One of the most memorable works of fiction I read as a pre-teen is a children’s story by Washington Irving titled Rip Van Winkle. I still remember my excitement watching the cartoon version of the story on Lagos Weekend Television (LTV) in the 80’s. Seeing one of my favorite tales come to life before my eyes was a joy unparalleled! For those of you who’ve never heard of this classic fiction, I’ll do you the honour of summarizing the tale:

The story is set in the pre- American Revolution War. Its central character is a man, Rip Van Winkle, who lives in a village at the foot of the Kaatskill Mountains along with his kids and nagging wife (Dame Van Winkle). He is well loved by the kids in the village because he often gives toys and entertains them with stories. He enjoys solitude and has a penchant for idleness which often incurs the wrath of his nagging wife. She complains incessantly about his lack of industry and neglect for his farm land which is constantly in disarray.

On one fateful autumn day, Rip escapes into the mountains with his dog, Wolf, to escape a barrage of nagging from his wife. As he wanders along he hears someone calling his name. On proceeding towards the direction of the voice, he comes in contact with a man dressed in old fashioned Dutch clothing. The man asks Rip for help and without hesitation, he assists the stranger in carrying a keg of rum all the way into a hollow-like Amphitheatre in the mountain. There he meets other men similarly dressed like the stranger, playing ninepins and drinking rum boisterously. He soon joins them in their drinking and revelry and before long, falls into a deep sleep.

He awakens and it is morning. He skin is wrinkled, his beard is long, his gun is old and rusted and Wolf is nowhere to be found. He returns to the village to find out that he has been asleep for 20 long years; his wife is now late, the American Revolution has taken place and his close friends have all died in the war. Someone calls out to a man called Rip Van Winkle who turns out to be his son, now a grown man. He is eventually taken in by his daughter who’s also now a full grown adult.

Such was Rip Van Winkle’s fate; missed out on every detail of life for 2 decades. The last he remembered, he was a young man wandering into the mountains. And now he awakens an old man unable to account for the past 20 years of his life.

I can relate to Rip Van Winkles experience because I too feel like I have been in a coma for that long; I can’t really account for the past 20 years of my life. The last I remembered I was an enthusiastic youth looking forward to an exciting future, but I am now in a future far different from what I had anticipated. There are lot of things I ought to have accomplished by now which just didn’t matter to me. Why didn’t they matter until now? Why has my mind been oblivious to the opportunities of the day? What did I do with all that time? How did the grey hairs sneak up on me undetected? Why did I never have a strong desire to get married until now? Why am I living far less than my potential while others who had far less potential at the beginning have gone far ahead? Why was I so comfortable with my self-imposed limitations? What was it that put me to sleep? Why am I suddenly waking up to the harsh reality that the time is short? Why now and not earlier? Just wondering if I am the reincarnated Rip Van Winkle.

This reminds me of Sharru Nada’s account in the all-time classic, The Richest man in Babylon. 40 years ago he arrived at Babylon a slave, and saw some labourers toiling by the gateway leading into the city. 40 years later he returns to Babylon a wealthy free man and notices the same men still toiling by the same spot; they’d had made no progress for 40 years.  God forbid that should be my testimony!

I talked this over with a friend and told him of my painful awakening and he said to me, “anytime a man wakes up, that is morning for him. No need to wallow in regrets. Forge ahead! I have decided from this point on not to allow the latter part of my life become a reflection of my past.

I am going to redeem the time!

(For other inspiring articles on my blog you can visit: http://nigerianphilosopher.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/i-feel-like-rip-van-winkle/ )

BOSTON – The nation's first full face transplant recipient said the first thing his young daughter told him when she saw him after the operation was "Daddy, you're so handsome."

Dallas Wiens, sporting a goatee and dark sunglasses, joined surgeons Monday at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in his first public appearance since the 15-hour procedure in March.

"It feels natural," said the 25-year-old Fort Worth, Texas, man, who received a new nose, lips, skin, muscle and nerves from an anonymous donor. The operation was paid for by the U.S. military, which hopes to use findings from the procedure to help soldiers with severe facial wounds.

Wiens' features were all but burned away and he was left blind after hitting a power line while painting a church in November 2008.

