Book Title: Song for Night

Author: Chris Abani

Publisher: Akashic Books, USA

Year: 2008

Song for Night is a story of civil war in Nigeria. It is set firmly against the backdrop of Christian and Muslim hostilities. Song for Night is an impressive and fast paced description and observation of war narrated by one of its active participant, a boy soldier (15 years) named My Luck.

In the nutshell, it’s a story of human triumph over insurmountable odds. A story of courage. A story of fear. A story of hope. The book has been described as an illumination of the body’s capacity for both ecstasy and pain with honesty rarely encountered. Its narration is faced-paced. Its prose, beautiful beyond measure. Its description and observation as clear as a blue sky.

My Luck was trained as a human mine detector, and joined a platoon whose job was to disable clandestine enemy explosives. This is how they were trained: first their eyes were made keen so they could notice any change in the terrain no matter how subtle: a blade of grass out of place, scuffed turf, a small bump in the ground, the sharp cut of a metal tool into earth – any sign of human disturbance to the ground. They also received feet exercises to make their feet sensitive – because as part of detecting bombs their toes had to work like fingers – always exposed no boots. As part of the training, his vocal cords and that of his comrades were cut off to prevent them from screaming and giving away (their) his platoon’s presence in case of an explosion, and, or if one is blown up.

Despite an absence of his voice, My Luck tells the story of the senseless war with clarity, and maturity of a retired soldier. He seems to agree that the war is necessary, and he is committed to fighting until he is told to stop. Yet, he hardly remembers the hate that led them to the bush in the first place. “We are simply fighting to survive the war…” he admits.

The story begins with My Luck getting separated from his platoon after an explosion. He woke up and found himself alone in the bush. My Luck’s journey to find his missing platoon takes him through abandoned villages, and rotting corpses. He sees first-hand the destruction caused and the futility of war. He remains single minded nonetheless – he must be united with this comrades and continue to fight until there is an order to stop. During his search, he talks openly about his own part in the war including how he enjoyed killing. He once sprayed a group of women with an AK 47, raped, and murdered his own commander.

Song for Night is a devastating book in its lucid description of the effects of war, yet it is a story with a happy ending. Although, the author Chris Abani never tells us about the end of the war, but My Luck does get reunited with his family. He also regained his voice.

As a counsellor, coach or other therapist we are not exempt from needing help. We all do face life issues that we cannot easily deal with ourselves and need an outside expert to support us. Even though we work in the field of supporting people it does not mean we can easily fix all our own problems.

Like any doctor who at times needs to see a colleague, so do counsellors. But when is it the right time? This is the exact same question that you will be asking yourself, before calling and making an appointment with a counsellor. Let me share you my experience in making the decision to make the call.

With the recent challenges I experienced with the passing of one of my twins two days after she was born I was facing the hardest times I ever had to go through in my life. The grief on one side and the joy of new motherhood on the other side, including the sleep deprivation and learning how to be a parent put me under big strain, emotionally, mentally and physically. Even though I was coping most of the times, there were times when I was not. In the good times I would think ‘it is fine, I’m able to do this on my own’ but in the tough times I really wasn’t all that fine – understandable under the circumstances.

There came the time that the tough times were too frequent and unsustainable over time. My life normally was built on the base of good times with sprinkles of challenges and annoyances. The life that I was living now however was the opposite; it was as if tough times were the undercurrent of my life.

If you were to compare your ‘normal life’ with how you are now, how different is it? Can you really live with how it is now? Is it just an exception or is it a trend? Answering these questions made me seek help.

I do not expect the person I am seeing to solve my problems or fix my issues. Some of the things that I am dealing with cannot be solved ever. That is not the point of seeing someone. She helps me deal with the challenges I am facing, she supports me in gaining a different perspective and think about upcoming potential pitfalls before I fall in again. And the most important benefit I get from the sessions is that she normalizes my situation, my emotions, and my reactions. She makes me feel normal, where I am an expert in being hard on myself. She does not make my life easy but she definitely helps to ease and softens my tough side or challenges my judgmental side.

All in all I would say that if you are asking yourself the question whether it is time to ask for help, do it. If you were in victim mentality, you probably would not ask the question anyway…

Legacy from Antiquity.

