How to do useless procrastination on the internet or at least how Abby does useless procrastination on the internet

The beauty of having access to the world wide web (CREDIT: I'd like to thank Mr. Albert Gore for this fine invention) at work is that you have access to ample amounts of procrastination right at your fingertips! This is a fact I know way too well. I'm sure the people monitoring the 'net use at work wonder why I do the things I do on the 'ol net...I just can't help myself!! Anyway, here are my top 5 favorite internet sites:


1. www.google.com. Can you remember a life before google? When I first interneted back in 1996, there was netscape navigator and then came yahoo which was like the best thing since fried plantain. Then suddenly there was Google... It is so fabulous that you can be grammatically correct by saying you are "googling someone" but can you "yahoo someone"? Yes and boy do I google up a storm...From the guy I had a crush on in primary school (now what was that surname again?) to ...for vanity's sake...myself....well, unfortunately for moi some illustrious Ghanaian lady has the same first and last name as me so you will only find me on google search page number 4…and in reference to drugs..No, no, no, it is honestly not what you think. I'm being thanked as a hardworking research assistant in another life in drug addiction research in mid-town Manhattan..Isn't it strange how you grow up with a supposedly strange name that everybody butchers and mis-prounces when you are a kid.Then when you move to your home country in your mid-twenties everybody there is surprised how you have such a common name combination! Of course they first insist you must be a foreigner who has decided to take up a local name..since you supposedly look East or Southern African...Ahhh...misunderstood everywhere!

2. www.bbc.co.uk. My source for the news…Even though sometimes I wonder why...After all, do I not spend all day listening to the beeb on the radio? For some reason I only seem to believe news if it from the beeb...Used to check the infamous ghanaweb.com for news but then realised it was more opinions and speculation than actual news..
I must admit that the ‘ol beeb is sometimes slow to update news and has a thinly veiled disdain for Robert Mugabe which sometimes worries my quest for news impartiality…(DISCLAIMER: Abby has not been a fan of Sir Bob since the late 90s ...I beg, fire those salvos elsewhere!! If you are a fan of Sir Bob please endeavour to find a Zimbabwean and ask them how things are in their country before harping on about the evil colonialists trying to bring down a true African revolutionary). Even though I believe the beeb, I'm still waiting for the follow-up on a story they broke saying that the Kenyan government had armed Kikuyu militia at the state house which sparked the so called "post-election violence" ....don't you love media-derived catch-phrases like that?! Was this story clarified when I was stuck in the deepest equatorial forests of central africa for 2 unforgettable months recently? Must've been coz not a single beeb reporter has uttered a peep about it.

3. www.imdb.com : the internet movie database…what can I say I’m a movie freak...being a filmfanatic comes with being a procrastinator....Although being in Ghana my movie intake has lessened in recent years due to restrictions on variety. But in my heydey I watched anything and everything. The good...the very very bad and the plain ugly. I promise not to be smug with my movie knowledge so I will end here. I welcome challenges..thought! I have this scary genetic affliction where I retain a whole bunch of useless knowledge and facts...that's why I get along with my big bruv so well...we speak the same language and most of Ghana think we are mad.
Finding the 6 degrees of separation that tie together all BBC productions is my latest fascination. I just found amazing links in my head between Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility and Love Actually...Emma Thompson's husband at the end of Sense and Sensibility (Hugh Grant) was her brother in Love Actually while her husband in Love Actually (Alan Rickman) was her brother-in- law at the end of Sense and Sensibiltiy...Her real-life husband (Greg Wise) was her would be brother-in-law in Sense and Sensibility while her real-life brother-in-law (don't know his name) became her brother-in-law at the end of Sense and Sensibility...do you need any more proof that I am crazy? Who cares about these facts anyway?

4. www.wikipedia.com: even if you can’t trust everything they say. In fact some of the things that pass for facts are plain scary! They really have to improve from their African stubs..You can imagine how great wikipedia is for a retainer of useless information like myself. I can check up everything from Southern African cuisine to a list of Kings of Asante Empire..When you are travelling to a new place you can always wiki it in advance.



5. www.facebook.com: First it was hi5 but that became snooze-worthy…For some reason, the 'ol buddies in the US of A had never heard of hi5...Now on facebook keeping up with friends and family has never been this fun!….provides excellent procrastination opportunities for a champion procrastinator such as myself…I recently found my best friend from primary school who was friends with someone else from our class who happened to be friends with my arch-nemesis from secondary school. Only Facebook can do that. Very soon “to facebook” will be a new verb in the dictionary alongside "to google", mark my words!