KANO-ONLINE MEMBERS DAILY DIARY

[Dan-Borno]

Hey guys, I just thought of this topic and like to share it
with all of my friends here.  This is how it goes:-

Every member loging in should post a report of what he
saw for the day.  It doesnt matter what it is, anything.

May be i should start:

[Dan-Borno]

18th April, 2007 12:30pm

I was on my way home from the office
when a soldier on patrol halt me to a stop.
He asked me from where? I told him from
the office.  He was surprised and replied
Government work by this hour? I looked at
him and said; whose work are you doing?
are you not working for the same government
I work for? 

He asked me what I was carrying in my car,
i told him nothing. 

Systematically, he whispered on my ear that
i should do something for him.  I became so
ashamed of myself and wondered why
the police virus is fast spreading to the military.
I gave him N50.00 and he cleared the road for
me without checking my car.

[Dan-Borno]

18th April, 2007:  4:00pm

INNA LILLAHI WA INNA ILAIHI RAJI'UN
Former Executive Governor of Borno State
Alhaji (Dr) Mala Kachallah passed away on
his bedroom at his newly built White House
along Pompomari by-pass.

Duniya kenan! kana naka Allah yana nashi.

[Dan-Borno]

19th April, 2007: 8:00 AM

On my way to the office, I saw an accident
with an Okada man (Achaba), he was carrying
four passengers on one motorcycle.  All of them
sustain serious injury. 

Imagine, even with my car, i dont want to pick
as many passengers as four because of my worn
out tyres, but here this okada man - four passenger
on one motorcycle.

Allah ya dada shiryemu

[_Waziri_]

19th April 2007: 10:00 am

I logged on to k-online, saw this thread and decided to post on it!

[HUSNAA]

Mala Kacalla ya riga mu gidan gaskiya? To Allah Ya jikansa da gafara. Ya yafe masa kurakuran sa. You know one wants to have money and power in this world quite forgetting the reckoning that one has to go thro later on. Deaths like this pull one down to earth and make u take stock of what is really important in life.
Allah Ya sa mugane amin

[Abdalla]

Now, let me see. I have two larger than life teenage daughters. One wanted The Princes Diaries DVD -- you know, one of those megapack DVDs with about 9 movies. Got one too with 12 movies on it -- the 3 Mission Impossibles; 3 Blades, 2 Bourne Identities and 4 Lethal Weapons The other (in second year at the university studying computer science) wants a megapack Rap DVD (containing over 60 videos of rap artistes). Got the three DVDs for 1,500 naira. Then the jambite phoned to remind me to get her Nite of One Thousand Laughs CD. Dunno know what that is -- it seems to be a Nigerian stand-up comedy thing; there are 11 of the CDs; bought one (Vol. 4). On cue, the junior one also phoned to say she wants Grey's Anatomy TV series DVD. Sigh. Globalization eh? Decided one of these days to do a case study of the influence of satelitte TV on young female Hausa -- beginning with my own household.

And the nine year old boy is complaining about his keyboard (we drove to town together) -- so off to Beirut Road to buy replacement. And of course we had to branch to Mr. Biggs for "lukekiyar kaza" (his lexicon) and coke. He wanted pizza from Pizza Hot, but they had gone on break.

It was only after I got home that I realised I did not get want I wanted to buy -- a 50 pack blank DVD carousel to back up my gigabytes of music rip-offs and ebook downloads. Too tired to go back -- plus it is blazing hot.

[HUSNAA]

 Lol Prof, in 'ya'yanka basu zama computer nerds ba, i dont know whose kids will be!!. So how is the computer sci a BUK? any good? Maybe i will enroll for another degree in that field....... ;D  ;D after this one.
PS how was my day today? Anything exciting to report? let me think.......... no same as usual..... yawn.... nothing exciting happened today.

[Abdalla]

Alas, I am afraid my kids' "nerdism" is restricted to spending literally hours on Hi5, Yahoo Chat, Skype and music downloads (Ciara, Shakira, Rihanna anyone? -- who are these people? I love rap, but i am old skool; also why do teenage girls like female rap artists -- is it some innate feminist gene conspiracy? Anyone sharing similar experiences?) We have to have obtain TWO separate internet accounts in the house to get some peace -- although the computer scientist (currently trying to sort out PASCAL -- wait until she gets to COBOL, hehehe!!) will go back to Kano University of Technology Wudil where she is in sophomore year. The computer science in BUK is good enough, but highly over-subscribed. The one at Wudil is more spaced out, greater contact hours and more personal attention. There is really a lot to be said for small colleges.

So what was the Yawning experience? Do tell!!!

