Nigerian Law School

Heyy blogsville,
I have been M.I.A as usual but this time I have a genuine excuse! I have moved back to Nigeria!

Yeap I took the plunge, I decided to come and take the Nigerian bar exam! I have been putting it off for 3 years since I finished my undergrad. Well I came up with a career plan and decided this was the next step.

I could have stayed longer at the ILO so sometimes when Naij life gets hard I say "omg I could have been in Geneva".

Well I am here now. NLS is in Abuja where I am taking the Bar Part 1. Its hardddd men. Its hard being back in school especially when its all legal practice that I have no clue about.

The advantage is that we are all "foreign" students at the moment, we are all going through the same thing together. There is no water so there its a lot of bucket sturvs!! Being back home has its perks though, not having to worry about bills and money etc



Good news, I have some fresh ideas for this blog so I am excited! Please do not abandon me because I will be sparsely blogging, I will be investing in some expensive internet to keep you all happy!


xoxo
Miss B

Music Sunday

Just found this and had to share it. Unlike some songs where I know people's opinions differ, it is not possible to be an RnB fan and not love this song. R Kelly is still the king of RnB for sure!

Bon Weekend!
Miss B

Music Fridays

For those who know me, you already know that I think she can do no wrong! I love this because we can never have to many songs saying how awesome we are. Yea We Run this!




Bon Weekend
xoxo
Miss B

Music Fridays

Heyy my lovlies,

I am sure you have been stuck in a musical fast without me to tell you what is hot and not! Well fear not because I am here to put you all out of your miseries!

I have Nigeria's answer to Rihanna, Miss Tiwa Savage! Pop songs about love with a catchy beat is all you need to have enjoy a great summer. This is her latest single from her upcoming album called Love Me Love Me! Isn't that all we all want people to do?

Enjoy with some ice cream dancing in your garden!
Love
xxx
Miss B

1st Week as an Intern!

Hey blogsville,
How are you all doing? I am doing GREAT! I have had such a great week so far. Ok so lemme give you guys the gist so far.

Day 1
I got to work super early because I was afraid I would be late. Intial gra gra as it is called! The U.N buildings are so beautiful and extremely well organised as is to be expected. I met all the other interns who are so interesting. To be fair everyone here is so interesting. The first boy that came in was half German and half Malian but schooled in France. So he speaks English, French, German, and Bambara. This is the norm in the ILO. Everyone speaks minimum French and English. In general most people in Geneva speak both as they have two official languages. Alot of them also speak basic German because that is what is spoken in Zurich. Because it is such a central European country you will also hear loads of Italian, Spanish and Eastern European languages around. And everyone for the most part is really accommodating! The first day mostly consisted of getting acquainted with the way things work. By the time I got home I was so knackered.


Day 2
I got put straight to work and loved it. The drama happened when I was trying to get home. I have to get three buses to get to work which I seemed to have figured out. However, I had to get to the train station to buy a monthly bus pass and that is when Miss B got completely lost. I knew where I was but could not find a bus to get me back home. So I had to get the bus back to work to try and figure my way back home. I took the right bus but going in the wrong direction! For those who know me, this will not come as a shock as my sense of direction is appalling, I can get lost in my own house! Anyway long story short it took me three hours to get home. I was so tired and hungry but I discovered alot of new places so it is not all bad!

Day 3
Work was really good but quite slow so I just had to catch up on reading. After work one of the interns suggested we go to France as food is much cheaper there. Geneva is so ridiculously expensive. I mean a Big Mac meal costs the equivalent of £13!! When I saw it I was tempted to make a formal complaint, I mean are you kidding me?
But I will go into that in another post. We took the tram to a neighboring French town and just looked around. What is really funny is that they have these officers at the border that can search people at random to check if they are trying to sneak things across the border. Now don't get excited they are not searching for drugs or weapons, they are checking for meat, fish, cheese and wine because these things are so much cheaper in France!!

