Personal on A Geek's Life

45: Re-Engage

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 21:10:00 +0000

Thanks to a chance episode of the Re-Enchanting podcast, The Seven Deadly Sins have been front and centre in my mind for a while now. In thinking about the past year of being forty-four, the y come to mind, particularly that of acedia. Sloth, its usual translation, doesn’t quite capture all its nuances, with its connotations of “a lack of any feeling about self or others”, “apathy” and “passivity” to name a few. It is this aspect of passivity and apathy that I feel like I need to address as a key focus area for the year of being forty-five.The last year did have momentous events ; packing up my life abroad and returning to be with family, a new job back in the UK and a slight pivot into the biofuels space from the core oil and gas stuff I had done all my work life before to name a few. Whilst that was most certainly the right decision, I do have doubts as to if it was the right time, and if it was for the right reasons. Forty-five then has to be the year of re-engaging, of re-igniting the passions that drove my life in the past. Alongside those are the several key decisions which loom for me next year, the desire for which has to be that they are made for the right reasons first and foremost.

The Year in Reading -2022

Fri, 30 Dec 2022 12:58:41 +0000

It’s that time of the year again where I reflect on my reading over the course of the year. For a more wide-ranging review of the year in books, check out the coverage at The Millions here . My previous attempts are linked here.

As has been the goal for most of the past few years, at or around two books a month for a total of twenty-four books for the year was the reading target. Unlike previous years, I was open on the subjects, more open than usual to wending my way through the year in books depending on what piqued my fancy at any given time. I’d like to think that shows in the range of subjects and authors covered by my reading this year.

43. Disciplined Execution

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 06:04:02 +0000

The Year of Being 42 went reasonably well, all things considered. I survived another swing around the sun out in the corner of the world I am now, with a sense of acceptance beginning to predominate. There are still days on which I ask myself why / how I ended up here but whatever misgivings I have tend to recede at month end. In this regard Re:Think, which was the theme for last year was useful, aided by the status game lens, picked up from reading the book of the same name by Will Storr. His argument, that we are all (created, evolved?) to play social status games has been useful for clarifying things both in a work and relational context. I now know that my primary game is one of success. I used to think that I was driven by the inner prestige bestowed by being a purveyor of niche, technical subjects in the workspace. The reality , as I am finding, is that the raw numbers at the end of the month are intensely motivating, not least if the costs of diapers, baby milk and toys are anything to go by. I am definitely not a player in the (physical) dominance or (spiritual/ moral) virtue status game. A highlight of the year has got to be having L & S out with me for the greater part of eight months or so. For all the late nights, befuddlement at my inability to contextually interpret tears and the feeling of being run into the ground, the appreciation of just how much effort goes into child care is one that I will go away with. Rethinking is not done by any means though, rather it feels like it will be a recurring decimal in my life for a long time yet.

Summertime..

Tue, 03 May 2022 05:07:25 +0000

Photo by Il Vagabiondo on Unsplash

One day it was wet, slightly windy and the temperature was below 30 degrees C, the next it wasn’t, which is how seemingly out of the blue the semblance of winter bowed out, being replaced by summer in all its fierceness. To be brutally honest, calling ‘it’ winter would be a stretch by all accounts, but for the context of the prospect of 40+ weather over the next few months. Of more personal importance though is that it is the end of Ramadan, and the lengthened hours with little food that was my lot in the period (a quirk of the shift patterns revised for the period was that my work day started an extra hour early, and the food spots at work were all closed). As with last year, I decided it would be a fantastic time to attempt to shift some of the weight, tacking on three morning runs and reduced carbs to the month. The three kilograms which have somehow slid off into the ether suggests there was some value to all that exertion. Whether it was worth it all remains to be seen though.

Rebuild Better - Revisited

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 14:50:43 +0000

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

No sooner than the year begins does it seemingly end, the flight of time - ponderously slow in the moment - somehow seemingly fast when the view is backward, over its long arch. It truly is a trick of time. As 2020 morphed into 2021, what thoughts I had came together around Rebuilding Better, the premise being that 2020 had been a year of significant disruption - and deconstruction - with 2021 a fresh chance to begin again, to put together what was broken in a better way with twelve objectives concretely describing that for me. Now that 2021 has morphed into 2022, it feels like a good time to revisit all that, so here goes.

At the Centre of Things

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 14:06:00 +0000

Image Source: The Guardian

Every waking minute of the past few weeks it seems has been filled with some nursery rhyme or the other, so much so that deep in my less wakeful moments, I have caught myself humming along to some tune or another. Chief of them has to be the ten in a bed one where a particularly bossy kid shoos off the others who end up in a pile beside the bed nursing various bumps and scrapes. Sometimes it has felt like there are an infinite number of ways this can happen, although the mathematics suggest that there is only one way to do that, if that particular order is maintained. All of this is long way to say that L is very much at the centre of things with sleep, if I can go out for a run in the morning and other such mundane things very much dependent on what state she wakes up in.

42: Rethink

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 18:34:57 +0000

Rodin’s Le Penseur. Image from the US National Gallery of Art

When I set about thinking about the year of being forty, it seemed a no-brainer that it would be centred around delving deeper. The premise was that as the worst kind of failure is one of depth, actively looking to ensure I had depth in all critical aspects of my life was key as I came into my decade of being forty something. As to why I think failures of depth are the most critical, I think that both the one who fails and the one who is failed are left with the lingering after taste of what might have been. For one, the chance of a lifetime disappears before it even begins. For the other the time and energy expended/ invested ends up being for nothing. Both face the opportunity costs, lost irretrievably. For the year of being forty-one, rebuild better was the key, given COVID and how it had intervened specifically in my life with regards to a new job.

World, Meet L

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 17:03:00 +0000

Photo by Marcel Fagin on Unsplash

As I write this I am looking out of my window onto the lush greenery of the park across the road in the tiny corner of South Yorkshire in which I am currently ensconced, as different from the edge of the world in which I have spent the last eleven months as it could be. For 45 degree Celsius and 90% plus humidity, I give you a bone-chilling 14 degrees Celsius with more than the odd spattering of rain; a mild Yorkshire summer by all accounts I am told.

2021: Rebuild, Better

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 08:56:14 +0000

Back in May of 2020, Nassim Nicholas Taleb tweeted about the pandemic - and the disruptive forces it brought to bear on the world we knew - being a trigger for one to do a total reset and adapt. For better or for worse, we all have had to reset through 2020. When I started thinking about 2021, the sense of evolving past the reset into something new was hard to shake. As such for me, 2021 feels like a year in which I need to focus on Rebuilding, but doing it Better.

The Year in Reading 2020

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 02:20:00 +0000

Coming out here dominated my thoughts at the turn of the year, which was how it found me digging into Richard Templar’s The Rules of Work . True the overwhelming sense at the time was of anticipation but there was enough uncertainty around how well I would navigate bridging a credibility deficit that looking for help came to mind most readily. In my notes from that first reading, I detect a sense of holding back against what seemed like rules promoting blatant self promotion. With the benefit of hindsight, and a big dollop of reality to boot, my view of the book is a lot more considered. There are certainly gems in there, which is why I intend to return to the book in the new year.

The Year In A Song (or Two)

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 10:35:00 +0000

In keeping with last year, I thought I’d go through the list of songs Spotify thought I listened to the most from my 2020 playlist to try to tease out some themes and recollections behind them. Here goes:

Fighting For Us - Anthony Evans: I popped into a church end of year event in Croydon at the behest of my friend O, where Anthony Evans did this song amongst others. It turned out that he’d just lost his Mother to cancer which put his turning up at all into perspective. I came back to this song quite a few times over the course of the year.

Season's Greetings

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 07:28:00 +0000

It feels very much like my first Christmas up in the ‘Deen, what with being house bound, friends and family some distance away and there being a decided chill in the air. Now, as with then, I woke up to We Three Kings in my ears with all the rabbit holes of memories it brings with it.

The key difference this time is that the lockdown has given everyone practice of staying in touch across the distance. Fortunately or unfortunately, that means I have several family zoom calls to jump on. It is a small inconvenience I guess, given the year we have all had - the best of years and the worst of years to use that oft quoted line from Dickens.

Forty-One

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 02:12:44 +0000

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

It was my birthday the other day, and in keeping with what is becoming a tradition of sorts, I spent the morning wading through a flurry of WhatsApp and text messages before a fairly lengthy video call with the niece who I almost share a birthday with. The rest of the day was spent off-grid, which has become one of the more enjoyable parts of the day. I don’t remember when the need to unplug on the day first came to the fore but I am finding that in the aftermath of all of that mental stimulation, some downtime is helpful. As I have reflected on here before, the five weeks between the 8th of July and the 15th of August tend to be emotionally draining ones. Dealing with a move - which is quite frankly a culture shock of sorts - has only added to that this year.

