The Weekend

Its kinda weird posting about my weekend on a Wednesday when another weekend is almost upon us but seeing as this blog isn't exactly financially viable and I have a proper job suing people for obscene amounts of cash , TWP sometimes has to take a backseat to my paycheck. Luckily though, today was payday *yay* so I thought I better post real quick while I'm still feeling rich and happy with the world.

Had a fabulous weekend, it was my neegar Oyidiya's birthday on Saturday and she had a house do and an after party at Rehab, in the tequila-laden hegzitement I forgot to take pictures at the after party so I just have from the house shindig.


My outfit to Oy's party. I was feeling very retro 60/70's that day, hence the gingham mid-riff baring top, high waist super flared pants, heavy bangs and Priscilla Presley eyeliner.




Lems for days


Oy trying to cut her cake while being harrassed by Iso and David


Nneka (who obviously did not want to make a second appearance on TWP) and Ndali



Helga, Yoko, Nene, Madonna and Rhema


Sunday was the almighty Innocent Idibia aka 2face's concert at the Expo Centre of the Eko Le'Meridien Hotel which basically just shut down Lagos. It was the best concert by a Nigerian artiste I've ever been to, even on the same level with the Thisday concerts. We were at tables that sat about 10 people with bottles of wine and finger food, the Expo center was just faboosh, the event organizer Cecil Hammond did a great job, I was really impressed.


Wearing my pink jewelled caftan by Fashion For Life which I said in an earlier post I was gonna wear to the 2face concert. this was said before I even had a ticket, as I always say "confession is possession" "speak and you shall receive" lmao!


Oy, still on a high after throwing a mad party the day before

The following pictures are from the skit 2face did with Nollywood actress Tonto Dike, whom I'd never heard of till that night. It was for the song "Flex" which 2face did with R Kelly (fleeex, time to have sex.....you get my drift). Anyhoo, in the first scene Tonto was on a couch in a white man's shirt and moving along to the music, she then started to take the shirt off. I was a bit alarmed till i saw she was wearing a nude shimmery bodystocking underneath. She and 2face then went behind a screen which was lit up from inside so we could only see their silhouettes. They then started simulating sex, from missionary, to standing up to doggy, to oral, they did everything. At the beginning I'd been frozen in shock that someone actually attempted this in Nigeria but I started to get the ingenuity of it. It was a BRILLIANT performance, like whoever choreographed it and thought of it is a bloody genius. I saw over on Linda Ikeji's blog, a few people were like the girl's reputation is finished and all that, which I thought was absolute bollocks. I don't think any less of her after seeing that, I even now respect the versatility she brings to her craft. If you decide to be an actress you might as well be ready to go all out instead of constantly been safe. Its going outside their comfort zones that won actresses like Halle Berry and Charlize Theron Oscars, anyhoo I digress, it was my favourite performance of the night.








Performing African Queen, he had this girl with the sickest abs I've ever seen in Nigeria, I thought my stomach was flat, this babe's own was CONCAVE (the one with her hands on her hips, not the Fulani one)


The show ended at about 2am, which resulted in my not getting to work till 10.30am the next day. It was sooo worth it.

*sidebar* Nigeria is 50 on Friday and its really not that big a deal, yesterday morning 15 schoolchildren were kidnapped in Abia State and instead of diverting resources and manpower to their discovery our government is gearing up to celebrate Nigeria's independence in such an obscene and disgusting way that I can't even quantify it. The Nigerian governments flagrant abuse of the county's massive wealth is mind boggling and the fact that its not even done covertly but to our faces is ludicrous. Yet there's nothing we can do, we can all stand on our soapboxes, tweet, blog, go on the radio about it yet nothing gets done. Our present and past leaders have utterly failed us and we can only look to the future and pray they do a better job.

God bless Nigeria.

RunDown

Wearing my dress by Ejiro Amos-Tafiri, my new favourite designer and she's a QC girl too!


