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First off, I had to post a picture of StephanieIj who won my Giveaway, she's pictured here wearing the snake ear cuff. This giveaway was such a success I have to do another one, maybe when I get to 200 followers....how about it? Follow, follow, follow and there'll be another TWP Giveaway. I'm thinking an outfit by a Nigerian designer this time..........

Now to the koko of this post.

Family, friends and collectively loved ones, welcome to my official birthday wishlist. With #CancerSeason almost upon us, a natural question arises "what shall I get Daks for her birthday?" No fear, I have drawn across a selection of different lists detailing the various things I'd love to have and I've narrowed it down to the 5 items you see below, sort of like a birthday registry.

God bless you as you bless me.

1) THE WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER THEME PARK

I know I've stressed my position as the Commander-in-Chief of Agbaya's Ikeja Branch here many times, but I'm sure you guys thought I was joking. I really haven't evolved past the age of ten, hence my penchant for seriously childish behaviour, one of them being my intense love for theme parks. I can live in a theme park for the rest of my life and be ecstatic and this one above is combined with my addiction to Harry Potter (confirmed #PotterHead). when I saw the ads for this park, I was stunned, Hogwarts built nearly to scale, Hogsmeade, drinking Butterbear, Hagrids house......

*swoon*

Please take me to this theme park, pleeeaase....somebody, anybody

If that's not possible, I'd settle for Disneyland.

Thank you!

2) THE CHANEL 2.55
One day on twitter, some girl (for the life of me I can't remember who that was now) tweeted that if you don't have at least one accessory or item of clothing by Chanel you are not a real lady. The curses that were rained on her head ehn, it was brutal, people took it personal, girls insulting the poor girl left and right. I personally thought it was hilarious, I mean, to own a piece by Chanel takes serious moolah and wealth doesn't necessarily make you a lady, the trappings of wealth are a great help definitely, but being ladylike is dictated by attribute not possession.

All yarns aside, me I sha want a Chanel bag.

In Miafarradaily's bag meme she put up a picture of her Chanel tote and added that her friend asked her if she walked differently now that she had a Chanel bag, because it had a kind of swagger. I thought that line was hilarious.

I want my own Chanel so I can be ladylike and walk or strut with a defiant or insolent air, I was made for Chanel dammit, especially the 2.55. First of all the bag is named after the month and year it was created, February 1955, February is my favourite month, courtesy for not so obvious reasons and my darling daddy was born in 1955.

You see, we're soulmates!

3) AN iTOUCHI have owned three mp3 players in my life, two iPods and an iTouch, I currently own none. Ask me where they are.....distributed amongst my siblings. The biggest disadvantage amongst the many many delicious advantages of being the first born (the best of them being you always get to pick first) is that your possessions have an extremely high turnover. Phones, cameras, iPods, money....name it, the minute I get it, a younger siblings hands are outstretched asking for it. I've never owned more than one phone before, apart from the fact that I can't handle two lines, once I buy a new phone, one of my siblings takes the older one and thats the last I see of it.

Luckily, my immediate younger siblings are boys so my clothes and stuff are relatively safe, even at that, my sister is twelve younger than me and I've spotted many a Facebook picture where she's wearing items appropriated from my closet. I'm luckier than most, my friend A has five younger sisters and the poor girl is constantly in tears, her sisters have rendered her almost naked, I give thanks to God everyday that I got off pretty lightly.

Back to the issue at hand, every time I got an iPod or my last iTouch, I had to give it to one of my brothers after using it for like a couple of months. This is why I'm pleading with someone to please buy me an iTouch, biko nu. At least I'm safely away from my criminally minded family so I get to keep anything I buy, at least until I go home again, but that's 6 months away, so in the meantime I'd like to have one to tide me over till then.

Merci.

Naturally you can't have an iPod without the listening accessory and I'm not talking about piddling earphones.........

3) BEATS BY DRE HEADPHONES IN PINKI'm talking headphones.

Chill first before you say I'm greedy, I really don't like earphones, they give me the worst headache, hand on heart. I can't listen to music with earphones for more than thirty minutes without having to take them off to rest my ears. I honestly don't know why this happens. This is why I never use the earphones that come with my phone, I don't even have any music on my phone, apart from the fact that with all the other load the blackberry carries and the amount of times it crashes per day, I don't want to add music to it, I'd have to use earphones to listen to it and me and earphones don't mix at all.

So yeah, thanks in advance.

4) AN iPADAn iPad is not a necessity for me, I have a laptop, I doubt I'd ever use it and when I see people using iPads in public I always think "wanker"......