Ten Questions: An Inner Interrogation

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 02:02:05 +0000

A Poets & Writers prompt from a few months ago asked us to explore ourselves by using the ten questions guests on the TV show, Inside the Actor’s studio, are asked. A few months late here goes my response:

What is your favourite word? This would have to be ‘Quotidian’, a word I’ll admit to first hearing from Chris Abani’s 2008 TED Talk. Between the man, his work and the heft of the word, it is my favourite word, one I once made the theme of an entire blog. )
What is your least favourite word? Like, when it is used as an immensely irritating filler word.
What turns you on? Boobs and brains. I’m partial to a well-spoken, well-read damsel with a great rack, cload in something just slingy enough to highlight the cleavage a wee bit. :) I’ve clearly thought too much about this…. Like this, which I’ll have to admit is disturbingly specific.. :)
What turns you off? A nag..
What sound or noise do you love? I love the sound of rain on a tin roof, maybe a throwback to growing up in Nigeria and the freshness that a thunderstorm brings, washing dust and dirt away. A tin roof speaks of solidity and shelter I think, and the sound of hearing the rain rage outside whilst I’m safe within is one I love.
What sound or noise do you hate? Dripping water. I suppose it is a counterpoint to rain, not least because dripping water drips in that annoying way, never quite making up its mind whether to be unleashed in a torrent or to just stop. Neither hot nor cold in a manner of speaking to use a Revelations metaphor.
What is your favourite curse word? Fecking, like fucking but maybe less in your face?
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Medicine, psychiatry or family medicine. How close I came I’d never know but both my sisters ended up towing that path and have quite succeeded at it I’d say.
What profession would you not like to do? Policing, politics, and the pulpit…
If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates? Could you have made your existence a little bit clearer and helped us understand our origins? What was all that cloak-and-dagger stuff about?

Hitting Reset: Some thoughts on adapting for a post-oil world

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 16:38:06 +0000

Photo by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez on Unsplash

** When I reflected on life at the turn of the year, and wondered what the year would be for me, Delve Deeper came to mind. Behind that was the understanding, inspired in part by the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders, that everything worth its salt is tested, and only those which had roots sunk deep would survive. I was also on the cusp of quitting my job up north with the prospect of the move of a lifetime looming. Whatever your particular take on COVID-19 is — elaborate hoax, a pretext for instituting a new world order or a symptom of a broken world — what is incontrovertible is that in its wake has come a seismic change to the world and what we know of it. For all the preening, posturing and the facade of strength the world economies have presented, 2020 has shown it all up like an edifice built on shifting sands to use a biblical metaphor. The Emperor’s new clothes, for all we can see, are anything but a covering.

The Diary: The Joy In Small Things

Fri, 29 May 2020 12:15:27 +0000

\\\* Seemingly like in the blink of an eye – like play like play in the pidgin English of my youth – we are somehow at the end of May! Summer is finally here, bringing in its wake the realisation that if I had stayed up North, the first of my Nine Fridays of Summer would have just gone past. As it is though, I find myself in an intermission of sorts, loitering in the space between a past life and the future in which an adventure in the sun hovers just out of reach, 70 days late. There are of course worse things than swapping grey granite for verdant green or being cooped up with family, like dying or very nearly dying like so many people, including a few closer to home for me, have over the past few months of this pandemic.

On Leaving

Mon, 11 May 2020 18:24:34 +0000

Of the many conversations I have had over the past few years, one sticks out in my mind, not for its length or its importance but for how odd it felt at the time. As I recall it, a travelling salesman and I had just finished a meeting and were heading to the kitchenette at work to drop our coffee mugs off when he asked: “How did you end up here?”.

On Being An Enneagram 5

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 20:43:06 +0000

As part of refreshing my Life Plan at the end of last year, I took the Enneagram Personality test, which suggested I am a Type 5 with a 6 Wing. The Enneagram is a personality categorising methodology of unknown (but ancient, possibly some Catholic mystic) provenance which was brought to the US by G.I. Gurdjieff and and eventually to pop culture by the likes of Richard Rohr. I owe my introduction to it to Ian Morgan Cron and his various appearances on podcasts I listen to regularly, as part of his book tour. More information is available here. With the benefit of time on my hand, I decided it would be a good time to re-read the book (The Road Back To You) and reflect on what I’ve learned about myself in the process.

2020: Delve Deeper - The Plan

Fri, 10 Jan 2020 17:25:04 +0000

One of the unintended outcomes of my year of living intentionally was revisiting my life plan and rejigging it to incorporate a Codex Vitae and annual (Life) plans. The framework remains the same: three interaction spaces (personal, professional, and public) and seven life domains (spiritual, physical, relational, financial, vocational, mental, causes and charities) across which the health of my life is measured. The idea is to, on an annual basis, review the health of my life using the seven domains to identify ones that need focus in addition to the three interaction spaces. The output of this exercise then is 10-12 goals which form the main objectives for the year.

2020: Delve Deeper

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 16:19:00 +0000

One of the biggest disappointments of 2019 for me was interviewing at a company across town and failing to land a job there. It was a company I had admired for some time, the role itself was to be the team leader for a small group of technical specialists overseeing a North sea portfolio and the pay was better; an added incentive. The interview itself started off well I thought but somewhere around three-quarters of the way through, it delved into territory I wasn’t overly familiar with. Part of it was a failure of preparation; I hadn’t taken the time to get intimately familiar with the company’s portfolio and thus prepare for any potential curveballs. The more I mulled over the disappointment, and let time do its thing, the clearer it became to me that this had ultimately been a failure of depth. I knew enough about my subject, had built a reputation in my locality and knew enough about the company to give the perception of competence and suitability on the surface. It was when the screws were turned and the veneer was stripped back, that a lack of depth - somewhat dodgy foundations if you like - proved my undoing.

The Year of Living Intentionally - Revisited

Mon, 30 Dec 2019 22:02:14 +0000

\\\* 2019 was my Year of Living Intentionally; the central idea being to stop living life on the huff but instead to define a plan and live by it. Five key themes came out from that period of reflection; Learn, Prepare, Engage, Diversify and Measure, with fifteen discrete actions identified across those themes. The screenshot above is of the dashboard that tracked the key metrics from the year. All told, a few great ones, several meh ones and a few epic fails. Data apart, I think the big benefit from this for the year is the visibility of my performance. I now need to build a practice of regular assessments and reviews to enable the Act-Check portion of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.

The Year in Reading 2019

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 09:10:38 +0000

It’s that time of the year again where I reflect on my reading over the course of the year. It wasn’t the most productive year of reading proper books (the web has cannibalised that for good for me I’m afraid) but a late spurt in November and December brought some redemption. For a more wide-ranging review of the year in books, check out the coverage at The Millions here. My previous attempts are linked here .

Life In A Song (Or Two)

Mon, 16 Dec 2019 17:12:56 +0000

\\\* The data is in, Planetshakers were both my artiste of the year and of the decade if Spotify’s number-crunching can be believed. Compared to 2018, I listened to 36% less music, although I suspect that had more to do with listening to a lot more podcasts than I did last year (thanks to switching to an Android phone and Pocket Casts), streaming more radio and the occasional YouTube binge. What would be fantastic would be a service that aggregated my listening across all these platforms and thus enabled me to delve deeper into the underlying trends to my listening.

Thankful Thursdays 48/2019

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 22:49:31 +0000

Thankful for:

Payday on the 25th, I had come close to scrapping the bottom of the barrel, if I say so myself!
A good return to Instagram, my post got liked a fair bit which is perhaps a tad shallow of me but whatever :)
My Freetrade investment turned into positive territory for the first time ever it seems. Progress.
Have a work-related query which seemed like it would be a hassle to resolve which has now been resolved. Grateful for supportive work mates!

Kicking off the Christmas Silly Season and a difficult conversation of sorts

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 18:27:23 +0000

Over the past few weeks, temperatures have slowly crept lower and lower, dipping below zero on occasion and leaving the city centre sidewalks crunchy and slippery underfoot at times. The leaves that the trees - once leafy and full but now stark against the light of the reluctant mornings - shed haven’t helped the state of affairs, trapping moisture which turns into treacherous ice once the temperatures dip below zero. All of that, and being this side of Halloween, means that it is the beginning of the Christmas Party silly season. This year, I have just the two to attend, a far cry from the halcyon days of $100 oil. I suppose this belt-tightening regime can only be a good thing, given it underscores a more prudent, sustainability-focused outlook for the industry. Tight belts or not, there is a certain bluntness which alcohol engenders, that is one of the things I am looking forward to witnessing.

Of Cross roads...

