The Winning Number…

February 29, 2016March 1, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha28 Comments

Carl was tired to the bones and felt disgruntled about his job. It was mere drudgery with little pay.

The new foreman was also an ass who kept yelling at people.

He regretted dropping out of college and wished he could start all over. Girls and booze was a pastime that got old fast and with Sue pregnant with a second child. He worried.

Break time was a little reprieve, so he ambled over to the deli where the other men gathered for a quick lunch.

All eyes were glued to the excited TV presenter who called out the winning lottery numbers. Each man read his ticket hopefully.

Carl paid no mind. He had bought just one ticket for reasons he couldn’t explain.

The cashier exclaimed that the ticket had been sold in the deli.

Each man checked his stub again and he fumbled in the back pocket of his dirty jeans to find his.

The ground rushed to meet him in dead faint. He had the winning number.

Inlinkz

In response to the FFAW photo prompt above. Thank you Ellespeth’s friend for the photo and Priceless Joy for this enchanting platform

Challenges · Personal · The Great Book Of Lists

These Musical Chords That Tug My Heartstrings…

February 25, 2016February 29, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha36 Comments

La Duchesse seems to know all the good buttons to press to get my heart overflowing with good memories.

I grew up on the staple of a plethora of music from a father who adored music.

Our mornings started with music for as long as my dad was alive. Played on the Grundig turntable and then on to Bangs & Olufsen sound system.

I suspected my dad wanted to be a musical maestro and he had a gentle deep baritone.

I love music and barely discriminate except when they are offensive and filled with cuss words.

I love the oldies and the trending ones as well. Most days, I join my children in singing the new songs, especially as we drive around town and I teach them some old ones. We love turning on the radio and just having a go at it.

However, deep in my heart there are those beats that are ‘my forever’ rousing strings of chords. I shall choose 10 out of the string beats of my memories and 6 from recent ones.

They are those beats that I grew up listening to over and over as I grew up in my parents home. Their sounds always transports me right back to the butter yellow house with the red roof. The house of my childhood.

We thank thee from Jim Reeves
The Archies. Sugar, sugar
Handel’s Messiah
Kenny Roger’s Through the years
Miriam Makeba
Nat King Cole
Bob Marley
Michael Jackson
Dolly Parton
The Beatles

I rock these ones below with my children:

Dido – Life for rent
Adele – Hello
Nico Vinz – I am wrong
Afrojack – Ten feet tall
Dimtri Vegas & Like Mike – Take me to a higher place
Mark Ronson – Uptown Funk

Blogging · Gratitude · Inspiration - Motivation

A Little Seed Sown…

February 24, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha45 Comments

It all starts with a little seed, that you plant, diligently tender and leave in the hands of the Lord of bounty to reward your efforts.

Last week, I applied for WordAds to be added to my blog since I am interested in earning a stipend for the hours that I am plugging away on this blog.

The initial feedback was a bit disconcerting for me. Basically, the response boiled down to the advice that I should go and wait and that they will get back to me if they find my stats satisfactory.

Given that my blog is a premium blog, for ads to be put in, you must have to meet a certain measure of traffic, which I presume is the general rule.

To cut a long story short, I went to sleep not to glad and I remember in my sleep, asking God to please not let my labour be in vain and reminding him of his words that a labourer is worthy of his wages.

To my delight, yesterday, I got a notification that my blog has been approved for WordAds and saw the ads placed on it.

It’s a gratifying moment for me and I am deeply thankful for this opportunity.

‘It will all end in praise.’

You can join Colline’s or Maria Jansson gratitude challenge platforms.

Inspiration - Motivation · Little rants · Social Issues · Three quote challenge

Nope! You Can Never Go Wrong…

January 28, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha23 Comments

People watching is a social science hobby that I spend quite a bit of my time engaging in. Observing people in recent times, some of the little things I see shows that there some fine redeeming human values which seems to be at loss these days. I am quite sure a good number of you would have observed these things as well.