But its sooooooooo coooool.

Gimme Gimme Gimme

5) CHANCE BY CHANELLast but certainly not least, I'd love some perfume si'il vous plait. This is practically a birthday staple or any kind of celebration staple even, its the most impersonal and at the same time the most thoughtful gift you can give a person. Perfume simultaneously says "I don't really know much about you, but I care about you a great deal". Thanks to many generous gifts over the years I've never had to buy perfume for myself. Come to think about it, I've actually NEVER bought perfume for myself, even a watch I think, perfumes are almost like mugs, I doubt any family goes to a store and says they want to buy mugs, especially if you live in Nigeria. A month of weddings can stock your cupboard for years.

Unfortunately all good things come to an inevitable end and my supply is running low. Chance is my all time favourite scent, bless me by putting it on your Daks list.

Good friends, do not be limited by the above, it may seem restrictive but I'll accept items outside of it with a gracious heart and a smile.

I know this list may seem a bit "ambitious", but as my mantra says, confession is possession, I have confessed it, generous friends and family help me possess it.

Love and light xxx

p.s. oh yeah, my birthday is on the 7th of July xxx

A Post About Nothing

Miss my Neks baby..........

Got back yesterday and as usual Aberdeen weather did not disappoint, when I left NY it was 32 degrees, landed in Abz and it was 14 degrees, I nearly ran back through immigration. Its weird because normally when its like 14, 15 degrees here that's a pretty warm day but whenever I go somewhere really hot and come back to Abz, I have to re-adjust all over again. Like when I went to Nigeria in April, the day I was leaving it was like 13 degrees and I was sweating, fast forward a week later I landed back in Aberdeen, temperature was 15 degrees and I felt like I was in a freezer. Gotta love the North Sea.

It just hit me this morning that I'll actually be on holiday till October, that's four long months, yeah I'll be writing my dissertation in the meantime but four months is not beans at all. So being the anal retentive control freak that I am, I already have every day of my four month holiday planned to a T.

*sidebar* In my next life I want to be an unreliable, spontaneous, live life by the seat of your pants kinda person. Even though I don't trust people who have no idea what they're going to be doing tomorrow talk less of next week, I've always thought it might be a little fun to be like that. People never have any expectations of you, for instance if you say you're going to be somewhere at 3 O'clock, you'll be given a two hour headstart and even when you flout that and show up at 7 O'clock people will just smile ruefully and shake their heads fondly at you. On the other hand if I say I'm going to be somewhere at 3 O'clock, I'm so famed for my strict adherence to punctuality that at five minutes to three, people start wondering where I am. Its exhausting.

Anyhoo my vacation timeline is looking something like this;

JUNE London at the end of the month for fellow QC girl Ayo's wedding. I CANNOT wait for this! I'm going to see people I haven't seen since graduation in 2001, in two words and a punctuation mark....live.com

JULY Londres again for my birthday (July 7th) #CancerSeason Raahhh Raaahhh!!! and my fam Ije's wedding.

AUGUST Austria for my flatmate Aruna's wedding, weddings are a great source of vacation spots for real. Then maybe back to the United States to tag along with my mum when she packs my baby brother off to college.

*sidebar* being my mother's handbag is a plum position, you get to go EVERYWHERE because mummy dearest doesn't like to travel alone, but since she gave birth to my baby brother and sister I have being supplanted. These usurpers have already gone through two passports in their short time on earth and there are rumours that a third is in the works, at my old age my passport has less stamps than theirs. It is well.

SEPTEMBER Budapest for my booski Oyidiya's Med School graduation and tentatively Paris with my besties Nwabugo and Nneka, and in an effort to get the best out of that Schengen visa, might stop over in Rotterdam to see my friend Iffie.

As a dependent student, this cockroach waka will be funded by a combination of faith, the parents and the meager earnings I scratch out from being unable to work more than twenty hours a week, but I'm a firm believer in "Confession is Possession". I swear this mantra has always worked for me, if you want something badly enough, the universe will conspire to give it to you and at the risk of sounding smug, I think I've probably got everything I've ever wanted.

Well except twins......I don't have my twin babies yet, but I'm working on it.

