Rome but economically it looks like one of the nerves of Italy, I’ve been to several ports in Italy(Trieste, Napoli and Catania) but none of them had as much resourceful economic activity like Genova, actually the port is so big that it can conveniently house about 30 Titanics and have space for many more, the aquarium in Genova is the 3rd largest globally, I am yet to see it but from what I have seen from outside, paying 12 euros to see it will be just as justifiable as paying 15 Euros to see Taj Mahal in India.

The city generally has a huge number of foreigners, actually it was the first Italian city that I saw blacks living a decent life, doing a decent job and even going to the university just like every other person. I was really impressed to see even Nigerians doing their business, the day to day activities and the law breaking(which every other person does) without any special attention. This is the only City in Italy which I’ve been to, that the average(Mediocre) Italian will see you in places like a discotheque, a bar or a restaurant living a decent and regular life without casting the stare you’ll probably cast at an UFO that suddenly shows up in front of you. Maybe it’s just a first impression, who knows…I’ll see how it goes! Peace Out!

...End of the Countdown...

The end has just started, my popular countdown to the end of my term has ended, I guess a lot of my countdown fans can’t wait to see what’s next. I can not say precisely what the end will be, maybe explaining how I approached the end will create a better picture of what the next steps will be.
The end was a good one I must say, we followed all the AIESEC Italia tradition. It started with transition, I had to do transition to 3 different people, the meant that the role had expanded quite much, I was particularly happy about that. The whole process took 3 weeks after which we embarked on a general and a historic transition, we had an MC house that had never been so full in the history of AIESEC Italia, there were 20 of us in a 3 bedroom semi detached duplex. Your imaginations can tell you what it was like, but let me just mention that it was fun and irritating, can you imagine the combination ? We had the usual Alumni Vs MC elect and outgoing match which ended 8-4 in our favour, the Alumni missed some key players, this coupled with the fact that either they were doing so much ‘flicky flicky’ or smoking like a chimney resulted in their team putting up a feeble performance. I must say that I was really impressed by the individual stamina last year, I saw nothing like that this year. We actually ran them over.



We won the trophy, had one of those luxury dinners that the MC members almost cry when it’s time to pay the bill. I noticed something remarkable, in this same ‘storical Dinner’(Historical Dinner) in the past year as Simona my team mate will pronounce it, the shouting and singing got to a point that I was pondering if all these alumni who were supposed to be demonstrating positive leadership in what ever they were doing didn’t have anything better to do, when I reminisce over that now, I bet I would have hated them if I knew what they were shouting about.



That’s one thing that keeps marvelling me when ever I think about it, I got so into the Italian singing and aspersions casting like men folk calling the women folk Troya! Putana! While the women folk in return called the men folk Froshor! That it never seemed like I ever felt irritated about it. If I knew they were calling the women Bitches while the women were calling the men Gays, God knows what my impression of Italians would have been. But sincerely, I think it’s a cool way of entertaining themselves. I still remember quite vividly that at my last AIESEC Italia, I stood on top of a table in a sport camping facility with about 120 AIESECREs from across Italy and 300 people from other groups to accept one of those aspersion casting award of ‘Troye Troya’ which literally translates to Bitche’s Bitch. That’s really a big one I must say. Don’t get the wrong idea, these names are absolutely devoid of any reality or ulterior motifs, it’s just something Italians do when they approach the social level of being drunk more or less like being tipsy or a bit lower than that.

Well afterwards, we had the final event which is the new years eve which is called ‘Capodanno’ in Italian. The party was quite typical of European standards, music playing, people chatting and drinking without any form of dancing, more or less like chilling out, but it’s called party in Italy and most other European countries. It was fun anyway. I actually sold the idea that marriages in African were done by Birthrooting,I did it so well(I was actually fooling them) that the German Girl(EB member of Pavia) and Dutch guy (a Trainee) actually bought that badly cooked ferry tale!
The Capodanno party was exactly the end of the countdown, at this point I still do not have any concrete info about my next steps, I had applied for probably a dozen internships, I’ve had several interviews, I am expecting response from a score of companies, and I have been turned down by a handful of companies. I wouldn’t really say I have been unlucky, however being in possession of a green passport from the country that represents a third of the black populace on the face of the earth coupled with the fact that I am making a gross inter disciplinary cross from Physical sciences(Industrial Chemistry) To Management does not exactly attract so much luck. Anyway I have at least been able to demonstrate that despite having my bachelors from Industrial Chemistry, I still exhaled in Management related Jobs. I finished my year with a 21% growth on the ICX realisation, that’s the biggest growth AIESEC Italia has seen in the past half decade.

Be that as it may, I believe that sta michia companies and their testa di cazzo managers should be smart enough to see that I am a super dooper talent(In Simona’s Words).Let me just say that have not been smart enough, not that I have not been lucky enough. Well the concept of luck and destiny from my perception is a consolation for lazy players and loosers which I am far from, so just like I have been doing, I will keep my head above the water and up, I’ll keep trying until I make my last attempt. My last attempt will definitely be made just before I move to the world beyond! I’m a tough person, so I will definitely outlive this apparently tough Time! It’s just a matter of time, As my Nigerian folks will put it, Notin dey happen make a siddon dey look