Sun, 10 Nov 2019 11:00:09 +0000

Image Source: Lachlan Donald on Unsplash

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about crossroads - the metaphorical kind of course - points in one’s life where decisions with the potential to change the trajectory of one’s life are foisted upon one. The triggers for this latest bout of thinking are varied but the one common thread is a sense of dissatisfaction which has simmered below the surface for most of the year. Turning forty is certainly part of that, particularly as in its immediate aftermath, it felt like I had reached the top of a mountain only to find there was nothing to be seen there. There is also the desire to head down south for good for family reasons, which perhaps has declared open season on everything I have done for work over the past fifteen-ish years. In the rarefied atmosphere in which my thought experiments exist, everything is an option: from a complete pivot away from oil and gas into something more tech-related, through a less severe move away from being the (siloed) technical specialist I have spent the past few years evolving into becoming more of a generalist to a gap year, travelling the world.

Thankful Thursdays 45/2019

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 03:58:37 +0000

\\\** Thankful for:

Friendly faces: Out and about during my lunch hour, it was a breath of fresh air to run into T around U Square. A friendly face in the midst of the day’s battle is always a welcome sight, dare I say
Came through a difficult presentation to Senior Management at work, it feels like I am settling in more and more to this new role at work. I still want/ wish my next move is wrapped up ASAP though. The future beckons.

Thankful Thursdays 2019 : Week 42

Thu, 17 Oct 2019 03:00:27 +0000

More job opportunities - both abroad and in the UK - which I’m being considered for.
Clear the air talks with S
Friends, who at short notice modified their programs to assist me with signing off on paper work.

Thankful Thursdays 2019: Week 41

Thu, 10 Oct 2019 05:43:45 +0000

Came through what could have been a tricky presentation at work. The reward of good work is more work as they say, so more work is on the horizon.
Great news from an interview I attended in early August, an offer has been extended I now need to make a decision!

Thankful Thursday: 2019 Week 40

Thu, 03 Oct 2019 11:42:51 +0000

\\\*

A lot has happened over the last week: travelling for work in West Africa, juggling tight deadlines at work and interviewing for a new role I’d really like to get. All told, it’s a week I have survived, specific things I’m grateful for include:

Returning safely to firm land following my four or so days offshore in the Ivory Coast.
Resolution of a minor snafu at entry in which I failed to turn in my passport for a new visa stamp but managed to do so on my way out without any issues
For pepper, and how it makes everything taste great again, especially fried plantains which are a staple out here.
For friendly faces: people I’ve worked with in a different office who it was great to meet and get help settling in from.
For good early opportunities: I spent a day sat next to a guy who had spent time working in Nigeria as an expat for the company I started off with. Being able to swap stories of that was great!
The opportunity to interview at a much bigger company than mine across town.Apparently mine was one of four CVs selected from 60+ applicants. Good to know my CV was of interest in what was a competitive field. I hope I get the job, but if not some constructive feedback would be great!

Quarterly Review - Q3 2019

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 16:59:27 +0000

Went Well

Transition to new role at work
Restarted a weekly Thankful Thursdays feature on here, in a bid to build an attitude of gratitude
Significantly increased my monthly run distance peaking at over 100km for July & August
Came through my regular BP checks in August without any need to adjust meds etc
Interviewed for AOC role, waiting to hear back on a potential offer, also waiting to interview for a senior M&C role at an oil major in the next few days.

Didn’t Go Well

Spiritual life is still out of sorts,
Suffered occasional bouts of panic, negative self talk and lack of self confidence both at work and my personal life. Need to get a regular meetup and support set up with an older wiser head/ mentor (eg Pastor W?)
Didn’t write as much as I thought I would. Need to establish a series of rituals to make this happen semi-automatically
Relationship with S appears stalled, with us both living our separate lives and not bonding as well as we should, current living arrangements being the primary cause I believe.

Year Objectives and Status

The 11 things:

Thankful Thursdays: 2019 Week 39

Thu, 26 Sep 2019 20:42:28 +0000

\\\*

This week I am thankful for:

The opportunity to travel for work, the starting point of which was a 3.00am wake up, final bag checks and then dragging myself into a taxi by 4.00am. For what it’s worth, taxi’s out here can be a bit hit or miss, thankfully this one was a big hit; a Sri Lankan national who had lived and worked in most of West Africa in the early 2,000s and had an opinion on the Jollof rice wars. All of that made for a very pleasurable, if slightly woozy 20 minute ride to the airport. Bliss.
The flight itself - business class via work - reminded me of all the delights of not travelling cattle class. All told - from leaving my house and arriving at my hotel at the other side - it was the better part of 16 hours, including a lengthy wait in Bamako for the President of Mali to fly off. The relative ease in which I travelled was something to be grateful for, as was what appeared to be a deportation, a reminder that just over 10 years ago, I arrived in my current country as an intrepid student but now have the luxury of belonging to another country.
Friendly faces on one of the assets I stopped over at which made my easing into that work day the easiest it could be, given the circumstances
Although my room on the first FPSO was iffy, I am thankful for the comparatively plush lodgings I ended up in, on day 3.

Thankful Thursdays: 2019 Week 38

Thu, 19 Sep 2019 20:19:11 +0000

\\\*

Second week since I’ve restarted these, and the first in which I have been trying to keep a log in my notebook through the week. Here goes:

Several times over the last seven days I’ve managed to bust out several good runs ranging from 5 to 10km. Given a mere three years ago, I could hardly complete 2.5km in a go, going the distances I now can is something to be grateful for.
Meetups with people I have known through work dominated my social life this past week. First off was a catch up with R who I shared an office with when I first joined my current company back in 2011 and who I have stayed friends with. I have him to thank for making the effort to draw me out from the shy, reserved, headphones-in-my-ears-all-the-time guy I was when I joined. The other meetup was with M, at a Nigerian eatery in town. He managed the pepper OK, and we have notionally agreed to do this every quarter, if we can.
The other big catchup was with S, whom I hadn’t spoken to in quite some time. It is always amazing to catch up with someone I haven’t in a while and then the conversation just seems to continue from where it stops. Grateful for friends!
My relationship with my local church (and the big C church to be honest) isn’t the greatest at all. Having managed to drag myself there last Sunday, quite a few things said seem to hit right home and capture the moment where I am at the moment.

Thankful Thursdays: 2019 Week 37

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 04:28:06 +0000

It has been a while I did one of these, life happened I guess, but recently I have come back to a place where mental health has come front and centre in the circles I roll in again. I suspect if you asked S, she would say I have been a terrible old git for most of the past year, which is where actively cultivating an attitude of gratitude comes in. The idea would be to document one thing per day that I am grateful for, and share on here on a Thursday. So here goes:

By Degrees: Lessons from My Decade of Being Thirty Something

Sat, 31 Aug 2019 10:23:32 +0000

The year I turned thirty, I was a student battling to put finishing touches to my master’s degree dissertation and pondering what the future had in store for me. That the success or failure of that year, and the year before that, came down to that singular task was the result of an unanticipated turn of events which turned what was a leave of absence to return to full-time study into having to leave my Nigerian job. Grad school, my response to the year before that, had made sense in my head largely because it seemed a low risk, given there was a reasonably high likelihood of returning. I, as it would turn out was ultimately mistaken.

The Monthly Wrap: March, Much Ado About Nothing (Much)

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 03:48:48 +0000

Highlights

Broke 50km distance for the first time in 2019
Kept up my daily devotional streak, thanks to the CoE’s Lent Pilgrim app
Completed a book! (James Clear’s Atomic Habits). Still behind on the year plan though

Lowlights

Habit streak tracking still patchy at best
Finances ended up a mess - home improvements were unbudgeted for but perhaps add value to the house (not quantified though)

Next Month Focus Area

Wet Weather Problems, Twittering about Tea and Loving at First Write

Thu, 07 Feb 2019 22:44:16 +0000

All it takes is an extended patch of wet and cold weather for things to descend into chaos on these islands, this latest batch of snow, heavy winds and cold weather culminating in flight cancellations and severe weather warnings amongst others. For the most part, I manage to survive - extra warm clothing, walking gingerly to and from work in the wet slush and almost continuous heating being the sum of the adjustments I have to make. It is at the weekend when the rooster comes home to roost in a manner of speaking. Having turned up at the airport for my 8.20pm flight down to Heathrow, delays till almost 11 pm are announced until at a few minutes before midnight we are advised the flight has been cancelled. Remarkably, everyone who should be on our flight is remarkably sanguine about it all, helped I suspect by the sense that the weather ‘gods’ have been at it again. Between the final announcement of delays and the flight being cancelled, we find (from Flight radar) that the ‘plane designated to carry us away to London has made several attempts to land at the ‘Deen but has failed due to fog rolling in. They eventually get diverted to Glasgow whilst we make an orderly line at the front desk to get our flights rebooked. I move my flight by a week and then head home, not before I find out that the woman in front of me in the queue has family in the same area of Surrey that I’m headed to, and very much like me, she makes this trip every two weeks so. Joking about being four-day spouses, does have a ring of truth to it though. For me, it offers evidence that this thing - having a foot in two different countries - isn’t exactly impossible to maintain, mild weather-induced irritation notwithstanding.

