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Short Story: Twinge | By: Morountodun

Alex stared coldly at the other side of the bed. Two years ago, the very same spot had brought him absolute joy. Even though suspicion and fear had crept in a few months later, soon to be followed by the deep sorrow and hurt that had hit him the past two months, he still hadn’t ever thought the day would come when the only emotion he would feel for his matrimonial bed and anything–anyone–it represented would be this mere numbness.
H

e picked up his phone and did what he had been contemplating for some days. The automated response after a few seconds confirmed he had dialled the right number as he didn’t have it saved on his phone.  The customer care line had its digits corresponding to the letters that formed the company name on a keyboard–smart move for ‘living in customers’ hearts’, as Helen often put it whenever she was advocating for her new-found passion. She had needed to get shopping stress off her mind so she could ‘focus more on work’, hence what had led to her obsession with online shopping. And focus on work she had, mused Alex emotionlessly.

A female customer care representative soon came on the line, and Alex told her briefly after she introduced herself, “I need a vacation. What travel packages do you have for next weekend?”

“May I know your name, please?” The CCR asked politely.

“Alex.”

“Thank you for calling, Mr Alex, but travel deals aren’t part of our services here at Nudot.com. We’re a retail company specializing in clothing items, household appliances, gadgets and books. May I suggest that you contact any of the travel agencies for that, please?” She said, cheery.

“Can you get me a number?”
Slight pause. “Sir, I wouldn’t have any of their numbers at the moment as we don’t render such services.”
Alex sighed and told her, exasperated, “You work at an online company, I would think you could just search the web and get me an address or a number to call. I can’t access the internet at the moment and I really need this!”
He had to mentally caution himself after he had spoken. She had done nothing but her job. Helen was the reason why he felt so bitter, so angry with the world. Deep inside of him, he had known her boss couldn’t just have been that extremely generous to her, like she had claimed. And of course, she never told him the Abuja trip was a getaway for two. Unfortunately for all, the plane returning them home had crashed, and out came the roll call. And the truth.
If the CCR was any less friendlier than she’d been before, he didn’t notice it in her voice as she calmly replied, “Alright, Mr Alex, while I’m checking for some travel agency contacts for you, may I let you know about some fantastic buys you cn get from us this weekend?”

“Ok.”

“If you’re interested in household appliances, there’s an excellent, affordable toaster going for just two thousand naira. Also, with the World Cup just around the corner, there are good quality jerseys available at low prices. So if you’re a fan, you could just order a…twin set, for you and your wife, if you’re married, or–“
“My wife’s dead. Please just text me the numbers.”

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“I’m so sorry about your loss, Mr Alex–“ Lola began, before she noticed he had hung up. She swallowed and quickly looked around to see if anyone had heard her conversation with the customer. 
The Quality Assurance (QA) team would have, of course. They got paid for snooping in on calls,  and one of them would soon show up to tell her how she could’ve better handled the call.
“Did I hear you mention travel deal now?” Bolaji, her older colleague sitting next to her, asked.
Lola nodded, updating her report on the monitor.
Bolaji hissed and said in her usual loud voice, “Some customers can be so funny. Does this look like a travel agency? And he cut the line on you, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, but I guess I upset him. He probably just lost his wife and I was going on about the set of jerseys–“
“Well, you’re not a fucking psychic now, are you? You were only doing your job!”
Lola wished she’d tone it down abit, but after three weeks on the job, she was getting used to the fact that quiet wasn’t exactly the word to define her mentor on the job with. She reached for her phone in her bag.
“What are you doing?” Bolaji asked, watching her every move with narrowed eyes.
Lola shrugged. “I feel like I owe him an apology. I want to text him the numbers he asked for too. It’s not really official, so I can’t text him using the company account, right?”
She cringed as Bolaji laughed a little too loudly and said, causing everyone in the room to look their way, “Well, you’re still new at this. Soon enough, you’ll learn to not let customers get to you. By the time you sell on credit out of pity and get into trouble with the management, oh you’ll definitely learn!”
Victor from QA walked into the room then, just in time to see catch Lola typing away on her S4. “Tell me you’re not texting that Alex guy on your phone,” he said, standing behind her with this hands at the back of her chair.
She turned and gave him an apologetic smile. It was against company policy to give out personal information, she knew that.
“You’re giving him a free, direct access to your mobile number for speaking to you like that, and you still won’t let a nice guy like me buy you lunch?” He told her, feigning annoyance.
Bolaji, who had been talking to another customer, muted the call she was on and told Lola in a mock-whisper, “That is to say, you’re still on his to-do list, so help you God. Amen.”
The call centre erupted into laughter, as loud as could get without being heard by the customers, and Lola smiled. Victor had been on her case sine her very first day at work, but she had been quick to learn of his reputation as office playboy.
She thought about Mr Alex again before the next call on the queue came in. How had he lost his wife? Did he wake up crying in the middle of the night because the pain was almost unbearable? Did his chest tighten and his heart threaten to stop beating like hers still did two months after losing Lolu in that ill-fated FT 719? Did he notice how she almost didn’t want to say the word ‘twin’  because it brought back memories that almost brought tears to her eyes?
“Helloooo!” came the voice of the baffled customer, who was wondering why her call had been picked and no one was speaking.