Was hoping to squeeze in a trip to Nigeria but Mrs. U put the kibbosh on that one, she however conceded to the end of the year, so Lagos for Christmas 2011 is a dead cert, tickets booked for December 19th, otito dili Jesu......na ndu ebebe! (sp?). Hopefully my parents won't insist on staying in the village for the entire duration, don't get me wrong, I love Aro but I know the main reason for keeping me ensconced there will be in the vain hope that I manage to snare myself a husband before the New Year. I've honestly always wondered why when parents want their spinster daughters to find husbands they go to the village, is that where all the husband material men are too? I keep telling my parents that I'm more likely to meet my husband sitting in traffic on Ozumba Mbadiwe than while making the rounds at the best homes in Ndiamazu-Uno, but they don't listen.

As you can obviously tell this post has no definite structure, its just streams of consciousness. I actually started out with the intention of writing a deeply personal post, my second ever (regular readers will know the first one) but the disadvantage to being a visible blogger as opposed to an anonymous one is that you can't let go as much as you want to.

Since I learned to write, putting words on paper has been extremely cathartic. Most times when I feel overwhelmed writing everything down helps to sort out the mess in my head but sadly I can't do that here because then people will know the inner me as opposed to the outer persona which believe me are not really the same person. Inner Daks is forever the akward, too tall, under-developed 13 year old who lived inside books and used to write poetry about killing herself while Outer Daks is this extremely confident person flitting from event to event and living this great life which honestly seems unreal most of the time. Its like since I turned 18 or so I've been living outside my body, like I'm this essence hovering over myself and just observing, like the person I'm looking at who loves fashion and people and life and love and family is someone else.........

Most of the time I try to imagine what will finally make the two personalities mesh and become one; will it be my soul mate, an experience, a tragedy, loss?

There is so much more I'd love to write but can't because it would be like ripping of an entire layer of skin....slowly, leaving the dermis exposed for everyone to see and that is something I simply cannot bear. For anyone to know that I can be weak, afraid, unsure, awkward, irresponsible.

This is a poem I wrote a long time ago and it seems to suit my frame of mind now perfectly.

Even when we are not happy, we smile
Because our strength comes from within
Like a steel rod rammed up our anus'
Through our spines
Into our brains
Forcing us to walk tall even when we feel like shit
Forcing us to stand erect even when we want to lie down and let the world march upon our backs
Yes we are strong
Powerful beyond belief
This is why you shall never see us cry
We shall never show fear
Dying inside but outwardly inscrutable
We are invincible
But every night, when sleep lies like a suffocating blanket on the world
When every shadow is like an enemy bent on murder
When Hades heaves up its bowels and spills them onto the earth
We lie in our beds
Weeping blood and sweat and tears
Weeping terror
For we are weak

Love and light xxx

Pure Randomness Still......

There was supposed to be no rhyme or reason to this day, we were just supposed to roam around aimlessly until I got it into my head that I had to visit the Kardashian store Dash in Soho.

I've accepted that I'm a professional agbaya and I refuse to seek treatment, I kinda like it.

This reminds me of a scene in a Nollywood movie..........

DAAASSSSHHHH!!!!!

I can't even front I love the Kardashians, they're seriously entertaining and so beautiful they look unreal sometimes, especially Kim. Kris is just super gorgeous, even at her age, she must have been banging when she was younger.

I couldn't tell if business was booming for them or not because when I was in there it was obvious that everybody else was just there for the novelty touristy value and were definitely not buying. They carry stuff like Kova & T and Wildfox which the average New Yorker can definitely not afford so I guess they cater strictly to celebrities or Upper East-Siders.

After all the waka of the day we went to the Empire Hotel where they film a lot of Gossip Girl scenes (breathing the same air as the Chuck Bass filled me with so much joy). It was fun but the Dj was kinda wack so we exxed and went to Bar 13 where the music was so dope I forgot to take pictures. Didn't get home till 5am so you know it was a good night.

Did more roaming today when we finally woke up and I stumbled across these lace earrings, they're earrings/necklaces. I saw them for the first time last year when Rihanna wore a pair during Paris Fashion Week but I didn't really seek them out the way I hunt down items with my usual dedication. I saw these today and thought they were so ghetto but I LOVED them still and I got so many compliments wearing them.

Another sleepness night is looming, about to hit the town right now and see wassup. Tomorrow its church, brunch and then JFK-ABZ.

Love and light xxx

Asa Concert

Last night, Neks and I were invited to an Asa concert by my friend Yvonne. I'm pretty neutral about Asa, I mean I like her but I don't really get excited, after last night though I have to admit the woman can sing! She sounds exactly the same live as she does on her records, the only other artiste I knew that could do that is Adele. Adele's live recordings sound even better than her studio ones. It turned out to be a really fun night in the end.