Throughout the ages water has been an essential source of life and has dictated the form that gardens took as their most vital element. In arid lands such as Egypt, the annual floods used to irrigate the banks of the Nile, which turned the enclosed gardens into lush retreats, supplying the pools and nurturing pleasurable shade giving trees. As well as this miraculous annual rejuvenation, water was also drawn from the Nile along dykes and irrigation channels. These determined the shape and layout of gardens, usually set in a symmetrical grid. The pool was the centrepiece of the ancient Egyptian Garden and was usually the preserve of high society that used them for pleasure but also to stock fish and fowl. The layout of the ancient Egyptian garden was deemed so important even in the afterlife that their layout can be seen in the tombs of pharaohs and nobility, in order to be used by the deceased. The Egyptians believed in deities such as Nut (also the sycamore tree Goddess) who provided for their needs in both life and the afterlife. Many of these representations are laden with pomegranates and figs so the deceased could continue to receive nourishment in the life there after. An example of this can be seen in the Tomb of Nebamun at Thebes c. 1400 BC. An inscription on another tomb at Thebes reads

‘ May I wander around my pool each day forever more. May my soul sit on the branches of the grave garden I have prepared for myself. May I refresh myself each day under my sycamore.’

Water features both inside and outside Egyptian gardens placed a crucial role in daily ritual of religious life. Larger gardens had several pools randomly placed to help cool the air.

Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire

The Ancient Greeks were filled with amazement when they first beheld the magnificent gardens of the eastern Persian Kings. Water features enhanced by architectural settings probably originated in Greece when springs were enclosed to preserve their purity and were later decorated as shrines.

Homer’s Odyssey has one of the earliest writings from ancient times of a Garden and water, written between 750 and 650 B.C. Mentioning the Garden of King Alcinous, being dependent on two things – Water and divine intervention. Homer describes the garden of Alcinous, king of the Phaeaceans as being rich with pears apples, pomegranates, and sweet figs that grow all year round. In Book V Homer also describes the garden of Calypso:

“And round about the cave there was a wood blossoming, alder and poplar and sweet-smelling cypress. And therein roosted birds long of wing, owls and falcons and chattering sea crows, which have their business in the waters. And lo, there about the hollow cave trailed a gadding garden vine, all rich with clusters. And fountains four set orderly were running with clear water, hard by one another, turned each to his own course. And all around soft meadows bloomed of violets and parsley, yea, even a deathless god who came thither might wonder at the sight and be glad at heart.’

In his book Phaedrus, written about 350 B.C, Plato and his friend chat beside a stream discussing the sanctified atmosphere of the location. Plato remarks:

‘ The spring which runs under the plane, how beautifully cool its water is to the feet. ‘

As also seen earlier in ancient Egypt the Greeks also believed in Deities such as nymphs that inhabited streams and grottoes. Nymphs are personifications of the creative that foster activities of nature, most often identified with the life-giving outflow of springs. The association of nymphs and muses led to informal arrangements of figures in and around fountains and decoration which natural stones and shells.

The writing of the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses are some of the earliest descriptions of the way water sources have been decorated. He describes Diana’s grotto as a cave that included a fountain stream which had walls decorated with pumice beneath a mossy floor. To their grottoes and caves the ancients used to apply a deliberately roughened layer of pumice chips which Ovid called ‘ living pumice’. Green Ochre a natural earth pigment was also used to imitate the living moss of a grotto.

In Pompeii Italy there are many examples of fashionable water features that were used in the seaside city, which provided a welcome retreat from the stifling summer heat of Rome. The fortunate residents of the villas nearby could enjoy gardens that were refreshed and enlivened by fountains and pools. Marble sculptures, especially fountain figures in ancient Rome, often took their subject matter from mythology or something with particular reference to the owner of the house. Bronze was a popular metal and it was more durable than marble. Bronze wall fountains of animal heads over marble basins were very popular across the Roman Empire and were used individually or in groups around a water feature. Typical examples of these are Lion Wall Fountains and notably the two dogs and a boar from the richly decorated house of the Citharist at Pompeii, which are now on display in the Archaeological Museum of Naples. Lion head spouts were one of the earliest forms of water features. This is because the lion has been an icon for humanity appearing in nearly every culture across Europe, Asia, and Africa. The lion has been a popular symbol of imperial stateliness for thousands of years. It has also had a positive depiction in many cultures of bravery and strength yet being noble. This Lion symbolism has been used in garden water features from ancient times through to the present day.

