A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Robert Anson Heinlein

This page highlights my general feelings on the subjects listed. If a title below is linked, then I have written a post that discusses the topic in more detail. Otherwise, I will write more about that subject sometime. 讀萬卷書不如行萬里路

On Business – There is a military saying: “amateurs talk strategy, and professionals talk logistics.” I find this especially true when founding even the most technologically advanced companies. The real challenge is often not ideas, science, math, technology, or business strategy, but rather the grunt work, ditch digging, plumbing, and thousands of unexciting, tiny, and mind-numbingly repetitive tasks that eventually combine to produce a finished success or failure. Similarly, the best teammates are typically not high-flyers and PhDs, but relentless grunt workers, including yourself, tackling and solving endless streams of minutiae, trench after trench. However long you think it would take to reach the goal, it typically takes much longer. I have founded and run three technology consumer and business services companies that developed software, animated media, and trained tech professionals for industry certifications. Much of my experience in business comes from those adventures – and misadventures [this isn’t a process that always brings out the best in me]. While I generally express broad opinions about businesses, some applications may be truer in one industry than in others.

On Success – They say it takes about 25 years to become an overnight success. So while resolute in the effort, I’m not in a hurry for popular accomplishment. Finding meaning in the approach and process of work is as crucial to me as outcomes, and prioritizing healthy relationships alongside my career pursuits is non-negotiable. In both friendship and business, I am growth and long-term-minded, even when it means forgoing obvious quick wins that ultimately undermine broader principles.

On Humanity & Causes – I regard Business as vital as Charity because innovations solve human problems and enhance standards of living, see an excerpt. I am also more inclined toward children and juveniles in destitution, and programs that offer sustainable paths to break the cycle rather than momentarily alleviate it. However, I believe both short and long-term solutions are equal partners in the process.

On Writing – Much of my journals, both offline and online, are seldom about chronicling events or activities that have passed. I write more as a way to think out loud without particular commitment to the thoughts explored. I embrace learning as an ongoing process and am always open to changing my mind in light of new knowledge. As such, every article I write is living, i.e., can change over time with new insight and reinterpretation. Where necessary for privacy, I do throw in fictional elements to protect details. A few articles are limited with a passcode intended for a smaller circle, but over time and comfort, I intend for all content to be public. Portrait photos of me on this site are deliberately grayscale to reflect the somber losses of relationships and time during the often solitary journey toward who I am today.

On Politics – I am apolitical in the sense that I neither identify with any one political ideology exclusively nor deem such ideals the only means to build and resolve society. However, I am fully engaged in current discourses and world affairs, bearing in mind that real-life events are seldom as black and white as we often like to imagine them to be: we live in a world that is messy with complexities practically impossible to grasp or scrupulously redress, and survival for only the fittest – seemingly nature’s penchant – is as distasteful as the coercion to conformity by a majority. 樹倒猢猻散 Since governments are ultimately a product of people, I cheer a little more on individual maturity than I do on public programs – even though reckoning both as equally important. In the long run, I think better individual values in multiple will effect a better government, regardless of its size. As far as popular support goes, I am in favor of i) societies where civil power is broadly diffused with ample checks and balances on direction and leadership over societies where civil power is concentrated and dictatorial (Nigeria used to be a totalitarian state, so my low preference for this form of government comes from first-hand experience.); ii) societies where all citizens are equal before the law, and procedures are clear enough to apply to everyone fairly; iii) political parties that recognize their responsibility to promote the common good and facilitate constructive civil processes and tolerance. I loathe parties that exceed their institutional mandate by dictating how individuals should think and what values they should hold – especially given the selective adherence and outright hypocrisy of party ideologues toward their own beliefs, as well as how these doctrines purposefully label and buttress caricatures of various groups in society to deepen exceptionalism, factions, and feuds (seen this movie before from my childhood household right into early adulthood; it’s never a happy ending.); iv) as one myself, I am pro-immigration. While it may be understandable that people who left their homelands to resettle and colonize others illegally tend to be most particular about others migrating into the same places they occupied under foreign rule, our entire human history, akin to most other animals, is based on migrations, peacefully and forcefully. Therefore, I believe people should be bound by customs and laws, not by borders, for which most populations aren’t even aboriginal. I wish for a day when people can move freely around the world’s rich assortment of experiences and be allowed at least a fighting chance at survival wherever they eventually choose to call home and help build up. Such a day would ideally be one where migrants and frontiers do not thereafter make life uncomfortable for their host communities or seek to violently displace and resettle the host nations that once coexisted with them. On nationalism and patriotism, I favor neither. I wouldn’t be what I am today if left only to any single country or blood kin. I have benefited and flourished under the love and care of many cultures, arts, peoples, tastes, and knowledge. As a result, I identify with each and care just as much about what happens in remote places of the world as I do wherever I reside. Our lives, histories, and stories are often far more intertwined across nations and distant cultures than we tend to acknowledge. I embrace the shared identity of everyone foremost as human beings, and my patriotism is with the collective human race and our home planet, Earth. Read More »

