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HELLO,
Dear
Family Members,
Friends and Visitors,
We are keeping up our resolution to update this site quarterly and to let you know what we
have updated. So, there we go. Read on.
1.
LETTERS FROM USA 15
Bunmi has not written home for
awhile. Wrong. He has not written what could be shared onn the family
website, for awhile! Here is the latest news from the
15th edition of his letters
from the USA.
Part of his assignment at Regent
University was teaching Communications Theory and Writing the Short Film, online. He
recently had another assignment of teaching the under grads - Communication
Theory, "Face to Face" and online too. We asked him," How did your Nigerian
accent go down with your students and how did you feel standing "face to
face" in front of your students instead of anonymously online?"
He said, "It
has been exciting, tasking, time consuming, a big responsibility, a great
experience and so much more. It will be hard to describe the whole
experience in a single word -- there are so many aspects to it."
"Communication-wise, my accent isn't a problem (some even say it's all gone,
which I'm not sure I like). Some of the students at first didn't know
what to call me but as soon as I explained to them that "bunmi¨ is like
taking the "du¨ out of "dummy¨ and replacing it with a "boo¨ they grasped
the pronunciation better."
Mum, who taught school when she
was young said, "that is the way I will teach students to learn how to
pronounce a name from another language. It is a good method to illustrate an
unknown with examples from the known."
So Bunmi, that is pass mark for
you from Mum! Hope your professors will give you more generous marks than
Mum!
2. AGRICULTURE
President Obasanjo, in March
2006, went to the USA on a state visit. On that occasion, he visited the
Rockefeller Foundation to chair a meeting of Eminent Persons Group on the
forth coming African Fertiliser Summit. He said in
his speech, "Without
doubt, an African Green Revolution is desperately needed. More than 70% of
Africa’s population is directly engaged in agriculture - but our farmers
have benefited little for their toil. The simple but brilliant approach to
improve crop yields - high - yielding varieties that respond to key inputs,
especially fertilizer - still has not found its home in our vast continent
of 900 million people."
The African Fertiliser Summit was held at Abuja on 9th June to 16 June 2006.
The summit could be said to have opened the gate to the African Green
Revolution that has been talked about for so long.
3.
ARTS AND CULTURE
Have you heard of
anyone collecting more than 10 honorary degrees from institutions of higher
learning? I have not, but recently a Nigerian newspaper published this story
Achebe For 40th Honorary Doctorate
RENOWNED
novelist and author of the classic novel Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe,
received his 40th honorary degree from a Canadian university, the University
of Toronto in June.
A
statement made available from the university to The Guardian Newspaper said
that the famous writer had received honorary degrees from the United States,
England, Scotland, Africa and Canada - including Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth,
Georgetown (USA); Guelph (Canada), Witwatersrand (South Africa), Ife, Univ34sity
of Nigeria Nsukka,
University of Ibadan, University of Port Harcourt (Nigeria), Southampton Open University, Kent, Sterling
(UK).
Read the full story here...
Well, that is great.
While heartily congratulating Chinua Achebe, Elizabeth and I wondered if the
display of these awards will not create a problem for his home!
Have you read the
novel "THINGS FALL APART"? It is a great novel and now a "must read" in many
Nigerian schools.
4. OUR SOFTWARE DISCOVERIES
In the last two updates, we shared
with you two of our software discoveries namely:
-
FreeNote - a virtual
yellow note sticker;
-
Gadwin PrintScreen - a
screen capturing software;
-
EditURLs, a free
browser tool that provides the user with the capability to edit
individual URL addresses in Internet Explorer's Address Bar;
-
e-Sword, a fast and
effective Bible study tool which we enjoy using.
In this new update, we bring you a
text file cleaner. As a Webmaster and an amateur Newsletter
editor, I often search for free useful contents from the Internet.
To use those contents in my newsletters and website, they need to be
cleaned. e-Cleaner comes in handy for this. For instance, it removes
characters like ">>>>>" from text contents sent to me by email. Other
contents with choppy word wraps can also be cleaned up with this versatile
software.
See it here...
5.JOKES APART
Here is a story-joke you will like
from our JOKES APART section in this update.
It is titled:
DRAMA IN THE AIR
On a Nigerian Airways flight to London from Lagos, sometime in the 1990s, a
baby girl was born by a passenger. The stewards dubbed the new born
" a future Nigerian Airways stewardess". It was a hilarious
drama-in-the-air which you should
read.
6. FINDING LOST FRIENDS ON THE WEB
Elizabeth and I had a surprising
and pleasant experience in January this year. We had lost contact with one of
our best friends of more than 20 years! We heard from him last in 2001. But
precisely on January 31, 2006, this friend traced and found us through this
website. The story is in our Comments Pages. But here is a peak.
31 January 2006
My Dear Bani,
I have just sent you a message through your website! A very great advantage
of having a website, especially if your name is B S Oloruntoba, of which
there are few in the world. I was delighted to see a picture of you taken at
a wedding last year and you are looking just the same as ever! But your
grand-children are growing, both in number and stature!
I cannot remember when we were
last in touch. It must be three or four years ago....
We replied:
Dear Mike,
What a small world we live in!. We met last in London in the summer of 2001,
I think. It was before you moved out of the UK. Yes, there is much to discuss
and catch up on each other's life. But first, let me tell you that I have
retired from working life. I am now 77 and living quietly as
a Grand Papa in Ilorin. Elizabeth and I often remember you and Jean and
wondered where you were - Greece or Laos?. Now we know. Blah, blah, blah...
7. CHRISTIAN FORUM
"A Gift of God's Love" is a story that will warm
your heart as it did to us!. It is about the gift to a poor boy living near
a missionary post in Honduras. The gift, a set of tools, turned out to be
what the boy needed to get a job at the time it was given.
A Gift of
God's Love, will forever
make your Christian Giving blessed.
You will find it more convenient to read this newsletter on line at
https://oloruntoba0.tripod.com/second_quarter_newsletter_2006.htm
Thank you for visiting us. See you again soon.
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