A Little Talk on Language Skills

Those who are friends with me on Facebook know how much hatred I have for poor grammar and spellings. Some may call me a subjective idiot for it, but if you think of it, that is the very reason the word grammar was even invented; to put up order and make sure that languages do not get even more distorted making up a modern phenomenon of the the tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-8)

Well. Here is the thing. A lot of people say that an intellectual nowadays does not have the same command of the Queen's language a JC dropout had in the Ngwazi days. I am in 92% agreement with that and I think this is a reason for worrying.

There are a couple of reasons why this concerns me. I will put them in the order of importance to me which might not be the same for you. If you are a rational being, however, you will agree with some of the things I say here.

I was talking about the issue of spellings and grammar. Nowadays the biggest platform that exposes this problem is the social networking area. With the influx of smartphones and the not-so-smart phones, Facebook accounts have become a basic things and everyone is on it. There are also many other interaction platforms but for now let us talk about ZuckVille.

Facebook was meant for posting. Posting text that is (those who want to post photos do it on Instagram nowadays. And shame on you if you have ever accused anyone of posting too much on FB). I personally have no issues with seeing a hundred updates from a single person in a day but I have an issue with a post that has too many grammatical and spelling errors. I always say this that I am not a saint on this one, but when this becomes too much it looks as if it was deliberate which gives a lot of mixed feelings; mostly the bad ones though.

The reasons for the hard feelings. The first one is just that I am am easily irritated by these language errors. Simply put. It might be to my desire for perfection in everything (some people have told me I am some sort of utopian guy who lives in fantasies. Works for me though). No big explanations on this one. Its just me, but let us be a bit more objective.

The other reason I hate broken English in our social fronts is the origin of it. These things are nowadays coming from from people who are ideally supposed to know better. Intellectuals. These are supposed to be people who should be writing the appealing stuff in English. Not what's on the ground.

Religious figures. Its not a good thing for someone to post the message of God in broken English, but that happens too. Very distracting, if you think of it and this was evidenced by my friend, Reagan Gonani who clearly said he cannot trust a Pastor who preaches in broken English. Maybe we need to switch to the languages we are the most comfortable with.

All of these give me a headache but the ones that are the most worrying to me are teachers. Now these are the people to whom we trust our children (Well. Not that I have some) for education. Having them willingly expose their incompetence in the very thing that they are supposed to be teaching makes me wonder whether we need to be developing our own curriculums and be homeschooling our children in language skills.

One of the reasons for which we have this serious problem is that most of  us are so much into casual texting and have with time rendered that synonymous.

Maybe it is time we moved from thinking of texting that is not shorthand as too formal. Maybe that could help cure the proper grammar and spelling deficiency syndrome that we have.

I know many do not agree with me that this is a problem. We have to agree to disagree sometimes, right?

Signing off. If exotic is difficult try vernacular but at least get comfortable with one.

Entrepreneurship: Do's and don'ts.

This is one mouth watering word among the visionary youth today and yes, on this post I just had to talk entreprenuership.

Some would wonder why I decided to pick this topic. Well. You will get it as we go along but being the man that I am I think it will be better if we talk about what this entrepreneurship is all about. Definitions first. Definitions are good.

Of course  the purposes of this post I did not go for the dictionary definition of the word so I will takebit from my understanding. So Richard Kamwezi defines entrepreneurship as the science or art of making money from supplying a need in any community. Art or science? If you are asking that question, well, that it is. Art or science. The main point is what happens and the end product and that is what matters the most.

The fact that there is money involved has made entrepreneurship a household among Malawi's elite youth. The reasons are pretty obvious; I mean you don't have to be super smart for you to know that you don't have to be broke to enjoy this life. Everyone knows that and much as money isn't everything, it doesn't hurt to have a good amount.

The issue of entrepreneurship has come into the spotlight recently with the coming in of people who are investing a lot in trying to give us the financial literacy we need. Bravo to these patriotic sons of Malawi who have not taken knowledge of practical personal finance management as something to be kept to themselves but as something to be shared for the common good.

Among those who have worked so hard to equip the Malawian population with these skills is one Henry Kachaje. I first met the man when I was doing my orientation at the College of Medicine when he talked to us on something I have forgotten. All I remember was that there was sense in it and it attracted me when I heard he was offering a seminar of a similar nature. This time we had to cough out K500, but being a public holiday with nothing sensible to do after our meal allowances had just fattened my account, I had more reasons for going than for staying.

We spent so many hours of sense and I remember that one of the most important topics was about entrepreneurship and the need for us to start businesses and create jobs in a bid not just to work on our well being, but also to uplift the country. Good stuff. I have attended a couple more of these and I must say that they are really nice. Henry also commands quite an audience on Facebook and he has been giving a lot of lessons drawn from a lot of successful people on issues ranging from issues of planning to business management. He is also the brain behind the Entrepreneurship Revolution Program. Salute to this gentleman.

