A different prespective to Life

I believed that I got married late, despite being married at an age that some people would regard as being the ideal age for a man. Looking at my children as most of us do, I always wished that they were a bit bigger and I had married earlier. As a medical doctor, although non-practising, I am called often to give my opinion on various health issues, and one gives my own views based on medical facts. Somethings it may seem that one comes across as being out of touch or not politically correct. Until occasionally, someone in authority or who has the necessary perceived expertise and experience validates one’s statements.  Professor Geeta Nargund is such a person. She is a consultant gynaecologist at St George's Hospital in London a fertility specialist, so it seems she has an idea of what she’s talking about. She advised that women who are thinking of having children should start taking steps before 30. "As women get older, they experience more complex fertility pr...

I was thrilled to learn that one Nigerian Professor, Professor Enoch Opeyemi of Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, has solved the 156-year-old Riemann Hypothesis. To put it in simple terms, this Hypothesis has to do with the distribution of prime numbers. Now for a more detailed explanation ( http://www.jstor.org/stable/2323497?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents ).  However, at the International Conference on Mathematics and Computer Science in Vienna, Austria, this Professor declared he had solved it.  The BBC and CNN took up the news, and as Nigerians, a warm glow was in our hearts. We were happy for one of our own and wanted to dance and jump for joy with him. Not only was there the prestige of being the first person to solve the problem that baffled the mathematical world for 156 years but there was also a massive financial award to go with it, a cool million US dollars. He said he had proved it to many of us when we remember our secondary school or A-level days. When ...

My children just started a new secondary school this term. But their current secondary school was not their 1st or 2nd choice as a matter of the fact it was not among our 6 choices. Now, how this happen? The borough of London that we are living in likes to give the impression that it interacts with parents and takes their concerns into consideration when placing their children into its secondary schools. It seems they don’t actually, we were not given any of the schools we had selected, that we painfully investigated, we went to this school as parents, walked around and inspected their sites, talked to their teachers, looked at the websites went through their documentation and after all that was given an under-subscribed secondary school which was nearest to our front door, the bureaucrats had calculated this, using a complex algorithm - well not that complex, just it was the nearest. Another thing was that had made this particular school was undesirable because of...

I had just finished a book by Chinua Achebe, the author of "Thing Fall Apart", called "There was a country". This book was regarded as "Long-awaited ….. and urgently needed", Also "A brave, clear-sighted treatment of the political background and brutal reality of the Nigerian-Biafran War". The book starts with an Igbo proverb, and there are a lot of Igbo proverbs and statements in Professor Chinua, books there is "He who brings kola, brings life", "a toad does not run in the daytime for nothing", etc. He stresses that "understanding the complexity of the world" is more valuable to him. This great man gave a clear-cut dialogue of his life, but most importantly, a Nigerian story and a Biafran story. This book can be said to be controversial, and one should understand that Chinua Achebe is, first of all, speaking as an Igbo man, and he is writing from someone who has been highly involved in the Biafra...

I love watching Game of thrones it is a television series on HBO and its 5th Season very soon on Monday, 13th April 2015 based on a series of books by George R R Martin . It is all about an imaginary kingdom Westeros (which is roughly based on the European kingdoms of the Middle Ages) and it about 7 or more main ruling families or houses and their associated sub-houses or vassals, the psychodynamics and the relationship between them is complex. Scattered among them are some characters who are unique and specific and unlike other television series the good guys do not always win, being good and noble might even put you at a disadvantage.  There was a main character, Ned Stark played by the actor Sean Bean, who was killed towards the end of season one from what seems to be because he was always truthful and honor bound, he held the position of 'The Hand of the King', kind of prime minister. Despite being warned numerous times that he should not trust anybody and when you...

I recently came from Nigeria, and the word on everybody's lips; well, almost everybody I had spoken to was when "we", I mean those from Ibadan environs, would have a state of our own. It seemed that the issue of "why" had long been decided, and people were acting on "when". People have seen the "progress" in Oshogbo with the "newly" created Osun state. The new buildings, the increase in the number of jobs, and other infrastructure, and if it is felt that we should have our own state. People were talking about the Ibadan - Lagos express. We have seen the rate of development in Lagos already. It seems each day numerous houses are being opened or built. My father, before he died, was a keen supporter of our own state, and since I did not have much experience of the political setting in Oyo state, I decided to listen and ask questions. It is said that we in Ibadan have greater populations than some whole states, Ibadan ...

There is a beggar outside the station in the centre of London, just next to where I work. Holding a cardboard poster saying "Hungry and homeless please give. God Bless You". I used to find some loose change at the bottom of my pocket and relive the contents of my pocket, minus the pounds into a small bowl he had placed in front of him for that specific purpose of collecting alms. Despite hearing stories that some of these "beggars" were rich and some were actually millionaires in disguise and had houses, I did not allow that to sway me in giving. But after reading a book titled "Dead Aid" by Dr Bambisa Moyo recently, this had made me consider my actions seriously and if I was actually doing more harm than good in giving. It is often said that "the path to hell is paved with good intentions". The interpretation of this statement I often take (as there are quite a few) is that there are a lot of "unintended consequences...

I was recently at a party of a close friend of mine who just arrived from Nigeria, and as we were moving from one part of the party to another. Our host said quite loudly we should leave our plates on the table as “it’s a woman’s job” to wash and pack them.  I noticed that a few of the men immediately felt very uncomfortable and there was silence all round. Some of them not willing to offend the hospitality of our host just smiled or crocked. Others of similar deposition laughed out loud, displaying all their 32 teeth, with a twinkle in their eyes. While a particular guy, showing that he was a moral crusader immediately reacted, stood up and left in disgust, hoping never to be seen or invited again.  The rest of us took a more 'practical approach' as it seem to us and called the man to order, and after seeing our reaction, he decided that “it was not a woman’s job” after all, and maybe he had misinterpret events, we quickly added if he wanted to stay married he ...

The term "Broken Windows" is a metaphor used to describe a certain situation, that is, if a window is broken in a house and left unrepaired, people passing by will come to the conclusion that nobody "gives a damn" about the house and the area is fair game, there is nobody in or it is not well looked after. That is why I presume that there is not only a single-window broken in most areas, especially in the estates. It either multiple windows were broken or not at all, i.e. "all or nothing". It is thought that "Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani adopted the Broken Windows Theory and implemented a community-policing strategy focused on order maintenance". The mayor had a zero crime policy and cleaned up areas nightly regularly; hence they had clean walls, which were clean of graffiti, waste, urine, rubbish, and areas were clean of hustlers, prostitutes, criminals, etc.  And people who committed minor, negligible crimes were arrested a...