Posts

Next Level...

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~Zawadi  Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful day. Hot but not too hot. The weather was just right.  We Had just been led to our table. The hotel was breath-taking! It was the garden set up for me. The place was top notch classy. I felt out of place honestly, but I always rise to the occasion.  I don’t know if its normal but I think I have different personalities(for lack of a better word) for different kinds of environments. However, my anxiety couldn’t allow me to enjoy the beautiful scenery. My thoughts seemed to be in a debate. Miss jump into conclusions seemed to be winning. “Are you okay?” He asked for the third time now. I hadn’t said much since he picked me up. Hell, I was nervous.  I repeated the same words, more enthusiastically this time. I was taking this too seriously; very typical of me. I mean he just wanted to meet. What else would he want?  My thoughts were interrupted by the waitress. We ordered food and talked. It was just a normal date after all! Until…

The one take 2000

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~Maina~   As I sat there listening at the phone beep a part of me hoped she didn't pick up, my mind quite conviniently veered off into reminiscence. It was scary how fast our love story had gone south. I don't know who's the authority on how long one should wait before asking a girl out but I apologise to all concerned parties if a week isn't enough. We'd been texting incessantly for a week before I finally asked her out surprisingly cavalier to her answer. I mean what's the worst that could happen if she said yes or no, we move on regardless. It had been so long since I went on an actual date I had no idea what had changed, I was this close to buying tickets to the carribean for a first date. Anyway we agreed I'd pick her up at 730 which gave me just about enough time to sweat and freak out all of the anxiety out of my system. I got there and she literally was just breathtaking which sidenote also might have been the asthma. It is well written and documente

First Date!

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~Zawadi~  After a week of texting and sending each other songs, he asked me out on a date. The first date. They say the first date is vital. You can’t afford to make a mess. If you do, pray for grace. We settled with Saturday evening. He would pick me up at 7:30 pm. Saturday is my self-care day. I wash my hair, do my nails, do a face mask and just chill watching shows. I order pizza and I make sure I sleep early to make up for the lack of enough sleep during the week. However, I didn’t mind disrupting my schedule for this one. He was special. I started preparing myself at 5. After a long refreshing bath, I started working on my hair.  In one of our conversations, he had mentioned how he liked natural.” Just the way God made you”. He wasn’t against makeup and wigs, “I just prefer natural”, he added. Who am I?  Went all the way to please him. I tend to think it’s a psychological thing, always trying to please those we like. My hair was natural and thriving. Styling it wasn’t hard

Reasons Uknown

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~Maina~ It'd been a while since I sent THE text which actually had been my fault. The two months seemed like five years. It had been tough, something I didn’t see coming. . Not to blow my own horn but I'd been single since like the ice age which by the way is way sadder than it sounds. I had finally found someone who genuinely liked me and it was going great; until the constant breakups and make-ups began.   In my book, consistency matters in whatever form. Whether I wanted to hit the thank you next button or take her to my mama remains a mystery.(I'll let you stew in the suspense for a while) The connection, however, was undeniable since day one as cliché as that sounds. I was super busy writing a proposal for work when Shiro hit me up for a party. I put the I in introvert so I wasn't much for it and on I worked, well until Shiro convinced me that this shindig was more important. As an introvert, I meet many girls so this was going to be a walk in the park.   I w

THE text

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~Zawadi~                                “Can we talk?” I read the text again as I unlocked the door to my one bedroom apartment. I was coming from work and the ride home was not blissful. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around THE text. After 2 days of no communication! This is all he had to say?  I questioned a lot of things. Does this mean he is ready to apologize? Or he just wants to blame me. The better part of me wished the latter. It would make things easier.  There has always been a connection between us, since the day we met. I believe it’s still there, buried under this entire fracas. It was Shiro’s birthday, A Saturday evening. “This is Maina, a colleague, Shiro said as she winked at me.”Hey, I am Zawadi, nice to meet you”, I introduced myself; couldn’t be more extroverted.  I don’t think I have had as much fun as I did since that night. We talked almost the whole night. Discussing our passions, dreams, sharing opinions on what was trending, literally everything. We

