All posts tagged: perception

On Punctuality

 Value :  a person’s principles or standards of behavior; one’s judgment of what is important in life. (Oxford Dictionary) 3 weeks ago, I began a Leadership Development course. There were at least 40 of us, most of us Nigerian. Our instructors were Nigerian (Funmi), Australian (Britta) and Dutch (Ocke). I learnt a lot in that course; I might blog about my experience in the near future. Right now, though, I want to tell you about an incident that happened on Day 4 of the 5-Day course. But a little backtracking first. Day 1, and we all identified values that were most important to us. Ocke told us that his people, the Dutch, were very practical and blunt, and so he appreciated directness, respect for other people and punctuality. He laid quite a bit of emphasis on just how important punctuality was to him. How he always was punctual to his appointments out of respect for other people and their time, and expected them to return the courtesy. Long and short of the story, he extracted a …

The Question

(I wrote this at the writing workshop I attended recently. It was inspired by the most intelligent company ever, their intellectual discourse *straight face* and a bus ride :D) They sickened you. You couldn’t explain your visceral recoil at the sight of the IBB posters; your mood soured, your emotions plummeted and you lost your train of thought to a brief desire to kill.  It didn’t help that the campaign posters were everywhere. The aftertaste lingered curiously. Why are you angry? – I don’t know. You were not particularly politics-inclined. You had not been old enough to appreciate the evil the Genius had perpetrated. You weren’t zealously patriotic; the country could bloody burn and you would fiddle! Why did you care so much you lost your peace? And why was the fact that it made you lose your peace so upsetting? The Question haunted you as you circled the city on a bus. It fixed itself in your mind as you ate the sugarcane you filched from a farm. It cooed as you conversed with …