Ancient manuscripts on hydraulics were rediscovered during the renaissance when designers revived the lost art of fantastic fountains for the great Italian gardens.

Technical Writers design, write, edit and update end user documentation such as: Installation, User, Administration, Configuration Guides, Online Help Files, Portable Document Format (PDF) files, Presentations, Specifications, etc. Technical Writing in the 21st century, by necessity, is changing with the times. These changes require us to learn new skills/delivery systems that take into account new modalities and methods that end users/customers use to search for and access information. We have evolved into Information Designers/Architects, who to thrive have learned new skills like: Video capturing, Demo creation, Blog posting and Usability testing skills. This article examines the new skills that we need today to succeed as Technical Writers, aka Information Designer/Architect in the second decade of the 21st century.

Technical Writing has become much more visual than in the past when static Diagrams, Screen Captures, Charts were utilized to help you explain how products worked or should be installed. Traditional static documentation is still in use; however, today, it is important for us to learn video skills that enable them to create Video Tutorials, Demos with video capturing tools like Captivate and Camtasia, for example. These tools enable you to create highly visual, step-by-step video/audio tutorials that your target audience can easily follow the instructions/message you want to convey to them in a way that previous static user guides never could. In fact, old style Technical documentation, oftentimes, was little used, if at all; because it was difficult locating the information users needed. With the transition to video/audio tools solidly underway and the advent and implementation of Web 2.0 Social Media Networking sites, Blogs, Wikis and Video sharing sites they have changed the way that messages move across the Internet, and with it Technical Writers have assumed new responsibilities as Technical Writing has moved increasing, online.

Changing with the times, also means embracing blogging and other Web 2.0 Social Media Networking tools to get our message across to customers. What exactly is a blog? The word blog is the combination of two words, web and log. As Bloggers, we add commentary, graphics, video and other information called blog post to the Blog on a regular basis, usually weekly. In some companies, we have assumed the responsibility of designing and writing blog posts to our organization’s customers and answer their feedback via the comments they post on the blog. Also, in some companies we are becoming more actively involved in designing, organizing and running interactive forums where customers can join, ask questions and get answers to common problems that are less cost intensive and time consuming than the old telephone support method. We are evolving from our traditional role as teachers and interpreters of new product usage between a product’s developers and customers to becoming much more involved in product architecture, usability and testing.

Going and gone are the days when we wrote end user documentation and delivered it to customers without doing all we can to make sure that the information customers are interested in locating is accessible and user-friendly. Today, we are working with application and hardware developers to ensure that customers can find the information they need quickly and as user-friendly as possible. This means that we not only write user documentation; but engage in usability testing to help the customer access the specified information they need, without scanning through information that is not of interest to them.Technical Writing in the 21st century by necessity are changing with the times. No longer can we approach our tasks as we did in the past. To continue to evolve and succeed we must acquire new skills like Video capturing, Blogging, Usability Testing and other skills that enhance and supplement established end user documentation modalities: User manuals, Online Help, Implementation guides, etc. The examples cited in this article are only a few of the many ways that Technical Writing in the 21st century is changing with the times.

Watching the squash ball during a rally is the most important thing you can do to improve your game. Never ever take your eyes of the ball during a rally. if you are afraid of watching the ball when behind you, wear protective eyewear. It is impossible to reach your potential if you don’t consistently keep your eyes on the ball. Watching the ball as it leaves your opponent’s racquet, in particular when the ball is behind you, will dramatically increase on how you are able to:

Better judge your opponent’s shot

You will get the first idea of where your opponent’s shot is going when the ball leaves his racquet. You can gather information on the direction, the trajectory, the speed and the height of the shot for your brain to calculate where you will need to be to meet it. To accurately track the ball, it is necessary to keep your eye on the ball at all times. If you wait to see the ball come off of the front wall you have lost about half of the valuable trajectory input necessary to accurately judge the shot played.

Better anticipate your opponent’s shot

Only by watching the ball that split second at impact coming off your opponent’s racquet will let you anticipate his shot.

