Getting Married – Y&B

(Y&B stands for Yegwa and me, Bibi aka Neogogo)

A million years ago (Nov 10th, 2008) I put up my first ever Sugarwater blog post. In those days the blog was on blogspot and it went a little something like this:

I’m a neogogo. And this blog is going to be about all the silly inconsequential stuff that we never talk about here. And by here I of course mean Nigeria.
As my header suggests, this will mainly consist of manga, gaming, foreign films and, since I don’t have a cat, my boyfriend.
Hope you like!
x

So many things have changed since then. My life, my interests, me – but this post is really just to talk about one particular change…my marriage!^^

For those who follow this blog (As BigBang said: “Thank you and you.”) you may have noticed that my posting went sort of downhill for the last several months. This was mainly because of the count down to my big day which was on Feb 12th. The funny thing is that I did mean to document the whole thing. I even took the pics! But at the end of the day the wedding was huger than me and took over completely and I was lucky to even find time to breath!

But at the end of the day it’s just cool to note that the person who started on this blog as my boyfriend and then became my fiance is now my hubby! 🙂

So without to much more ado here are some pics (Scanned and one’s I stole from friends on FB), my only regret is I gained all the weight I lost while I was actively working out (sigh) but all that withstanding, we had a pretty rocking time:

My Mom-in-Law on the left!

We are flanked by my Mom and Dad (sorry! So fuzzy!)

Our Civil Ceremony, bro-in-law, sis, me, hubby (we got married thrice!^^)

If you want to see what it was really like, I have bonus Videos!!!!!!! This was done for us by my bro-in-law who is a film maker in the UK (more on that later).

Part 1.

Part 2.

So many people suffered so we could have these moments. Our parents, our siblings, our relatives and our friends. I know we can never adequately thank everyone but we’ll keep trying anyway!

Finally, many people have asked me since getting back from our honeymoon (another post!) what it’s like to be married. To them I say, since Y and I worked together and were almost always in each other’s company before, the main difference now is that we live together in our own little place.^^ So for me marriage is kinda like before but now with sleep overs! hehe!

Hopefully I will be better at posting as I get my life back in control.

Still love u all madly.

xx

Korea vs. Nigeria T.T

I knew it was coming since Nigeria and South Korea were put n the same group but I just decided not to think about it.

Now, it’s come home to roost.

Not only is Nigeria going to play against my Sukkie’s country, Sukkie will be watching and expecting his eel’s support. I discovered the evidence on sears blog today!

courtesy: shiro401

This is a dilemma! My loyalties are divided! Do I support King or country?

What if Nigeria loses??? What if Nigeria wins??????

Will his Sukkieness forgive this eel if she stands against him just this one time so she can stand for her country???

I can’t even watch this match. I will stay far away not having a heart attack.

And hoping selfishly for a draw!

PS. Yes, I noticed they spelled Nigeria wrong and no I will not be making a big deal of it unless they spell it wrong in Hangul. (Just kidding. Frankly don’t care how they spell it. I know I can’t say or write ‘Korea’ in Hangul!)

I don’t get it.

Is it really that weird???

That I’m a Nigerian woman that loves Korean Pop Music???

Or K and J Doramas and the entire culture that comes with it?

I ask because of the reaction I keep getting when people see me watching my music vids or my shows. I actually never really think of it as strange till I see their expressions when I try to explain to them what I’m doing. It’s like this careful blank look you give someone when you are surprised by the realization that they might be mildly disturbed (see weird, obsessed fanatic).

I mean sure, I am passionately involved with the genre now; as in just about every vid on my ipod is korean and my screensaver is a vast slideshow exhibition of Jang Keun Suk (with the occasional BB, 2ne1, CNBlue and DBSK members). But I’m a passionate follower type and that’s how I show my colors! No one looks at Manchester United fans like their crazy when they do the exact same thing!!!

credit: http://www.theotaku.com/wallpapers/view/169742/jang_keun_suk

My Sukkie!!!: The second most beautiful man in the world (after my fiance^^)

Is it because I’m Nigerian? From West Africa? Should people from Nigeria or Africa only watch and listen too a prescribed set of things? Am I outside of our safe stuff to be into zone?

Would it help if I said that just as I’ve been taking in Western media content my whole life I’ve also been consuming eastern media content in one form or another for most of my life? That before I let myself get into Kpop, one of my favourite genres of music was anime soundtracks?

Is it because they’re talking and singing in a different language? Don’t we do the same thing here? Is non-english pop or hiphop only real or okay or acknowledgeable if it’s in our own languages? Does that even make sense???