Day 4
Friday seems like a more chilled day at the office. People wear jeans and leave a little bit earlier than 6. We went into town to go and have what was supposed to be the best Gelato in Geneva. We queued for about 20 minutes before we got served which I found so irritating, especially as we had been warned that this is always the case. But was it worth it? Hell YES! I had Pistachio and Vanilla and its was so awesome! So light and fluffy and melting with ridiculous flavour......mmmmmmm!!

We the walked across the pier and the lakes. The weather has been so beautiful here its really picturesque. Everywhere looks like a postcard. Everywhere you look you can see the mountains in the background.

I did not do much at the weekend, just watched loads of t.v shows and cooked. For now here are the pics I have been able to take with my phone.

P.s I really need to get onto wordpress, uploading pictures on blogger is really starting to do my head in!

Miss B

Bissous
xoxo

Swiss Intern!!

Heyy blogsville,

Hope you have all enjoyed the easter break and royal wedding fiasco as much as I have. Unfortunately I could not make it to the wedding, but I am sure you have seen all the wonderful pictures. I wish them all the best and hope they have a better ending than Diana and Charles.

So the big news has finally fallen into place. I got a 3 month internship with the International Labour Organisation in Geneva to do an internship on the elimination of child labour, which was the topic of my masters Dissertation. Yipeeeeeee!

I will be forever be grateful to my Labour Law professor in Warwick because he made it such a relevant and practical subject and I fell in love from my first lecture. He was also my personal and dissertation tutor and let me tell you all NEVER under estimate the power of a good teacher. He was a hot shot lawyer so was always jet-setting, China today and Prague Convention tomorrow, and thus never put too much pressure on me which was perfect because I wrote like 4 chapters of my 8 chaptered dissertation in one week even though I had 3 months! He really inspired my interest and I will be forever grateful for him.

My dream when I was younger was to be a journalist but my dad used to say that journalists are poor/are always persecuted in Nigeria. I still love journalism and writing but there were very few female journalists in Nigeria to actually look up to. There were no Nigerian Christiane Amanpour and Becky Andersons when I was growing up. By the time I discovered Funmi Iyanda, I was already half way done with my law degree.

Law was a natural second choice because I used to love to debate in school and was asked to make countless presentations for the school.

However, I found law, as in the real law that 80% of firms practice to be really dull. It is nothing like Ally Mcbeal or Boston Legal and is mostly paperwork and research. I have worked in 3 law firms and the only part I enjoyed was criminal law which is too much work for too little pay.

I also found that unless I could work for the CPS(Crown Prosecution Service) i.e the state, defending criminals really goes against my morals. Most of the clients I worked for in the London firm were guilty, they were illegal immigrants, tax evaders, all in various levels of criminality. Their guilt were usually established and I spent my time researching precedent and case law to get them off or onto a lighter sentence. It just did not agree with me.

Don't get me wrong, Criminal Law is really very exciting, it is just like Law and Order, going to prisons, barristers chambers, court, picking juries, filing motions and knowing a person's liberty rests on how well you work has a mad adrenalin rush.

This made me decide not take the bar exam here and do a masters. I wanted to do human rights law but Warwick offered a good International Economic Law program which is how I fell in love with Labour Law.

That is the genesis of this internship. I have dreamed of being a diplomat or working for the U.N for a long time now so I am hoping this internship will take me one step further towards achieving that. There is so much I feel I can do for Nigeria especially regarding child labour. I am from Kaduna where the almajiri culture means child labour is an epidemic of astronomical proportions and education is still a distant dream for 70% of children.

Anyway lets not get carried away, I am no Mary Slessor but I am excited at the prospects of what I can learn. I am now in Geneva and tomorrow is my first day so fingers crossed. I will be bringing you all the juicy gist of my whole internship experience.

Switzerland is very beautiful, with the usual European architecture and organisation and so far I am glued to my google translator because everyone here speaks French and German so I hope I can improve my WAEC French as well. I will also be posting pictures of my journey as I hope to go to the alps and visit a few cities around.

Enjoy

xoxo or as we say here Bisous!