On Race and Ethnic Relations – I admire Martin Luther King Jr.’s accomplishments and spirit. However, my personal predilection is more akin to Malcolm X. If loved and accepted, I love and accept back – live and let live. When mistreated or stigmatized, I decide whether the situation merits continued engagement and will move on when the circumstances are not significant to my interests or values. Otherwise, I defend myself, whatever the outcome, and may well be defeated in the end, but will not be intimidated. Generally, I find conversations that prattle about black marginalization or “white*” privilege disingenuous because they tend to reinforce and perpetuate the same delusions they claim to condemn – whether from minority people fecklessly attributing every blame and fortune to their beige compatriots as though themselves intrinsically handicapped, or from “white*” people coyly deprecating their own race to indirectly congratulate themselves and act the benevolent patron saint with condescending kindness. Save us ​the​ self-righteousness; vanity only looks good on dead people. When you take a dig at “old white* men”, I view it as racially contemptible as a dig at any other ethnic group or gender. I don’t see anything wrong with being rich, old, or “white*” as long as we collectively continue to make that option equally available for everyone else. As for ‘Black Lives Matter’, I appreciate and have solidarity with the principle of the movement, but personally do not feel comfortable with anyone *telling me* that my life matters or not. No, it should be the other way around. *I tell you* that my life matters. Leaving it up to someone else to determine the value of another’s life is what created the problem in the first place, and also puts them in a position to decide otherwise whenever they see fit. I simply can’t cede such power to the whims of society or any movement. So, I prefer to be the judge of my own worth and value – better or worse – and tell the world, not the world telling me. Still, again, I acknowledge the bigger principle of BLM and support the sentiment of equal recognition for every race and demographic. Moreover, the vilest racial slurs ever hurled at me have come from people who are themselves ethnic or gender minorities, and the people most likely to insidiously interject racial allusions out of nowhere into conversations or suggest concern for their personal safety in the context of my race are usually progressives and liberals. I have also been offhandedly prejudged as lazy or watch the arduousness of my labor patronized by nonentities of all shades and kin who have never themselves built anything substantial at scale from scratch. There’s this strange idea that if you are of a specific profile, you probably aren’t “working as hard” or need to be schooled on the value of “work”, while at the same time, your most valiant endeavors in drudgery are dismissed or downplayed. These animosities from ideological hypocrites and even people not dissimilar make me surmise racism not as a product of merely history or ignorance, but as one more perpetual point of visible difference capitalized on by both individuals and societies to project their own vulnerabilities and insecurities about other people, whether similar or dissimilar to themselves. If we all had the [exact] same skin color but different hair or eye colors, there would still be discrimination… in fact, there is. If we all had the [exact] same skin tone but different heights or weights, there would still be discrimination… in fact, there is. Humanity is a creative species. If there is any physical trait or difference to be found, we will find it – and then both adore and stereotype it. People have and show prejudice for the slightest variation in their fellows, even when it is as superficial as a tattoo. Whichever you are: Olive, Brown, Beige, Pink, Mutt; be unapologetically you and have self-respect. You are foremost a person, not a color, gender, class, ethnicity, statistic, geography, or privilege. Be your own man/woman beyond the evanescent solidarities of other people. Do not condone anybody demeaning you racially or by any other category – work, life, station, even when they do so “charitably”; otherwise, you will feel entitled to treat others similarly. Reaffirming your sense of self at all times, even when it condemns you to a more difficult life, is by far more worthwhile and actualized than most people, including your patronizers, will ever know. However you look, you are gorgeous, and legitimately sister and brother.