On Monday, Wiens appeared before a packed room of reporters and photographers with a new, somewhat swollen face and a new head of hair.

"I adapted to it very quickly," Wiens told reporters. "As time went on ... I was able to smell again and breathe through my nose. Every step of the way was amazing."

The first thing Wiens' nose was able to detect after months of having no smell? Hospital lasagna.

"You wouldn't imagine it, but it smelled delicious," Wiens said.

Surgeons said the transplant was not able to restore his sight, and some nerves were so badly damaged from his injury that he will probably have only partial sensation on his left cheek and the left side of his forehead.

Plastic surgeon Bohdan Pomahac, who performed the operation on Wiens, said the transplant's results were better than he expected.

"The most fun part is to see the next six to nine months when the function will start to come back and when Dallas will start to feel a light touch on his face," Pomahac said. "To me, that's really exciting."

In an Associated Press story and a YouTube video last fall, Wiens spoke poignantly about why he wanted a transplant and how he wanted to smile again and feel kisses from his 4-year-old daughter, Scarlette. Face transplants give horribly disfigured people hope of an option other than "looking in the mirror and hating what they see," he said.

He told the AP that his daughter and his faith have kept him motivated. He repeated that Monday. "Even though I'm in amazing hands here," Wiens said, "I'm also in God's hands."

The surgery was paid for by the Department of Defense, which gave the hospital a $3.4 million research grant for five transplants.

About a dozen face transplants have been done worldwide, in the U.S., France, Spain and China.

what if my girl was called aharit instead of arit



My girl has always been my closest friend but not one day has she ever told me her

real name . She said her name is arit and many times i go Aight ? and she says Right

. Not one day has she dared to put it all together and say AHARIT !

I wondered why she would never tell me her real name . I wondered not for long as I

asked her to marry me . to which she immediately agreed . She had been waiting for

this for ages .


Now we are about to get married it is just a few days or even weeks away .



And I asked her for the last time What is your name Arit

And she said AHARIT and I looked at her and understood . AHA RIGHT !


He sold his birthright for a meal of porridge He ignored the 'Aharit' . That which

comes After . Show me Temptations and I will ask for the AHARIT .

Now we shall soon be together for ever even after the AHARIT !

Happy Valentine

Ephesians 4:2

The guy with more friends than anybody has been named Time magazine's Person of the Year: Mark Zuckerberg, the controversial, 26-year-old founder of Facebook, the newsweekly announced Wednesday morning.

Winning the honor over such short-listed names as WikiLeak's Julian Assange (the favorite in a readers' poll), the Tea Party, the Chilean Miners, Apple's Steve Jobs and Afghanistan leader Hamid Karzai, Zuckerberg on his own Facebook page describes his personal interests as "openness, making things that help people connect and share what's important to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism."

As Time tagged Zuckerberg's on the Web site of the Today show – Time editor Rick Stengel made the announcement of Zuckerberg's selection on the NBC morning program – "More than half a billion people on the planet live in a world created by Mark Zuckerberg. The good news is, their friends all live there too. Zuckerberg founded the social networking site Facebook in his college dorm six years ago, but 2010 was the year that Facebook reached critical mass, both in sheer quantity of users and in its presence (through its 'connect' features) all over the Web."

The profile continued, "Zuckerberg spent much of the year fighting privacy concerns, and this fall he had to shake off a movie that depicted him as an alienated loner, hacking to get girls. But the world's youngest billionaire has no plans to slow Facebook's growth, nor does it show any sign of stopping."

That movie is The Social Network, which, besides doing well at the box office, is an Oscar Best Picture frontrunner. In the past week it's been honored, too – having been named Best Picture of the Year by the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Circle and critics' groups in Toronto, Boston and Los Angeles. In addition, the movie and its leading man, Jesse Eisenberg, who plays a hard-boiled Zuckerman, received Golden Globe nominations. .

Time's Person of the Year tradition harkens back to 1927, the year the magazine (which, like PEOPLE, is today part of Time Inc.) was launched. The first Person was aviator Charles Lindbergh. Others named throughout the decades have included Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932, 1934 and 1941), Adolf Hitler (1936), the American Fighting Man (1950), the Generation Under 25 (1966), American Women (1975), and, during their terms in office, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, both Bushes, Clinton and Obama.

