On the Road

Sorry I have been missing in action for a while. The reason is I'm traveling. Having graduated now I have to move out of school and that's been such a hassle.

I'm really really tired and still have a lot to do. Will be back once I'm done.

Day 1 - Yourself

The doctor said I had to stay in bed and rest so I'm doing this 30 Day Drawing Challenge that I found on the Internet. Some people on Tumblr were doing it and that's how I found it. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun as long as I don't get lazy and drop out halfway through.

Oh, and I'm tagging Prism of an Immigrant, Yagazie Emezi, Nogo Blogs, and D Pencil Pusher to do this with me too if they want since I know they like to draw.

Click here to see the challenge

Here's my entry.

It says on Day 1, you have to draw yourself.

It's meeeeeeeeee!!! ^_^

As you can see, I am a terrible painter and I haven't been practising portraiture as often as I should.

Eyaaaaa!!!

Next up (Day 2 - My favourite animal)

Sick in Hospital

Again. This time I have food poisoning. I just finished throwing my guts up and now I'm waiting for the doctor. The nurse has set up a needle for a drip on my arm so I guess I'm going to have an IV put in.

Earlier I was panicking because the abdominal pain was so severe and then it spread to my chest and my heart was thumping wildly and I couldn't breathe. I feel a bit better after vomiting.

I fell asleep eating some Chinese food last night and this morning I figured it would be okay to continue eating it. I should have warmed it but I didn't. In retrospect that was a huge mistake. Now I have food poisoning.

Sent from my Blackberry on the Sprint 4G network.

Update:

Thanks so much everyone. I'm feeling much better. I've been discharged from the hospital and am now back in my dorm. The doctor gave me a bunch of prescriptions and said to rest and get plenty of fluids so that's what I'm doing at the mo.

The Making of the Nigerian Blog Awards

If I've been somewhat scarce for the past few days it's because I was furiously trying to get thirty badges ready in time for the 2011 Nigerian Blog Awards.

I offered to do them in December last year and the original plan was to start months in advance so I could finish them all at a leisurely pace but a combination of procrastination and disaster made sure I was drawing right down to the last minute when the winners were announced on Twitter.

After accidentally deleting my original sketches, (and crying a good deal about it too) I was drawing blanks on what to draw for each award. (Heh heh, pun intended). It didn't even help that some of the categories were really really hard to visualize (prime example - Most Inspiring. Grrr!! I hated that one).

Time was running out so I did what every good artist does when they've come up short on ideas - recycle an old drawing.

Meet Emeka:

Emeka

I'm guessing now that the awards are over you've seen him around quite a bit huh?

Yeah you have:

Oh, and by the way, I named him Emeka because I have never met an Emeka in my life that didn't have a square head.

Emeka is a personal project that I'm still working on (he's not quite perfected yet) but he's a modification of the original "Little Yoruba Boy" drawing I did a while back. Basically he's a "dress-up" character I created and designed to star in a series of art projects that I'm still working on but I realised that he was perfect for the awards especially since the days were going by and there were still no badges. 

Long story short, with a little (ok, may be a lot of ) modification, (and stress, and lack of sleep), bit by bit Emeka became the badges.

Best Poetry or Writing Blog" Emeka

"Best Political Blog" Emeka

Look at all the little Emekas just freshly inked!! ^_^

Each of my Emekas dressed up as the respective award I'd put him in charge of, and together, the Emekas saved the day!

And there you have it.

The Emekas of the Nigerian Blog Awards

(click to enlarge)

(Note: There are other Emekas. These are just the ones that I made for the awards)

That's all folks.

UPDATE:

Which THREE Emekas are your favourite?

Memories of Japanese Boy and What I Want in a Man

Whenever I think about my relationship with HL (Japanese Boy) and how it deteriorated and ultimately ended, I feel really sad. Thinking about him makes me cry and everything about it makes me sad. A lot of things happened on both sides and I think at some point it was clear that the only option was to just not be around each other any more.

Even so, I miss him.

A lot of women have mental "lists" of characteristics they want in the men they date or marry. I don't have a list but then again my track record of relationships with men is worse than a bomb in a septic tank so what do I know?

I've been thinking about things that make a man desirable and to be perfectly honest, I love who I love and that's pretty much it but I just realised that small and insignificant as it may be, one of the reasons I was so reluctant to let HL go was that he's an artist.

Somehow I just think that that was something special we had in common; that we had together. He would look through my sketch books and I'd look through his. He'd bitch about all the stuff he had to draw before so-so date and I would understand. Sure, he was definitely more musically inclined / into music than I am - He's a DJ and listens to music ALL DAY from like 6am till he goes to sleep, even in class; I'm not really into music although I like a bunch of artists and songs and I used to play the piano and the recorder - but we understood each other's artistic needs and I don't know if it counts or not but it meant a lot to me.

I'll probably end up with whoever I end up with but I feel like if I had children and they couldn't draw I would be heartbroken. Somehow I have this fantasy of me and my husband and my kids drawing and painting and being arty together so maybe artistic ability is sort of secretly / subconsciously one of the genetic factors on my list.

I always thought I didn't have a list but now that I think about it, maybe I do. Maybe I have a list of one.

My Language Challenge Entry

Here's the entry for my Language Challenge. I'm speaking Igbo and the transcript is provided underneath. ^_^

Please note: I use "mbwa/mgba" (match - as in contest - ) here to represent "Challenge" and "aba" (hook used to join two things) to represent "links" (as in URLs, web links, etc since links join one point on the Internet to another).

Language Challenge 2 by sugabelly

Transcript:

Hi .... It's Sugabelly... This is my post. I want to thank all the people who've said they'll participate in my Language Challenge.

Everyone please do your best because it will be really great for us all to hear all the various Nigerian languages on Blogville.

I'm really happy because we've already got a few entries in three languages: Sting did hers in Pidgin, Aseni did hers in Yoruba, and IphyIgboGurl did hers in Igbo.

Meanwhile, I've put links on the Language Challenge page so you can see who's already done theirs.

I hope that people on Blogville will do more posts in their languages so that we can learn.

Is there anything else? Is there anything else I can.... anything else I want to say? No.

Alright! I'm done! ^_^

Sugabelly's Language Challenge

Here are the rules:

1. It DOES NOT MATTER how well you can speak your language. The goal is to speak regardless. So don't worry if you don't speak that well or you have to include lots of English words. ALL language levels are welcome.

2. Video posts or Audio posts are strongly preferred. This is because the point is to hear and enjoy the spoken language. Written posts are frowned upon but will be accepted too. ^_^

3. Please always provide a translation for your readers of other ethnicities! Translations should be in English and can be in the form of captions under a video post, or written transcripts for audio and written posts.

4. Please tag each participating post as - language challenge - and post the link here in the comments so I can link to it and make all of them easy to find.

5. Please encourage other Nigerian bloggers to post in Nigerian languages.

If you're in, let me know. At some point in the hopefully near future, I will draw a Language Challenge badge that you can post on your blog as a reward for participating.

Thoughts? Suggestions?