Full Circle

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 05:39:19 +0000

Dragging myself out of bed to begin the motions that will end in my lining up at the starting point of this week’s Aberdeen Parkrun, it strikes me that it is just over a month ago that I shipped myself and a couple of bags out of town for an extended holiday season. In between there have been pit stops in various parts of Surrey, East London, Chelmsford, Kent and an extended traipse through several towns within the Valencian Community. A second full week of work has beaten any remnant of festivity out of me, which heightened the sense of finality of the park run. I have come full circle, back to the grind of life. Wash, rinse, repeat. The run itself was hardly memorable - three minutes slower than my PB from last year putting the surfeit of Christmas pudding into perspective.

Riding shotgun, old things and a return to the reality of life

Sun, 13 Jan 2019 11:37:01 +0000

Between a dull headache, rheumy eyes, a rasping cough and my –at the best of times – dodgy night time vision, I suppose it was inevitable that I would ride shotgun for most of our time in Benidorm. Inevitable or not, that did little to settle the simmering discontent that gnawed at my insides each time we had to hop into the car and go somewhere. To compensate I offered directions, commented on lane switches and approaches to roundabouts and generally made myself as obnoxious as possible, particularly when other road users came close enough to see me sat in the other, non-driving seat. In my mind, that (ultimately useless endeavour) made it seem to others that I was in control, orchestrating things from behind the scene rather than being the mere passenger I was. Patriarchal tropes and stereotypes aside, it offered a front row seat from which to observe first-hand all the little discourtesies female drivers endure on the roads. Away from the immediacy of the moment, memories of Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker piece on the subject of learning to drive came to mind. Not that the fact that other men, far more intelligent than I, have struggled with this absolves me of blame here.

2019: The Year of Living Intentionally

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 19:42:44 +0000

\\\*

If I had to boil down the essence of the year of being thirty eight into one word, it would be coasting. It felt like I lurched from one crisis to the other, my actions driven more by the need to fight whatever fire glowed brightest than any form of plan or structure. As I stand here on the cusp of turning forty, I feel like something needs to change significantly - a fool at forty is a fool forever they say. That, and that t here is someone who is significantly affected by my actions only makes it more imperative that I get my SH*T together soon.

The 2019 Actions

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 07:24:38 +0000

List of running actions and habits for 2019 for tracking, derived from The Year of Living Intentionally:

Read The Hero With A Thousand Face
Utilise the hero’s journey in updating my Life Plan
Identify my band of friends and brothers and engage them individually once a month
Identify devotional to use for 2019 (should involve reading 10 or less verses):YouVersion selected
Track performance vs KPIs (various), report monthly, quarterly and annual
Find web filter app for Linux and install
Remove phone and laptop from bedroom
Run >=25km a week
Practice intermittent fasting
Eat <100g of carbs per day
Exercise daily (run or fitness blender)
Limit coffee intake to one cup per day (morning)
Explore options/ procure a blood pressure monitoring wearable
Save >= 10% of net earnings (less GAYE)
Restrict spend to <110% of budget
Clarify medium/long term work plans (data science, corrosion/materials/welding/inspection) and location
Update M&C roadmap, include gap analysis and closure plans (vs XoM competencies)
Complete Data science Data Scientist track course, decide on Udacity Nanodegree
Join a Data science for good meetup/ hackathon
Identify/ complete a creative non fiction writing/ blogging course
Learn to use kdenlive or other editing suite, also inkscape?
Build list of books to read/ themes for 2019
Read a chapter of a book per day
Write compassion kid once a quarter
Identify/ complete assertiveness training/ coaching
Find a mentor for work and personal life
Call siblings / in-laws once a month, call Dad weekly
Meet up with one of Rotimi, Deji A and Deji Ajayi once a month
build stock picking tool (strategy and triggers)
Identify app for tracking daily/weekly actions completed vs planned
Determine my target macros (fat, protein, carbs) and total calories

Almost The Season of Good Cheer

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 16:10:26 +0000

Although the lights have been on around town for a while now, only now with the office Christmas party a few days away has any sense of good cheer begun to rear its head. In addition to the bunting everywhere (and our very own special office Christmas tree), the subject of Christmas plans has now seeped into our coffee machine conversations, as has the buzz around the office secret Santa reveal. The Christmas party is definitely a highlight of the season, not least for the special costumes a certain someone breaks out year after year and the alcohol enabled banter which in my view tends to reveal the inner workings of peoples minds more often than not. On a personal note, I am looking forward to catching up with a couple of friends of mine ahead of Thursday, which means I’ll be out everyday from Tuesday till Friday when I hop on my flight down south to formally kick off my period of unplugging.

Things Liked: A List

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 18:57:28 +0000

---

Coffee, particularly when it is -5 deg C outside
Fried chicken, in all its various incarnations
Digging out the right answer to a particularly difficult question
Music, particularly ones which take me back memory lane
Handwritten notes (when received)

I Write Because...

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 19:57:30 +0000

Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash

---

One of my earliest memories of doing stuff with my mother is of a newspaper cutout, sheets of paper and her sitting beside me encouraging me to apply whatever iota of critical thinking I could summon to whatever was the task of the day, usually some Close Up essay competition or the other. I don’t recall us ever submitting any of those, the discipline of wrestling thoughts into semi-coherent arguments perhaps being the point of the entire exercise. That sense of writing as a vehicle for thinking aloud about a subject is one that has stayed with me over the years.

Remembering November

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 05:48:46 +0000

Key Events

Came through several important meetings at work with varying results:
- Area Review: One I could have done without but feedback was they went well.
- CCMT: One completed
Had my annual performance review. Feedback is that I need to improve my visibility. Personally, I feel like I need to decide what I want to do (stay/leave/move into data science?)
Was chased by the verification folks on some review items for a recently completed project. Personal follow up on welding and how pressure equipment design codes handle MDMTs required.
Attended a two day seminar on non-intrusive inspection. The data analysis section seemed particularly interesting, given my interests in data science/machine learning.

December Goals

31 Days of Journaling, Day 31: Wrapping Up

Sat, 01 Dec 2018 11:15:40 +0000

It has been a fascinating month going through the Art of Manliness Jump-start your Journaling 31 Day Challenge. I suppose the key is in the challenge bit because for what it is worth it wasn’t the easiest of things to complete. A few themes came at me time and time again, mainly related to my relationships with people and how much (or how little) I ave allowed others into my deepest space. That (friends and brothers, mentors, my romantic relationship and a few others) is one of the key focus areas for the next year, which I have captioned The Year of Living Intentionally.

31 Days of Journaling, Day 30: Thankful For...

Fri, 30 Nov 2018 20:03:58 +0000

Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash

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For the Day 30 prompt. Thankful for:

Life: Given how many people I know who died during the course of the year, both young and old
S: Who chose to accept me, warts and all
T&M: Who continue to hold down the fort on the family front through what have sometimes been testing times.
Books: For the opportunity to slip into them away from the world
Friends: Who have stuck with me through the years
Work: Which in spite of a growing sense of dissatisfaction still pays the bills.
Travel: The chance to get away from it all from time to time.

31 Days of Journaling, Day 29: Something I am Proud Of

Thu, 29 Nov 2018 19:46:25 +0000

The prompt for Day 29 is to write about one thing that brings you great joy. Here goes.

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A few years ago I would have said that my job was the one thing that gave me great joy, seeing as I felt very strongly that I was contributing and saw my future being very much intertwined with corrosion and materials. For a variety of reasons, including the sense of coasting that I have struggled with over the past year, it is beginning to feel like something I just do, that pays the bills.Trying to suss out the underlying reasons and getting back to a place of excitement about my current role (or something else) is something I have to focus on resolving in the new year!!!

31 Days of Journaling, Day 28: Tools of The Manly Life

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 18:39:38 +0000

Day 28 of the Art of Manliness 31 Days of Journaling Challenge is to gather my tools for a better life. Here goes:

A Mentor: One of the clear gaps I have identified from the past year has been a tendency to isolate myself from people, both at work and in my personal life, one of the impacts of which has been a lack of oversight of my decisions. Mentors, in both my personal and professional lives, are a priority for me over the next year. Two people, EM and CG, come to mind as options for both domains. Engaging them with a view to seeing if this is something they’d like to help me out with is something I have added to my list of things to explore and conclude over the next year.
A Mastermind Group: The AoM folks boil down a Mastermind group into a collection of similar irons which sharpen each other. Through my interactions with my friends in the corrosion business, I’d like to think the intent of this tool is being met already. Carefully selecting a mentor with corrosion expertise who also help provide coverage of this need, I believe.
A Pocket notebook: My evolving journaling practice is loosely aligned to Austin Kleon’s (which is in turn inspired by David Sedaris’s).
Discipline: All of the above require me to get off my backside and develop/ implement a number of habits consistently. Discipline is what will ensure I keep at these till they deliver value in my life. Enough self.