[HUSNAA]

Honestly there was nothing special to the day. I just yawned bcos there really was nothing ;D.
Ciara, Shakira, Rihanna, (not forgetting Beyonce - you must know her of course - the most beautiful girl in show business at present and talented to boot....dont know what she sees in JZ but i dont know anything about him, only that they look like Beauty and the Beast). These are the pretty young thing female artistes. The most talented of the four are Shakira and Beyonce actually. Check out Yahoo launchcast for the latest on all the current crop of musical artistes. Me I am of the old sch like u, and I cant stand a lot of the music that permeates these days, but there are plenty of exceptions, and I prefer rock music to rap.
Let me ask u, isnt COBOL a bit outdated as a language? PASCAL is supposed to be the stepping stone to learning computer programming, so maybe that is fine as a founding stone, what about the higher level languages like VB (supposed to be the easiest to grasp)? or C++, Pearl? JAVA? Are they on the menu? otherwise i am afraid the kids are not being taught what they are supposed to be taught in terms of languages. Anyway I dont know much about comp sci. after all. I am interested cos my son wants to study comp sci, so i want to know as much as poss about what goes on so that i can be of help to him. Anyway he wants comp engineering, which is a bit more sophis...so I am telling him to knuckle down and learn descrete maths...i dont know how helpful that is, but i am thinking that it is crucial to comp engineering.
So Wudil is a better option than BUK for computer studies? How strong is the curriculum?

[Abdalla]

Husna,

Prefer rock, eh? You remind me of a thread I got into on this forum over two years ago where I declared my predilection for rock and almost got stomped to earth! Check the archives and you will see it. Apparently it was wrong to be BLACK and love rock. Sigh. I DO love rock -- heavy metal, for that matter. I have attended concerts in various locations in London (Lewisham, Hammersith Odeon, Dominion) and in Brighton, and in most cases I discovered I was almost the only "person of color" as they put it now. Hehehe! Even in the rock preference, I am old school -- Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Twisted Sister (obscure, I know, but damned good!) Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, Budgie, Magnum, Iron Maiden, etc. I am afraid I missed out the Metallica revolution. Have you tried progressive rock? Y'know, Genesis, Alan Parson's Project, Pink Floyd, Renaissance, Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, Mike Oldfield, Gong, Marillion, Van Der Graaf Generator? Also some Euro-Rock such as Gandalf, Eloy, Ashra Tempel, Can, Amoon Duul? Check them out, pretty good music -- which explains why BOFs (boring old farts) are almost always old school!

I got into rap up close and personal. I lived in Berkeley, California for sometime, and I was smack in the middle of arap community, it was unavoidable -- and bloody pleasant! This was at the time rap was in its infancy (having been acquainted since my sojourn in Chelsea in the mid 1980s; I still have my vinyl recordings of those early experiments). One genre whose birth I witnessed in the Bay Area was MetalRock -- starting with a group called Hard Corps, long before Limp Biskit and Kid Rock came along. Ah, life, eh?

Kids these days are into things that will make your flesh crawl -- but I studiously ignore the generation gap and often try to listen to their stuff (understandably, they don't like mine!) -- sound more like pop to me (remember Kajagoogo, Adam and the Ants, Human League, Imagination, etc); but it is their thing. Last time in was in the UK in September last year, I was a given a two-page fullscape sheet with names of records to buy! That's I got to know Shakira, Ciara, Rihanna etc. I told them to forget it because they are costly. HOWEVER, I can them ALL the music they want from a Chinese blog! Hehehe! Their brother is into what I am into -- Ali Farka Toure, heavily. We are currently listening to SAVANE. Beautiful stuff.

Kids these days also seem to be more set on a silicon future than our generation. I remember how every kid in our class wanted to become a doctor. I hated the idea of becoming a doctor, so I was an oddball. Now they are more tuned to computers -- must be something to do with all this sat comm. I would prefer Computer Science to Computer Engineering (and believe me, I did not even know what Ibtihal, my daughter, chosed on her JAMB form as I told her to choose something she is interested in, not something her friends are doing). I was happy when she got Computer Science, because that is the core of the silicon valley they are heading towards. Computer Engineering bogs you down to hardware, and in Nigeria, with our "apprentice mechanic" mindset you really have to negotiate through mazes and mines to get anywhere along that route. Computer science is more maths, more -- computing! The reason they are taking them through the languages is the get "dirty under the hood" philosophy. Depsite all the WIMP envinroment now, the tutors -- and their curriculum designers -- still believe a little dirt does good. Don't worry though, the rest of the bells and whistles of computer programming are certainly on the menu as they move through the ladder. Don't forget, though, you have to support the tot with more help than the college can provide. We do that at home with the kids, going to often unusual places to get course materials, etc.

For my money, Wudil is definitely it -- I have seen it up close and personal! So give it a thought. Good luck to the tot!