I was recently accused of going out a lot, which I took umbrage at because I regard myself as a bit of a homebody. I stood corrected because my accuser did not mean I was at Rehab and Marquee every weekend shaking my cakes but rather that I had an active social life, that I could understand. Lagos is a total beehive of activity, every day and not just weekends there's oodles of stuff going on: wine tasting, sweet tasting *le sigh*, book readings, movie premieres, fashion shows, concerts, comedy shows, burlesque, salsa, yoga, networking events, store openings, jazz nights, bar openings, karaoke, restaurant openings, award shows, poetry slams.....I LOVE Lagos, you get my drift. Anyhoo I decided to limit myself, so sadly I don't go out as much as I used to, therefore less stuff to talk about and as I already placed an embargo on my personal life here on 3WP, I might soon descend into TMZ territory and start reporting celebrity news, lol.

Luckily I have lovely friends who refused to let me fade into obscurity, also egbon mi obirin Nwabugo was in town from the abroad. Last week being the end of Ramadan, I hit up my friend Bisola's Sallah party.

*sidebar* In Lagos, whenever its Sallah there's a noticeable increase in Christians acquiring Muslim friends so as to have somewhere to go and lem. Luckily I have Bizla who never fails to put on a spectacular bash every Sallah, so I don't have to go prostituting myself like some people I know *side-eye*


Chinye, Bisola, Nwabugo at Bisola's Sallah do

After gorging ourselves we headed to Club Towers for my newest obsession, karaoke. I actually did karaoke for 3 weeks straight without a break, I'm now weaning myself off it slowly and downgrading to singing loudly in my car so I don't offend innocent people. If you see a girl in traffic in a blue Camry doing the dougie and rapping to Lil Will, do not be alarmed. We met up with Ediri, Nerhi, Faith, Antoinette, Valerie, Benjamin, Ejiro, temi and Ada for a Lady Gaga, Spice Girls and Rihanna session.


With Ify, Bugo, Ediri doing "Wannabe"



They show the most hilarious videos while playing the songs, its like a Hall of Fame of bad acting


Temi, Ify


Ada

My girl Oyidiya aka Oy came into town and ice cream therapy had to be on the decks, we hit up Ice Cream Factory with Yoko and Henrietta.


The damage that was done, this were just our entrees sef, we did more damage that night, bill came up to over N11,000.....never again



Ran into Dan, while she was on a "frolic of her own"


Yours truly wearing my ankara brooch from ST Colours, also doubles as a hair clip. Fetch!

*sidebar* we ran into Noble Igwe, PR guy who also runs the blog 360Nobs. All week on twitter, Nobs had been going on about "The Girl In The Yellow Bikini" whom he met at his SL..USH pool party in Abuja the week before. He posted twitpics of her asking if anyone could identify her and give him her deets, he even did a blog post on her. That night at ICF, Noble finally tracked her down, dude wanna romantic die.


Yoko and Noble
I have no pictures of Oy and Henrietta from that night because Henri deleted the one I took of them because she "did not like herself in it" and I forgot to take another one.

Took a day off work on Wednesday to go sort out my NYSC Final Clearance, I really can't believe its been an entire year since I started Nysc, it went by super fast. I'm actually ashamed of how inadequate a corper I was, I didn't stay in camp, I wangled my way into the Drama Community Development Group, ensuring myself an entire year of loafing. Serving, truly isn't that bad but we make such a big deal out of it and think its so "cool" to not have fully participated in it, anyhoo its over now, can't do it again.

Met up with Oy and Nneka at Cafe Royale to plan Oy's birthday do on Saturday, which promises to be legendary btw.



Oy and Nneka

Jusqu'à ce que nous nous réunissions encore my Blogville lovers xxxx

STAN

I'm not even gonna bother apologising for infrequent blogging because I know I will do it again, so now thats outta the way lets proceed shall we?

I keed! I keed! Forgive me Blogville for I have sinned, its been....dang, almost a month since my last post. I don't even know whats causing my tardiness anymore, I'm just lazy, that's it, no other explanation.

