To help you start this week on an optimistic note, I'm going to share with you the story of a man who at the age of 65 with just $105 and a chicken idea, built an industry leading franchise. 

image: colonelsanders.com

I really like the way his story was laid out on Ronford.net and I won't attempt to edit it or combine it will other sources. I will simply paste it here for your reading pleasure and, hopefully, to inspire you to never give up.

"

Colonel Harland Sanders, born September 9, 1890, actively began franchising his chicken business at the age of 65. Now, the Kentucky Fried Chicken® business he started has grown to be one of the largest retail food service systems in the world. And Colonel Sanders, a quick service restaurant pioneer, has become a symbol of entrepreneurial spirit.

More than two billion of the Colonel's "finger lickin' good" chicken dinners are served annually. And not just in North America. The Colonel's cooking is available in more than 82 countries around the world.

When the Colonel was six, his father died. His mother was forced to go to work, and young Harland had to take care of his three-year-old brother and baby sister. This meant doing much of the family cooking. By the age of seven, he was a master of a score of regional dishes.

At age 10, he got his first job working on a nearby farm for $2 a month. When he was 12, his mother remarried and he left his home near Henryville, Ind., for a job on a farm in Greenwood, Ind. He held a series of jobs over the next few years, first as a 15-year-old streetcar conductor in New Albany, Ind., and then as a 16-year-old private, soldiering for six months in Cuba.

After that he was a railroad fireman, studied law by correspondence, practiced in justice of the peace courts, sold insurance, operated an Ohio River steamboat ferry, sold tires, and operated service stations. When he was 40, the Colonel began cooking for hungry travelers who stopped at his service station in Corbin, Ky. He didn't have a restaurant then, but served folks on his own dining table in the living quarters of his service station.

As more people started coming just for food, he moved across the street to a motel and restaurant that seated 142 people. Over the next nine years, he perfected his secret blend of 11 herbs and spices and the basic cooking technique that is still used today.

Sander's fame grew. Governor Ruby Laffoon made him a Kentucky Colonel in 1935 in recognition of his contributions to the state's cuisine. And in 1939, his establishment was first listed in Duncan Hines' "Adventures in Good Eating."

In the early 1950s a new interstate highway was planned to bypass the town of Corbin. Seeing an end to his business, the Colonel auctioned off his operations. After paying his bills, he was reduced to living on his $105 Social Security checks.

Confident of the quality of his fried chicken, the Colonel devoted himself to the chicken franchising business that he started in 1952. He traveled across the country by car from restaurant to restaurant, cooking batches of chicken for restaurant owners and their employees. If the reaction was favorable, he entered into a handshake agreement on a deal that stipulated a payment to him of a nickel for each chicken the restaurant sold. By 1964, Colonel Sanders had more than 600 franchised outlets for his chicken in the United States and Canada. That year, he sold his interest in the U.S. company for $2 million to a group of investors including John Y. Brown Jr., who later was governor of Kentucky from 1980 to 1984. The Colonel remained a public spokesman for the company. In 1976, an independent survey ranked the Colonel as the world's second most recognizable celebrity.

Under the new owners, Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation grew rapidly. It went public on March 17, 1966, and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange on January 16, 1969. More than 3,500 franchised and company-owned restaurants were in worldwide operation when Heublein Inc. acquired KFC Corporation on July 8, 1971, for $285 million.

Kentucky Fried Chicken became a subsidiary of R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc. (now RJR Nabisco, Inc.), when Heublein Inc. was acquired by Reynolds in 1982. KFC was acquired in October 1986 from RJR Nabisco, Inc. by PepsiCo, Inc., for approximately $840 million.

In January 1997, PepsiCo, Inc. announced the spin-off of its quick service restaurants -- KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut -- into an independent restaurant company. The spin-off should be completed during the fourth quarter 1997. The new restaurant company, TRICON Global Restaurants, Inc., will be the world's largest restaurant system with more than 29,500 KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants in nearly 100 countries and territories.

Until he was fatally stricken with leukemia in 1980 at the age of 90, the Colonel traveled 250,000 miles a year visiting the KFC empire he founded.

And it all began with a 65-year-old gentleman who used his $105 Social Security check to start a business.