Taking it from the fact that I have attended a couple if sessions with this gentleman and that he has inspired me to start reading a lot from many authors leaves some of the people who know me wondering as to why I am not in business. Tough question. Probably has to do with my past experience with business. In case you are wondering why I could not keep on keeping on, well, this battle I lost so that I could focus on the war.

Let's take away the personal side of this and be a bit objective. Henry is not the only one coaching young people into worth creation through entrepreneurship. So many other people are doing it and there are many success stories about this which have left people looking at this as an option over employment. This has led to some good developments in the lives of many but on the other hand the excitement hasn't come without repercussions.

The motivation talks and lessons that people have always being excitement to the people who attend and they instill a desire to act on them. To some, talks on entrepreneurship help to build an already existing desire to venture into business and job creation while to others they introduce the same. The interpretation of the message by the two groups of people is different and if taken without caution it might ruin a lot in the latter.

I will give a personal example. I am not the kind of person who grew up with the idea of doing business. I was raised in a family of civil servants; mum, dad, first born so when I was growing my main focus was on finishing school and getting a good job in the government and getting paid for the rest of my life. Cool stuff by many people's standards. Getting exposed to this material that we share on worth creation, success and all left me thinking that it was not enough and that I needed to do more right here and now. What did that get me into?

Without proper planning I got into a couple of businesses, one experimental and the other with all guns blazing. The end result was catastrophic, having lost some good amount of money to unpaid bills.

Before you crucify me for tarnishing the glorified of entrepreneurship in the society, I just want to make some few things clear. I am not trying to give a bad picture of the thing that I think could be our way out of poverty as a nation. What I want is to give another view of the same thing before things like these happen to everyone else and make us all have sad faces like the grumpy cat.

The main point to this is that there is need for proper digestion of information when we hear about things like success and entrepreneurship. There is indeed a need to act on this information, but what we need is to understand what we are getting into because there are dangers to this if we act prematurely. I would particularly like to highlight on two issues.

The first one is that of looking at what and who you are before venturing into business and entreprenuership. I am not trying to suggest that these things are meant for some people and not for others but sometimes it is good to give these things the serious analysis they deserve.

If you are new to business, it is not too much to ask for you to see what you can do at a small scale before getting to full blown business. Saves everyone the trouble. It is good to first look at who you are and what you can do before losing the opportunities at hand the most highlighted being school. Tales are told of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who dropped out of college and made a lot of fortune. Tales are told of Mark Zuckerberg who started the Facebook project in college and is not worth billions. These stories give intellectuals the urgency to act but one thing we have to understand is the issue of the differences between their situation and ours. Some might think I am an advocate against risk taking but that is not the point. You have to know what you can manage at what time and to focus on that before losing every other opportunity. I personally do not consider it wise to put entrepreneurship over tertiary education. If you can manage it, give it a go but if you can't, brother, sister; leave this, get your degree and think about it at home. Maybe it would work better with your job.

The same goes to all others who are doing things that are important and involving. While it is worthwhile to take risks, some of what people do in entrepreneurship is not about taking risks but to venture into a clear impending danger. Recipe to disaster.

We could use a lesson from Jesus Christ on this one. In Luke chapter 14 verses 28-30 Jesus talks about how if you want to build a tower you need to calculate the costs before starting the project, lest you be called a fool if it fails due to poor calculation. Master Jesus. Not me. That, dear everyone is worth following.

Second part of this is also dealing with the way we handle the information from success coaches. The information we get from them is all exciting when they tell us to think in numbers and everything else. People will always tell us to think in millions which is not a bad idea really. The way we take that information however makes the difference between the person who makes the million and one who keeps fantasizing it till the day they lay in their grave.

The excitement you get from a motivational talk will always leave you desiring the next one and if not careful we might just resort to attending seminars on success and wealth creation without actually doing anything about it. We will read all the books and watch all the videos of talks by Robert Kiyosaki, Zig Ziglar, Jack Canfield and any other you can mention (if you don't know any of the three people make a date with me for something needs fixing) but if it just gives us just enough drive to keep us reading, watching and listening, then there is a problem and we are as good as not getting those lessons.

Long piece of writing, but what really is the point of this? The point I was trying to drive home is the fact that we need to balance up our issues when we get information. When we are taught about success and entrepreneurship, we do not have to be too theoretical with our analysis and to venture into it prematurely but at the end of the day we also do not have to be those fools Jesus talked about, who hear stuff and do not use it (Matthew 7:26 and surrounding verses).