31 Days of Journaling, Day 27: My Place

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 18:11:11 +0000

The folk at AoM identify eight factors which feed into an assessment of the suitability of where one is at the moment. Given Aberdeen and Byfleet are currently it for me, a table with the pros and cons of each location seemed like a logical place to start. Here goes:

[gdoc key=“https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IZdb5os_AQNEjVBwEAscnsPzq2u2uqcj11jiaMktMBQ/edit?usp=sharing”]

31 Days of Journaling, Day 24: Memento mori.

Sat, 24 Nov 2018 08:30:27 +0000

Photo by Deleece Cook on Unsplash

–

Remember you will die…. Death puts everything into perspective, you can’t take anything away with you and once you’re dead you’re lost to everyone on this side of the divide. This begs the question of what I am living my life for, whose approval am I bending over backwards to please, against my principles. And perhaps most importantly, am I living my life in a way that makes sense in light of what I think is a non-physical reality on the other side?

31 Days of Journaling, Day 23: My Distractions

Fri, 23 Nov 2018 18:50:08 +0000

My distractions in no particular order:

My phone with what it drags in (Twitter, Instagram)
TV, particularly media consumption (Chicago PD, NCIS in all its guises and Chicago Med being a few of the things I burn hours watching)
My (paper) notebook, a source of distraction for all the times I rewrite my to do list and obsess over the perfect productivity system instead of just getting things done

To manage these I am trying to control access, by setting up my phone to automatically turn itself off at night and restart in the morning, only watching TV at weekends and not fussing over the quality of my to do list. One more on the watch list over the next few days/ weeks I guess…

31 Days of Journaling, Day 22: If I Won A (Small) Lottery

Thu, 22 Nov 2018 20:37:01 +0000

Playing football manager doesn’t count I suspect so I’ll have to go with the next thing which I am finding is playing around with data in Jupyter. This is something I am enjoying so much that I am seriously wondering if Corrosion & Materials remain a strong force in my future. Unfortunately I haven’t learned enough of the data science domain for it to be my main stay going forward, but if money were no object, that would be where I would go. That much is not uncertain.

31 Days of Journaling, Day 21: One small thing

Wed, 21 Nov 2018 17:32:45 +0000

Image Source: AskMen

A recurring theme on my yearly lists is to lose weight. Save for a big push in 2012/13 when I went from just under 100 kg to 82 kg, performance has been topsy-turvy. Things are decidedly far form ideal at the moment, seeing as I currently come in just under 94 kg at the moment. This all feeds the one small thing I want to focus on over the next few weeks, adding one push up a day to my morning routine. If all goes well, by the end of the year I should be up to 39 push ups each morning.

31 Days of Journaling, Day 20: On the past and Nostalgia

Tue, 20 Nov 2018 17:23:28 +0000

The Young and the Eager, for the Day 20 prompt

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The most recent time of my life I feel nostalgia for has to be my formative years in Eket, Nigeria. Hired fresh following a year of national service, with a starting salary that almost eclipsed my father’s; 30 plus years of teaching in a University notwithstanding. Prior to applying, interviewing and getting hired, getting into the software industry had been my realistic focus, driven by my interest and a sense that it was perhaps the most realistic option for me. The perception at the time was that to get a good job in Nigeria, one needed to be connected.; which I was not being from a minority ethnic group in a minority state.

31 Days of Journaling, Day 13: On My Mind, A Brain Dump

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 18:50:19 +0000

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

–

For Day 13 of the AoM 31 Days of Journaling Challenge; A Brain Dump using the GTD Trigger List.

Work Projects Started Not Completed
- DL Management Strategy
- OFC Transition
- CCMTs & CCMT Action Management
- UKCS TAR Work Programs
- T T-A Communication File Note
- Area Reviews
- S Area PW Failures RCFA
Work Projects That Need To Be Started
- CMS Year End Review
- T CCMT Preparation
- 2019 PoB Requirements for UKCS Projects
- 2018 Spend Reconciliation
- 2017/18 Appraisal
Personal Projects Started Not Completed
- archive.rustgeek.me relaunch
- News31 EoY Video Preparation
- News31 EoY Review for magazine
Personal Projects Yet To Start
- archive.rustgeek.me theme modifications
- 2019 objectives and planning
- Alicante Trip with S

31 Days of Journaling, Day 11: A Band of Brothers

Sun, 11 Nov 2018 10:14:40 +0000

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

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For Day 11, the question is “Do you have a gang of friends who push and support you? If not, how could you make some good friends?” As with all the questions so far which have related to friends, I’ll have to hold my hand up again and say this is an area where significant improvement is required. That being said, I have a number of acquaintances in this city with whom I could be better engaged. A number of them are in the same season of life as I am which bodes well I suspect for our being able to band together for mutual support. First things first then, I’ll look to schedule a catchup with a couple of the guys, particularly D and R.

31 Days Of Journaling, Day 10: The Hero's Journey

Sat, 10 Nov 2018 03:05:46 +0000

Photo by Brett Patzke on Unsplash

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The Hero’s Journey makes for interesting reading, showing how in 12 stages the boy becomes a man as he journeys through a life. Although based on myths, the underlying idea behind this framework is that these myths work because they represent how we understand how life happens to us. Vogler’s model, which the folk at AoM espouse, is an abridged version of the original in the Joseph Campbell book (The Hero with a Thousand Faces) and identifies 12 steps (from the Wikipedia page) as below:

31 Days Of Journaling, Day 9: My Day

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 11:47:37 +0000

Day 9: My Day

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Up at 4.42 AM and unable to go back to sleep. Meetings with senior leadership at work on my mind.
Played around with some CSS for some modifications I have been mulling over for this blog
Finally out of bed at 6.00 AM to start prepping for work.
Off to work at 7.00 AM, glad for some respite from what has been terrible weather. Relief ends up short lived because it opens up again half way through.
Arrive at work wet and cold at about 7.30 AM.
Arrival routine kicks in; cup of coffee, read and respond to emails, catch up quickly with office mates.
First hour spent reading up on latest version of slide deck for meeting, then attending final dry run
In between, I sort out delivery of equipment required for a mobilisation offshore in two weeks.
Spend rest of the morning in chasing final bits of data for meeting.
Lunch @ 12 NOON, quick walk to Boots at Union Square for a sandwich, pepsi max, protein pot and two snack bars (meal deal)
Back at 12.30 PM for final check of meeting requirements and then into meeting.
Meeting from 1 to 3, a bit of a grilling but I feel like we do ok. A number of things to follow up on even though the consensus seems to be that it has been yet more talking shop. Hopefully real behavioural change kicks off after this.
After the high of the meeting, rest of the day is an anti-climax of sorts. catch up with R for the first time this week now that I can catch my breath.
Eventually it is 4.30 PM and home time. Walk home and arrive at 5.00PM
Dinner, more CSS modifications and then soon it is sleep time.

100 Days Of Ascent, 1 - Certitude

Tue, 02 Oct 2018 06:03:20 +0000

Psalm 120:1 I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me.

For the first of these 100 Days of Ascent, it is perhaps fitting that the starting point is a place of certitude, a statement of fact: I call on the Lord and he answers me. No ifs, no buts, no maybes; just a clear statement of what is. The word translated call is the Old Hebrew qara, which carries the connotation of a loud, expressive sound, not a quiet muttering. The Lord is referred to by his name YHWH here, the independent, self existing proper name which I suppose speaks to his power, majesty and essence. This then is an interesting juxtaposition, a cry in a season of distress to the all powerful God, who in His answering deigns to respond to the cry of one puny human.

September

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 18:29:28 +0000

beach\_morning

book

DataScienceConf

food\_CDI

food\_CDI2

lounge\_CDG

---

In the end September sped past,

Winging It

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 11:54:10 +0000

I am seating in a meeting, listening to the folk around the table drone on about some subject now lost to memory when it hits me – in the way I imagine an out of body experience might – just how much of what is often dressed as expert opinion is little more than strongly expressed opinion. Far from thumbing my nose down at others, it is a farce I very much consider myself as a contributor to. That sense of winging it, making things up as I go along, is one which has come to define the first half of the year for me; from the vagaries of the aforementioned work situation to the minutiae of doing life, spread as it has been between the grey, dull granite of the ‘Deen and the leafy, colour-suffused greenery of the Wey country.