"

Yesterday, I watched the documentary of Microsoft. How it all began in 1975 when a 21 year old and a 19 year old took a chance and wrote a letter to a big company telling them they could build software for their product. And that was how Microsoft began. The company asked for a prototype, Bill Gates and Paul Allen worked day and night to make a demo software, finished it on the plane ride to the big company. They got paid and told to make more software. Bill Gates took a break from Harvard. The personal computer world was just beginning then. Only the geekiest of the geeks paid attention to it, and only the nerds were involved. It was the fringe. Filled with youngsters with no corporate experience -- university dropouts, nerds, students and tech freaks.

The documentary showed how Microsoft progressed year after year since that 1975 deal. No structure, no marketing, no incorporation, little legal stuff and like a pet project. Looking in retrospect, no one would have predicted it would last this long let alone become one of the world's biggest company and producing the world's richest man. They simply built software for their fellow tech geeks and a few big companies. Three years after they formed a partnership and registered the company. For 5 years, everyone in Microsoft was a programmer. No business guy. No lawyer. No finance guy. For 8 years Bill Gates did all the accounting.

Then, the computer industry was the next big thing. Like the petroleum industry in the mid 19th century and the auto industry at the start of the 20th century. As Steve Jobs said, the next big thing is never started by the big companies, by experienced business men or by popular people. If you're looking for the next big thing, check the fringe. In Nigeria, check the sociopreneurs and the Nigerian startup community.

image: robonwriting.com

But in the world, the next big thing is the renewable energy industry. It started as an obsession of ambitious university professors and graduate students. But now it's much bigger. The big energy companies are beginning to notice and are helpless. The only thing they can do is buy up these much smaller guys who are building the future. In fact, the former parent company of Julius Berger Nigeria, Bilfinger SE exited Nigeria because they are transitioning into an engineering and services group with special focus on servicing the Energy industry. They know that the next revolution is going to happen there. Developed countries are placing a cap on emissions. Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, nuclear thermal stations are now seen as a ticking bomb. The amount of research money spent on harnessing energy from eco-friendly renewable sources is mind blowing. Trillions of dollars. It's the inevitable future.

If I had to give this post another title it would be: Le Fabuleux Destin de Maya Angelou. In English, like the movie Amélie, it would translate to Maya. Ordinarily, it should translate to The Fabulous Life of Maya Angelou.

image: businessinsider.com

Born on April 4, 1928, as Marguerite Annie Johnson.
Her parents separated in 1931 and she was sent to live with her paternal grandmother.
She was sent back to live with her mother in 1935.
Her mom's boyfriend raped her at the age of 8. In 1937. She told her brother, who told the rest of the family. The man was convicted but jailed for only one day. But someone was less lenient than the law and murdered him 4 days after his release. This shocked Angelou so much that she became mute for 5 years believing her voice led to his murder. She was sent back to her grandmother.
Again, in 1941, she returned to her mom. She began her dance and drama education.
In 1942, she dropped out of high school to become San Francisco's first black female cable car conductor (equivalent of danfo conductor).
In 1943, she returned to high school, became pregnant at the age of 17. Began her career as a single mother, waitress and cook.
In 1951, she married a Greek electrician, aspiring musician and former sailor, Tosh Angelos. And became a professional dancer.
In 1954, her marriage to Tosh ended. She became a nightclub singer. Took up the stage name Maya Angelou and began a two year tour of Europe.
In 1957, she recorded her first album, Miss Calypso.
In 1958, she joined a writing club and began her writing career.
In 1960, she joined Martin Luther King Jr's civil rights campaign.
In 1961, she moved with her son to Cairo, Egypt, to become associate editor of a weekly newspaper, The Arab Observer.
In 1962, she moved to Accra, Ghana, to become an administrator at the University of Ghana. She also became a feature editor for The African Review, a freelance writer for the Ghanaian Times, a broadcaster for Radio Ghana, and a performer at Ghana's National Theatre. Met Malcolm X in Ghana and they became close friends.
In 1964, she returned to US to help Malcolm X build a civil rights organization.
In 1967, she began writing poems and plays again. And was living off stipends from a friend.
In 1968, she was asked by Martin Luther King Jr. to help organize a match. King was murdered on her 40th birthday, April 4. Again, she suffered a depressing shock which on recovering from brought out the genius in her. According to her biographer, Marcia Ann Gillespie,  "If 1968 was a year of great pain, loss, and sadness, it was also the year when America first witnessed the breadth and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius". Maya Angelou, without any previous experience, wrote, produced and narrated a ten-part series of documentaries. And also began work on her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
In 1969, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published and brought her international recognition and acclaim.