If I can recognize hotness in people who are black, does it mean I may not recognize it in others who aren’t? And if I do, is that a cause for concern? If my admiration rests on artists who also share the condition of not being black and part of my appreciation is physical is this, because I’m black and West African and Nigerian, a sign of oncoming dementia? A symptom of an ignorant or badly brought up girl?

Is one really not supposed to like an artist even if they’re really good because they use a different word to say “hello,” or because they just don’t look enough like you?

If I think he’s hot…

…does it mean I can’t think he’s hot???

I actually, seriously don’t get this!

Sorry to rant but it really dampens my enjoyment of these things a little bit when people act like it’s soooooo odd and weird. Why do they jump to the conclusion that I’m weird for liking something that they have no idea about? Shouldn’t they be the weird ones? Why is it that on encountering something they don’t understand, rather than curiousity, their reaction is judgement?

This year I discovered K-Pop and it’s all I listen to because it de-stresses me, gives me great joy and is better than my former habit of junk food in bed. Last year I was listening solely to alt. rock. At one point I was only listening to anime and gaming music. I have no idea what I will be listening to next year but I do know that I will probably listen to it passionately and almost exclusively because that is how I deal with the things I love.

Thank god for the internet and being able to reach across the globe if that’s what it takes to find like minded people.

But I have to say, it would be really nice to find one person in Nigeria who doesn’t think it’s weird to love KPop cos  they love it too.

ps. I’m only half as pissed as I sound. I’m telling myself it’s like the anime/manga scene around here. Less and less people these days look at you like you’re crazy when they see you watching cartoons with people speaking japanese and there is actually quite a big community to indulge one’s enthusiasm in the genre with thanks to the overwhelming popularity of franchises like Naruto and Bleach.
So, there’s nothing like that for Asian Pop or Doramas. Maybe I’m just early to the party is all.

Some Home Town Love <3

I know I only post about Asian content here and lately only about Korean stuff (will this phase never end?) but today I wanted to do something from home for a change. That’s Nigeria in case you didn’t notice it on my huge ass header^^!

anywayz;

Her name is Mo’Cheddah and she records with up and coming indie label Knighthouse. Don’t be fooled by her daintiness because this pocket sized diva is fierce!!!

And very, very, very cute!!!!

She’s also finally released her first solo vid!!!! This is FRESH out the kitchen, folks as in literally just dropped!

Check it out, the song is called “If You Want Me”

Images credits as tagged.

Lagos gets eaten by a Mysterious Haze

If I was a studio head, I wouldn’t need to hear one more word. My signature would already be drying on the cheque. But no, unfortunately this is not the concept for the Nigerian schlock horror flick that we’ve been waiting decades for (that’s not just me, right?) It’s just a weather report.

Why the heck did I step out last night to go to the gym and find myself on the set for Nightmare on elm st.?

This is the power of The Haze….wooooooooooh!!!! O.O

UPDATE: Er…wot’s this I’m hearing about my beloved country and nuclear proliferation? The Haze Plot thickens!

…..yeah, I’m moving to Korea. Annyeong!!!!

Fan Girling

Credit: Zazzle.com

So…I kind of think I’m a fan girl.

Scratch that. I’m pretty much a fan girl I just didn’t realize it till my most recent fan girl obsession (more on that later). Strange thing is I’m coming to realize I’ve always been one. I’m actually the type.

Before starting this post i did a shallow browse to see what internet oracles Google, Wiki and Urban Dictionary said about fan girls and fan girlism. I wanted to have an idea of just what I was confessing too. I must say, it wasn’t pretty at all.

The term fangirl is mostly used in a derogatory manner and fan girl culture is largely derided. For some reason, maybe because of where i was looking, a lot of people seem to find the term inseperable from Twilight Culture and the teens that ascribe to it.

huh.

I don’t want to defend fangirlism. I just want to say why I am coming to terms with the fan girl in me.

I first started showing traits in my tweens which I suppose must be typical. What is interesting is I remember even before I fixated on my first boy group how much I wanted someone or something to love in that passionate yet giggly way. I wanted to be able fantasize with my girlfriends at sleepovers. I wanted to hunt down pictures and paste them up declaring my absolute allegiance to the world even before I found anything to obsess about. I wasn’t all that into real boys and I’m pretty sure I was already reading too many romance books.

Then I discovered the group ‘Take That’ (Mark Owen in particular) and my fan girl history began. My obsession with them was not entirely satisfying because, Nigeria doesn’t really foster fan or hobbyist communities and this was before internet so there was no one to love them with and maybe that’s why that first love faded (though there is still a lingering warmth for them. So happy they released an album again:))

Since then, over the years, I have nursed devotions to various personalities or groups including: The Beatles (very delayed beatlemania, lol!) Robert De Niro AND Al Pacino, Michael J Fox, Sharuk Khan, Dave Matthews Band, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Ikuta Toma and most recently Jang Geun Suk.