Begin Again

Fri, 20 Jul 2018 01:22:16 +0000

It feels as good a time as any to begin to think about beginning again, what with it being the start of the second half of the year (and there being no scientific basis for determining that this point on the earth’s arc around the sun is any more an origin than say 10.53 am on April the 16th). That it is bang in the middle of a particularly emotive season - bookended by H’s birthday and mine, with her passing and her interment looming large over that six week period - also adds to that sense of an ending, and a need to draw a line in the sand and begin again.

Coming Up For Air

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 12:55:19 +0000

Photo by Zen Photographer on Unsplash

– Eat-sleep-work-walk; wash-rinse-repeat. This just about sums up the past six weeks for me, travel down south being one of the few brights spots in an otherwise humdrum existence. In that state the days blur into each other - the weekend when it comes offering scant relief - before being quickly subsumed by a new Monday morning and the start of a new cycle of drudgery. It is that time of the year when the final reports from last year are being reviewed and finishing touches made to the detailed plans for the new year’s work so there is little scope for escape.

Lent

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 18:56:43 +0000

Photo by Thuong Do on Unsplash

This year for lent, I am taking up the challenge from Desiring God to read through John Piper’s book, Fifty Reasons Jesus Came To Die. Whilst that may or may not be more spiritual than giving up caffeine, what is not in doubt is that it is firmly aligned with a few of the things I want to achieve this year, notably read more books, and developing a daily practice of prayer and bible study. At a chapter a day (and two on Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday), it shouldn’t be too big a strain on all the other reading I’m doing. Win-win? I’d say so!

#5 - Beloved

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 19:30:48 +0000

St Alban’s Cathedral, December 2016…. For the Word Press photo prompt, Beloved, for which there can really only be one response.

2018: The Goals

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 11:54:00 +0000

It felt like I coasted through 2017 in many spheres of life with the main (only?) thing of significance that occurred being getting married to S in October. I’d like 2018 to be a vastly different one, filled with energy and intention and delivery. The seven focus areas in my life plan apply, with a few (Spiritual, Physical & Health, Financial and Personal Development) being focus areas.

A successful 2018 for me is one in which I:

My Year in Music, 2017

Thu, 28 Dec 2017 17:31:27 +0000

Although according to Spotify I spent the equivalent of 17 days - and then some - listening to music, no one song defined the year for me the way What A Beautiful Name It Is defined 2016, and the Nine Fridays of Summer. Of those that I listened to the most, Todd Dulaney’s Victory Belongs to Jesus, came closest for the sheer number of times I listened to it on repeat, but that lacked the personal connection that joining in with the crowd roaring the chorus to (in my opinion one of the songs of Hillsong Conference 2016) What A Beautiful Name It Is had.

The Year in Music

Thu, 28 Dec 2017 17:31:27 +0000

The Year in Reading

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 17:37:12 +0000

After many years of having thoroughly enjoyed the annual parade of opinions of books over at The Millions, I decided to have a go myself this year. Far from being a celebration of a year in which I read deeply and widely, it is a light reflection on all the things I managed to read this year. Enjoy! ---

Of the myriad of things I most deeply wanted to achieve this year, two loomed large in the personal development domain; to read more and write more, which was why I entered the year clutching my copy of Patty Dann’s The Butterfly Hours close to my chest. In my head, writing more - and by extension, better - required tools for tuning my craft, which was why this book, with its promise of personal memoir married to prompts, seemed the perfect fit. It helped that all nineteen reviews on Amazon were 5*. I did enjoy the book, albeit more an an example of easy reading memoir than a collection of prompts. I suspect that had a lot more to do with me than the book. If it is any consolation, I returned to it several times over the course of the year, it along with Dinty Moore’s Crafting The Personal Essay being fine examples of the sort of creative non-fiction I would like to churn out.

The Year in Reading 2017

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 17:37:12 +0000

The Diary: The Paphos Files

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 11:02:08 +0000

The first bits of Cyprus we glimpsed as our flight began the descent towards Paphos were wind turbines slowly turning in what must have been a slight evening breeze, and houses which from the height looked like small, matchboxes pressed into the sides of the hilly terrain below us. Although it was only 5.20pm local time, it was quickly growing dark, which at first seemed odd until I realised just how much closer to the equator we were here than in England from where we were arriving. This trip to Cyprus was at the instance of S, ten days in Paphos being her idea of a honeymoon. The hope was to get the chance to catch our breaths after what had been a whirlwind three weeks in which we had managed to get hitched without losing our minds; the pressure of a large Nigerian wedding notwithstanding.

The Diary: On Flights, Music and The Muddled Lives Of Heroes

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 04:27:30 +0000

Between work and visits to family, I travel quite a fair bit by air each year. Already though, 2017 is on course to be my most airborne yet - love-hate relationship with flying notwithstanding. The thing with S has been a big part of that, more so over the last few weeks, five of the last six of which have been spent down south. In times like this, even I have to admit- however grudgingly - the usefulness of being able to just fly. I shudder to think of how many hours I would have spent on trains or coaches over the last few days if flying was not an option.

The S Files: Coming Up For Air

Tue, 26 Sep 2017 17:49:25 +0000

The morphing of what began as an interesting way to spend my summer Fridays last year into full scale wedding planning has left me feeling ragged and in need of a time out; the colours, people and costs involved being mind boggling for a bloke who has built the last few years of his life around his me time. Far from feeling like chickening out, I’m more grateful than miffed, seeing as becoming a husband and a father are key components of my life plan.

Being Thirty-Eight

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 17:34:45 +0000

It feels intuitively like the last year was my shittiest one yet - pardon my french - the sense being that all of the metrics which I have typically measured myself by are well south of where they should be. Most obvious is the flab around my waist, undeniable evidence that the 92kg reading on my scale is as factual as can be. There are other things of course, not least the sense of listlessness, the feeling of drifting and the increasingly dispassionate nature of my spiritual practice . A year ago I was certain that the year of being thirty seven would be my best one; the S bounce being a big part of that assessment. Reality though has been a less certain, more topsy turvy version of what I wanted it to be.

Weekly Photo Challenge - Reflecting

Thu, 11 May 2017 17:01:14 +0000

For the prompt, reflecting; which brings to mind the chill of a late (post Christmas) walk in Verulamium Park, a precursor to a splendid evening in St Albans spent with S. Of course, there were waffles and hot mugs of chocolate to warm us up afterwards. #Reflecting.

Wish

Fri, 10 Mar 2017 15:00:54 +0000

St Albans Cathedral, one December day. For the prompt, Wish:

For fulfilled desires, For the Loved Ones to return Again in peace. Wish.

The Small Light in Things

Tue, 07 Mar 2017 08:36:31 +0000

I decided that for Lent this year I would give up caffeine, if starting almost a week after the properly faithful and switching to tea, topped up by the odd cup of decaf coffee count as giving up. No longer being part of any of the Orthodox traditions meant I failed to get the prompt I took for granted growing up, the ash crosses on foreheads that signalled Ash Wednesday, and the start of Lent. The point of Lent is spiritual - which giving up caffeine is not, at least on the surface - but I think there is a spiritual point in trying to best what has become a costly, insidious habit; proving to myself that coffee is not my master. Given how much my morning routine at work is related to taking time out to reflect at the start of the day with a cup of coffee in hand, it should be an interesting thirty-seven forty days. Hopefully it translates to better sleep - the data from my Fitbit will be the judge of that.

2017 - The Objectives

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 08:04:53 +0000

The following are what I consider my main focus areas and objectives for 2017, derived from the Life Plan. A number of these are long running things I have failed to resolve over the years. Here’s hoping 2017 is a much better year.

The Life Goals Restated for visibility: 1. Be the best husband, father, brother, son and friend that I can be 2. Excel in the Corrosion, Materials and Asset Integrity Engineering Discipline 3. Live in, and contribute to life in, a great church and a great city

A Question of Gaps

Fri, 25 Nov 2016 04:42:33 +0000

I am big on putting together grand plans, ones which go to a great level of details to spell out the things I want to do and achieve. Where things have fallen down over the past few years has been in the application; the hard, long slog that is the doing needed to bring the plans to fruition. It would appear that in this regard I am like most people, particularly as this relates to New Year’s resolutions. This gap - this disconnect between what I want to do and what actually happens - is most obvious in the area of my spiritual practice. As an example, getting to a place where a daily time of prayer and bible study is embedded in my daily routine is one of the key things I have wished for over the course of the last few years. This has tended to be more a source of frustration than inspiration in my case, especially as these failings drive a sense of cognitive dissonance.