Two days ago, I watched an elderly lady who was counting her steps struggle with the few things that she had and a couple of the items fell from her hands.

She paused briefly, bending gingerly to try and gather them and from my observation, she probably has Arthritis.

My natural instinct was to run up and help her, unfortunately my distance was a little far off to offer immediate assistance.

Meanwhile, two young men, probably in their mid-to-late twenties stood two steps away from this lady, puffing away on their cigarettes and not one of them bothered to render a helping hand to a woman who looked old enough to be their mother.

For all you know, they were probably busy videoing her difficulty for their YouTube Channel, which seems to be the new thing these days.

People would rather spend time shooting a video of a dying man in an accident instead of figuring out how to help.

I honestly had to curb my desire to make my way over and give them a talk or two about chivalry, they might not take it well.

However, I gave them a thorough scolding in my head 😉 and reminded myself that I have to keep teaching my boys how to be gentlemen.

By extending a hand of fellowship or help no matter how little to those around us who need it, we can never go wrong. We are actually not just helping others, but staying in touch with our humanity.

These are some little nuggets of quotes that you might wish to spend a couple of seconds on.

‘Instruction in youth, is like engraving in stone.’ African Proverb

‘The old woman looks after the child to grow its teeth and the young one in turn looks after the old woman when she loses her teeth.’ African Proverb

‘We rise by lifting others.’ Robert Ingersoll

Several dear bloggers have invited me for quote challenges and each day, the invitation increases by a notch.

I don’t like to let these things trail for so long, but I also don’t like to just toss quotes out there with nothing to say about them.

I try to look at the things that I observe around me and let them serve as lessons or inspirations for my thoughts.

I would like to thank Sepultura and That Little Voice for their generous invitation extended to me, to participate in the quotes challenge and would like to invite the following bloggers below to take up the quote baton and run with it.

Bunkaryudo

Sheridan Johnson

GloverDeb

No pressures at all. Just go with it if you wish to.

The Little Rules are:

Post three consecutive days.
You can pick one or three quotes per day.
Challenge three different bloggers per day

My regards,

Hope · Life · The Daily Post · Writing

Friends of my heart…

October 30, 2015 jacquelineobyikocha20 Comments

Growing up in a small university community like I did, had lots of plus sides and that included having lots of childhood friends with whom I played and carried out our escapades until the ever present flow of life’s change caused us to drift apart.

I was lucky to have such childhood friends of my heart who occupy such special place in my memory bank and between these friends and large family, you had no need for an imaginary friend.

Thankfully, I am able to reconnect with a lot of them with the help of social media, while, unfortunately some of them have crossed over to the other side of the divide where the links of social media cannot traverse.

There are some of them I am yet to trace and a number of them come to my mind ever so often.

Dear Chinyelu Okonkwo,

Now and again I think about you and wonder if life is treating you well and where you are.

I haven’t seen you since we were ten and in my minds eye, you have stayed the same ten year old, precocious, vibrant friend of mine.

Naturally you would have aged like everyone else but for some reason, I can’t seem to visualize you beyond this age.

Whenever you come to my mind, I remember our child’s play of running round the school block of University Primary School, Nsukka, during break time and singing silly song’s.

I have searched now and again on social media, to see if I can find you but it hasn’t yet yielded any result.

Who knows maybe one day in this lifetime, if we still walk this side of the divide, we may yet reconnect.

Another childhood friend whom I wonder how she has fared with life is from Bangladesh and I had no idea that the name ‘Anu Misra’ was quite common until I attempted to trace her.

I found so many Anu’s, I have searched so many faces, but I couldn’t recognize any.

Maybe, this splendid exercise might yet yield some positive results. We never know these things.

In response to The Daily Post prompt Imaginary Friend

Many of us had imaginary friends as young children. If your imaginary friend grew up alongside you, what would his/her/its life be like today? (Didn’t have one? write about a non-imaginary friend you haven’t seen since childhood.)