In 1972, she produced the first screenplay by a black woman.

In 1973, she married Paul de Feu, a carpenter. Began writing lots of articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, plays and poetry. Also got an award nomination for her role in a movie titled Look Away.

In 1974, she published Gather Together in my Name.

In 1976, she published Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas.

In 1977, she bagged a lot of awards and over thirty honorary degrees from colleges and universities from all over the world. She also met Oprah Winfrey around this time, later to become her close friend and mentor.

In 1981, she divorced Paul de Feu. She got a lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And began her university teaching career.

In 1993, Maya Angelou recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at President John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. The recording of the poem won a Grammy Award.

In 1995, she recited another poem A Brave and Startling Truth which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.

In 1996, she directed a feature film, Down in the Delta. And received Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy Association National Award.

In 2000, she created a successful collection of products for a greetings card company Hallmark, including greeting cards and decorative household items.

In 2002, she published her 6th autobiography, A Song Flung Up to Heaven.

In 2006, she received Mother Teresa Award

In 2008, she campaigned for Hilary Clinton. Some of her campaign ads featured Angelou's endorsement. After Obama won the primaries, she campaigned for him. She also became the first recipient of Hope for Peace and Justice Voice of Peace award.

In 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers and career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

In 2013, she published her seventh autobiography.

In 2014, she died at the age of 86.

Talk about a life full of achievements! Over 30 honorary degrees for someone who didn't attend any college/university. Her real life sort of began at the age of 40, when she wrote her first autobiography after the shocking death of Martin Luther King Jr. She grew up at a time when racism was rife in US.

Her whole life can be summarized in this amazing poem of hers:

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

In the book Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston, the part that had the biggest impact on me is in the foreword by Paul Graham, where he said: 

"... I think there's a general principle at work here: the less energy people expend on performance, the more they expend on appearances to compensate. More often than not, the energy they expend on seeming impressive makes their actual performance worse. A few years ago I read an article in which a car magazine modified the 'sports' model of some production car to get the fastest possible standing quarter mile [speed]. You know how they did it? They cut off all the crap the manufacturer had bolted onto the car to make it look fast."

image: gpevolved.com

Even growing up has children, the brainiest at school work is often the least presentable kid. And the coolest are often the dumbest, academically. Then we moved on to the corporate world; doctors, professors and engineers don't make the celebrities list. Comedians have the best (appearing) business cards. 

People whose jobs require more of brain power end up sacrificing a lot on the appearance side. They become like that stripped sports car. Optimized for performance rather than sleek appearance. While people whose paychecks depend on how good they look and how smooth they talk end up giving up a lot in the hard skills section. It's almost always performance versus appearance rather than performance and appearance. A huge improvement in one is always at the cost of the other.

So which should you go for? Performance or appearance?
Here are some quick rules to help you make the right choice.

1. Like they say: you can't be poor and ugly; pick a struggle. If you'll need surgical help to advance well in the appearance industry, then stick to performance. Be crazy good at whatever you have an edge in. Be so good that people will pay you so well that when you clock 80 a 20 year old girl will want you as her life partner.
2. If you find hard work too hard for your delicate self. And your beauty opens more doors than your brain at a ratio of 9 to 1. Please pick appearance over performance. Stick to what you are good at.
3. If you've got both, which is same as being plain. When you are looking your best, the clothes get more compliments than you. And your major talent is being able to work hard. I'm sorry you don't have the luxury of making a choice. You will have to try everything.
4. If you've got none. You need to stand up to whoever is making you feel that way. There is no one who hasn't got some beauty and/or brain. You need to get your self-confidence back. Then go figure out where you fit in the three options above.