Important: If you are turning your head back to the front wall prior to impact you are not anticipating, you are guessing! To volley well in particular you need to see the ball early to be on your way to intercept it. If you learn to anticipate if they’re driving, dropping, boasting or going cross-court then that is half the battle right there. Anticipation only works with watching the ball when it is behind you.

Research demonstrates that “expert”players can predict the opponent’s shot to a very high accuracy level up to 600 milliseconds before impact. Important cues for making anticipatory decisions – movement of the arm and racquet especially 160-80ms before impact and the flight of the ball immediately (up to 80ms) after impact.

The two main sources of information that are used by expert players are:

1. Probability – the opponent’s strategic habits, the opponent’s technical abilities and his/her court position;

2. Postural cues given off by the opponent – specifically the arm and racquet movement leading up to contact with the ball.

Research has shown that expert players do not have better “vision”than beginners nor do they look at different cues to beginners when searching for information on which to base their decision about what is about to happen. Rather, expert players appear to make better use of the information available – especially with regard to the opponent’s arm and racquet action.

Expert players also identify or pick up patterns of play better than beginners.

Anticipation skills range from the simple – predicting the bounce of the ball, through to the ability to read the play sufficiently well to volley a fast paced ball hit from the front court by a “deceptive” player. These skills become automatic with experience but traditionally, we have only developed these skills by playing matches.

Better move around the court, have a better rhythm

Watching the ball when it is behind you is vital for movement. This, in turn, will increase your speed to the ball and allow you to move at the appropriate speed, not overrunning the ball. Overrunning the ball is one of the biggest problems at a beginner level.

If you watch the front wall, you will only have the sound of your opponent hitting the ball or the ball coming into your peripheral vision to react too. This will often have your feet moving late or very late respectively, and make it a huge disadvantage in getting to your opponent’s tight shots.

watching improves your speed around the court dramatically without getting any faster physically. I believe watching the ball well will get you way faster around the squash court than getting physically faster.

Only through consistently watching the ball coming off your opponent’s racquet when the ball is behind you in the back court will you learn a rhythm to move around the squash court.

Rhythm is an integral part in any sport, facilitating all movements.

Make better tactical decision

The more time available you have in this fast game, the better your decisions tend to be.

Play safer and avoiding decisions against you.

Watching helps you getting out of the way of the racket swing, and ball, while your opponent is returning the shot. Wear eyewear if you are afraid to watch. Without watching the ball your progress will be limited and can be dangerous. Watch the ball and if you are too close and within the “line of fire” move out of the way, but do not take your eye off the ball. You can’t always go back to the T when you hit a loose shot. Move your T position if necessary.

The downside of not watching the ball when your opponent is behind is that you may be guilty of not clearing, and even worse,not attempting to clear. That can be the difference between a stroke and a let.

With the economy still undergoing a lot of uncertainty, rather than throwing in the towel at your small business, especially if you are in services, you can instead extend the same principles the environmentalists recommend – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – to what you offer clients and keep the dollars rolling in.

The strategy of reducing doesn’t just apply to the office products you use or how much space you occupy; you need to also look at how to reduce what you offer without taking away from your value proposition. That means never reducing your price, but instead looking at ways to chop up what you do, so that clients can still buy from you while leaving your value proposition untouched.

For example, depending on the work you do, instead of covering the whole project from soup to nuts, you might do the front-end planning while they supply the labor and premises to execute the tasks. Or, they gather the information and then you come in at the back-end to do the analysis and provide the recommendations. The beauty of reducing is that it still leaves you performing the higher-perceived-value tasks out of your overall offering. It doesn’t mean you can’t do entire projects if clients still have the budgets; of course you can! But for those customers who are cutting back, you can tailor to the funds available. As they say, no-one is ever remembered for their prices but they are for their value.

This leads to the second part of the formula, Re-use. In this case, while you can go on making good use of your paper clips over and over, it also means looking outside your four walls for ways that can help your clients. One form of “re-use” is putting people to work that your clients might otherwise have to lay off. Perhaps a client has always wanted to undertake a major nationwide survey, but has never had the budget? Or, they want to do some business development work but didn’t have the feet on the street? Rather than paying the much higher costs, which include markups, to an outside firm such as yours, they instead have you act as manager of an in-house team and put their surplus people plus your expertise to work. This way, your client will see you as even more indispensable to their business while the customer teams you manage will get the job done.