Yes. Most recently. All these years down the line. I’ve been working for years now and I’m still reading “comics,” watching “cartoons” and fangirling. There’s a word for people like me in Nigeria. It’s “Agbaya” and to sum it up I would say it’s what you call someone that is – er – maturity challenged?

carmensakura07.blogspot.com

I don’t know what makes me fan girl. I just know that sometimes I admire something or someone so much that it gives me the uber happies which leads to portrayal of fan girl traits: taking in all their work repeatedly, hording images and information, refusing to obey the laws of grammer or even express intelligibly, being totally shocked when anyone doesn’t like them and looking for other people doing the exact same thing so we can do it together.

Sick and sad? I don’t know.  To be honest, I believe it can be. There is a thin, almost invisible line between fanning and stalking and there’s a dark place where reality can blur with fantasy and one constantly hears of fangirls who wander into this limbo never to return again. This is where non-fan-people believe we already dwell. That’s why they look at us with that particular *look* when they stumble unto our image collection/fan fiction bank/shrine (I kid, I kid! U should have seen tour face when u read shrine).

The thing is, I also think there are positive aspects to fan girling. It’s true we speak a strange language and use way too many emoticons and punctuations in general. But my experience as a fan girl makes me wonder does it matter how we communicate if we are communicating? Isn’t it great to be able to get on like a house on fire with someone from the other side of the world because of a shared passion? And isn’t it wonderful to be able to let yourself be passionate and not be ashamed to be so?

I think it’s great to be able to crush like the teen girl I still am inside (I really am an agbaya!) and to have friends who help me laugh at myself because they do the same thing. I think sometimes our devotion is important to the industries they tend to rise around. Our support can sometimes push our stars to new heights which makes us even happier. Also sometimes our admiration influences us positively to do greater things with our lives like learn languages, write or just try harder in life.  There’s so much more I want to say about positive aspects of fan girl culture but this post has gone beyond epic. Gotta round up!

I do wish all fan girls could be the healthy type that respect as well as love their idols and keep fantasy and reality in  their respective compartments. I wish they could be like the fan girls I have met so far who prioritize mutual respect and organisation above all in creating the communities through which we relate. Fan girling to me is supposed to be about pure, girl-centric fun. But I don’t run the world. I’m just a fan girl who deliberately chats with typos and shamelessly uses terrible japanenglish/Hangulenglish with her OL friends.

I should know better. Actually, I do, I just happily ignore it.

d(^__^)b

Lol!

My Graphic Novel

I’ve decided to come clean and admit here that I’m writing a graphic novel. I’m doing it for the initiative that Y has set up. It’s called The Nigerian Comic Book Showcase and it’s under Spaceboy Nigeria. It’s meant to promote and publicize Nigerian comics!

My story is called easy.delicious and tells about 3 friends and one frenemy that are gifted to various degrees in music and decide to form a rock band in contemporary Lagos. It’s going to be about their lives, dramas and romances and what happens when they actually succeed.

For those who know me you’re probably guessing that there’s going to be more than a few shoujo elements in it. I’m happy to tell you that you are guessing correctly. Because I am a sucker for shoujo manga, it stands to reason that I would want to do something similar so I can share some of the joy that the genre brings me! Woot!!! \(>0<)/

Ahem.

Anyway, I am currently working on the scripts which (be warned) I shall probably provide samples of here. I am also currently desperately in search of an artist to share this project with!!! It’s hard to find someone that can do the cool, funky and feminine style that I think this story needs but I won’t give up. I have actually considered trying to do my own work. This would mean having to learn to draw, of course so I set up my own page own deviant art specifically to force myself through what I fully expect to be a grueling process!

Please wish me luck and look out for more info on this!

NEPA vs. my PS2: A Losing Battle?

I know it’s called Power Holding Company now. Whatever. We all know that it is still possessed by that Mega Demon called NEPA.

I just need to ask Naija gamers one small thing. How far? How do you do it? How the hell do you handle NEPA? Is it Inverters? Transformers? UPS? And when they blow as they inevitably must, what then? Bribery? Jazz?

How many grim and hard earned battles have you lost between distant save points? How many of your consoles have given up the ghost? How do you deal? Is there a support group for those bereaved by NEPA?

I’m tired and battle worn but I don’t want to give up. Not till my PS2 pops and I catch that familiar smell of burning rubber in my nostrils. At which point in time, I will be looking for revenge.

Why I Have Been Playing FFX for over Four Years?

It’s shameful and true. As of today, I have been wandering through the wilds of Spira for more than FOUR YEARS! What gives???