Finally, don't bother asking me where I fit. Not because I won't tell you but because it doesn't matter. All that matters is that I'm trying to join the group 2 guys. There's nothing like the easy life.

The only thing we should be afraid of is standing still. Especially in the important aspects of our lives: career, family, friendship and our walk with God.

I'll use an illustration a fellow Toastmaster once gave:

When we travel on our roads in Nigeria, we maneuver around the numerous potholes we see. Over time, we become experts at avoiding the potholes and become comfortable with seeing them daily and almost everywhere. But for each day we do nothing about the potholes, nature widens them for us. The rain, sunshine and occasional bump into them make them wider. Then one day they get so big that they turn a 3 lane road into a tortuous single lane road, and lead to accidents. And we are forced to pay them attention, and fix them after a lot of damage had been done and at a very high cost. While we could have avoided the human and financial tragedy if we had fixed them when they were just a fist wide.
We stood still and let the small potholes grow big to become an emergency. And it's almost the same thing we do about the roads in our lives. The roads of friendship, family union, career fulfillment, spirituality and personal development. We stand still and let the smallest issues grow into an emergency before we do anything.

The title for this post is taken from a Chinese quote which says, "Be not afraid of growing slowly, only be afraid of standing still." And there's a wealth of wisdom in that short statement. Nothing in life is meant to stand still. Even neurologists tell us that the nerves in our brain work on the principle of "use it or lose it". And we've got a great saying about life itself, "Life goes on." Relationships that aren't growing are dying. No middle ground. Whatever is not getting better is only getting worse. 

The bulk of the problems we face in life are from the little things we stood still about and are surprised to see grow into an emergency. Like the mother of an armed robber who is sobbing uncontrollably and tearing herself apart at the news of the arrest of her only child; she must have stood still as the child was growing up. Or the man getting an emergency call at work about his wife's decision to file for a divorce; it must have begun as a small pothole. 

As hard as it is to try to fix all the small issues in our lives, we shouldn't be afraid to try. Even going at them slowly. Especially the issues that surround the most important parts of our lives. The only thing we should be afraid of is standing still.

I'm writing this post at past midnight. And that's how I now start each day. Most days, I start the blog post at 10pm or 11pm and continue till 1am. After scheduling the blog post to post at 7am, so that my email service will pick it up at 8am and mail to everyone who subscribed to my blog; I go back to reading or practicing some more programming. After an hour or two, I log every expense I made that day, then, I read my bible passage for the day, pray and go to sleep. 

I wake between 7am and 11am. Read a page in my French self-study book, check my emails. If I have an appointment, I begin to rush (in slow motion) to ensure that I don't leave home too late. Usually, when I leave for appointments I come back home late at night. But when I don't have an appointment, I open Outlook and reply to some of my emails. Do some work. Skip breakfast. Take lunch. Start reading on programming and practicing. Take video classes. Take online lessons. Take my bath. Go back to reading. Then between 9pm and 11pm I take my supper. And begin writing a blog post. Till it's past midnight.

image: rapgenius.com

Now you might wonder: why is there more reading than work? It's because I have this grand plan to start Nigeria's first real online stock brokerage and analysis portal. To open a stock brokerage account will be as easy as opening a Facebook account (though will require scanned copies of your utility bill, ID card and 2 signed forms), but you won't need to come to our physical office. Then it will have the Nigerian equivalent of Morningstar.com You will be able to do all the stock analysis and the comparisons you want right on the site. I have already begun gathering the raw data I need. It's my big step to achieving a much bigger goal, to someday start a hedge fund.

But why don't I just find someone to build the software and focus on the business part? Well, there are 2 reasons:

1. I'm not business-oriented. I'm only good at getting things done but not good at getting paid for it. I'm more like an artist, especially a painter who would rather spend all day painting than discussing business with potential clients. In fact, I recently met an old entrepreneur who told me that what I need is a manager, someone who would handle the business negotiations on my behalf and get his fixed cut but owns no part of my biz till I learn to do it myself. However, I'm sticking to what I'm good at. And I'm good at learning to do things from scratch myself. Working with other people stymies my creativity. I love working alone, hearing only my own breath in the room. And I would rather take the long route to success than trade that luxury for a co-founder.
2. I don't have definite business plan. There's no structure to guide the relationship between me and any business partner. And I can't hire a freelance developer as I don't have all the pieces together, and I plan to build the site slowly and continuously. Though, in the end, I will have to hire people but it's definitely not now.

