GeorgeAppiah.com |||||

Damn … I wish I had three or four of this pillow. But I can only wish. And this morning I woke up to a spanky-shiny-funny new email from a laiiidy … and dear, that got me laughing all over.

It was a really long mail and included everything — from serious accusations to a love proposition (no, I’m NOT kidding). And gee… that was good, because these days I hardly get any interesting mails at all — except the spam, of course!

I’m not posting the entire mail here … just the part about me disappointing her everything she heads over over to this website and doesn’t find anything new (and I’m doing this with her permission).

Just to let you know I’ve been reading your website for over a year now, and I really do appreciate your sharing your life with me. Yes, your descriptions are so vivid that, sometimes it feels like I’m right by your side (not that I don’t want to), and you telling me a story.

And I’ve always been looking forward to the next article, though I must admit I can never tell what’s coming next and when. And that’s my problem with you, George. You’re so disappointing.

Day after day I dash over to your website looking for something new, and nothing. Week after week you disappoint. And that gets me so angry. So angry and I just feel like eating you alive, or shooting you, or something.

Of course, knowing you (from your writings, that is) I don’t expect you to take that para above seriously. Or would you? Why, are you cheese? You seem to be a busy man, and I do understand there may be a million things that may be keeping you from writing. But could you give just a little TLC to us, your readers too?

Are you currently in Ghana? A friend of mine will be travelling …. blah blah bla (and she went on and on into talk about how great it would be to live a “poor” life in Africa, and eventually asked “if we could get to know each other” and more blah blah blah :-) )

Hmmm. Of course after reading such a mail I simply had to fire up Firefox and start writing rightaway. Actually I’ve been writing a LOT more recently, except I’ve been writing more and more for myself and not for public consumption.

But the real reason I’ve not been blogging more frequently recently may be that I’ve been so so so “busy” doing nothing. And when I’ve got so much nothing to do, where’s the time to write a new blog post?

Or may be not. But who knows? Anyway … these photos may be a clue:

I know of a man who named his daughter “Innocent” because he felt he wasn’t responsible for that pregnancy. But this one?

This one says only members allowed. Simply key in your username and password and enter. Problem is, anyone can have a username and password these days

Lost Found in translation? A restaurant in China boldly displays this great “Chinglish” menu:

Checking my website’s visitor statistics today, I found a lot of entries for the keyword “Stephen Appiah”. So people who are looking for information about Stephen Appiah, the famous Ghanaian footballer, end up on my website!

And because I have so much time on my hands these days, I decided to do a little digging around to find out how this successful footballer is managing his affairs online. Sad to say, I wasn’t impressed at all.

First, the website http://www.StephenAppiah.com doesn’t belong to Stephen Appiah. From the public WHOIS records, the domain name “stephenappiah.com” belongs to one Murat Akal from Instanbul, Turkey.

Surprised? Just remember the cardinal rule of the domain name game: names available strictly on a first-come-first-served basis. The only exception to this is trademarks, which can be contested. But the last time I asked, no one could claim a trademark for his/her name.

The official website for Stephen Appiah is www.StepApp.com, which is also the home for his non-profit StepApp Foundation, as well as his fashion brand StepApp.

This site appears on the first page of the search results for the the keyword “Stephen Appiah” on all the three major search Engines: Google, Yahoo and Live (Microsoft). So why do people still end up on my website, which is buried so deeply away?

That’s easy enough to figure out: the unscrupulous firm working on the website have decided to use their client’s website to promote themselves, instead of their client. This is the first page of a Google search for “Stephen Appiah”:

As you can see, Stephen Appiah’s official website is the third on the page, but it doesn’t mention his name at all — not in the title, and not in the description (actually there’s no description at all). It only says StepApp :: Powered by AccurrateConsult.com (the web design firm working on the website).

So unless you know the non-profit and fashion brand StepApp already, you’re not going to associate that site with the Ghanaian footballer. And if you know StepApp already, you’re likely to go directly to the site instead of searching for what you already know.

Does Stephen Appiah know about this? I doubt he does. Would he care if he knew? I doubt he would. Should he? Absolutely. And I’ll tell you why he should in an upcoming post.

Exactly when I’ll turn 30, I may never know. But going by my “official” date of birth, I’m about 20 or so little moons shy of this critical point in life. What’s really special about the age 30 anyway?

I really don’t know. And that’s got me thinking — a lot. Sometimes even worrying.

Like the “Teddy Bear” (Teddy Pendergrass), I’ve never missed a thing throughout this twenty-something fine years I’ve spent on this little planet. The good, the bad, the very ugly — I’ve seen it all. I’ve lost some, but I’ve won even more.

I’ve seen love come knocking at my door so many times– and so many times I’ve been too deeply stuck in my own little world to get up and turn the door.

That I’ve drifted away from the yellow brick road in recent times needs no mention. It continues to amaze me how a simple “conforming gimmick” quickly took a whole new life all by itself.

But now that I’m 100% convinced that no girl really wants me, it’s time to start living for the one single person who really matters to me: which is me (despite what I might have made you girls to believe).

Ironically though, the more I close up this little life of mine and really live for myself, the more I genuinely find myself seeking the interest of others. The fewer — but deeper — the relationships I build. All the long and loose talk obviously give so much instant gratification, but never help anyone grow.