Miss B

P.s- you all need to check out North of Lagos. Its an awesome blog about an American girl learning yoruba in the University of Ibadan. I am hooked! I am hoping I can blog as often and in as much detail as she does over the next 3 months!

Obama at White House Correspondents' Dinner

I love love love this guy. He is such a great speaker and seems genuinely funny. He has finally put this birth certificate matter to bed. For those who don't know, Donald Trump wants the Republican ticket to run for president and has been promoting a rumor that Obama was not born in America. Donald Trump is such a dumb ass, I have never liked him. And I am convinced that Dangote is richer than him so please he should go and sit down somewhere!


Miss B

Music Fridays

Hi blogsville,

I have some good news which I cannot wait to share with you all! Just waiting for all the bits to get tidied up before I download the gist. Hope you all had a good week. I have enjoyed the bank holiday so far. I went to waterworld yesterday with my friends. Its an indoor water park in Stoke-on-trent. I have been twice now and I still cannot swim. The next time I go I promise myself I will have learnt how to swim! We all had an amazing time though.

I am also hoping to go to the royal wedding parade next week in London. If I do, I will post some pictures and get Prince Harry to realize that I am the princess that he has been looking for!!

Due to the success of last week, I have two tracks for you. The first is called Mwah Mwah (Kiss Kiss) by Bracket. This song is so silly but extremely catchy. I think Bracket have cemented their genre with this song as professional wedding singers!

The second is by Sound Sultan who I am becoming more of a fan of day by day. This song is called Orobo and is also hilarious. It promotes a good message of loving all sizes of women. My favorite line is towards the end when he says "orobo fit turn to lepa and lepa fit turn to orobo so you can never know, meanwhile enjoy your current posture". I could not have said it better.



Enjoy the Bank Holiday and Easter Break.

Miss B.
xoxo

Music Fridays

Hey blogsville,
I know my blogging has been abit adhoc lately but I promise you its about to get a whole lot more interesting. Thank God it is Friday again and thank God for another week. Since I missed last week I have a two songs for you.

The first is Share my Blessings by Naeto C ft Asa. I have had Naeto's album on repeat for the past couple of weeks and I would suggest you all cop it. It is quality stuff but this is my favorite song on it followed by 10 over 10.

The second is one of the most powerful songs I have heard in a while. For those that don't know Adele you need to google her because she is simply awesome. This song has such deep lyrics and perfectly describes the hurt of break up that most of us have felt/will feel at some point in our lives. I challenge you not to fall in love with this song.





Enjoy your weekend.
xoxo

Miss B

Music Fridays

I listen to a little bit of everything but I don't generally listen to reggae and bashment music. Unfortunately this is what my brother mostly listens to so I have been forced to adapt. He has gotten me hooked on this song which has the most catchy chorus since "oh na na what's my name"!


Its Called 'Fucking with my heart' by Wayne Marshall. The title is quite self explanatory. I don't know much about the artist but like I said this isn't really my specialty genre! You are guaranteed to love it though!





Enjoy your weekend!
xoxo
Miss B!

Bankole's Crocodile Tears

"Speaker, House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole at the weekend burst into tears on sighting the young inmates of a remand home which he built in Abeokuta."

This is one of the stories on Next234 today, and this is a responding comment by a reader. He sums up my thoughts perfectly. As far as I am concerned Bankole is one of the biggest disappointments to this government.

"These are the kind of tears a man cries when he is coming towards the end of his tenure and he realises the catastrophe he is going to leave behind just like the old leaders he used to condemn. Suddenly the man has realised he is just like them. These are the kind of tears a man sheds when he has been living in wonderland; living a life of fantasy and he is abruptly and suddenly brought crashing back down to earth.

These type of tears are the hardest to hold back. This is because you cry for yourself. You shudder at the realisation that you are a very bad person. You discover who you really are quite suddenly. I can guarantee that while he cries, in the back of his mind he is thinking of all the fast cars, houses, women and lavish parties he has been spending money on.

