The violence in Nigeria

As if there is not enough violence in the world, we have this ongoing violence in Nigeria for a long time now. As you know Nigeria is the largest country in Africa with the second biggest economy due to oil production. But its population has a toxic mix of several ethnic communities and also equally divided into Muslim and Christian religions. And because of this, there has always been violence sometimes on a grand scale but mostly on a smaller one. But with the introduction of an extremist group called "Boko Haram" roughly translated into western education is forbidden, the violence has reached to high levels. It has attacked not only government forces but people within its own Muslim religion whom they think are not "Islamists enough" (whatever that means) and despite all the counter offensive against them by government forces, they keep on hitting back on soft targets like schools or villages not entirely secured. Although this extremist group thankfully have not extended their scope and violence beyond Nigeria and there are no reports out there suggesting that they have swear their allegiance to Al-Qaeda. But this can quickly change as Al-Qaeda seeks a foothold in the African Largest country and the Nigerian extremist group gaining international exposure through their allegiance to Al-Qaeda. My father was offered long time ago to head a bank branch in Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, but I told him to reject that transfer since I had read already about the violence happening there. Not to put a country in a negative light but the truth is violence keeps on rising in that country and unless the government reigns in the violence, it will just escalate and become internationalized.

Another cruise ship gets sick

Now I am getting sick reading more than six hundred passengers getting sick recently on a cruise ship, which has now returned to its home base and the cleaning has begun. It was some sort of a virus and the cruise ship operator has offered fifty percent refund on the current cruises and fifty percent on the future one. Who will again go in their right mind on the next cruise is a good question to ask. But if someone says that it is just a onetime event and it does not happen always. That is true since many cruises depart every week but you only hear the ones that face with disaster, but even one news like this can make you think twice about going on a honeymoon or an excursion especially the ones who have already become sick in one of the cruises. I long time ago went on a cruise with my family from Boston to the northern parts of the U.S. and Canada. At that time, we had the luck that the weather was perfect (with no rain or clouds to worry about) and smooth sailing all the way, so every time I hear about the cruise ship disasters, we thank our lucky stars that we did not encounter any. Although I along with my daughter enjoyed the most, but my wife does not even want to think about going on a cruise again. I would love to go a cruise but it makes me think twice over when I hear these kinds of reports and then imagine what it were me and my family on that ship and we are stuck. No thank you for now and for a few years until everything goes well and the Cruise industry takes precautions. Although I know that disaster can strike any time but there should be contingency plans in place the minute something like this happens. No excuses whatsoever since people have paid money to enjoy the cruise not to turn it to a nightmare.

Snow day in Atlanta, Georgia

Before I start, just for my readers internationally, Georgia is a state in the United States with Atlanta its biggest city. It is in what we call the Deep South and thus they have a hot climate even during the winter days. The winters are not as cold or harsh as they are in the Northern areas of the U.S. Thus the people living there and many of them being from the north to escape the harsh climate have made Atlanta their home, and they are not used to snow or cold weathers. Furthermore they have no transit system to take back millions of people in case of snow and don’t want to invest in it either. And it was about time that Mother Nature had a little fun with them. For us people living in the north, we chose (grudgingly) to have all four seasons all year long as our winters are harsh and summers sometimes hot but not very often. And I can understand that there was the issue with ice but it is a big international city and how they dealt with is at times funny (for us people in the north) and at best tragic as thousands of people got stranded on the roads and hundreds of school kids had to spent time in their schools after regular school day because of this snow. I would not call it as a snow storm because merely three inches of it (in spite of ice) does not qualify itself to make a big city paralyzed and incapacitated for the whole day. Whatever excuses that are now pouring in for not preparing, it is still the fault of the government not to prepare its citizens in these times when most of the people don’t know how to cope with snow and ice. A new mass transit system is now in need for the city even if the people think that this will be once in a life time phenomena because you never know it might occur more frequently in the future, so better be prepared than to suffer again.

The world does not work on U.S. standard time

I wrote an article long time ago regarding a world out there besides the U.S. but due to our busy schedule and vastness of our country, we don’t feel that much connected to the outside world. And here I am again writing about it. As I work in the financial industry (AND NO, I DON’T MAKE MUCH MONEY, BUT I HAVE A JOB) and work with various countries around the world. I also wrote about how different cultures have different work ethics, which does not mean that they are lazy or don’t care but they work on their own schedule. It is just that there is not that much urgency on their part and this is what I keep on telling me that if we are in a hurry to do something and have done it as fast as possible, we should not expect other people outside the U.S. to work on our schedule. And this the people working in time sensitive industries just forget. I have been to other countries and work there too and they are generally more relaxed and not in a hurry to do things. Although they take their time to do things but you never know what is holding up things in other places. Remember not everybody has the same laws as the U.S. and you need to be patient when dealing with overseas customers. Gentle reminders are fine but to be bullying and aggressive just because your customer in the U.S. wants to get the things done their way and on their time would not cut it in other countries and may even cause resentment. So if you are going to do business outside the U.S. you should be mindful and considerate of other people's culture and habits and way of doing work by doing some research or analysis so that you don’t get stressed out when it comes to time to dealing with them.