Three Guys and a Girl in a Dutch House with Steep Stairs

Just a couple of months ago, I was in Ghana making last-minute plans to come to the Netherlands for a brief sojourn. Things were so last-minute that I only found accommodation one week before I flew out. I was so grateful to have a place that I did not even know (or care) whom I would be living with. So when the landlady ushered me into my new digs and I met Tenant #1 (a guy) , Tenant #2 (a guy) and heard Tenant #3 was also a guy, I was calm on the outside but in my head I was bouncing off the walls in surprise. Don't get me wrong; I've had plenty of room-mates,  housemates and flatmates in the past but they have never been exclusively male. So this was going to be interesting! The second shock was the stairs - the steepest I had ever seen before in my life! I still have visions of me tumbling down the stairs one of these days. Anyway, its been 2 months and I have settled into my Dutch digs. 

 

I love my room; it has large bay windows and a wonderful street view. The street below is very narrow and the large windows across the way remind me of the film Rear Window. Luckily, curtains and frosted windows are a deterrent against  scary voyeuristic tendencies! In fact, Dutch houses tend to have large windows at street level so its quite common to peer in on a family dinner as you walk down the street.

Playing with the Boys: Dumpling-making and Mooncake-eating as part of Chinese Mid-Autumn festival

Have I learned anything from living with guys?  *Yes* guys are a-okay as housemates! At first the toilet seat remaining up used to drive me crazy but last week something occurred to me. If you live in a house where the vast majority of the tenants prefer toilet seats up then am I not the weirdo for wanting the seat down?

The narrow street of cobbled stone below as seen from my window. I sometimes wonder how people manage to park on this street.

"There are Homosexuals in Ghana's Parliament - Derrick Adjei" - Observing Ghanaian news from afar and SMH**

Being away from Ghana for a few months, one of my favorite activities is checking up on the news either through Joy FM online, Twitter, Citifmonline or occasionally Ghanaweb. Last week, I concluded that there was clearly nothing newsworthy happening in the whole of Ghana. How could I possibly reach such a conclusion? Well, a headline from earlier this past week led me to that very conclusion:

There are Homosexuals in Ghana's Parliament - Derrick Adjei

According to the article, the aforementioned Mr Adjei has a list of purported homosexuals and they all happen to be members of the opposition.

At first I thought April Fool's Day had come early (or late?) and that this article was a prank. I was a little surprised to hear it was actually a serious article. I was even more surprised that some of my Twitter buddies in Ghana actually took  it seriously!   Fellow blogger Osabutey Anny has a colourful and interesting take on this debacle in his piece Rubbish Politics.

Out of morbid curiosity, I listened to the interview where Mr. Adjei first mentioned his list. His revelations only came at the end of  an ironic diatribe on lies in Ghanaian politics. It appears the young man was reacting to being called a homosexual by members of the opposition at some point in time. He said nothing would deter him from publishing his list on Wednesday 15 September. Well, it appears that the Wednesday outing for the mass outings came and went without any such publication. Of course from what I  have observed from afar,  it did cause entertainment and distraction. 

Perhaps Mr. Adjei was saved by the publication of excerpts from the autobiography of former British diplomat Craig Murray. In his book, Mr. Murray makes curious and potentially damaging claims about Ghana Election 2000. However, many have since come out to say that Mr. Murray's claims are not entirely accurate. So aside from the hot pink list and the Murray revelations, other tantalizing tit-bits from Ghana news include:

• Boakye Djan's intelligence is 'fufu-based' -Kofi Adam

• Dan Botwe upset by Boakye Gyan's "kindergarten" analysis

Clearly it's time for me to give up on the belief that there is a modicum of seriousness still  left in Ghanaian politics. So instead of observing from afar and being rendered speechless by utter ridiculousness, I have decided to devote a little blogging to the world around me. Watch this space for chronicles on #Dutch Living! 

Dutch Living exemplified: The Bikes of Leiden 

**SMH = 'Shaking My Head'. For some of us over the hill, all this LOL (laugh out loud) language is sometimes hard to keep up with!

The 100 Most Powerful Black Men on Twitter List: Heavy on sport and entertainment but Light on intellectuals

Last week I saw a tweet directing tweetheads to the list of The 100 Most Powerful Men on Twitter:

"These men have the ability to drive massive traffic with a single tweet of a link, are constantly retweeted by their loyal followers, and exist on thousands of lists created by their fans."

I scanned the list quickly and noticed a trend. Here are the first 5 entries on the list:

• LeBron James: High profile basketball player 

• IamDiddy Music mogul and artist

• Kanye West: Music mogul and artist

• BarackObama: 44th President of the United States. According to BarackObama's twitter profile, this is not President Obama's account but run by a grassroot organization  

• Tyga: I have no idea who this is but according to Wikipedia, he is a young rapper signed to Young Money entertainment.

The rest of the list is pretty similar; great representation from the world of sports, rap, R&B and entertainment but very little from academia, science, technology, health-care, business or even politics. Okay, I concede, Twitter is a social-network mainly associated with the entertainment industry. With the 140 characters limit, it is hardly the meeting place for deep intellectual discourse! However, Bill Gates and several other innovators from a plethora of other fields have accounts. Therefore, this list has really gotten me to think: are black men with the most impact on the planet likely to be rappers and sportsmen? Granted there are black men who have risen to the top of their respective fields outside of entertainment but are these people known or really recognized? Is the world learning to identify prominent black people with rap and sports rather than anything else? To me this is a troubling and very sad phenomenon.

P.S. I should add that philosopher and intellectual Professor Cornel West of Princeton University does feature on the list of 100  Black men on Twitter at Number 50. By the way, did you know that Cornel West was in The Matrix Reload and The Matrix Revolutions?  Hmm... maybe it is all about entertainment.