One of his cars would solve the problems of that place. A bottle of champagne that he has a shower in will solve a whole family's problem in the Nigeria we live in today. Even heavier thoughts may be going through his head because only God knows what else he engages in. So free the guy. Im get plenty wahala for head." John

"Someone needs to get this guy a big basin for his crocodile tears. This cocky speaker who ostesibly has perverted the use of his Harvard degree by becoming one of the greatest treasury looter in the history of our nation should be shedding tears of blood. We all celebrated him when he emerged to succeed his predecessor - the crude hairdresser, on the belief that he will become a role model for the youths of this generation. But ever since, he has presided over a worse House of Reps. with a notorious reputation of being one of the most unproductive legislative house in world history. He will need a lot of big basins and many face towels to take care of his tears, because, he's only seen a tip of the iceberg in Nigeria's catalogue of woes - a consequence of corruption and an unconcerned attitude. " Bondu Alaska

xoxo

Miss B

Music Fridays

Hello,
How have you all been? I have been good, things are looking up but will update you once its all settled. I keep getting comments/messages about the Northern Prince Finale but I have already addressed this issue in my previous post (Happy 2011). I am sure you can appreciate how frustrating this is for me as well.

Anyway so todays song is called Won Fe Moje by Ryce. This is the first song I have heard from this dude but I love it. I heard it first on Cool Fm Lagos and found it so hard to track down. But here is is for you all!





Enjoy!
Miss B

Music Fridays

Heyy blogsville,

TGIF!!

Hope you all had a good week and looking forward to a great weekend. Its music Friday again and I would like to share the song I am currently feeling with you.

Fally Ipupa is massive in Fracophone countries, not so much in Naij which is a real shame because his songs are always upbeat, energetic and fun, not to mention that he is tres cute! Rumour has it that he is dating hot Ghanaian actress Nadia Buari, talk about West African love!

Today's song is called 'Ma Cherika/Sexy Dance" one of his most popular party anthems. I have noticed that alot of his songs seem to have the lyrics "your mama and papa" kinda like Timaya!

Enjoy
Miss B
xoxo

Music Fridays

Hey peeps,

I will try and post you songs I am feeling every Friday just to celebrate the end of another week.

Today's song is one I heard on MTV when I was in Nigeria and fell in love with but I didn't take down the name and I have been searching for since I came back. Luckily I remember watching the MTV awards and he performed and won the award for best Lusophone (best Portuguese for those like me that have no idea what this means!)

I have no idea what he is saying or what the song is even about but its such a catchy beat with repetitive lyrics and a funny and energetic video.

Have a great weekend!

Enjoy

Miss B!

FELA! Musical

Heyy blogsville,
I went to see the Fela! musical in December and it was A.W.E.S.O.M.E! Since the massive publicity with its release on Broadway last year being produced by Will Smith, Jay-Z and Spike Lee, I knew I had to see it.

The dancing, lighting,costumes, choreography, and of course the music was on point! It was captivating and 100% quality entertainment. They had us dancing and singing with them it was quite an intimate theatre. I would recommend it to anyone, the only flaw to me was that I didn't want it to end!

I also learnt alot about Fela, as it was a biopic of his life told though song and dance. For example I did not know that he married 10-15 wives (numbers unconfirmed) on the same day! Now that is a bad guy!

I know a number of comment-ors were disappointed that Fela wasn't played by a Nigerian, but the actor(who is originally Ghanain) did an excellent job to me! He could sing, dance, speak bits of Yoruba and had perfected the mannerisms of Fela. Best of all, his saxophone playing was flawless. And Ladies his 6 pack alone is worth paying for, considering he is shirtless the whole time (hehehehehe).


Best part was the tickets were so affordable thanks to bargain hunting by Omoj!

Its back in the summer in Engalnd for those that want to see it HERE. I also heard that its coming to Lagos soon.

Here are some pictures I took in the theatre (even though I don't think you are allowed ;-)

Enjoy

xoxo



























The view over central London from the theatre was breathtaking!




xoxo
Miss B!