30 is beckoning, though I may never know when it exactly arrives. Time to move on. Time to stop worrying and start living.

[Below is Teddy Pendergrass singing "In My Time" (1984) ]

Last year I banned myself from cooking, and here’s why: just see the photo below. For some reason, any food I try to cook gets burnt. Heck, I even burn water!

I remember very well the last time I cooked — with BB (Big Bully — my big sister). We were both in the kitchen waiting for the food to get ready, while her (then) 6-month old baby was sleeping in the next room. Somehow we drifted into a conversation, and before we knew it, the food had burnt — right under our big noses.

And how did we get to know the food had burnt? We heard this wee cry from the baby and rushed over to check why she was crying. Suddenly we stood staring at each other: the food was burning and the smoke was choking the baby!

And just for your information, I studied Catering for three good years at school, and I even made an “A” in the final exam. So much for the restructuring of our educational system

So how do I eat? What do I eat?

Actually, most of the time, I don’t. That’s a trick I learnt when I was a kid: hunger doesn’t kill– at least not that quickly. When I do eat, it’s mostly juices (because fresh fruits and veges are difficult to come by here in Accra) and biscuits. On rare occassions I get the Esthers and Dzigbordis to make me pepper soup.

And by now you should have figured out why I’m writing all this: I’m just trying to woo Esther to come over and make me pepper soup. If you’re reading this, Esther, someone needs you. Pepperly. Souply. Dearly.

Here’s one odd-old-new news: I was one of the lucky folks who won MarketingSherpa’s weekly book contest way back in December, 2007. The book I won: What’s Your BQ: Learn How High Brand Quotients Helped 35 Companies Succeed, written by branding expert extraordinaire, Sandra Sellani.

And here’s the interesting part: the book arrived in my Post Office letter box here in Accra, Ghana, on the 28th of December 2007 — but I only got hold of it today, 12th of April!

What happened? Confession: I hardly pay a visit to the local Post Office these days. In fact, yesterday was the first time I paid a visit to my local Post Office this year. My life is now run almost entirely online.

Thank you MarketingSherpa and Sandra Sellani for this book.

[Yes, I wear pink stuff. I adore pink.]

Just for everyone’s information, Dinah — yes, the same Dinah who was, but is no more — was here with me early in the week, for three days. No, nothing fancy going on here: she was simply here to fulfill a long promised (and always postponed) visit.

She got here Tuesday evening. With so much water gone under the bridge already, there was really not much to talk about, except reminiscing over what could have been. So she slept like a she-bull, while I sat up most of the night, all night actually, trying to write on paper what I felt in my heart.

Wednesday — the only full day she spent here — was hectic, to say the least, at least for me. We hit the streets, mostly on foot, visiting many important places in Accra. What were the highlights of the day? Well, depends on which one of us you ask.

For me, it was great tracing back memories of my early days in Accra — through the streets of Osu, all those places I used to hang out way back then (I’m talking of traditional Osu neighbourhoods like Anumansa, Kinkawe, Ako-Adgei, etc, NOT just Oxford Street).

But perhaps the real highlight of our day out was the visit to the Accra Shopping Mall, where we did a LOT of window shopping (yes, we managed to resist the temptation to buy anything at all). Actually I simply followed along, playing the “nice boy” role, while being whirled around from shop to shop, and enduring one feminine lecture after another — on topics from bra types to panty types and everything else in-between.

Anyway, I survived the day. Heck, I actually enjoyed it, and would have enjoyed it even more if I wasn’t walking with the guilt of carrying a camera with a dead battery

Though Dinah’s visit was such a brief one, this was a real break I seriously needed. This was my first non-working day out in a very long time! Her visit also (sort of) re-set the clock for me: the void she left behind (and I’m not just talking about her visit) has got me thinking about the things that really matter to me.

Here are two more photos: the first taken way back then, when we were everything to each other; and the latter taken during our day out (that was the ONLY shot the camera could take before the battery died completely). Do these two photos (and the one above, which was also taken during her trip here) tell you anything at all?

I saw this sign around the popular “Monkey Hill” in Takoradi — in the Western Region of Ghana. My initial reaction to the sign was: KEEP OFF - ONLY MONKEYS ALLOWED!

If you do follow me on Twitter, you will remember about a week ago I said I was going to work on some 3,000-plus ADSL modems. Yep, no typo here: I had this unpleasant task to update the firmware and pre-configure a large consignment of ADSL modems — a little over 3,000 units — for one local ADSL service provider. This was to make these boxes work with both their ATM and IP DSLAMS.

How I got myself into this big holly mess is another story altogether — that will, hopefully, be told in the not too distant future.

But I’m glad the work is done. It took exactly 8 days — within which time I never stepped out of my bedroom-turned-workshop, and never had more then 10 hours of sleep (total). Of course I got great help from my little friends Christopher Bennett and Remy Edmundson, and I’m really grateful for their help.

Now that this torture is over, it’s about time I moved on: go out there into the streets of Accra, find a cute little girl who can think, marry, have a whole lot of kids, and live happily thereafter.

Or something like that. What ‘ya think?

Technorati Tags: ADSL modems, IP DSLAM, ATM DSLAM