Abdalla

[HUSNAA]

Husna,

Prefer rock, eh? You remind me of a thread I got into on this forum over two years ago where I declared my predilection for rock and almost got stomped to earth! Check the archives and you will see it. Apparently it was wrong to be BLACK and love rock. Sigh. I DO love rock -- heavy metal, for that matter. I have attended concerts in various locations in London (Lewisham, Hammersith Odeon, Dominion) and inBrighton, and in most cases I discovered I was almost the only "person of color" as they put it now. Hehehe! Even in the rock preference, I am old school -- Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Twisted Sister (obscure, I know, but damned good!) Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, Budgie, Magnum, Iron Maiden, etc. I am afraid I missed out the Metallica revolution. Have you tried progressive rock? Y'know, Genesis, Alan Parson's Project, Pink Floyd, Renaissance, Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, Mike Oldfield, Gong, Marillion, Van Der Graaf Generator? Also some Euro-Rock such as Gandalf, Eloy, Ashra Tempel, Can, Amoon Duul? Check them out, pretty good music -- which explains why BOFs (boring old farts) are almost always old school!

u are truly a living encyclopaedia of rock! Some of those names are out of my depth. I know of black sabbath, led zeppelin Judas Priest but I have never listened to them. I liked thin Lizzy (boys are back in town) pink floyd (brick in the wall) and I think I must have listened to Genesis's songs although I cant remember any. Most of the rest, I dont know of. I think I know Mike Oldfield somehow I seem to remember the name from somewhere. I know nothing of Euro rock. I guess I am not much of a  metallica.  Anyway, my rock preference runs to David Bowie, Elton John Yellow brick road, saturday night, crocodile rock,  my song simply unbelievable classics always fresh always enjoyed)  Queen (Bohemian Rhapsody, Killer Queen, save me, Fat bottomed girls, Bicycle race ) Exile, White Snake, the Beatles (wow! wow! wow! love 'em), Peter Frampton (My heart goes boom boom boom remember that?) Simon and Garfunkel (Mrs Robinson any day please) Aerosmith (I dont wanna close my eyes i dont wanna fall asleep cos i miss u babe and i dont wanna miss a thing). Dire straits (love them so cool and timeless remember 'sultans of swing?') and Bruce Springsteen. Bruce Springsteen was a late entrant in my world of music cos I first noticed him when i saw him in concert (on TV) gyrating to his mega hit 'dancing in the dark' Unfortunately I couldnt stay and watch cos I was in the thick of  semester exams and  everything took a back seat during those stressful times. but the song stuck in my mind and later much later, I was able to get an album of his greatest hits. He is somethin of an oddball. He looks the very height of rock chic, but his music has lots of the country flavor in it and frankly speaking i am not a great fan of country rock. I prefer the jarring jangle of electric guitars.

I got into rap up close and personal. I lived in Berkeley, California for sometime, and I was smack in the middle of arap community, it was unavoidable -- and bloody pleasant! This was at the time rap was in its infancy (having been acquainted since my sojourn in Chelsea in the mid 1980s; I still have my vinyl recordings of those early experiments). One genre whose birth I witnessed in the Bay Area was MetalRock -- starting with a group called Hard Corps, long before Limp Biskit and Kid Rock came along. Ah, life, eh?

still cant stand rap music. The only one I can  listen to is Eminem, then I did like what's his name? who made rap mainstream? mc hammer!!! then tupac possibly. But honestly, I hate rap music.
U still got vinyl? My dad had until a few yrs ago in his dwindling collection of memorabilia, a vinyl original of the song 'some day' from West Side Story  and a few Fats Domino from the 50s!! Lol I am not sure if they are still there, but my sister and I were wondering just how much that West Side Story vinyl would fetch in today's market!!

Kids these days are into things that will make your flesh crawl -- but I studiously ignore the generation gap and often try to listen to their stuff (understandably, they don't like mine!) -- sound more like pop to me (remember Kajagoogo, Adam and the Ants, Human League, Imagination, etc); but it is their thing. Last time in was in the UK in September last year, I was a given a two-page fullscape sheet with names of records to buy! That's I got to know Shakira, Ciara, Rihanna etc. I told them to forget it because they are costly. HOWEVER, I can them ALL the music they want from a Chinese blog! Hehehe! Their brother is into what I am into -- Ali Farka Toure, heavily. We are currently listening to SAVANE. Beautiful stuff.

Oh I simply loved Adam and the Ants (Stand and deliver yr money or yr life; Prince Charming) Oh he was hilarious, but he couldnt last of course; the music was too 1 dimensional and for the moment. I liked human league also with their classic dont u want me baby? when I was at sch and that song came out we used to twist the words to dont u want my baby dont u want him ohooo but that was really a great song. I count it as one of my all time favs. There was Kim Wilde with her Kids in America at the same time which was a great tune at the time, but is slightly lame in retrospect. However, she and Nena, brought out a fantastic single in 2003 half german half english called Anytime Anyplace Anywhere.
I'd love to listen to some Senegalese music. There is currently a blind couple who seemed to have made a name for themselves in Europe. I dont really like their music. I prefer that Senegalese guy (the one who had a hit with Nene Cherry called Seven seconds).  So maybe I will download yr collection of Senegalese music and Saadu Bori if u have him when I see u in sha Allah.