So I've been learning HTML5, CSS3, ASP.Net MVC web applications, JavaScript, Windows Phone App development and cloud services. Spending more than half of my average day on them.

We all know that if you laid all the economists in the world end to end they still wouldn't reach a conclusion. Of all the technical books I have read, the ones I often find myself arguing with the authors are books written by economists. I'm not really an argumentative guy. You will (almost) never find me arguing with anyone. But I like it when people pick a stance and stick to it. I hate to see someone drifting ceaselessly between two opposing opinions. And I'm yet to read any book on Economics -- micro, macro or international economics -- that the author stuck to one stance. And I would rather buy a book on finance and investment (my favourite technical field) written by an Engineer than buy one written by an economist. One of the books I dislike most and wished I hadn't bought is A Random Walk Down Wall Street. It was written by an economics professor. I didn't gain any useful knowledge from the book. But today's post is on best statement I have ever heard made by an economist.

"But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again." John Maynard Keynes. My favourite part of is "... In the long run we are all dead ..." 

Here's a little more background to that quote. In Economics there is what we call Business Cycle and Long Run Economic Growth. Business cycle is more like a theory that states that there will always be fat years and lean years for a nation. And Long Run Economic Growth states that fat years will more than make up for the lean years, that in the end we will always be better off. So now you understand why Keynes said when economists focus on the long run they will end up doing very little (become almost useless). It's because we all know that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, rainbow after the storm, and bigger boom after every bust.

image: revisionguru.co.uk

Keynes is saying that though the long run will definitely come, it may not benefit us (but I think he meant some of us, especially England). If we keep leaving everything to chance and spend our time coming up with theories to give us hope that things will soon change for the better, when it finally does we might not be alive. Or it might benefit only our neighbours. But most importantly we would have lost the chance to make it better quicker and on our own terms, afterall, regardless of what we do it would become better.

Now let's leave economics for the economists and take a closer look at our individual lives. Are you also long run obsessed? Leaving a huge part of your happiness and progress to chance? Hoping the end of the tunnel is soon and the storm will soon be over? First, there is nothing wrong with that. Like we Yorubas say, "A chicken that is alive can still eat corn". If you keep your optimism you will almost definitely see a better day. But there's something better. If you don't just stay hopeful and alive, but also put in an immense effort to better your state. If you try to control your current affairs more and leave less to chance, you will be better off soon and more assuredly. Because in the long run we (might) all be dead.

But you'll have to sort out your accommodation, feeding and living outside the plane for at least 10 days before the next plane ride. Still it's a very cheap way to travel the entire world, visiting all the continents except Antarctica. Taking about 12 plane rides, that's less than $500 for a plane ride from New York to Tokyo.

Here's my recommended itinerary, booked using OneWorld  

Start from Lagos and head to New York (visit South America before next trip)

From New York, head to Tokyo. Visit some Asian countries.

Tokyo to Sydney, then Dubai. Finally visit EU countries via Paris. Return to Lagos.

The biggest problem is that you'll have to do the herculean task of getting visas to all the countries you plan to visit before leaving Nigeria. Unlike US and European citizens, most countries don't give us visa on arrival. You can't just show up in their country and request for a visa. Special thanks to our terrible global reputation. View the Global Visa Restriction Index by Henley & Partners. Central African Republic, Togo, Niger, Ghana, Zimbabwe and lots of other African countries rank better than us, they have less travel/visa restrictions.

But that shouldn't stop you from planning to visit the world. With a good visa agent, you can get visas to (almost) all the countries you want to visit.

P.S. If you don't get any blog post from me on August 1 2014, then know that a miracle has happened and I'm on a world tour.