I was really surprised at the amount of fans she had, especially the white ones, they nearly outnumbered the black ones plus they knew all the songs and were singing along....babe is international.

Quick question, at what age did Asa move to France? I ask because she speaks English like its a foreign language or she just learned it. Its quite alarming. I understand your accent changing when you move to a foreign country but to assimilate to the extent that you forget how to speak English...........now that's just odd.

Neks

Yvonne

Bukky

Another entry into my Cocktail top 5, the Amaretto Sour, it joins the White Russian on the list of cocktails I can ingest without gagging. I think I've mentioned on here how I was born without the alcohol drinking gene, I didn't start drinking till I was about 23 0r 24 and I only started because I was tired of always ordering Fanta or Maltina and staying stone-cold sober the entire night while everybody around me descended into serious merriment. I truly, truly don't understand how people become drunks, alcohol is icky, its bitter, I don't get how people enjoy it. My friends have been on a mission to find the perfect cocktail for me, everybody knows of my Fanta/Maltina addiction and they've been trying for years to convert me to one of those people who unwind with a glass of wine after a hard day.

This of course has proved impossible.

I've been known to shame myself terribly by happily drinking "soft" at formal events while fellow "adults" are cooly drinking champagne. I've tried sha, alcohol is not for me men. Even though I can manage the very rare glass of wine, champagne or the above mentioned drinks, anybody who can buy me a crate of Fanta or Maltina will have my heart.

Got my shatter nails done today! I'm soooo excited, I've wanted to do this manicure for the longest time, I'm def going to buy my own O.P.I. Shatter Polish before I leave. Its really easy to create, you just apply the base polish in any colour you want, (I chose black) and then you apply the shatter polish (I used silver) over the base polish and it just starts to seperate, creating the shatter effect you see above.

Next stop, Minx manicure.

I have 3 days left in NY, I can't believe I'll be in dark, gloomy, cold Aberdeen on Monday morning....oh well, I guess I have to go home sometime.

My friend Michelle from Bombchell in Atlanta is coming into town today! I'm SO EXCITED! She's one of my oldest friends, we've been friends since primary 1 and I haven't seen her in ages. Plus I get to see my darling Kemberly today too. This weekend is looking live.com *in Tamar Braxton's voice*

Love and light xxx

Down Time

So I've been in New York since Thursday visiting one of my besties Nneka. I left 2 days after I finished my exams and a long flight combined with lack of sleep from studying resulted in me crashing since I've been here. I've literally been sleeping like I was drugged, luckily I've been able to crawl out of bed from time to time to hang out with friends and chill. I haven't been in New York for almost two years and I'm so excited to be back, the energy in this city is amazing, I could never live here but I don't mind experiencing it in little doses.


FRIDAY

It was so warm, I couldn't believe how warm it was. Going back to Aberdeen is going to be so traumatic for me.


Met up with my friends Cassie, Annie and Chichi who were visiting from Maryland


SATURDAY
A big plus for me was meeting up with my friend and blogger, Stella of Jadore-Fashion, we had the most random time walking around the city and encountering some weird paprazzi dude who kept taking our pictures and refused to tell us what it was for.




See how fabulous her camera is? It puts my baby Canon to shame for real.


Later that evening I attended my friend Amaha's graduation from Medical School, when they were reciting the Hippocratic Oath I actually got choked up, made me want to be a doctor. I was actually on the path to study Medicine at first, I was a science student in SS1 but after the first term when I wrote essays in Chemistry instead of formulas, the Guidance Counsellor called me into her office for an emergency meeting and tactfully suggested that my talents lay elsewhere. I dropped Physics and Chemistry and picked up Government instead...and legal history was made, lol. It was an awesome ceremony, we went out to dinner later and an after party on a yacht. Good times







Awesome day and night, things are always fabulous when I have my close friends around.


SUNDAY
Due to the excesses of the night before, we didn't wake up till almost midday, just in time to catch brunch at a Nigerian restaurant and drinks later at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. Met up with my friends Molly and Dami later that night, where, as usual, whenever I'm with Mols, things always go slightly off kilter. We decided to go to some roof-top bar for drinks for like an hour before we started heading back to Brooklyn, as our cab was drawing up to the hotel we noticed the long New York style line for the bar stretching out to the street. I absolutely refuse to stand in line outside bars or clubs, there has to be a difference between 21 year old Daks and 25 year old Daks now. So I'm like, I'm not feeling this, lets exx. Molly, who's one of the most fearless people I know by the way says we should act like we're staying in the hotel and just cut the line. I'm telling you, chutzpah works, we blagged our way into that bar ahead of like 30 of NY's finest who were lined up waiting for entry, I kept cracking up.