Photo: Mark,AAssange, Chilean Miners

Ibori's investigator attacked by gunmen

In a mafia Style take down reminiscent of the hollywood movie The Untouchables,

Solomon Yorr, an official of Nigeria's anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), is in a battle for life as medical personnel struggle to patch up his bullet ridden chest.

Mr. Yorr, in the past few weeks, has been intensely involved in the investigation of the former Delta State governor, James Ibori . He is the second-in-command of the team in charge of Mr. Ibori's investigation.

Mr. Yorr, who is attached to the Economic Governance Unit, an elite group in the commission which handles mainly cases of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), was attacked by gunmen on Sunday night in his home in Keffi, Nassarawa.

Femi Babafemi, the head of Media and Publicity of the EFCC, in a press statement yesterday, said that the operative is now receiving medical attention and has been installed in an Intensive Care Unit(ICU) in Abuja.

EFCC operatives, who spoke on conditions of anonymity, expressed fears that the attempt on Mr. Yorr's life was not unconnected with the high profile investigations that he has been handling.

Increased tempo and increased attacks

Mr. Babafemi of the EFCC told NEXT in Abuja yesterday, that the recent attacks on operatives of the commission was a result of the increased pace of high profile investigations undertaken by the commission, while debunking the idea that the recent attacks was indicative of a revamp in the quality of investigations being carried out by the EFCC.

"The steam has always been there. We are also raising the tempo of our activities. Some of these attacks are rooted in the desperation of some corrupt politicians to succeed in the 2011 elections. We had already alerted the public on the threats that we have been receiving," he said.

Mr. Babafemi said that between December, 2009 and March, 2010, two active operatives and one former operative of the commission had been killed. But he restated the determination of the anti- corruption agency to go ahead with its duties.

"The EFCC chairman, Mrs. Farida Waziri, has since directed that security should be beefed up around the officer, while she prays for his recovery. She has equally stressed that the various attacks against the agency and its officials will not in any way distract or deter us," Mr. Babafemi said.

Taking care of its own

A Lagos-based human rights attorney, Jiti Ogunye, however, had harsh words for the leadership of the anti-graft agency, who he says is not doing enough to safe guard the lives of its operatives.

"My observation is that the leadership of the EFCC may not be doing enough to protect its operatives," he said, adding that he feared that the continued attacks on operatives could demoralise their colleagues.

"For a law enforcement agency, it is important that perpetually, the capacity of that agency is bolstered such that it stays ahead of criminals or would-be-criminals. Part of the capacity should be its ability to protect its operatives. It is very important that a law enforcement agency must be able to do that," Mr. Ogunye stressed..

Mr. Ogunye dismissed the idea that the EFCC may be working harder than in the past, and insisted that the leadership of the EFCC must look inwards to solve its current challenge.

"There might be a self-inflicted disability on the part of the leadership of the EFCC, because once the leadership is compromised, then the operatives will no longer be safe. The commission must look inwards to find out what they have not been doing right to protect their operatives," he said.

A federal grand jury is about to indict John Edwards, sources tell the National Enquirer. The grand jury has been investigating the former presidential candidate since April 2009 for possible misuse of campaign funds -- Edwards had mistress Rielle Hunter on his payroll -- and indictment is now imminent. The Enquirer talked to one friend who revealed that John was "terrified":

"While he believes he's done nothing illegal in trying to hide his extramarital affair with Rielle and their daughter, he thinks the Feds are going to make an example of him."

It hasn't been a great winter for the former presidential candidate. On the one hand, there has been Andrew Young, former Edwards aide and admitted accomplice in concealing the affair, stepping forward with a tell-all memoir of campaign trail debauchery and details of an Edwards-Hunter sex tape. On the other, recently-separated-from wife Elizabeth has threatened to sue Young for "alienation of affection," while friends told the Enquirer that Edwards beat her in a marriage-ending fight.

Meanwhile, rumors float about that Edwards proposed to Hunter and the two plan to move into a recently purchased $3.5 million beachfront home. If the couple do in fact intend to move in together, plans could be delayed if Edwards ends up serving jail time.