Body Dressing

I'll be back to comment on the dress.. ..

30.04.06

My take on this dress and others I have seen her in is simply woi! And to think this is one of the better dresses I have seen her in

Serena is a big girl. Not big as in fat, but big as in muscular and with a big frame. (Personally I think she used to use steriods…just my personal opinion and I may be wrong)

Thing is, you cannot dress a big framed woman's body in a girly girly dress. It does not work like that.

Don't even get me started on that thing sitting on her head!! 

Mrembo’s Photos: Pics trial run 2

I seem to have got a few requests to view my photo album. I orginally set up for my family and close friends. I am having a few issues making the albums public, so I have decided to set up one public album for all you who are curious to see me. Most of them are from last year summer and are all me. No family.

I think I figured how to post pics. Below is Oprah in a dress I absolutely love and have promised to sew it myself when I finally get a sewing machine.

So to see me click on the mrembo album and it will be the third album that has pics of me. The other two will remain closed.

Enjoy.

 

15 mins later……..

I think I think I have done it.. I think..maybe..

 

Hair today:Weighty Matters

I happen to possess a full head of scantly (as my nigerian braider defined it) distributed, off-black nappy hair, with which I have a love-hate relationship.

A few years ago, I decided I had had enough of permed (chemically altered) hair and thanks to www.nappturality.com I joined the nappy hair club. Fast forward to 5+years, 2 perms, numerous hair cuts and finally to today. I woke up, went to work, came home and cut off my hair, yet again. I seem to go through a phase each year where I just have to cut my hair. I am now of the firm opinion that the lenght (or rather height given that napps grow up instead of down) at which it is now, best suits me, both in its shrunken form and stretched out. I am very pleased and mostly that I did the job myself.

Off to another topic.

Big Al and I are looking for a gym, actually we have found one. The sales rep was really good and like all people who make the effort to speak to me in English here in Denmark, she's in my good books. She went through the whole sales pitch and blah blah …. It got interesting when she said we get to measure our body fat. Big Al got on first and came out with a staggering 24% body fat and I was smugly looking on thinking to myself  "well done girl less than 25% for you" Next was my turn so I confidently jumped on the machine and sales rep punches in all the numbers… wait for it, wait for it…. ati 39.5% body fat!!! :-O

The whole thing was just so outrageous I did not and cannot even get annoyed. See I am totally convincied the machine has a big prob. When it asked for "type of body" sales rep entered "standard female body". Now I am a tall girl. I stand 5feet 10inches and a half… tall. My frame is not exactly Naomi Campbell nor is it Serena Williams… ok maybe it is… … but that is besides the point 39.5% body fat and to think I had said to her I only want to lose 5kilos…..

As far as I am concerned. THE MACHINE LIED! tosha gari! (nuff said)

I have gotta do it!!

The guys at Kenyablog have sent me a polite reminder to complete my registration with them and ensure that thier log appears on the front page of this blog. I am having a hell of time doing it……..dial up is a pain in the behind!

So here we go again trying to do it.  

Yesterday I wrote so much stuff, I then clicked publish, not once but twice and the little thingy at the bottom of my screen said "done", so I went to "view my site" and nothing had been published. I ofcourse could not press the "forward or back" buttons to recover what I had written, so I am having a kinda rant at the moment. I swear this blogrollring had better work!

Living in Denmark.

I think it’s a good thing that I am no longer counting the passing days. I am settling into a routine, carving out a place for me and myself here and it is going alright.

Patience is the key and much as I have always known this, these last few days have reinforced the truth that I need to LEARN to be patient!. If I could have it my way, well, I would have found a job, house and car by now and everything would be honky dory!.

Don’t have much to say today.

Site Management and Danmark

I am doing my level best to learn how to do all the funky things one can do on a blog, like load a picture, get the blog ring thingamajig to show on the front page. It´s taking time… I´ll get there.

Today is day 8 in Denmark and so far so good. Hey, I am at a computer blogging, what else could be wrong. I promised to write more about Denmark when I got my thoughts together. My "creative muse" seems to have taken a short holiday and I find myself unable to compose anything worth putting down.

Denmark has a population of 5.6million people and by gad do you feel it. I have always lived in a city so this whole outback boondoos living takes some getting used to. The landscape is flat rolling with vasts pieces of farming land. At the moment it is all black with manure in preparation for planting, brown with dead harvest or green with grass (crop rotation stuff blah blah!).

I have not yet truly interacted with Danes. The official business I had to do, all the registering to get all the vital numbers was painless. The people were ok and at least made the effort to respond in English when I spoke directly to them. I start my danish lessons when I get my numbers (which I was promised would take about 3 weeks). It is there that I hope to start the socialisation process albeit with non-danes.

The job thing… eh, I have a small gig at the family bakery! yeah! working 4 hours a day. Today I am at an office doing some consulting gig thingy… so like I said, one day at time.

that´s all for now.

Finally!!!!

It is exactly one week and one day that I packed my bags, quit my job and hopped on a plane to join Big Al in Denmark!

Have I been through the wringer or wot!!!!

I don't even know where to start or what to say. At the moment the jury is still out on "how we feel about Denmark". It will probably be a long deliberation and a decision is yet to be reached… so hang on to your pants and lets take the ride one day at a time.

The one shocker was that EVERYTHING and I mean EVERTYTHING shuts down on the Easter Weekend and almost nothing opens on Sunday, so if like me you are a busy body that likes to be in and among people (as in a city girl born and bred where nothing really ever shuts down except on Sundays after 4pm) then that will be a big big shock.