Take home message? Be action oriented enough to act on the message but be wise enough to make sure that what you do leads to the intended results other than a loss of what you already have.

Entrepreneurship is indeed the way to go but it is not a walk in the park. There are challenges and they havevto be taken into account.

I must also say that it is worth knowing and actually very practical that we know that not all of us will successfully venture into entrepreneurship and we will go the employment way. What you need to make sure is that you make yourself ready to have that job that will give you the satisfaction that you deserve because you can still think about the future with this.

For my friends who want to venture into entreprenuership, someone once told me the difference between a trader and an investor. If you are getting to this, which one are you and which one do you have to be?

Something to think about.

Reflections of a "Grown Man"

I recently celebrated my 22nd birthday. Age 22 is not quiet the oldest someone can get, but the fact that I got here is a testimony on it's own. Yes. I am a believer in God and I know these years have not just been there.

So! Birthday. This is a day of celebration and many call this "their day". Not a bad notion at all but if you think of it, it is also an opportunity to learn. Quiet a number of learning points on my recent one and here I am to share, being the good man that I am. Take them or leave them but I recommend the former.

The first of these started coming up way before the day. What basically happened is that someone (me) took it to a a social network to announce his birthday a week prior. As you would expect, people took it as asking for gifts and all and started giving all sorts of not-so-intelligent comments (Trying so hard to avoid the word stupid here. It was for humor anyway) but one in particular caught my attention. This one said that I just needed to bear with people because they usually accuse others of not telling them of their birthday and on their own birthday accuse others of not remembering it. That was quiet a revelation, if you think of it. So this world basically is full of people who say, "remember my birthday and remember to remind me of yours". The application of that? Well. You might want to figure that yourself. It is intelligence that is taught, anyway. Not wisdom.

People aside, the day itself comes with expectations and we cannot be immune to them. Sometimes it is just very important to keep the expectations low but the challenge comes because it is very hard to know how low is low enough. You might expect little and not tell people that you do but still people get some mind reading powers all of the sudden and lower the delivery below your already lowered expectation. Wanna ask me how to deal with it? I don't have the answers. The fact that I told you this exists means that I am already giving you solutions. See it coming and keep that smile.

When I said expectations have to be low, they have to be low for everything and in this case everything simply means everything. Ideally, physical presence is quiet a thing to get nowadays because if you are like me everyone in your circle is a busy person. Gifts are hard to come by because everyone's Malswitch (why do we still call it that, anyway?) or salary has already been budgeted for and your gift has no space on it.

Ideally you would just expect a phone call, but nowadays people do not make calls anyway, so any form of text message should be your minimal expectation. Sounds reasonable to expect, but wait a minute. People do not want to do that either. It turns out to be hard for people to send two lines of a text message so don't expect that either. People don't want to spare time to give advice despite this being the information age (did you know it was, by the way?) Just enjoy it when it comes.

This lowering of expectations should have no exceptions, anyway. It should go across the list of friends and family and everyone you can mention.

So... Why are these Matteos Gudu philosophies coming? Well, the point is just that there was a time when birthdays were those things that would make people give you attention for a day and ignore you for a year. Now they are worse than that, so face it.

Good sides to birthdays. They are really cool, the best side to it being the cake and the food and the Sprite. And yes... Ice cream for people who do that thing. Do these if you can, but if you can't don't force. Being broke is a vice so don't get into it because of a birthday. Adding years shouldn't subtract from your pocket so be smart about it and spend wisely. If people make something for you, partake. That's one of your functions on a big day like that anyway.

Music. Let's not take long with this. Dance where necessary.

Back to information. The birthday can be a very important source of information. If you believe in the Johari Window business, here is the day you get information about what other people know (or maybe think) about you but you don't know. Somehow people get loose and say what they have been keeping from you. So fascinating to hear. Had the best dose of that on my 20th. For the rest of the years, I have either gotten better or people have gotten softer on me, telling me nice things only. Quiet interesting. If it is the same with you, you might want to take it with a pinch of salt. No one would want to spoil your day, would they?

So, how do we sum this up?

Birthdays are good but they seem to be getting trickier with time with the changes in communication and financial conditions. Best we can do is to embrace these changes to avoid frustration. On the other hand, when a friend has this once a year event, let us learn to put a smile on their faces. It makes a great difference.

All in all, everyone celebrating a birthday should know that getting older is an hourly thing. Happens per minute and second if you like, so having it big, much as it might be a good idea is not that significant. What matters is translating the growth into actions.

I must say I enjoyed my 22nd, though. That was real fun, thanks to those who made it for me.

Quiet enriching. Actually what someone said as birthday advice is what prompted me to post this. Shout out to Joram O Nyirongo. You ate the cake and said something wise. Fair transaction.

All in all, birthdays are overated.