Lolu would always live in her heart, she only had a few more hours’ work for the day–she might as well make it count. Momentarily discarding the grieving thoughts, she injected a full dose of smile in her voice and spoke sweetly, softly into the phone, “Welcome to Nudot.com, your favourite online marketplace. I’m Omolola, how may I help you..?

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Morountodun is a writer and a microbiology graduate of
University of Ilorin.
Twitter: @Morountosweet
http://morountosweet.wordpress.com
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Are you a writer? Interested in sharing your short stories on this
platform? Be our guest on our Short Story Fridays segment.
Email: ololade.olatunji@yahoo/ gmail.com
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Entertainment

Meet the hottest player in the Premier League

A group of American women were asked by popular bookmaker, Paddy Power to pick their hottest player in the premier League. And guess who took their fancy most? Arsenal striker, Olivier Giroud.
Paddy Power took 300 pictures of Premier League footballers; two goalkeepers, five defenders, five midfielders and three strikers from each of the 20 teams and asked 250 American women, unfamiliar with UK sport, to rate these sporting gods purely on physical attractiveness.
 
The top 10:
1. Olivier Giroud (Arsenal)
2. Santiago Vergini (Sunderland)
3. Matty James (Leicester City)
4. Paul Konchesky (Leicester City)
5. Jason Shackell (Burnley)
6. Erik Pieters (Stoke)
7. Morgan Schneiderlin (Southampton)
8. Nacer Chadli (Tottenham)
9. Ciaran Clark (Aston Villa)
10. Ben Foster (West Brom)
(O_o Where’s Fabregas, Nani, Evra, Walcott?)
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Entertainment

Nigeria ranked 42nd in latest FIFA rankings

Nigeria has moved up one place to 42nd position in the latest FIFA ranking. Algeria top the chart for Africa while AFCON title holders, Ivory Coast and  Ghana come second and third respectively. 
1. Germany
2. Argentina
3. Colombia
4. Belgium
5. Holland
6. Brazil
7. Portugal
8. France
9. Uruguay
10. Spain
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Latest FIFA Ranking (Africa)
1. Algeria
2. Ivory Coast
3. Ghana
4. Tunisia
5. Cape Verde
6. Senegal
7. Nigeria
8. Guinea
9. Cameroon
10. Congo DR‎
11. Congo
12. E. Guinea
13. Mali
14. RSA
15. Egypt
16. Gabon
17. Zambia
18. Burkina Faso
19. Rwanda
20. Togo

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Entertainment

Short Story Fridays segment is back!

Hi people
I’m happy to announce to you that The Short Story Fridays (SSF) segment on the blog is back after 7 months of ‘leave’.
Incase you don’t know what the segment is all about. We usually post short stories of writers (budding and veteran) on fridays, our aim is to promote excellence in writing whilst giving you our esteemed readers a worthwhile reading experience. We posted about 20 or more stories last year. You can check the Arts section of the blog to read.
If you’re a writer, or you know short story writers, kindly refer them to us. Interested? Send your short stories and your profile (one paragraph) to ololade.olatunji@yahoo/gmail.com.
The first story of the year would be published tomorrow. 🙂
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Entertainment

(Photos) Zlatan Ibrahimovic strikes a pose with 'himself'.

Swedish footballer. Zlatan Ibrahimovic was recently  honoured with a waxwork by his club, Paris Saint Germaine for his immense contributions. The unveiling was done on Monday, February 9, 2015 at the Grevin Museum, France.
‘I took the opportunity to take a selfie with myself at the Grevin Museum in Paris. The one to the right is made of wax and the one to the left is made of steel.’ The excited striker wrote on his instagram page.
Photo credit: Getty Images
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Entertainment

Obasanjo's endorsement of Buhari, a political somersault – Fayose

Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose who has been a vocal member of President Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign team has reacted to ex President, Olusegun Obasanjo’s recent endorsement of 
General Muhammadu Buhari.

He has described Obasanjo’s support for the ex- Military man as a political somersault and a suicidal mission. He also implored Nigerians to ignore him because of his penchant for deceiving people for his own political gains.

