This morning, I woke up to a phone call from my mother reminding me once more, in case I had forgotten that I had finished university. It was a good reminder, it felt good to go back and forth about all the many ways in which God had brought us across the Nile and to come together to celebrate the wonderfulness of it all.

Can you believe it? This time in 2005 I had all but given up hope of ever going to university. In September I started uni, only for my mother to lose her job 2 months later. I got back from Kenya this year having lost my dissertation and having work due in two weeks later. My cousin was tortured and killed. My country was on the verge of implosion. And yet, here we are. We've finished university. Who doesn't believe in miracles?

I don't know what the future holds, and to be honest, at this moment, I don't particularly care. All I know is that I have seen the mountaintop. And all God's chilren cried, Amen.

I have a bee in my bonnet. Buzz buzz buzz..we'll see how it goes.

Just a few points to note.

1. My middle finger on my right hand is turning green. Should I be worried? The practice nurse said I probably just bit my finger too far down and it got infected. I can't afford to buy the medication right now so I'm hoping that all those years of eating healthily will help my body fight this. Still should I be worried?

2. I can't afford tp gp to a wedding right now so Imma have to fuggeddaboutit.

3. revision is moving uber slowly, but uber slowly may be better for one who needs to remember deets

4. I went out to a Lebanese restaurant yesterday with Isabelle. What good food!! I love Lebanese food now. And to think but for the lamb all of it was vegetarian!! How healthy and oh so delish!

5. Random good quotes I've heard this week but can't share on facebook because my profile is deactivated:

"The old rules of marriage were the best. 1. Marry for money. 2. You can fake an orgasm but you can't fake a rent check!" Joan Rivers

"Oh Lord, give me the patience to deal with my husband, because if I ask for strength, I'll beat the crap out of him!" From Oksana's blog.

Buzz buzz buzz...can I get a rest until the 19th? Less than 2 weeks to go...please let me focus on my exams first!

I'm watching Bridget Jones Diary for the umpteenth time. I love these movies. I think they're crazy but really fun.

There's a character in the edge of reason called Rebecca Gilles and it just makes you think. That girl is supposed to be 22!! A year younger than I am!! Ha ha ha..its so funny. She looks so put together and finished in that movie and I look so...not finished. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this as a whinge, I quite like me the way I am most of the time. Its just the idea that she's 22, and she's finished. I'm not even one third finished. Why do European girls try to grow up so early? Why is everyone in such a hurry to be finished. Life is great when you're younger. I wish I was 20 again. 20 was such a great age to be you know - no responsibilities and the like. And now, here we are on the threshold of adulthood...

I'm feeling retrospective. Exams in a few days, and then who knows? The uncertainity of it all is a little overwhelming. I only have 3 exams but I'm feeling a little unsure of myself. The last time I had a history based exam to do things didn't work out so great. I get nervous. I forget important facts. To be fair I seem to have done ok on the coursework up to this point but still...the nerves are killing me. And distracting me to no end. Lord, I need a miracle!! I really, really, really desparate for a miracle.

On the upside...I deactivated my facebook acocunt a few days ago. The first step of the new disciplined and almost finished me...:-)

So I'm online checking my email after submitting my second to last chunk of Undergraduate coursework (yipee) and I come across this article and it made me think. England has changed me. When I was in Kenya, the typical rite of greeting was; hello, hi. How are you? Everything ok? How is your family? And university/school? How is your boy/girlfriend/ husband/wife/significant other? Children? Etc. Essentially, by the time I finished saying hello to someone I was bloody familiar with the general wellbeing of their entire family tree. Now the ritual is more hi how are you? Busy eh? Working hard? Stressed/? essentially going round and round in circles discovering more and more about how stressed out the individual is.

And that's just it. Individual. What a selfish society we live in! Where it becomes mroe important to self analyse and self critique than to extend a warm handshake or greeting to someone else. If you spend time listening to someone moaning about how difficult their life is then suddenly you're friends, even though later on you discover that you actually don't know anything about that person. I certainly don't consider many of the people I've met in England friends. More like close aquaintances. I am hungry to get back to the ways of the old country. I need a dose of that Kenyan hospitality.

Read the article and enjoy...

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There is a colleague I often bump into at the university where I teach, and we exchange a similar greeting every time. "I stayed up past midnight reading application forms for today's meeting," she says. And I answer, "I got up at dawn to prepare for a class." We groan, laugh lightly and rush off to our busy day—until the next morning's story of being too busy.

A friend in Senegal tells me that people there address one another very differently—family to family. "Blessings on your father and mother," one might say upon seeing a friend, "and blessings on your mother's parents, and blessings on your father's parents, and blessings on your children." It is a pleasant greeting, and it takes a while to say it. So why do we Americans greet one another in our grim, rapid-fire way, workload to workload?

Because overworking has become our national way of life. More of us are clocking longer hours, and we seem to be packing our free time with extra activity. According to a report from the International Labour Office, Americans now put in nearly 2,000 hours per year, which comes out to two weeks more than our counterparts in Japan, formerly the long-work-hours capital of the world. The Hilton Time Values Project reports that in a national survey it conducted, 26 percent of respondents agreed with the statement "I consider myself a workaholic."

What drives us to stay so busy? Some of the pressure to overwork comes from the boss and the need to pay rent. But when I asked those I interviewed for my book The Time Bind why they worked long hours, many of them told me, "We do it to ourselves." Indeed, some of the pressure to overwork comes from ourselves. Some may feel addicted to the adrenaline rush of doing too much, and at the last minute; others seek appreciation from a supervisor or co-worker. And still others see work as a measure of their value. They think that if they do more, get better, go faster, stay at the office later, they'll be worth more—and be happier.

But many who struggle still aren't happy. And with every additional task, we become a little less able to tell what it is that we really feel. What emotions would we experience if we weren't working ourselves to death? What wishes drive us? What fantasies hitch themselves to our continual busyness? Only when we step away from our frenzy can we know.

Even under the threat of being labelled a hater, allow me to take this time to announce to the world that my flatmates are idiots. Class A, certified idiots. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

Idiot 1 goes off and decides to move out but leaves us the going away present of her rubbish all over the kitchen floor. Idiots 2-4 ignore the rubbish for days -and I concede that I am an equal idiot for doing the same but in my defence I've cleaned the house more than my fair share of times and I just got fed up - and pretend not to notice. Between hair in the bathroom, rubbish on the kitchen floor, age old crumbs on the side table, recycling left piling up for months they are all idiots.

And idiotic for not standing up and saying that the time had come for us to buy new bin bags until the last one was finished. After doing the shopping twice in a row I got fed up of trying and the nannied idiots sat in their rooms and waited for the bin bags to run out. They never buy anything, even though their parents literally do their shopping for them every weekend, pick them up and drop them off at the doorstep and do their laundry. They are idiots.

Three months and counting...