*Why are White references in quotation marks? Because I have never personally seen a white person, and think using the word White to describe a race is a silly, narcissistic, but surprisingly lingering colonial fabrication to christen a certain vainglorious status on a group, bogusly elevating them with all the broad cultural connotations of the color White – pure, divine, daylight, blameless. It’s the kind of righteous self-classification a group will crave to gaslight their worthiness in committing atrocities and theft on their fellows, whom they derogatorily dehumanize as non-white or black, along with that color’s broad cultural connotations: impure, heathen, dark, guileful; thus, inferior and deserving of affliction. To be clear, my beige ethnic comrades aren’t the only race to have committed barbarous genocides for avarice and conquest. Emphatically no. Every race, every color, every ethnic group, even biological families among themselves, commit acts of sadism for sway and hegemony. In this sense, my treasured Caucasian siblings are no less or more human than any other ethnicity. Greed and violence are a human condition, not an ethnic one. My focus here is on the colonial construct of ‘White’ and ‘Colored’, which is still perpetuated to this day to describe groups of people. Couldn’t hold the incredulity away from my face when I once heard a liberal beige woman nonchalantly describe a Hispanic gentleman as Brown and herself as White; the gentleman, in this case, actually had a noticeably fairer complexion than the person labeling him Brown and herself White. “What a joke!” I thought to myself, who came up with these ’emperor’s new clothes’ labels anyway, and why does the cartoonish irony remain largely unchallenged? Here’s where most liberals will quickly retort, “Oh, it’s just a social construct!” – meaning, an idea or concept that exists because of collective agreement and shared understanding within a society. When exactly was this “collective agreement and shared understanding” reached to label you “white,” and what entitled you to this distinction? Also, why are you so keen on being labeled “white” and just as keen on labeling other humans “non-white”? Whose interests do these labels serve, and who preaches their prerogatives? Liberals, why is this construct so important to you that you can’t help but highlight and dredge up labels at the *very* first opportunity you get? What’s with the unsolicited self-deprecation about your ethnicity as though you were supposed to be seen any differently to begin with? Or the idolatry and fake criticism of “white men” to backhandedly insinuate your “social construct”? Why are you so obsessed with re-educating others into this purported “social construct”, how they should navigate it, and the social hierarchy for each label? It is not a social construct; it is a self-awarded construct; the twisted virtue of straw manning the evil, condemning the straw man to signal correctness, while striving to preserve the constructs of that evil where it’s useful for exceptionalism, especially when you’re low on self-esteem. Yet, evil or not, you simply don’t possess the merit. Angels may be white. Saints may be white, too. Even a wraith may be white. On the other hand, you most certainly are not white. In fact, I’ve never met a single human being of flesh and blood who is actually white. I have, however, met many lovely people of various colors, including shades of pink, shades of brown, shades of olive, and shades of beige. So contrary to the ridiculous conceit of describing certain people as white and others as colored, we are all colored, and we are all people of color. Claiming a color you clearly aren’t is, at best, comically insecure, and at worst, delusional.
TL;DR – It genuinely amuses me when people describe themselves as white with a straight face. You are not white, bruh, nor am I inclined to indulge a chucklesome colonial fantasy and color complex. Embrace your evident color, beige. It really is gorgeous enough.

On Faith and Spirituality ― The tenets of my faith are: (i) my relationship with God is founded first on an intimate personal fellowship. Dogma and institutions of all kinds are categorically secondary to my devotion. (ii) God is secure – has to be if really Almighty. Therefore, the Being shouldn’t require the neediness usually put around it by people. If needing us to create its own sense of existence, then that Being isn’t fit for what we deem it to be. On the other hand, if this Being is Absolute as repeatedly ascribed, then it shouldn’t be intimidated or compelled by defiance, despite our self-importance. Read More »

On Criticism – A hallmark of life is the variety of our individual experiences. This diversity is the cradle of creativity, allowing us to appreciate the world in expressions and forms different from our own, and that’s good. It also means that opinions are necessarily manifold, and even while acknowledging the sensitive emotions around criticism, I make an effort to keep an open mind on even the most fundamental subjects. Regarding personal criticisms, while people are prominent in my appreciation of life, their approval isn’t necessary. When you summarily dislike me, that’s ok because you’re probably not my type either. Even though a gentleman to some extent, I am no Boy Scout, and becoming one isn’t exactly on my list. Communing and cherishing the people in our world is a quintessential element of my engagement in life, but it just isn’t where I define myself. It shouldn’t be for anyone. | See an Excerpt »