The Burden of Grief

Fri, 11 Nov 2016 22:42:56 +0000

One of the lingering effects of H’s passing is that four times a year, I go through a phase where I especially struggle for words to share with my father. Although triggered by four specific days – her birthday (the 8th of July), their wedding anniversary (the 11th of November), the day she passed (the 19th of July) and the day she was buried (the 8th of August) – these tend to be long drawn out affairs affecting the days leading up to and the days after these days. The struggle takes various forms primarily centred on whether to call my father or not, and on the days when I manage to call him, what to talk about - to keep things as normal as possible or broach the difficult subject of H. He and I have never been the best of conversationalists - we’re much too similar for that – but these days make that tenuous relationship an even more difficult one, so much so that on most of these days, I have opted for not calling him in the end.

A New Beginning

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 12:06:14 +0000

Just under two weeks after S and I had out first serious spat, the subject of which was the pace or lack thereof of our thing, I ended up sat on a couch in Chelmsford, meeting her parents. The opportunity had come together very quickly, they being around and I being able to find a couple of days to make the trip to meet them.

The meeting itself felt at times like an interview, an inquisition and a friendly chat; good in the sense that it put into context the protective nature of the relationships S has with her wider family. On the way back, I broached the difficult 6-month, ‘Us’ question, her choice of answer - what do you think - suggesting that perhaps events had overtaken that by far. That I agree with. So here we are then - official, in a manner of speaking. Beginning again then, the first day of what I can only hope is a long, fruitful relationship :)

In Five Years' Time...

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 06:16:04 +0000

Alongside the overarching life plan, and the 2017 goals (the Year of Being 37) here are the wider targets I’d like to be and to have achieved by 2020.

Spiritual
- Serve in a leadership capacity in my local church (FOL Aberdeen or elsewhere if God’s plan takes me outside Aberdeen over the next few years), primarily focused on teens, young adults and single men.
Physical & Health
- Eat using an Low Carb, High Fat model
- Weigh 80 (+/-2) kg and 20% body fat
- Run a mile at least three times a week
People & Socials
- Meet and marry a woman who makes me happy and who has life goals I can contribute to
Financial
- Grow net worth to > £500k
- Save 10% of net earnings year on year
Work and Career
- Be a regional Corrosion & Materials TA/Lead Engineer or equivalent at a Oil Major
Mental & Personal Development
- Start and significantly progress a Corrosion & Materials related PhD
- Publish a book of essays or poems
Causes & Charities
- Visit the kids I sponsor with Compassion UK and World Vision
- Add another two kids (co-sponsored with my family)

Becoming British

Tue, 11 Oct 2016 18:56:01 +0000

I had the joy of receiving my permanent residence card today, a key milestone on a journey that began at the back end of 2008 with my decision to head back to grad school in Newcastle. At the time, staying back in the United Kingdom, and becoming British were not necessarily on the agenda, it was meant to be a gap year away from what had been a difficult year at work.

Outer Layers: On Dressing in Four Objects

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 17:44:03 +0000

Source [ Afolabi Sotunde]. For the WordPress Discover Prompt, Outer Layers

--- When asked to describe my look, I tend to go for scruffy chic, this being my attempt to rationalise away what is my laissez-faire approach to dressing up. Left to my devices I default to four objects: jeans, a t-shirt, super comfy shoes and a pair of glasses which I am increasingly dependent on. On the occasions on which I have deviated from these, they have tended to be to the relative safety of a shirt and a blazer over jeans; the full shebang - a suit and a tie - only coming out for weddings (the last of which I agonised over before buying a new suit) and black tie dinners, which I tend to avoid. I suspect I have managed to get away with this, particularly at work, because I work in the Engineering field and have largely worked for employers where a formal dress code has never really been enforced.

About Town: Weird gifts, names and Children on Trains

Sat, 24 Sep 2016 06:44:20 +0000

Sometime ago, not without some misgivings I must add, I moved desks at work, all part of the new re-stacking policy designed around optimising our use of space. Following the move, I went from a desk which looked on into the central corridor with my computer facing away from the door to one where my view was the bus station across the road. The view was decidedly an upgrade, what came with it though was a sense of being blinded to people milling about behind me and coming in to meet me, particularly on the occasions when I have my head phones plugged in to maximise my concentration.

Of Times, Eyes and Seasons

Fri, 16 Sep 2016 20:45:00 +0000

Life - and time - have a penchant for throwing up surprises, ones which are sometimes welcome, but (perhaps more often than not?) unwelcome. Never more obvious is this than in the passage of time as measured by times, seasons and the lives of others. Somehow life in the moment, in the here and now - never seems to move at pace; only with the benefit of hindsight does the amount of time that has elapsed become obvious.

Lull...

Fri, 09 Sep 2016 03:13:33 +0000

[ Source]

In conversation with a gentleman I consider a mentor of sorts, the question about what was going on in my life at the moment got asked. After a few moments pause, I realised that the answer lay somewhere between ’nothing of note’ and ’normal'.

With the Summer Fridays out of the way, life is focused on fleshing out budgets for 2017 at work and waiting on a direction on a critical decision I have to make; somewhat of a lull compared to the frenetic pace of life over the past few months.

Nine Fridays of Summer: All Good Things Come To An End

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 11:49:23 +0000

It feels like only like yesterday when the prospect of free Fridays had me all excited, wondering what I would do with myself. Somehow, nine Fridays have come and gone since then, with proper 5 day work weeks left to look forward to till the offices shut for Christmas in late December. These Summer Fridays were especially important to me being the very first ones I was entitled to, even though I had worked in the same team for almost five years.

Nine Fridays of Summer: Of Heat Waves, Vienna and A Perfect Month of Sorts

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 19:45:40 +0000

In what can only be incontrovertible evidence of Sod’s law, the air-conditioning at work chooses the worst week possible to break down in; a week of unseasonably warm August weather. Loads of meetings to attend, lunchtime walks and endless cups of water help ensure that I don’t end up too listless; not that broken air-conditioning ranks high on the list of life-threatening things humans have to deal with, or should be an excuse for reduced productivity.

All In

Mon, 22 Aug 2016 07:26:36 +0000

Almost three months to the day since I first met S, these arrived at hers with a note that tried to up the ante. The facts are what they are: I really really like her, we get along very well and I’d like to be a lot more than just friends with her, potentially the future Mrs S.

Her call now… #Waiting

Nine Fridays of Summer: The Not-Quite-A-Milestone-Birthday Edition

Fri, 19 Aug 2016 11:27:06 +0000

Months ago - when it became apparent that my birthday this year would fall on a work day - I made a mental note to take the day off. The act of making that official - signing into the absence management software we use at work and requesting the day off - never happened, which was how I ended up stuck behind my desk at work on the day. That the only slot for a meeting I had been trying to set up for months opened up on the day, the Friday before, didn’t help either.

Nine Fridays of Summer: Coming Up For Air

Fri, 12 Aug 2016 21:15:14 +0000

It feels much longer than 12 days since I was last in London, mixing it with the young, free and saved at the Hillsong Europe conference but I suppose life and adulting can do that to you, particularly when that sometimes indecipherable line between work and life is crossed. Shed loads of emails and the cumulative effect of multiple weekends away finally caught up with me both in my work and personal lives, leaving me wondering if it was all worth it after all. All told, the amount of time I have spent scouring YouTube for snippets of the songs I heard, and the satisfaction going over pictures from that weekend still brings, suggests that there is still some lingering benefit.

Of Things Around My Neck

Tue, 05 Jul 2016 19:48:32 +0000

It was with a mixture perhaps of Joy - Zadie Smith might disagree - and most certainly relief that I read the final lines of Kelly Sundberg’s It Will Look Like a Sunset, turned the page and realised I had finally finished reading my copy of The Best American Essays for 2015. It - the niggle at the back of my mind constantly reminding me I was yet to complete any of the books I’d started this year - had begun to feel like a thing around my neck. The 13 book target for the year - measly as it were - is now about as achievable as skiing in Kaduna, I suspect.

Father's Day Blues...

Sun, 19 Jun 2016 22:33:41 +0000

Last year, I went to a different church for Father’s Day, keen to avoid the big song and dance that usually ensues on the day at my regular one. Being a very single thirty-six year old bloke — a few months shy of turning thirty-seven — does put celebrations of fatherhood in perspective, the realisation being that that phase of life is at least eighteen months away for me.

I suppose rather than bemoan my fate, I can ask myself the difficult questions, trying to wrap my head around why I am still a single bloke. To be honest, the year of being thirty-five was the one in which I most seriously began to think and see myself as a father. Still though, a couple of liaisons down the road, the sense is very much one of getting to the party a tad late.

On Rejection

Fri, 27 May 2016 07:30:18 +0000

Image Source

The conversation - when it happened - happened on a whim; as unplanned as could have been. The intent - to set up a face to face meeting later in the week - quickly snowballed into a full-on conversation about the direction the whole L thing was headed. As it turned out, it was headed nowhere.