 “Leaving President Jonathan and vote for Buhari is like to abandon the road and enter the bush. God forbid we enter the forest which we may not come out for years. How can you follow somebody who because of old age is senile, but being propelled by his followers to fly the plane at all cost. Won’t that plane crash?” Fayose added.
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Entertainment

Nigeria’s Postponed Election Is An Embarrassment Of Bad Choices. Chimamanda Adichie writes.

Last week, Victor, a carpenter, came to my Lagos home to fix a broken chair. I asked him whom he preferred as Nigeria’s next president: the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, or his challenger, Muhammadu Buhari.
“I don’t have a voter’s card, but if I did, I would vote for somebody I don’t like,” he said. “I don’t like Buhari. But Jonathan is not performing.”
Victor sounded like many people I know: utterly unenthusiastic about the two major candidates in our upcoming election.
Were Nigerians to vote on likeability alone, Jonathan would win. He is mild-mannered and genially unsophisticated, with a conventional sense of humor. Buhari has a severe, ascetic air about him, a rigid uprightness; it is easy to imagine him in 1984, leading a military government whose soldiers routinely beat up civil servants. 
Neither candidate is articulate. Jonathan is given to rambling; his unscripted speeches leave listeners vaguely confused. Buhari is thick-tongued, his words difficult to decipher. In public appearances, he seems uncomfortable not only with the melodrama of campaigning but also with the very idea of it.
To be a democratic candidate is to implore and persuade, and his demeanor suggests a man who is not at ease with amiable consensus. Still, he is no stranger to campaigns. This is his third run as a presidential candidate; the last time, in 2011, he lost to Jonathan.
This time, Buhari’s prospects are better. Jonathan is widely perceived as ineffectual, and the clearest example, which has eclipsed his entire presidency, is his response to Boko Haram. Such a barbaric Islamist insurgency would challenge any government.
But while Boko Haram bombed and butchered, Jonathan seemed frozen in a confused, tone-deaf inaction. Conflicting stories emerged of an ill-equipped army, of a corrupt military leadership, of northern elites sponsoring Boko Haram, and even of the government itself sponsoring Boko Haram.
Jonathan floated to power, unprepared, on a serendipitous cloud. He was a deputy governor of Bayelsa state who became governor when his corrupt boss was forced to quit. Chosen as vice president because powerbrokers considered him the most harmless option from southern Nigeria, he became president when his northern boss died in office.
Nigerians gave him their goodwill—he seemed refreshingly unassuming—but there were powerful forces who wanted him out, largely because he was a southerner, and it was supposed to be the north’s ‘turn’ to occupy the presidential office.
And so the provincial outsider suddenly thrust onto the throne, blinking in the chaotic glare of competing interests, surrounded by a small band of sycophants, startled by the hostility of his traducers, became paranoid. He was slow to act, distrustful and diffident. His mildness came across as cluelessness. His response to criticism calcified to a single theme: His enemies were out to get him.
When the Chibok girls were kidnapped, he and his team seemed at first to believe that it was a fraud organized by his enemies to embarrass him. His politics of defensiveness made it difficult to sell his genuine successes, such as his focus on the long-neglected agricultural sector and infrastructure projects. His spokespeople alleged endless conspiracy theories, compared him to Jesus Christ, and generally kept him entombed in his own sense of victimhood.
The delusions of Buhari’s spokespeople are better packaged, and obviously free of incumbency’s crippling weight. They blame Jonathan for everything that is wrong with Nigeria, even the most multifarious, ancient knots. They dismiss references to Buhari’s past military leadership, and couch their willful refusal in the language of ‘change,’ as though Buhari, by representing change from Jonathan, has also taken on an ahistorical saintliness.
I remember the Buhari years as a blur of bleakness. I remember my mother bringing home sad rations of tinned milk, otherwise known as “essential commodities”—the consequences of Buhari’s economic policy.
I remember air thick with fear, civil servants made to do frog jumps for being late to work, journalists imprisoned, Nigerians flogged for not standing in line, a political vision that cast citizens as recalcitrant beasts to be whipped into shape.
Buhari’s greatest source of appeal is that he is widely perceived as non-corrupt. Nigerians have been told how little money he has, how spare his lifestyle is. But to sell the idea of an incorruptible candidate who will fight corruption is to rely on the disingenuous trope that Buhari is not his party.
Like Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party, Buhari’s All Progressives Congress is stained with corruption, and its patrons have a checkered history of exploitative participation in governance. Buhari’s team is counting on the strength of his perceived personal integrity: his image as a good guy forced by realpolitik to hold hands with the bad guys, who will be shaken off after his victory.
In my ancestral home state of Anambra, where Jonathan is generally liked, the stronger force at play is a distrust of Buhari, partly borne of memories of his military rule, and partly borne of his reputation, among some Christians, as a Muslim fundamentalist. When I asked a relative whom she would vote for, she said, “Jonathan of course. Am I crazy to vote for Buhari so that Nigeria will become a sharia country?”
Nigeria has predictable voting patterns, as all democratic countries do. Buhari can expect support from large swaths of the core north, and Jonathan from southern states. Region and religion are potent forces here. Vice presidents are carefully picked with these factors in mind: Buhari’s is a southwestern Christian and Jonathan’s is a northern Muslim. 
But it is not so simple. There are non-northerners who would ordinarily balk at voting for a ‘northerner’ but who support Buhari because he can presumably fight corruption. There are northern supporters of Jonathan who are not part of the region’s Christian minorities.
Last week, I was indifferent about the elections, tired of television commercials and contrived controversies. There were rumors that the election, which was scheduled for February 14, would be postponed, but there always are; our political space is a lair of conspiracies. I was uninterested in the apocalyptic predictions. Nigeria was not imploding. 
We had crossed this crossroads before, we were merely electing a president in an election bereft of inspiration. And the existence of a real opposition party that might very well win was a sign of progress in our young democracy.
Then, on Saturday, the elections were delayed for six weeks. Nigeria’s security agencies, we were told, would not be available to secure the elections because they would be fighting Boko Haram and needed at least another month and a half to do so. (Nigeria has been fighting Boko Haram for five years, and military leaders recently claimed to be ready for the elections.)
Even if the reason were not so absurd, Nigerians are politically astute enough to know that the postponement has nothing to do with security. It is a flailing act of desperation from an incumbent terrified of losing. There are fears of further postponements, of ploys to illegally extend Jonathan’s term. 
In a country with the specter of a military coup always hanging over it, the consequences could be dangerous. My indifference has turned to anger. What a staggeringly self-serving act of contempt for Nigerians. It has cast, at least for the next six weeks, the darkest possible shroud over our democracy: uncertainty.
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Entertainment