Even if you’re already recycling waste paper and other items at the office, you need to also look at how to recycle past work you have done for clients. While any such initiatives must avoid betraying client confidentiality, especially if you have signed agreements to this effect, by taking the generic parts of existing client work, perhaps even from past work for several clients, and finding ways to recycle these as products you can sell, you will meet two goals. One is, you will generate some revenue and two, you will have found another way to introduce prospective customers to your services. You might want to bring out a series of reports or your First Annual Survey of X about a market in which you do a lot of work; if you have done such work over the last 12 to 24 months for large corporate clients, finding ways to recycle this information to small businesses will introduce you to a market segment that you might normally not serve.

While no one likes a shaky economy, by using the 3 Rs to your advantage, you will be better able to weather the storms and position yourself for the fourth R – Recovery – when that happens!
Copyright Deborah C. Sawyer

Have you ever wondered what the most dangerous time of the day is to be behind the wheel of a car? The chances of being involved in an accident will increase as the number of vehicles increases on roads and highways. Rush hour, holidays, and seasons may also increase the odds of an accident. However, a large factor in motor vehicle accidents is related to the amount of alcohol impaired drivers on the road. Knowing the safest time to drive can help you plan your trips safely year round.

The most dangerous time of the day to drive is between 5:00 pm and 7:00pm. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports that approximately 13 people are killed during what is typically deemed the “rush hours”. There are many factors that contribute to this time frame being statistically prone to accidents. People are tired from long days at work, anxious to get through traffic and return home or arrive at their destination and sun glare is optimal. Realizing that you are driving during a time in which a high incidence of accidents occur may help you to be more aware, avoid driving at those times and be extra cautious when driving.

Saturday is the most dangerous day of the week to drive. Saturday plays host to celebrations, late night parties, holidays and alcohol related incidents. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Saturday has more traffic related fatalities than other days with an average of 158 traffic related fatalities each Saturday. Additionally, Saturday has the highest number of fatalities compared to the percentage of vehicles on the road ways with 1.2 deaths for every 100 million drivers.

Alcohol plays a large role in the motor vehicle deaths on Saturdays, An Automotive Association reports that 31% of fatal drunk driving accidents occur on weekends with the greatest number of drunk drivers on the roads between the hours of midnight and 3 am. Vehicular accidents resulting in fatalities are four times more likely to occur at night than in the day. In 2010, more than 10,000 people died in alcohol-impaired driving accidents. That is equal to one death every 51 minutes.

Summer months offer excellent weather with more day light hours, dry roads and excellent visibility. However, they reported twice as many fatalities during summer months as opposed to the rest of the year with August being the most dangerous month to drive. It is also reported the Fourth of July as the most dangerous day to drive due to wide spread celebration and massive alcohol consumption and August as the most dangerous month to drive.

Be cautious when driving at night on holidays and remember that, from 5pm to 7pm, rush hour is a particularly dangerous time to drive. Knowing the most dangerous times of the day to drive will help you to plan a constructive road map of safety for the upcoming events in your life.

If you want ways of how to find out how many times someone has been married, then read through the paragraphs below. The Family code and Family Law of this country does not allow a person to have more than two marriages at the same time. If it does happen that a person does marry two people at the same time then the second marriage is considered null and void.

So you can do yourself a favour and find out about the marital status of the person you are in a relationship with. There are various degrees of separation that a person can apply for. When most people are granted a separation they then assume that they have been granted a dissolution of the marriage. This is not the case. Let us look at how to find out how many times someone has been married in detail.

Without taking up too much of your time I would recommend that you use premium services. I am sure you have heard of places that offer free searches through public records. The terminology should not fool you. The searches are free and the results are not.

So you might as well go ahead and use a paid service that will only require you pay for the results that you want to see and not for the search. There are quite a number of these that you will come across. Ones that I can recommend to you are Archives.com and ussearch.com. Like I said there are others but you can try these two and see what you come up with.

There are other ways of how to find out how many times someone has been married, but using marriage and divorce records is your best option. This way you can do away with speculation and assumptions.

One handicapping angle that many handicappers forget when they’re trying to pick winners is the athlete angle. In other words, you must remember that horses are athletes and that the trainer’s job is to condition that athlete just like a coach helps his human athletes reach their physical peak. Think about human athletes and how they are each unique. While they may all do wind sprints on a football team, the effect may be different for each one.