We also discovered, after 5 days of great anticipation, that we live too far from the telephone exchange system to get BROADBAND internet connection!! Now hear me out!. Yes, I was born and raised in Kenya/Uganda where internet, let alone broadband was a thing of the mid nineties.. so it,s not like I have always had it. However I lived in the UK for the past 5 years and since the 1st week there I had internet connection and I grew completely dependant on it. It was comfortable knowing it was there even if I spent only 10 mins on it. So you can understand my disappointment after great anticipation…. Right now I am getting my fix on a dial up and I will not complain cause this dial up connection is much faster than the connection at the cyber cafes in Nairobi and Kampala.

Today was a good day in Denmark. I am literally taking it one day at a time. The last 4 days were not so good days. Big Al has been a gem! (poor thing! putting up with mood swings from hell!) Tomorrow seems like it will be a fine day…. but right now it is one day, each day at the time.

Anyone relocating to Denmark all I can say is………………………………….

I would really like to hear from people who have relocated from their home countries to a new country that was non English speaking… how did that go?

When I get my thoughts more together, I will post more. I think I might manage a post a day or two.

An eloquent exposition!

"Liberals like to think that racism is a product of ignorance, of a lack of contact, and that as human mobility increases, so racism will decline. This might be described as the Benetton view of the world. And it does contain a modicum of truth. Intermixing can foster greater understanding, but not necessarily, as Burnley, Sri Lanka and Israel, in their very different ways, all testify.
Hong Kong, compared with China, is an open society, and has long been so, yet it has had little or no effect in mollifying Chinese prejudice towards people of darker skin. It is not that racism is immovable and intractable, but that its roots are deep, its prejudices as old as humanity itself."

"In our 14 months in Hong Kong, I learned some brutal lessons about racism. First, it is not the preserve of whites. Every race displays racial prejudice, is capable of racism, carries assumptions about its own virtue and superiority. Each racism, furthermore, is subtly different, reflecting the specificity of its own culture and history.
Second, there is a global racial hierarchy that helps to shape the power and the prejudices of each race. At the top of this hierarchy are whites. The reasons are deep-rooted and profound. White societies have been the global top dogs for half a millennium, ever since Chinese civilization went into decline. With global hegemony, first with Europe and then the US, whites have long commanded respect, as well as arousing fear and resentment, among other races. Being white confers a privilege, a special kind of deference, throughout the world, be it Kingston, Hong Kong, Delhi, Lagos – or even, despite the way it is portrayed in Britain, Harare. Whites are the only race that never suffers any kind of systemic racism anywhere in the world. And the impact of white racism has been far more profound and baneful than any other: it remains the only racism with global reach.
Being top of the pile means that whites are peculiarly and uniquely insensitive to race and racism, and the power relations this involves. We are invariably the beneficiaries, never the victims. Even when well-meaning, we remain strangely ignorant. The clout enjoyed by whites does not reside simply in an abstraction – western societies – but in the skin of each and every one of us. Whether we like it or not, in every corner of the planet we enjoy an extraordinary personal power bestowed by our color It is something we are largely oblivious of, and consequently take for granted, irrespective of whether we are liberal or reactionary, backpackers, tourists or expatriate businessmen."

You can read the rest of the article at Rombo's blog and the title is The Gobal Hierachy of Race. An article that appeared in UK Guardian news paper in September 2003

What am I

I remember thinking I was going to be a lawyer when I grew up. Must have been about 10 years old when that thought first developed courtesy of LA LAW.

Somewhere between form four and five I decided I was going to be journalist, this time, thanks to CNN and Christiana Anampour. She walked on water as far as I was concerned. During those years, Ugandan and Kenyan school holidays clashed which meant when I was off school, Kenyan kids were in school so there was nothing to do but watch TV when I was in
Nairobi. Those were the days of zero day time TV. All you had was CNN on KTN and I watched it voraciously…..

Then I did my A Level Exams and my dreams of traversing the world reporting stories was dashed to the ground suffice to say I did not make the grade. So there I was at University doing Sociology and French (flat course as we called them)  without a clue as to what I would end up doing….But through all this, I figured I was going to be “someone”… hell I had been preparing to be “someone” all my life. With me was the right background and school pedigree, all I needed was the right opportunity… fast forward to October 2001 and I’m on a plane to UK on track to kick start my career…… a year later armed with my Masters Degree and hundreds of job applications I was nothing but a clerical officer.

Today sitting at my desk in my proper white collar office job and I am struck that I am nothing but a glorified interviewer, a job that could easily be done by anyone with at least high school education….

All my 29 years on this earth, I have heard, been told and believed that all I had to do was work really hard and so I did. Admittedly I have never been the sharpest tool in the box, but do consider myself to be relatively intelligent.

Am I pissed?….., not necessarily. Disappointed?…, perhaps. Have I given up… amazingly no or maybe stupidity is a flaw I am yet to claim.

The nagging question remains though,……. when it comes to my career.. “who the heck am I, what am I  and will I always be just another cog in the wheel ,will I know the joy of career work fulfilment like some people I know?

Extreme makeover – mine!!

How the heck could I forget. As you know, I went to the dentist sometime ago and after some consideration decided to have my teeth done ….as in bleached.

I am proud to report that I am now a member of the white teeth club!!! hehehehe! and by God does it feel good. 

The change is dramatic and I am thinking to getting the home bleaching tray stuff to have on hand… donno… just think I should have it. They were bleached using 11% hydrocloric acid. The process is known as microdermabrasion bleaching…..(i think… or is that for the skin).  The dentist proctects the gum with a rubber mat like thingy and then puts a seal near your gums. Then proceeds to dab the teeth with the acid and waits about 30 seconds and using a kind of pumice thing rubs away a layer of the enamel exposing the whiter layer.

I have not suffered from sensitivity and I did not get any burns from the acid.

Very pleased!