The subject of games unfinished and perhaps abandoned has recently been brought to the fore for me, thanks to Y’s recent podcast on the same subject. As the speakers reeled off the titles they had started and were yet to complete, I began to think of my own list.

I am a casual gamer so it’s short yet, somehow mortifying. At this date on my PS2 I am currently playing FFX (where I’ve clocked about ninety something hours), Kingdom Hearts (the original not part two or three), Sims (also the original for PS2), Katamari Damacy and Sly Cooper. On my DS I am currently playing FF7, Animal Crossing, Cooking Mama, Pokemon Sapphire, Etrian Odyssey and Super Mario 64 for the DS.

Wow. Confession really is good for the soul.

Games I actually have finished are : Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney and Pokemon Pearl. We-ell, Pokemon Pearl is really a technical finish because I beat the elite four and am the official pokemon league champion (yup, yup!) — but I am two rare pokemons short of completing my pokedex and I am yet to venture into that last island with all the fighting areas (rumor has it that you have to be a bad ass to hang there!)

Man, that’s short. Okay my soul feels kind of bad again.

Anyway I have been thinking about it and wondering why my list of completed games is so embarrassingly short whereas my list of unfinished games continues to grow. Am I a serial Giver Up-er?

My story with FFX began in about 2004 (three years after it’s release). I discovered it in my ex’s collection and after falling in love with it, I absconded with it and got myself a PS2. So, it is actually the game that made me buy a console (that’s why I feel compelled to defend poor Tidus whenever he gets dissed!). I did get my ex a game he wanted in exchange, though. Unfortunately that game was X-men Legends which now I feel was very poor compensation. All I can say is that we were misled.

Anyway, I’ve been playing since that ancient date and I think I can say even now that it’s not that I’ve lost interest in the game. It’s just time. I’ve lost a lot of that.

This might sound like whinging but I feel like lots of games today share the characteristic that to make any kind of proper progress, one has to log in some serious hours. This is problematic because I find fewer and fewer days in my life that contain even up to one hour to kill. If I want to finish FFX (and any of the games I am currently playing) it’s going to take discipline, focus and even some sacrifice. I wonder, like Gatorade; do I have it in me?

Actually, there has also been some Naija factor involved in my PS2 lapse at least. For the last two years and a bit, I haven’t been able to even touch the machine. This is because I brought it with me from the US and couldn’t find a transformer that wouldn’t blow up when I plugged it in to it. Well, I did find one but then I accidentally blew it up on my George Foreman grill. But all that has changed now.

I have recently acquired a monstrous transformer (actually, Y hooked that up for me) that deals in about 200 watts of electricity and so have been able to literally and finally dust off the old box. It’s good to be back in Spira and I have every intention of getting to the end of this particular game more than the others. Why?

Not because of the shame of how long this is taking though, granted, there is that. really it’s because, about four years ago I also got FFX-2 and I can’t let myself even open the shrink wrapping till I’m done with Tidus.

As a casual gamer, I have a long and challenging road ahead of me so – wish me luck!

Some Kill Giants – GIN!!!

So my boyf (who I have been referring to as Y) just recorded the first podcast for his gaming blog Some Kill Giants. I realise, of course, that I haven’t written about SKG before but I think that’s excusable seeing as this is just my fifth post!

So here’s the skinny; Some Kill Giants is a blog about gaming with highlights about gaming in Nigeria in particular. It is relatively new on the scene (Started in June this year) but already has been noted by prolific gaming blog Game Set Watch.

Anyway, Y decided it was time to move into the exciting world of podcasting where he could bring to life some of the relevant voices in Nigeria’s gaming scene. The show is about gaming in Nigeria. That is literally what GIN stands for.

This maiden show in particular covered two interesting topics the first of which was Games you haven’t finished and why you haven’t finished them. The second topic which was nostalgia based was a discussion of the game Super Mario World.

I’m not going to spoiler it by breaking down what was said. I will just say that it was a very interesting discussion because the speakers were obviously well informed and passionate about the subject.

It’s a first effort so it’s not perfect and could use some cleaning up here and there but it still has a lot going for it. The tone and energy, for instance, was consistently high level and fun. Also, different perspectives were brought to the floor as Nigeria like other places breeds a variety of gamer types.

We have the every console/every high profile game gamer, we have the select consoles/reviewed games gamer, we have the no console/friends selection dependent gamer and we have the no console/strictly PC games gamer. Each of these broad archetypes was, I think, well represented in this discussion.

So if you have about thirty something or so megabytes of space on your computer hard drive, mp3 player or phone, please consider downloading this. It’s so nice to hear Nigerians speak passionately about something other than politics or football.

Long live fringe culture!

(Oh and that banging logo was designed by Y! Big ups, babe!)