Unfortunately I was hit with the official Nigerian disease over the weekend, malaria and was confined to bed the whole weekend (apart from a quick trip to Orchid Bistro with Bisola Winterbottom and going to wail at my bestie Nwabugo's place cos she was leaving on Saturday). Anyhoo, on Sunday while busy feeling sorry for myself and trying to force down my 4 times daily tablets of Artesunate, my darling friend D, knowing the sorry state I was in, came over to mine with spare ribs and butter pecan ice cream, I was delighted of course, even if a little surprised. "D" I said, "how did you know that I'd want spare ribs and butter pecan ice cream". "Daks" he said, "everybody knows what you fux with". I realised how true that was...

*permit me a little insight into that aspect of my personality* I have an OBSESSIVE personality i.e. when I love something I OD on it, I tell everyone how much I love it, I tweet about it, I read/eat/watch/do whatever it is at least every damn day (finances permitting). I literally never get tired.

I and D had a fun 2 hours while he went over all the things, over his long association with me, he knew I stan'd for:

*this list is in no particular order*

BOOKS
I LOVE BOOKS! I learned to read pretty early, by the time my mates were still struggling with "the fat cat sat on the mat" a la English Premier, I was already on a Dr. Seuss and Enid Blyton p, no jokes. Its so bad that when I'm bored I read the back of cereal boxes just to have something to read. I read everywhere, while eating, on the can, getting my hair did, at work, driving sometimes, when the traffic is really bad. I tingle in my unmentionables when I smell new books, I hpnestly don't think I can fully quantify how much I love to read so I'll stop here.

BEYONCE
She. Is. The. Queen. Period

MALTINA
i really can't explain why I stan for maltina and I don't know whats gonna happen to me when I move away for from Nigeria and can't get it anymore. The taste is just sublime.

DVD SERIES
I'm addicted to sitcoms, drama series etc (except Mad Men, talk about useless hype). I remember the great Desperate Housewives Weekend of 2007. Where I spent an entire weekend from Friday to Sunday, watching Desperate Housewives Season 1 and 2 in its entirety without moving. I ate all my meals in the living room, I took very infrequent bathroom breaks, I think I only showered once that weekend. It was deep

CELINE DION
Anyone that can get Celine Dion to sing at my wedding must sit at the right hand of the Father on Judgement Day.

KITKAT CHUNKY'S
The Whys and Hows are immaterial, I stan for chunkys in a bad way.

BUTTER PECAN ICE CREAM
Every other flavour of ice cream, especially chocolate make no sense when measured with butter pecan, none at all.

GREASE
Sandy, Danny, Rizzo, Kenickie, Frenchie, the music, the 50's, leather pants, Pink Ladies, Thunderbirds??? The holy Grail of movies.

VICTORIA BECKHAM
Vicky is the greatest fashionista ever! She literally does not take a bad picture, like I have never seen one bad shot of her, never. She's like my ultimate.

JACQUELINE LEE BOUVIER KENNEDY ONASSIS
The complete antithesis of a femme fatale, yet this woman held the entire world in thrall her whole life. Gotta love her chutzpah.

BLACKBERRY
Truly, them Research In Motion people have no idea what they did for me when they invented the Blackberry.

ROMANCE
I love love, no matter how much I try to be cynical and world weary of the idea of romance, whenever I hear the story of the couple that have been in love for years and still act like they just met, I get tears in my eyes. Yes bad bishes cry, lol.

These are a few of the things I stan for and fux with on a daily basis. For the more aesthetically inclined of my reading public, a post with pictures should be on the decks sometime this week.

p.s. NYSC is over!!!!!!!

Le Petit Marche

So I had an awesome weekend, good things, many good things I can't get into just yet. Anyhoo this post is supposed to be about Le Petit Marche, so on to it!

