Arsenal

Update from Zimbabwe

Taura Khuluma Say it!!, , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Hello world!

I-Love-Zimbabwe-T-Shirts

My first ever blog as UK returnee, that’s what people like me are called out here. Throw into that my work life and business life, its been an eye opening week. I have drifted into a new world here, I am now into art, culture, development work and value creation. It’s a fascinating departure from teaching global marketing strategy! But I am relishing the prospects of what is in store in both lives. I am getting to grips with working with limited amounts of very expensive internet, pay as you go calls, $2.55 tins of Heinz Baked Beans and $11 for 500g of Kerry Gold butter. The trip to the shops was a proper “shit just got real moment”. Actually that trip explained why nearly all fridges I open here are just water coolers!

But, from a business perspectives the prospects are seemingly unlimited. It’s just a matter of how innovative one is in identifying projects, financing them and planning that could be a limiting factor. Innovative and creative solutions to problems are few here. This market is very short term in its outlook, pricing is unrealistic with every business looking to make as much money as possible today. I feel its unsustainable in the long term especially if a new player enters the market with a different pricing strategy. It will take a shift in culture across all sectors to steer businesses towards a different perspective.

And the politics keeps everyone guessing but I suppose the less said about that the better, there is a lot of guessing to keep everyone entertained without me adding to the rumour mill! We all wait patiently, what other option do we really have? What is more fascinating for me is how politics influences areas that I had never thought could cause discomfort to the political agenda of the day! I have so much to learn here.

As for now I am sitting in a hotel room watching a TV on mute and listening to music as I write. This is going to be the hardest part of the transition, the darkness of the night consumes daylight by 1715 and time drags on slowly until morning. I have 13 channels of nothing I would like to watch and BBC iplayer seems to have been told I moved from England because it now says I am not allowed to watch stuff I have missed! I might need saving from myself soon!

The premiership is back, Arsene Wenger and Ivan Gazidis are lucky to be living in country where the people and regimes are tolerant, if it were a different country someone would have been shot by now. I will have more on everything next week, albeit from a different hotel room!

Closed for business!

Taura Khuluma Say it!!, , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So after giving gentle warnings to slow down, my body finally thought, fuck it and sprung tonsilitis on me. The worst 3 days of my year so far. Anyway, I am slowly getting back into the groove of things so I thought it might be fun to go back to taking a lighter look at the world and stop being so critical of all the wrong business practices I come across. So today I will talk about the Kardashians, Football (soccer to the unconverted) and racism!

We might as well start with the heavy stuff, so Chelsea are alleging that a referee called one of their player something racist. And they are screaming from the roof tops calling for immediate action and baying for Mark Clattenberg’s head all at once. One would be forgiven for being sceptical at all this especially as it is the same Chelsea that spent millions postponing their own self-confessed racist from facing the same justice! Come on, really now you want expedient justice?. So my brother and I was thinking about what the ref might have said and we settled on “don’t be a monkey”. Now, some of you will say how dare we! but we are black like Mikel so we get a free pass on that but the real question is if the ref said “don’t be a monkey” to a black player is that being racist? We thought it was funny and when the laughter stopped my brother said many black people would find it a little upsetting. Any thoughts? Remember it was just us monkeying around!

So being at home suffering as I was means I was exposed to day time TV, it’s half term here so the kids are at home and the extremes of what I had to put up with were as bad as Fireman Sam on one end and The Kardashians on the other end. Wow, how do these people make money out of absolutely no substance at all. The Kardashians are obviously good business people because they have managed to fool the world much like some priests or pastors get 100000 people filling up churches on a sunday. I can’t imagine anything other than faith, blind faith, making anyone want to pay the  Kardashians money for that TV program. What were they paying for? It’s not even interesting, over exaggerated and pointless. I don’t hate them as people but please …..it’s all Ray J’s fault!!. Him, his joy stick and whoever planted the idea of getting out the video camerain his head. I suppose we might as well blame people’s fixation with watching other people have sex. If it wasn’t for all these things, there might have never been The Kardashians.

I am sure some of you have noticed that this blog entry is a bit old, the old body took too long to get back to working order so the writing went on hold for a bit. Anyway since the time I wrote this the racist ref has been exonerated by the Police confirming my earlier misgivings about the whole story. So today Arsenal played Tottenham and beat them 5-2 just like last season and just like last season all the talk leading up to the game was all about how Tottenham is now ahead of Arsenal but the numbers at the end of the day don’t lie, the gap is still vast and not looking likely to shrink anytime soon

More up to date news, Obama won the elections and so the race thing came up again and so some news paper I was reading yesterday went to great pains to show that despite Romney’s perceived favour from white Americans, the whites didn’t vote for him in 5 of the 9 swing states, so I think the whole think was just shit stirring as the Brits call it. It ain’t about the race dude, the people just weren’t filling your swag!

It’s a numbers game!

Taura Khuluma Say it!!, , , , , , , Leave a comment

This week like many in the past few months has been all about people using numbers to support or justify lack of support for various issues in business and elsewhere. The worry I have about numbers is that a lot of the time the numbers that are being thown about are all historical and not a reflection of the current situation. Today the Obama governement put out numbers to show that a quarter of a million people a back in work reducing the unemployement figure to 8.1%, while the numbers are useful for those that know how to use them there is another purpose to them, 2013 elections! Here in the UK, the energy companies anounced that they have cut their prices by 6%, hooray but hang on, considering inflation and the fact that last time the prices went up by 15% there is no real benefit in the prices being reduced. So they want to appear as though they care, again there is always an ulterior motive in many of these statistics.

Some sad numbers coming out of Egypt and again someone or some groups have jumped to the numbers of an unfortunate incident and started spining the truth to suit their own motives, some say it politics, some say it is revenge but noone stops to think about the dead or their relatives. How callous is it to try and gain political mileage from such a sad situation. Shame on them

Elsewhere the numbers show that times are hard, the transfer period in football has just ended and not a single palyer sold or bought in England for over £10 million, going back 3 years this same window had clubs spending £400 million in January. Last year was crazy as well,  Fernando Torres went for £50 million, and how that has flopped! maybe that’s why teams are not spending money in January anymore. They don’t want to buy another Fernando or Caroll who cost £35 million!

1 point out of a possible 12 for my beloved Gunners in 4 games is numbers that put a damper on things but it’s all real! hopefully tomorrow will bring 3 points because things can’t carry on like this. Still, looking aound the premiership things aren’t all lost yet.

Here is to a great weekend,off to have 1 or 2 cognac and rebulls, hope you do too.

Stay safe!