HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Many thanks to all those that have patronised this blog, but it's time to move on...to WORDPRESS!

You can read me now on http://ekbensah.wordpress.com, and encourage others to read me, too!:-)

Have a GREAT and prosperous year!

360 Degrees of Blogging Separation

The end of the year always gets like this, when you are trying to wrap things up at work, but have to reconcile it with the usual blogging. When you top it up with an imminent general election that seems to have eclipsed even Christmas festivities, you arrive at a point when you realise you are dealing with an incendiary brain tongue-twister that only YOU can sort out.

Let's just say I have the pictures for Accradailyphoto, and the entries for my other blogs--but I JUST haven't made time to write them out as I have been a little more than preoccupied with helping contribute to a cause close to my heart--including my professional work ofcourse.

I should get a picture up by Friday and maybe some small entries here and there.

I should bounce back with a vengeance next week. Indulge me and forgive me, too!

Thank you for your patronage!360

Back on 20th October

Feeling burned out. Currently in the green, lush, and touristic region of my country, located in the Central region, where I am here to attend the funeral of a relative.

But it is also a brilliant boon to the jaded. I am getting plenty of food for thought on life and death.

My blogging will be sporadic as I rest to return with vigour on the 20th of October.

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Thus Ends My Suit Experience

With the closing of the ACP Conference, I duly go back to wearing shirt and trousers, leaving behind my trusted jacket, which lends me a smarter look.

I don't know about you, but I like my suit, and not just because I saw my Dad in it throughout my formative years, but because I have always felt that it in no way does it substitute your attitude and your mind.

For now, it's goodbye to the suit till we meet next time:-)

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The Strange Case of the Elusive President

Fact is: it is not so strange, and the Sudanese president as not as elusive as the title might suggest. Who can blame me, though, when I see someone reading a GHANAWEB article with bold headline "Al-Bashir Skips Town", and I ask for a copy?

As I freeze my behind in this excessively-cool air-conditioned PRESS CENTRE located in a tent adjacent to the press conference on the final day of the ongoing Sixth Session of the Brussels-based ACP Group, clearly, someone is feeling the heat!

It appears the only reason why Bashir was able to make his speech yesterday on Ghanaian soil has everything to do with the fact that the Sudanese president was assured by Ghanaian authorities that he would not be arrested, despite the fact that he was on the soil of an INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT county.

I am suddenly reminded of Charles Taylor who was arrested by Nigerian authorities in 2006, not too far from Cameroun. It coincided with the witnessing by Ghanaians of the country's first solar eclipse in many decades.

Even the stars might have been mad at his blaze of gory in his home country of Liberia!

In that instance, too, Ghanaian authorities refused to arrest the man when he came to Ghana.

Do you smell a pattern of pusillanimity here, or simply a desire to maintain positive diplomatic relations-- something the late former Foreign Secretary of the UK Robin Cook called "constructive engagement"...

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Happy Birthday "Big Bro'" Fenix

Didn't I tell you? Fenix, our most caring and loving family pet dog, a beautiful golden retriever, is now older than me! He turns five dog years today, which would make him 35 human years!:-)

No longer will he demand that I puta leash on him before he goes for a walk. No longer will he jump excitedly when he sees his leash! No longer...!!

Oh but he will, 'cos he hates getting out of the gate <i>without</i> the darned thing!

Happy birthday, mate!
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Soporific Days

Today was one of those days when despite electronic admonishments from emails urging one to *carpe diem*, it was just downright impossible to do so!

It was also a day when I felt I was in much-need of the leave I've been contemplating. The office is that much quieter with my immediate boss himself on leave and therefore being left unsupervised, but before he left, he put down an outline of outstanding issues, which include a revision of an article I am writing on mining codes revision and regional integration.

The latter is my forte; the former not. I am just not feeling sufficiently motivated to re-write that article, but I got myself a deadline of Friday, as next week, I don the press cap and cover another international conference coming to town.

It really would be in my best interests to finish it off, and just stop moaning! Sleep became me a lot today. I guess I need quite a lot of it to be back in the mood for tomw.

enjoy YOUR evening...
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(BBC) Forum for Thought: The Bearable Lightness of Being Silent

The BBC Worldservice has been running a programme on Sunday mornings called "The Forum", where intellectuals from all disciplines gather together to allow themselves to be queried on topics as vast as globalisation, global business, mathematical formulations of an African village, etc. You get the picture: wide array of issues.

Yesterday, an intervention by one Professor Trevor Cox (who works on sound engineering) featured on the one-minute-idea-to-save-the-world segment talked about the need to sometimes just - keep -quiet and switch our phones, mobiles, computers off . It had less to do with energy and more to do with getting back to a time and period when we could think without being interrupted by a text message and whatnot.

His major contention is that for business to work effectively, the quiet is very much needed.

I believe someone by the name of Carlyle said in a moment of epiphanous truth that "silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves."

The irony of this post is that I am writing it -- motivated by the desire to blog -- in a mall, where silence is virtually impossible (Celine Dion is blasting from the eatery, while muzak plays in the halls of the mall), but downright counter-productive to the business of selling all sorts of stuff!

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Many thanks...

...to all those who honoured my invites. I hope to revolutionise the blogging experience from hereonin!

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