From my small room to the world

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It always fascinates me how anyone could manage to pull off a simple look and have a very beautiful high quality photo up on Instagram. I follow several influencers on Instagram and most if not all, have very beautiful high quality feeds. How do they manage to do that? I have always wondered. I have been a YouTube fan since 2019.   I enjoy the funny videos, the pranks, the couples’s channels, music, kits; I could name a whole list. Thanks to quarantine, I have grown an interest in content creation. What I didn’t know however, is the amount of work that goes into those videos, the beautiful photos on IG not forgetting tiktok videos, until the beginning of May.   I did one tiktok dance with my sister; it was exhausting. We practiced for two days and on the recording day we took almost 10 takes before we had a nice video. Editing the video is also a task. The video was less than minute but the amount of time we took to have a good video was a lot. Imagine the creators who put up 40 minu

An open letter to my ''friend''

  Dear “Friend”, It’s almost a year now since we began our friendship. I can’t complain much it’s been nice, except the times when you unexpectedly shut down. I remember the first time it happened Whooo!! I thought I’d lost you but you opened up. I don’t know if our relationship is the same as others but in some way it is.   I don’t want to lose you, have you stolen or see you broken even though it’s bound to happen one day; neither of us is perfect. Regardless, I certainly can’t stop thinking about how it will end based on my experience in past relationships.   But I still try to enjoy every moment in the present with you. You know my desires, my plans, my priorities, my favourite people, my favourite type of music, my crushes, my cravings, my favourite animal, my secrets, my emails, my Facebook friends, my 90 Instagram followers, my insecurities, my fears, my phobias, my worries and my sleepless nights. You have seen my happy tears, my sad tears, my ugliest laugh, and my smil

It was an awfully quiet night preps...

It was an awfully quiet night preps. Unlike the others, the principle had taken rounds in the classes. She is fierce, with a very loud voice. She managed to make everyone fear her, some teachers and workers included. We could hear her as she gave instructions in her stern voice to some class, probably on the form one block which was on the 3rd floor. Our class was on the 1st floor of the same building. Once her voice was heard, everyone, I mean everyone in the school would start fidgeting. This is because she would come to your class and check random things like your notebooks, your desk, practically anything! I remember there was this thing we used to do called “5 sums a day”. When you heard her that is when you would remember that the last time you did them was last term. You should be on number 455 but your sorry self is at 250. Remember it’s from last term. You had to think of a way to have an updated number in case she checked those. Talk about drama!   The 9:30 pm bell rings.

Chocolate and period cramps...not so sweet 😩

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Dark chocolate It was a normal school day. I took breakfast, hot chocolate and bread, and prepared to go to class as usual. I left my room and headed to class. It was a math’s class, probability and statistics II, to be exact. If you know this unit you know how crucial it is to pay attention or else, it will end in premium tears .My period had just started.   It was all going well until cramps knocked the door. It was mild at first. I would tolerate the pain until the end of the class. Unanticipatedly, the pain became so severe, that I couldn’t write or even hear what the lecturer was saying. Heeee! I started feeling nauseated and dizzy. I thought I was going to faint. I told myself (nikajiambia) to relax, and lie on the desk. It didn’t help! There’s that thing in movies they use when they are electrocuting someone, the knob they use to increase the current with. It felt like someone had that thing and was accelerating the pain as time went by. It was terrible. I gathered my courag

Quaranticles

Wairimu's story had me thinking of my own quarantine experience which has been the opposite of  glamorous to say the least.I have honestly never been home this long and I'm proud to say its a pretty pleasant place. When the son of Jomo decreed schools closure I was quite elated for a free holiday which I never get (thank you very much DEKUT) .Had I known it was going to turn out to be an early retirement, I'd definitely have saved some of the excitement for my actual retirement if I may. As you may already know its near impossible to tell a monday from a Sunday everyday is pretty much the same. Wake up sleep eat repeat kinda like a very fattening vortex. With all the free time I decided to try something new and exciting step forward social engineering. It basically is the basis of that movie stuff I'd told you about. It was quite fascinating and surprisingly easy so it seemed. I was dead sure I had the hang of it but kwa ground vitu zilikua different(the experience was

My hair raising experience, literally!