There is also an Egyptian artiste called Amr Diab or something like that. He also made waves some yrs back. Do u remember a classic and very famous egyptian female artiste? The greatest of her time? She was given a national burial when she died in Egypt (either in the eighties or seventies, dont know) I have forgotten her name. I used to listen to her so very often. Oh she was so famous, she used to have the Saudia royalty as her audience. She was a classical musician however, but her voice was divine.

Kids these days also seem to be more set on a silicon future than our generation. I remember how every kid in our class wanted to become a doctor. I hated the idea of becoming a doctor, so I was an oddball. Now they are more tuned to computers -- must be something to do with all this sat comm. I would prefer Computer Science to Computer Engineering (and believe me, I did not even know what Ibtihal, my daughter, chosed on her JAMB form as I told her to choose something she is interested in, not something her friends are doing). I was happy when she got Computer Science, because that is the core of the silicon valley they are heading towards.
Computer Engineering bogs you down to hardware, and in Nigeria, with our "apprentice mechanic" mindset you really have to negotiate through mazes and mines to get anywhere along that route. Computer science is more maths, more -- computing! The reason they are taking them through the languages is the get "dirty under the hood" philosophy. Depsite all the WIMP envinroment now, the tutors -- and their curriculum designers -- still believe a little dirt does good. Don't worry though, the rest of the bells and whistles of computer programming are certainly on the menu as they move through the ladder. Don't forget, though, you have to support the tot with more help than the college can provide. We do that at home with the kids, going to often unusual places to get course materials, etc.

Yes I was relieved when he said he wanted to study comp engineering/ science. Whichever. Cos the tendency is to go for the arts or social sciences and frankly speaking in Nigeria, the social sciences is an overbloated field. It is easier to study comp sci, bcos there is so much material out there and much of the time its a hands on approach. In so far as u can sit the tots down with a good machine and the manuals in front of them, the sky's the limit or so i think. But I still think that there is a bright future in comp engineering. Maybe not in Nigeria, at the moment, but its a skill that is highly prized. I mean imagine the strides being made everyday in that field. Its mind boggling. One cant keep up. But it really needs ppl with a mind focused on engineering at the same time and my son is an artist by nature, so there will be a little conflict there. The good thing is that engineering is a design discipline as well so maybe he isnt far off the mark.

[Muhsin]

What an interesting and worth contributing thread is this one, Dan-Barno?

Wallahi, I, for long, though after people like our great Prof of the forum have told us to stay at home, have been encountring probs during browsing this site. I don't know as I counln't detect where the goddamned problem lies. Further, I bought numeral time codes (at a very expensive rate, because an hour is just for a token fee of N50 there at BUK, but now... ::) ) That was being given me a hard blow whenever I tried it. I don't know why? Is it only me who this is happening to? I cannot almost always write replies-itsn't responding.
Dan Allah, me clarion call to Admin to please set this out of the site. Saboda har ga Allah, this is just as chasing me out of the forum. And worst more, same to one of my friends, who is new here.

[Dave McEwan Hill]

Interesting thoughts.  "Rap" is a distillation of rhythym. The words are used to accentuate rhythym rather than melody and as such is a natural progression of African-American or African- Caribbean music forms. If one goes back to the late fifties one finds strong elements of this trend in the music of Chuck Berry ( the most innovative figure in Rock 'n' Roll) and Little Richard though both produced their work in the traditional verse and chorus form which was then the only financially viable method of doing so and which was basically European format (and Scotch/Irish for Country music).
Listen to word of  Berry's "No particular place to go"
Riding along in my automobile
Baby beside me at the wheel
Stole a kiss at the turn of a mile
Curiosity runnin wild
Cruisin and playin the radio
With no particular place to go

It could be translated straight into rap

[Dan-Borno]

Dave de Dave,
I am image you in my memory
there you are sitted on your swing chair
wearing those olden days medicated eye glasses
enjoying and admiring technology.
Sitting in your room discussing with guys
in Africa - its good for you and your health  ;D  ;D


21st Apri, 2007
I went out to the voting centre at exactly 10:00am
We waited for for good six hours without seeing any
sign of electoral materials. 

They arrived 6:00pm, and before you know it, its time
for Magrib Prayers and must of us couldnt come back
to cast our vote, because the environment is condusive.

But somehow, the election was held  ???  ???  ???.