LPM is held on the last Sunday of every month and is a fantastic opportunity to get fabulous Nigerian designed clothes at somewhat okay prices

*sidebar* I have a minor Monday morning rant (omg Alliteration! lol). Anyhoo, who else thinks that Nigerian designer's items are overpriced? I mean whenever I buy stuff I tend to mentally convert it to dollars, it kinda puts things into perspective for me, so when I'm thinking something like MTN BIS is just N5,000, my American brain goes "that's like $35 bucks every month, separate from my phone bill!" btw MTN is ripping us off big time. Back to my rant.......a standard dress by a Nigerian designer is between N20,000 to about N50,000 and that's just the cheap ones. The Deola Sagoes and Tiffany Amber's retail upwards from N250,000, I've even seen a Deola Sagoe dress for N800,000....over $5,000! The dresses are works of art, yeah I give them that but still, almost a million naira for a single dress? Hell to the N-O!

So I hardly buy from Nigerian designers, even though I think their clothes are just amazing, I prefer to buy my materials, copy the styles and mosey on down to my neighbourhood tailor who'll make em for me. Therein lies the problem, I am chronically impatient, its a disease, I want everything chop chop. So the made to measure clothes don't do it for me, I hate having to wait about two weeks or more to have the dress sewn, instant gratification is my middle name. LPM is therefore a perfect opportunity for me to get these clothes and accessories I love for a cheapish price as all the items are on sale. I couldn't get pictures of all of them as my trusty Canon Ixus decided to disgrace me by dying halfway through but I made a good haul still.


ST Colours: Gorgeous bib necklaces, brooches/hair clips made from ankara and polo shirts with ankara accents.


The girls behind ST Colours, forgot to get their names



A laptop case by Juliet David West for Jidz



Purses by Jidz


WHAT I GOT

Achingly beautiful caftan by Fashion For Life (07034091894), they had been slashed from N45,000 to N15,000. Clothes lust took over me, I was operating on auto pilot. Its gorgeous! Already have an event in mind to wear it for, the 2face concert in September, ticket donations are welcome, thank you!



Draped jersey and Ankara dress by Ejiroghene Amos-Tafiri (08028292983, ejiroamostafiri.com): prior to LPM yesterday I'd never heard of this designer but best believe I'm now a solid fan! The clothes were sick! Crazy! Crazy! Crazy!



Double-sided ankara bib necklace and brooch/hair clip by ST Colours


Met one of my fashion crushes Terence Sambo from terencesambowrites.blogspot.com

TWP and Terence

Spent the day with my uber delish cousin Chioma and my twitter buddy
Oyetola.

Chioma Nwachukwu


Oyetola Smith

Ran into cool peoples

Tari Ekiyor, Noble Igwe (I think dude on the left's name is Adebayo, not too sure, just met him on Sunday, somebody correct me if I'm wrong)

After causing damage to my bank account, I needed to take my mind of it, so I met up with my favourite married couple Ediri and Nerhi to go see 'Grownups' at the Palms.


Ediri and Nerhi Okwa


If you haven't seen it, you best run to the cinema asap! That move is HILARIOUS!! We spent 99% of the movie cracking the eff up, comic gold I swear. 'Grownups' joins 'Salt', 'Inception', 'The A-Team', 'The Back-up Plan' and 'Shutter Island' as my favourite movies so far this year.

TARI EKIYOR : AN INTERVIEW

“Growing up, I was never the girl with long flowing hair, who got the best grades at school and everyone liked and wanted to hang around.”

At that first line I was hooked!

The above quote is from an article called “The Making of Tari Ekiyor” written for the entertainment website Bellanaija.com by the writer of the same name, that article was my first encounter with the force of nature that is Tari Ekiyor. The honesty and sincerity of that piece was unbelievable and as I read every line I cringed inwardly at the way she laid herself bare for audiences whom she had never seen to rip apart. We all have our embarrassing adolescent stories that we would rather forget but to see someone not only reliving those experiences but relating them on such an unimaginable scale was beyond my comprehension.

Blogger, columnist, screenwriter, media content developer, Tari Ekiyor wears many hats and on a sunny Sunday afternoon at Café Royale over glazed doughnuts and strawberry margaritas we dished on life, love and lipstick.