Also, while some may sprint 100 meters in 11 seconds others may be slower, but still in top physical condition. The point is that each athlete, whether human or horse, is unique. The best horse trainers understand that and will use different workout patterns and techniques for each one. They may work one horse in company with others while they may keep another horse far away from others when it works.

Your job as a handicapper is to understand training techniques and then to see what is going on with a horse from that understanding. When one trainer sees another working a horse slowly he or she knows what the trainer is trying to achieve. While it is true that each trainer has a set of tricks or moves that he uses and finds success with it is also true that he may use one for one horse and another for another horse. In other words, one size does not fit all when it comes to conditioning horses.

Part of the problem that handicappers have when they are trying to understand a pattern of workouts is that they often forget that the conditioner also has to keep a horse mentally and emotionally healthy. A workout is a time that the horse gets out of the barn and can release some pent-up energy or relieve stress. Yes, race horses do experience stress. If you understand the trainer it will help you to understand the workouts and to know when a horse is ready to win.

That brings us to the key to workout patterns and times. Understand the trainer. That means you won’t be able to understand everything that is going on in a lot of races because there are too many trainers for a handicapper to learn all the different personalities and moves, but if you just study the top ten trainers at your favorite race track you will have knowledge of the men and women who win most of the races. Then you can apply that knowledge every time you handicap a race and want to understand where a horse is in terms of its physical conditioning. Trainers usually don’t go for the win with a runner until they think it is ready.

Are you lonely and getting bored? How can you manage or totally eliminate boredom in your life especially during this trying periods in the World history?

As a result of the Coronavirus pandemic that had laid a siege on the entire World, I had been locked down at my home. In the first few weeks, my life literally degenerated to mere sleeping, eating and watching the television. I started getting bored in-spite of the fact that I am even quarantined with my entire family. In any case, my partner has been wonderful supporting in the cooking and homemaking while the kids do the dishes and other minor home chores.

I now begin to put myself in the shoes of my friends and colleagues around the World who are single and lonely even in this circumstance. I know because I was once single, lonely and felt bored.

Boredom brings about tiredness and loss of vision. When you are bored, you feel like someone thrown into the desert with no sense of direction. You feel like you are lost. You become clueless on what next to do with your life. Happiness and joy begin to elude you. You begin to lose interest in yourself and all that concerns you. You start to withdraw from friends and well-wishers. It could be a period you could fall into depression and begin to nurse suicidal thoughts.

Being single and lonely are no problems on their own, it is what you make out of the situation. It is always hilarious when the burden of boredom is lifted off your shoulders. You will have energy, poise and the motivation needed to take action to move your life forward in the right direction. You will be much clearer on your life’s mission and vision.

So, what are the top 5 ways you can eliminate boredom, and thrive in your life.

• To-Do List: You’ve got to keep a schedule of your activities on a daily basis. Organize this list the night before the next day. Do not give any room to fighting any ‘fire’ by taking time out to carefully plan your activities everyday in advance. And when you have planned out what to do and you’re doing the actions religiously, boredom will cease to exist in your life.

• Read Another Book: Reading another book in your area of interest is another way of waving boredom goodbye. When you’re reading a book on a subject you’re passionate about, your entire being is absorbed in it. You want to get the meat out of the book. You’re trying to decipher the information and the message the author is passing across.

• Learn a New Skill: What is that skill you’ve been wanting to learn all these while? This is the great opportunity! You want to be a dancer? You want to be a seamstress? You want to learn how to play the guitar? If you’re an entrepreneur, this is the time to sharpen your marketing skills for the current realities. And you’ll discover that the curiosity to know the next steps would replace your boredom.

• Connect: This is the time to create new relationships and probably re-connect with your good old folks. And good enough, we are no longer limited by time and space. Thanks to the numerous social media platforms where you can make new friends around the World in a fly 247.

• Exercise: During this lock-down, many a single and lonely folks have gained some extra pounds. It is fast becoming a twin problem of boredom and overweight. And so, you need to incorporate exercises into your regimen to address your health and boredom challenges.

Boredom can be eliminated. The onus is therefore on you to keep yourself mentally and physically engaged in order to push feeling of getting bored behind you.