Most Influential Igbo Personalities: Did your favourite celeb make the list?

A-list celebrities like Genevieve Nnaji, Basketmouth, Don Jazzy, P-square have made the ‎Most Influential Igbo Personalities (MIIP) list.

‎The MIIP book released early this year was published to celebrate entertainers of Igbo descent who have made their marks in their respective industries.
‎Also featured in the book are Stephanie Okereke-Linus, Rita
Dominic, Chinedu Ikedieze, Osita Iheme, Saint Obi, Frank Edwards, J Martins, Nkem Owoh, KCee, Flavour, Jim Iyke, Okey Bakassi, Naeto C, D’Prince, Patience Ozokwor, Charles ‎Awurum, John Okafor,  Phyno, Uche Ogbuagu, Ugo‎ Stevenson, Amayo Uzo Philips, Crystal Jane Cosmas (CJ Mama), Andy Ike.
Award-winning Journalist and
Publisher, DayLight online newspaper, Azuh Amatus stated  that ‎ “The Igbo region is currently referred to as the entertainment capital of Nigeria.”

He also pointed that, ” ‎The success recorded in the Nigerian entertainment industry today was highly contributed by Igbo citizens; the industry.  

He added, “It wouldn’t have been complete without their immense contributions, giant strides and commitment. This is one of the reasons this book should be commended.

“In all spheres of human endeavours, they have touched the nation and those of them in the entertainment industry should be lauded and appreciated therefore I strongly believe that this book represents what they have done and will continue to do for Igbo tribe and Nigeria in general,” he concluded.

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Entertainment

Khedira and Rodriguez to be fined for attending Ronaldo's birthday.

Still on Cristiano  Ronaldo’s 30th birthday party matter! ‎ So some of his teammates who were with him on that Saturday night are going to face the music.
Spanish media report that injured Los Blancos players; Luka Modric, Sami Khedira and James Rodriguez would be fined for breaching the
club’s Code of Conduct by ignoring medical advice and attending the party.

Albeit Luka Modric offered apologies for attending the event, others might not escape punishment.



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Entertainment

"He's smart and educated enough". Former President Obasanjo declares support for Buhari.

If you read his “I am no more OBJ, I am now ABJ (Anybody But Jonathan) comment few weeks back, then this news shouldn’t surprise you. The only part I find awkward is him choosing an international event to spell it out.”
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 Former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, at the launch of his book ‘My Watch’ in Nairobi, Kenya on Tuesday publicly expressed support for the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler and presidential candidate.
The PDP chieftain  affirmed that “the circumstances Buhari will be working under if he wins the election are different from the one he worked under before, where he was both the executive and the legislature – he knows that.”
He continued, “It’s a question of leadership – political and military. He’s smart enough. He’s educated enough. He’s experienced enough. Why shouldn’t I support him?”
And on the recent postponement  of elections in Nigeria, he said “The signs are not auspicious. I don’t know whether a script is being played.”

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