Her writing career started with What’s New Magazine, after which she then put together a portfolio of her articles and shopped them round to several media houses, they all loved her work but unfortunately were not willing to publish. In the meantime she busied herself with projects such as ‘Dragon’s Den Nigeria’ and ‘The Apprentice Africa’ and is the screenwriter behind the animated Youtube sensation ‘The O Twins’. She also produced the radio show ‘The How-To Class’ on Top Radio 90.9.

She started her blog, tariere.blogspot.com while waiting in an office a couple of years ago, but due to pressures from work was very infrequent with posts. On hiatus however in August 2009 she decided to concentrate on developing her blog content and within a very short time she had gained an immensely popular following. Its success propelled her to seek out other projects which culminated in a weekly column on bellanaija.com, 360nobs.com and ayakaonline.com and also as a contributor in the Elan section of 234next newspaper.

INCLUSION OF HER PERSONAL LIFE INTO HER ARTICLES
“I am really freaked out by how much of my personal life I put into my articles. You know the Bella Naija articles come out every Wednesday and most Tuesday nights I’m counting down till the next morning, thinking how will people react to this? What will they say? What kind of person will they think I am? By Thursday, it’s all over, my life has been dissected by faceless readers and it’s on to the next one. I learned that these things are fleeting and being able to put down my experiences and share them with people on such a public medium has strengthened me beyond belief. It has made me more confident in whom I am because I have laid everything bare, I basically have nothing to hide from anyone, and my whole life is an open book. I personally think it gives me an edge because nobody can use my past as ammunition to hurt me.”

BALANCING CHRISTIANITY AND SEXUALITY
“I wrote an article once where I mentioned sex as a sideline, it was not related to the theme of what I was writing about at all and someone commented on it, saying they were very disappointed in the fact that I profess to be a Christian and I can talk about engaging in sexual activity. I was very hurt by that comment because the person refused to view my article as a whole and focus on the journey within, rather that person chose to highlight a part of the article that was in no way important and draw attention to it in a very negative light.

My Christianity is not defined by whether I’m having sex or not, it is defined by my relationship with God and with the people around me so why someone would choose to tie these two things in completely baffles me. I am celibate right now and have been for a while because I have chosen to explore this path in making a deeper connection with myself and in my relationship with God, which I know I can’t reach while being sexually active outside marriage.”

HER GROWING REPUTATION AS A RELATIONSHIP EXPERT
I don’t think of myself as a relationship expert, that whole thing started because I did a series of articles in my column S.I.R. (Strong, Independent & Relevant) on 360nobs.com where I basically gave labels to the different levels of relationships between men and women and to my surprise there was a lot of positive feedback. The things I write about are culled from personal experiences, therefore every label I talked about; the scrobo, the booty call, the friend with benefits, the side chick, the main squeeze; I’ve lived through, and I was merely recounting the lessons I’d learned from having gone through them. Therefore I’m not an expert in any sense, I’m still learning myself, still experiencing.

On this note I put down my pen, shut my notebook and I and Tari launched into a proper gossip and amebo fest which was fortunately off the record. After an afternoon with Tari Ekiyor, I can authoritatively say that I found her to be a beautiful person both inside and out and extremely friendly with an infectious personality. Her personal journey has been shared by thousands of people and has also become theirs too and as she counts down to Wednesday mornings when another part of her would be laid bare, she doesn’t do it alone.

Age Appropriate via 234next

Two posts in one morning, that's a record for me because I'm notoriously infrequent with blogging. But I had to let y'all know that i got an article published by 234next, a newspaper in Nigeria! You can read it here

In Remembrance of Him circa 2005

Kisses, feather light on the back of my neck
That perfect spot you always know how to find
Your merest touch ignites me
I grow warm in my most private place
A s your fingers trail down my arm
Clothes melt off as if by magic
More kisses at the madly beating pulse of my neck
Down
Down
Without hesitation
You take possession of my seins
Hurting me as you love me
Wreaking twin sets of destruction on those tender parts of me
Your fingers wander all over my body
Touching, feeling, stroking, caressing
I take you in me and my world is reduced
To that singular act of giving pleasure
And being engulfed in it