Can't a Brother Get a Little Peace? There's War on the Streets and there's war in the Middle East...

Too much has been happening in my life that it's bound to make me a bit soporific, and let me just add that I was in no such state in this picture! Merely planning the year, or at least pretending to do so!

I like the "domino-effect" metaphor being bandied around to describe the events from the Jasmine revolution of Tunisia, through to Egypt. Yesterday, I heard that Sudan was engaged in anti-government protests as well!

Swell.

I don't want to go overboard with the "people power" concept, but clearly, it is there is some shape or form.

In my own life, there are revolutions going on: from how I manage my finances to deepening and consolidating the passions I hold so dear in my life(work, my significant other, my blogging).

Let's just say I'm glad to be back in the mantle to kick-start a new month; it will be great to be back blogging more regularly.

Six years of this blog is no mean feat. There must be something right I'm doing to have endured this long.

In Egypt, six days of demonstrations ain't bad either.

I just hope they heed Churchill's words:

when you're going through hell, keep going!

Alright so I failed...but Note to Self!

The problem with emergencies...is the way they kind of "emerge" from nowhere and consume the time you would spend on other things. So it is that I was caught up in an emergency work-related meeting on Wednesday, which flowed into today, which consumed practically the whole day.

While some are bent on burning holy books to commemorate September 11, in this country, we are enjoying a holiday on Friday 10 September -- to celebrate our Moslem brothers and friends in this largely Christian and religious country who have just finished their fast.

So everyone might just be off to the beach.

Or doing something.

I shall certainly be doing the latter, as I cogitate over work, and blogging material for the week of 13 September:

*New Media and Anas Amerayaw Anas
*Bus Rapid Transport in the offing

Enjoy. Till next week!

Bouncing back on 6 September, 2010!

For the second time, I have taken "unofficial" leave from this blog--and not necessarily because it was a choice.

Last week, I was at school. Specifically at a school for activists trying to understand the global financial crisis.

This week, I am winding down to prepare full-throttle for September, and a remaining quarter of the year that proves to be replete with as many meetings as one can imagine.

I have been tweeting, however. If you're a tweep, find me on @ekbensah.

Am definitely bouncing back the week of 6 September, which is a special week for me in so many ways.

Till then!

Mid-Week Madness: Blogging Paradox ; Afrigator Re-Dux and Guinea on My Mind

Few people know that I have another blog, entitled "Reflecting the Eccentric World of E.K.Bensah II"--save Ghanablogging colleague Kobby Graham who has listed it in his aggregator. That's the space where I blog about relationships, life and other esoteric stuff, which I feel I cannot shed light on on the ghana blog.

Whilst you're reading, let me give you a small quote from a post I wrote in June 2007 about reconciling real life with blogging--what I call the blogging paradox:

In so many ways, blogging has transformed us into both contradictory and paradoxical people. Contradictory because some of us chose to blog about heretofore private issues under both the ambit of free speech, as well as something to blog about, when that very same issue, we probably wouldn’t discuss with someone face-to-face...

When you read this blog, you do it and make judgments—or not—on the entries I write. At the time you read my entry, your attention is drawn only to the post, but not to my whole personality. In that respect, even if you consistently visit the blog and have a fair idea of who I am, by way of my blog entries, it’s difficult to be certain whether it’s all an act.

We have contemporaneously become paradoxical because the self-reflection of our private lives that we are so keen to refrain from divulging fully is refracted through our blogging, such that we blog about our personal lives, but only in a way that doesn’t reveal too much of what we intimately think and feel...

I believe with that quote I was trying to experience a catharsis that only writing can bring. This post, for example, was going to be about "what to do when you cannot blog", but when I started writing, I remembered there were other issues I needed to pick up, such as the dreaded afrigator.


The genesis of this post started with the fact that I was going to write about Ghanaian banks; however it was scuppered by my boss challenging me to do an analysis of the Guinea/Niger crisis refracted through the role of ECOWAS in Guinea.

This has meant that I have had to naturally suspend my blog entry to do some serious research before doing a good piece on the Guinea crisis. I've done a write-up for the blog; all that remains for me to do is to transfer it into blogging stuff.
In between that, other private matters have crept up--including where on Earth Ato Kwamena Dadzie is on the afrigator blog list? Somehow, there seems to be a bit more sanity. I wouldn't know if it had anything to do with the post I wrote last two weeks. All I can tell for now is that the cutting-and-pasting blogs have been relegated down there somewhere in the 80s. I am still a bit concerned that some non-Ghanaian-content blogs, such as Nubian Cheetah, who blogs more about Africa than Ghana is in the top 5.

I am sincerely happy to see that David Ajao's blog is in the top 5; he's a veteran and deserves the spot. The delectable Esi Cleland and Abena of Procrastinator Fame; including yours truly are in the top 10. What is Koranteng's Toli still doing in the top 5?!