Embarrassing (?) Or Authentic (?) Reveals: I watch the 2016 movie Arrival every New Year’s Day – most underrated movie ever. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is probably my favorite Bond movie, and Timothy Dalton is my favorite Bond character. Had lots of Indian movies in my childhood as well. Some of my favorites are Sholay, Mard, Dostana, Yeh Vaada Raha, Fifty Fifty, and [the incredibly cheesy] Commando. Favorite TV dramas included Rosa Salvaje, and some Lebanese series I only recall today as Cristina. My favorite Nigerian movies are Oracle, Living in Bondage, and Rattle Snake. As far as Disney, I think my favorite is Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. Samurai X and Apple Seed are definitely my favorite anime… Do those count as anime? I owe more than I could ever admit to playing the Legend of Zelda series. Had a mind-numbing crush on Miranda Keyes of the Halo universe (never played; streamed it), and wish I killed the stinking Prophet of Truth myself. The cancellation of Firefly TV Series, 2002–2003, with its particular cast, is, in my opinion, the gravest mistake humankind ever committed in its entire existence. HBO’s Succession, although not a TV series I remember fondly, marked a significant turning point for me while grieving my father’s loss… My middle name at birth was Cyriacus, or was it Cyracus? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I dislike looking busy or hurried… I don’t think communicating an air of busyness makes a person meaningfully occupied or important. At the same time, the one thing I am seldom guilty of is not making an effort, even asinine ones. Maintaining eye contact, even on the best days, does not come naturally to me, let alone on the worst days. Despite my highest esteem for relationships, I value independence more. As a gesture of good faith, I show a lot of vulnerability in friendships – bad fits often mistake this authenticity for weakness or some misguided opportunity to dominate or patronize… usually doesn’t end well for either of us:/. I allow ample benefit of the doubt when dealing with people, but will stay with an informed decision once made. I’ve known life when people defined my role and told me who I am… I’ve also known life where I tell people who I am as well as the role I choose… I much prefer the latter, despite its unpopularity and the tendency to be misunderstood as mere pride. Having experienced denigration for a significant portion of my early life, especially within my childhood household where the judicial rule was “the older sibling has prerogative and is right irrespective of facts, and must never be faulted in front of younger siblings” (I am the lastborn of six, so do the math on pent-up outrage), I tend to overcompensate for this as an adult by a weariness for any authority or charge over me that feels unearned, and a low tolerance for disparaging environments and people who thrive on making others feel small, overly self-conscious, or constantly on the defensive. Another side effect of this child life hangover is that I tend not to respond well to being hazed, no matter how prized the new community or person, and would rather leave. I am likely a neat freak – unable to function and physiologically distressed whenever my personal space is cluttered or untidy – which is rather amusing, considering I was the opposite as a teenager. It takes me no less than two hours for a *quick* shower, usually at random hours of the day or night. More of my housing neighbors have moved from my snoring than any other issue – something about hearing ogres and fearing for their lives ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Even when inclined to contribute somehow, I do not bid publicly in fundraisers or auctions because I consider the process manipulative of people’s insecurities. I hate reunions. Personality tests categorize me as ENFJ-A, and astrology as Scorpio / Lunar Taurean… let that sink in for a moment, the most hardheaded of both earth and water signs in a single person; the gods are cruel. My texting top speed is 1word/minute, even when my life depends on it. I generally maintain some distance from my phone and email, especially at home, and the ringer is almost always set to Silent/Vibrate. However, I typically reply to messages promptly upon seeing them, regardless of the time of day or night, and do not delay an answer for effect when I already have the information. If you’ve never received a misdelivered email or letter from me, you haven’t known me long enough; my workflow makes this inconvenience rare but inevitable. While I consider myself intentional and thoughtful toward people I’m interested in, I’m not a calculated person. I struggle with the practice of celebrating achievements or relishing triumphs; for me, a win serves primarily as a signal to turn the page to the next item without looking back, except to glean personal lessons relevant to other challenges. I never dine for the “dining experience”; I dine for the food.

Featured song:

Similar Page: Epilogue