The beauty of youth is that the reset button works.

image: ric.edu

All my heroes have one thing in common -- they've had to press the reset buttons growing up as an adventurous youth. I got the frankness in my writings from Mark Twain, the humor mixed with disregard for public opinions from Oscar Wilde and the passion to keep writing daily from George Bernard Shaw. Mark Twain generously used his reset button, switching careers like clothes throughout his youth. Oscar Wilde followed all his passions. George Bernard Shaw wrote on everything that interested him and wrote daily. They spent their whole youth exploring and hitting on the reset button when they felt the need to. And over 100 years later, some adventurous boy in Nigeria (me) is finding the courage to go after his dream life from them. And putting his reset button to a good use.

My favorite movies are movies about sailors, be it an animation mpvie like Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas or regular movies like the Pirates of The Caribbean. I can't remember how old I was when I read Treasure Island. In fact, my favourite movie, an animation, is loosely based on that book: Treasure Planet.  What I love most about sailors is that they get to experience life like no other person on earth. They end up having what I call -- world skills. Self-reliant, incredibly multi-skilled, great sense of humor and always staying in trouble's way. Obviously that wouldn't apply to all sailors, but it applies to the ones I who interest me. Of all the military men, including Napoleon Bonaparte and Alexander the Great, the one whose live enthused me the most is the Scottish sailor and american naval John Paul Jones. As a sailor you are forever young and every major expedition is like pressing the reset button.

As a youth you should value learning and experience over gain. You've got a lot of energy and creative ideas, you shouldn't be afraid to try them out. No matter how badly things turn out, the reset button works. Most of the successful people struggled throughout their youth trying this and that. Yet they ended up being very successful and proud of the valuable life lessons and experience they got struggling through their youth time frequently pressing the reset button. Youth time is the most defining part of a man's lifetime, the best way to invest it is in quality learning and memorable experiences. Because the beauty of youth is that the reset button works.

Ever wondered why our beans still need to be manually picked and separated from stones before we cook them? The answer is simple: we seldom take up challenges and do things right. All our creative thinking starts and stops with fixing our family issues. When it comes to big economic and technological issues, we simply wait for US, Germany and China to find the solution and export it to us. The only exception I know of is the poundo yam. And we could do it a lot better if we kept the thinking cap that lead to it.

IQ by Nations (eutimes.net)

Try imagining what it would be like if Henry Ford hadn't taken up the car challenge? Or if the Wright brothers hadn't dedicated their lives to figuring out how to fly? Or Thomas Edison had lived a more regular me and my family only kind of life? What if Bill Gates hadn't dropped out of Harvard to take up the PC challenge? What if Steve Jobs had retired at 40 and quit forcing himself to build the world's most innovative company? What if Dangote had gone full-time into politics or put all his money in some safe foreign account/investment instead of taking up the industrial challenge in Nigeria? 

Most importantly, what if you begin to take up the big challenges you complain about and set to do things right? We too can be creative. We can build original things (beyond the popular moi-moi) that people in other places in the world will be grateful to us for. We can solve our own problems -- technological and economic. We can make an automated process of bagging beans (like it's being done for rice) that will ensure that no stone or bean pod slips into the bagged beans.We can make the most of the abundant natural resources we have that are less common in the developed world and, hence, have no technology made abroad for us to import. We can begin to further the Solar electricity technology to harness the bountiful sunshine we get year round. We can begin to think for ourselves beyond politics, national and corporate, beyond immediate family needs and beyond being just a consumer. Celebrities in US start businesses, innovative businesses, with their money. Celebrities in Nigeria act like the peak of life is in buying cars, dubai wedding, expensive jewelry, and posing for pictures beside the foreign celebrities. What do they want the owners of the companies that produce those cars, private jets, 5-star hotels and jewelry to feel like? Like they are gods who make the dreams of the richest Nigerian celebrities come true. 

Everything starts and ends with the mind. If we've got a poor mind, we'll never have a better class of people regardless of their bank account. We will always remain poor, intellectually and materially, in the comity of nations. We will continually be seen, by some racist, as an evidence of human evolution. But worst of all, we will continually depend on US and China for everything from the clothes we wear to the companies to work for and to the security of our lives. Every diminutive talk about us in the foreign media will be validated by our own national actions.

If we don't take up challenges and do things right. If we don't start as individuals to take responsibilities for not just our lives but our community and the nation as a whole. All that the world will know about us are our brain dead politicians, childish celebrities and daredevil criminals.