After getting in, we enter the bar and it was like hotness overload. Extremely beautiful guys, muscles rippling, eyes twinkling, champers flowing.....after a few seconds I started to notice they were a little too beautiful, there was way too much man flesh on display, the intimacy between the men was a teeny bit full on. I, Molly and Dami twigged at the exact same time that they were all gay, I couldn't believe it, after the Oscar worthy performance we had given outside just to end up in a gay bar. But I love gays, the atmosphere is always so fun and of course we were spotted immediately and christened glorified fag hags for the evening. It turned out to be a seriously fun night in the end.





The week has begun now I can get down to the main reason for being here....the shopping. Everybody on my bbm and twitter were probably sick of me for constantly making noise about shopping in dollars. I HATE shopping in the United Kingdom, the prices are ridiculous, the difference between shopping in dollars versus pounds wasn't really that glaring to me before until I moved to the UK myself. Whenever I went to the UK or the US before it was always a vacation so I would spend stupidly but now I'm actually living there and paying bills, my 1 pound does not touch ground, "aka Aradite" is my new name. Its ridiculous how something like Mac Studio Fix is like 25 pounds and in the US its 26 dollars, 25 pounds equals 40 dollars....absolute madness. So anyway I've been taking advantage of the price difference.

The rest of the week is solely for sight-seeing, I can draw a map of the entire layout of Macy's on 34th street from years of experience but I have no idea where Central Park is, I have to remedy that.

Love and light xxx

HAIRVEN

In my infamous natural v. relaxed hair post I mentioned that I've only bought human hair twice in my life and this was about three years ago. I'm still using this hair till today so that can attest to its quality and the quality of the products I use for it. At first I used mainly Pantene products for my hair but about a year ago the person I bought the human hair from, business woman extraordinaire, my good friend Iroghama Ogbeifun released her own line of haircare products called Hairven and since then its been "Pantene who"? Hairven products are amazing, and I can attest to this myself. Besides the fact that I'm pro-Nigerian products, I will only use a "home-grown" product over a foreign one if I firmly believe the quality is above par and I can assure you that Hairven is the ish. Its not just restricted to my "acquired hair" (as Sheila Speaks put it), but also my natural hair, because I wear weaves mostly doesn't mean I don't take care of my own hair


Iroghama Ogbeifun, CEO HAIRVEN


Hairven specializes in the sale and supply of high quality hair care products essential for the maintenance and styling of hair extensions and natural hair. Their goal is to meet an intense demand for affordable and excellent quality hair products to suit the taste of today's Nigerian woman, and as such Hairven hair care products have been manufactured with the woman of colour in mind.

The products are a one-stop shop for the trendy woman concerned with maintaining her natural hair and her human hair extensions (Remy, Brazilian, Peruvian, Indian, Malaysian....just to name a few) at an affordable price.



Curling Gel


Foamation Mousse


Leave-In Conditioner


Silk Nectar Serum


Silk Protein Conditioner


Thermal Styling Spray


Volume Shampoo


Hairven is currently been stocked in salons in Lagos, Abuja and Port-Harcourt, Prince-Mega Cosmetics Agency Port-Harcourt. You can also conveniently buy Hairven Haircare Products from the comfort of your own home at 234world.com, keyword "Hairven", and have it couriered to you anywhere in Nigeria.

For more information you can contact Hairven: +234-807-4813607 and +234-706-3443434
website: www.myhairven.com
Email: info@myhairven.com, iro.ogbeifun@gmail.com

Eznira Vintage Fair

Getting tired of your own clothes? Ever wondered what it would be like to raid someone else’s fab wardrobe? Well here’s your chance

This is how it works, each person drops off a minimum of 5 items(cloths, shoes, bags, accessories) from their wardrobes with one of the reps before the swap date.( Feel free to bring your parents fabulous clothes from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s to swap too).

They will also have a vintage stand where beautiful vintage and vintage inspired dresses, jackets and accessories will be sold.

Swapping is FREE, and there will be seamstresses at the fair to assist if clothes need altering. (this service is not free)

If you have not donated items you will not be eligible to swap but you can still buy stuff from their vintage stand.

They reserve the right to reject items which are in bad condition i.e torn, dirty or faded.

All Items left behind left behind will be donated to charity

The fair will run from 11am to 5pm on the 12th of june at No24b Abayomi Shonuga Crescent Lekki phs 1'