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I have always had this peculiar brownish “weak” hair since I was a kid, which was always in cornrows that would start loosening up within the first week of plaiting. Back then, every girl in every primary school either had their hair plaited in cornrows or maintained their hair in a teeny weeny afro, a really tiny one, sometimes even stayed bald, kiparangoto! Now, for us, the cornrows girls, the standard for neat cornrows was super tight lines with the scalp clearly visible in between. The standard for beautiful ones was those done on long hair which had a long twirl resting gracefully on the shoulders or at least a few centimeters downwards on the neck. (This is obvious considering the notion, which is quite flawed, that longer hair means more beautiful hair (I mean, we are still very obsessed with length to date). Having “weak hair” that wasn’t long enough to twirl at the back, ladies and gentlemen, meant that my hair was almost never ‘neat’ and definitely ‘not beautiful’ despite the

My Quarantine Story

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It has been a rough couple of days and I was thinking of what I would write. It then hit me, my quarantine story. Hey, I know it’s not over yet, but so far there’s a lot to tell. I am not sure it will fit in this blog but stay with me, let’s see where it goes. It’s been 12 weeks three days since I came home. I remember when I came home after the direction by His Excellency the President gave to close schools, I didn’t think it would last this long. Still, here we are. But its time it ends.  But until then, A Luta Continua (The struggle continues). I say A Luta Continua because it has not been a bed rose. This doesn’t disqualify the fact that I have had many happy times in this period. To be honest it’s been a roller coaster. Not a fun I must say. All in all, I have learnt, grown and I am grateful. I have listened to songs I never thought I would and enjoyed them. I have discovered songs from years back, not so popular but good to the soul. I love authenticity. African songs have a l

Should I follow the crowd?

As a person, I am sure there are times you sit down and evaluate your life, or not. It reaches a point in our lives where we make a deliberate decision to make a difference in the way that we live. For example, there are days I decide I will code and get better at it because I like knowing things and doing them well. There are this other times, especially after attending an event or just meetup I fell so pressured. I even make a schedule on what I will learn and when. Sometimes you feel so motivated to learn what the speaker was talking about. Truth is most of the time we are determined to do things or even change our lives because of what we heard or saw someone do.   Other peoples’ success or failures do influence us. According to Rob Henderson from Psychology Today , “Research shows we do not have as much control over our thoughts and behaviour as we think. We take cues from our environment, especially other people, on how to act.” Most of us deny this and tell ou

My love...

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I wish I could always wake up to the view of the sunrise from my window every morning. I recall when was in high school, I would do my duties in a hurry; not to catch some sleep, like most people would do. I used to rush not to miss the beautiful, breathtaking view of the sun as it rose. I think it is one of the very few things I miss from high school.  I dare say it made my life in high school interesting. I used to enjoy those moments very much. That was part of self-care routine in high school. I remember a time during the national examinations period, we could see the sunrise from where I did my duty. The beautiful colors blended together.  The shades of orange and red, stretched across the sky. God is truly an artist! I believe this was the beginning of my love for nature.it also gave me the desire to do photography. Every time saw it I wished I had a camera to capture the moment and save it for one of the difficult times in high school. Joining a school in Nyeri, I see it

The path that chose me

Life in tech has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs. As a kid, all I wanted was to be a police officer. Then along came the 2007/08 post-election violence. I wouldn't become an officer. An interest in cardiology promptly followed but was nipped by our beloved stringent Matiangi.  Then it hit me, if the million Hollywood movies I'd watched had taught me anything, is tech and hackers are cool. Enrolling for a bachelor's degree in computer science definitely was the epitome of my life this far. I had these ginormous expectations based on concrete evidence from the movies where they'd go all typy typy and yell I'm in. I even get goosebumps thinking about it. Nothing could get me off my perch…enter discrete mathematics. As the proud Kenyan I am, I kept moaning and ranting 'saa hii itanisadia aje'. Fast forward to a semester later and all they'd taught us wasn't even a modicum of what I wanted to learn. So I turned to the G.O.A.T of substitute tea