It, the culmination of months of chasing, was about as anti-climactic as could be, worsened perhaps by how sure I thought I was that this was it. A lot of things sucked about it - not least the fact that the reasons offered; the uncertainty around work and the pressure from family all felt like convenient cop-outs. That my interest, made known clearly and consistently over the past few months ultimately counted for nothing felt like a slap in my face. The alternative too felt inferior. True he was probably a lot more heeled than I was, but there was baggage which I didn’t have which - given the seriousness with which L had seemed to chase this - should have counted for a lot more than it.

(Trusting) God's Design In Detours

Wed, 25 May 2016 06:23:22 +0000

From today’s John Piper Devo:

Have you ever wondered what God is doing while you are looking in the wrong place for something you lost and needed very badly? He knows exactly where it is, and he is letting you look in the wrong place….

And your agonizing, unplanned detour is not a waste — not if you look to the Lord for his unexpected work, and do what you must do in his name (Colossians 3:17). The Lord works for those who wait for him (Isaiah 64:4).

A Question of Patience

Fri, 20 May 2016 07:30:20 +0000

Source

– A year ago if you had asked me if I thought I was a patient person, my unequivocal answer - given without so much as a batted eyelid - would have been that I thought I was; somewhere between 9 and 9.5 on a scale of 1 to 10 if you had pressed me to quantify. The reality, grudgingly accepted after much soul searching a few weeks ago, is that I am not; a realisation that has left me second guessing the validity of all the other assumptions about myself I carry. The first seeds of doubt to assail my iron clad convictions were sown by an offhand comment by my friend M, the context being a decision she needed to make. As far as I was concerned, it was an open and shut case; she needed to put the poor sod she was stringing along - in my opinion - out of his misery. To her it was a lot more nuanced than that, for which I got the quip about being impatient (and unfeeling).

On Lagos

Tue, 26 Apr 2016 12:19:27 +0000

That my relationship with Nigeria is somewhere between strained and non-existent is something I have made no bones about time and time again. That sense of lostness rather than easing with time has only become stronger, the key events in my life over the last few years - Newcastle, the bookend to a horrendous year of work and the somewhat forced decision to not return to the bedlam and then H - all chipping away at what bonds are left, leaving them increasingly tenuous.

Times, Seasons and A Hundred Juggled Things..

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 13:38:54 +0000

It feels like a trick of time, a sleight of hand drawn from the very top tier of a Houdini play book, but the facts – borne out by the calendar I have open in front of me, and the worn pages in the notebook I bought a couple of months ago - tell a different story; a record, as stark as it is of just how much time has passed in 2016 already.

#89 - Questions for the Universe, 3

Thu, 31 Mar 2016 15:25:03 +0000

If someone pops into your mind and then a few days later they email you out of the blue… Is the universe speaking, or are you - like all confused people - calling a coincidence an omen?

#Pondering

#71 - The Struggle

Sun, 13 Mar 2016 23:54:22 +0000

To not get ahead of oneself, to not be so swept up by the exhilaration of the moment that one loses sight of the bigger picture; that there is still a whole lot of knowing to yet do…

#HeartsOnSleeves

#68 - On Waiting

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 23:18:52 +0000

A year ago if you asked me how good I was with waiting, I suspect without giving it much thought I would have gone for somewhere between 9 and 9.5 on a scale of 1 to 10. What I am finding out to my chagrin, prompted by a few events and a conversation with my friend M (in which I get the blame for the unravelling of a certain situation) is that I suck at this waiting business.

Dear Future Me

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 13:08:02 +0000

For Mag 308:

Dear Future Me, I wanted to tell you that whatever happens tonight- on the corner of L and Ninth; you will survive.

That this too, this sense Of worry wrapping itself like a wreath around your windpipe will pass, whether lost in the exhilaration of assent; or obliterated in the loud clang of a cataclysmic bang.

That this sense of free fall, of uncertainty gnawing at your insides will give way to the clarity of certitude; that the restful stillness of truth will triumph over the ambivalence of baseless hope.

#64 - Certainly Uncertain

Sun, 06 Mar 2016 22:03:03 +0000

Spent the entire weekend building up to a conversation with L. The arguments and counter arguments were all laid out in my head, in my very worst Ted Mosby imitation. Here on the cusp of the actual meeting, it doesn’t feel so cut and dried in my head anymore, which may or may not be a good thing… I guess I’ll know soon enough how it goes..

#Pensive

#61 - The February Wrap - Of Life, and Steady Habits

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 22:16:36 +0000

What has quickly become apparent – as this year of living earnestly evolves - is that far from being the wild, giddy, excited life I half expected when my thoughts began to initially crystallise, it is one that is lived in increments; steady habits being the under-girding behaviours which hold everything together. That sense – of slow, steady if ponderous, progress – is one that has been consistently underlined and reinforced all year; by the book I am currently reading (Donald Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life), the ongoing series at Passion City on Habits and various conversations, the last of which occurred over the weekend with the older guy friend/ mentor O. The general gist of the book and the series is that change is only possible if there is an overarching vision of the future that frames the daily actions that we take, providing an incentive that keeps us plugging away at them.

#46 - Certainly Uncertain...

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 21:02:39 +0000

What to do when uncertainty gnaws at your insides…

#BillionDollarQuestion

#37 - The View

Mon, 08 Feb 2016 19:07:59 +0000

4.30pm, after what has been one of those hectic days from which I am only too happy to be saved by the end of my work day. Today though, the sense - for the first time in a long while - that I have been productive.

#Content

#27 - Body Pump

Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:15:34 +0000

Against my better judgement, I decided to book a Les Mills body pump class at my gym (which I haven’t been to since last October). Suffice it to say that my soreness and general tiredness in the aftermath of the 45 minute class suggest my fitness is nothing to write home about (or more accurately is non existent). A wake up call if ever there was one.. Sigh

#WakingUp

#23 - Going Analogue

Mon, 25 Jan 2016 20:32:23 +0000

My quick wander around Union Square leads me to WHSmith where I trawl the shelves, ultimately failing to find a notebook that calls to me. I do find this A5 sized one with gridded out sheets at Paperchase, one that reminds me of studying Maths in my (Nigerian) primary school days. Truth is my current task management set up (Wunderlist on my phone and Mac) leaves a little niggle - an inability to order tasks n running order. As a work around, I have pulling through the day’s tasks into Notes on my phone, a sort of live action tracker, which is where this new setup shines, replacing the notes app on my phone with a proper notebook. I hope, once the shine of a new notebook and erasable pen wears off that I can continue to do this… Fingers crossed.

#20 - TGIF

Fri, 22 Jan 2016 20:50:18 +0000

A Guinness for the pain…. and to kick off the weekend

#TGIF

#13 - 25 kids, 25 years

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 23:45:58 +0000

Sometime in the late 80’s/ early 90’s.. The place: a University in Ekpoma, Nigeria.. The people: kids and teachers from the Chapel’s Children’s Sunday School, a few of whom I still remember by name - all grown up now. A few dead people (RIP Gracie, GB, ‘Lena and Harold), one fairly famous (Nigerian) fashion designer (M) and seven kids who made it into engineering with a further six involved in other STEM subjects.

#9 -Back to Black

Mon, 11 Jan 2016 20:00:39 +0000

Overheard on the airport lounge’s public address system, Amy Winehouse belting out the lines to Back to Black.

A bit out of left field but enough to unleash a flood of memories from that summer of 2009.

#LifeInASong

#7 - Of Mentors

Sat, 09 Jan 2016 23:37:32 +0000

Watching Whiplash again reminded me of the power mentors (or more correctly in this case, people who we look up to and whose opinions we cherish) can have over us, driving us to become singularly focused on achieving, thereby impressing them. The merits and demerits of the influence of Fletcher on Andrew may be open to interpretation - the methods certainly are - but the intensity with which that final scene was delivered might make up for every thing.

#5 - Spontaneity

Thu, 07 Jan 2016 21:25:06 +0000

Sent on a whim, and very well received by all accounts. I should do this more often.

#Embrace spontaneity

#4 -Of names...

Wed, 06 Jan 2016 21:11:20 +0000

At the coffee machine, catching up with the new, younger engineer who shares my first name, he asks me what my surname is. I give him the anglicized, easy to pronounce version which doesn’t satisfy him. He asks me how I would pronounce it - cue five attempts, after each of which he fails colossally to reproduce the sounds I make somehow ending up adding, subtracting and transposing syllables through his various attempts.

#3 - Joy In The Simple Things

Tue, 05 Jan 2016 22:55:28 +0000

In the picture are two of my favourite things: coffee, particularly that festive specialty ginger bread latte and wasabi peas which have been out of stock at the shop next to work for a while. Which is why I went a little over the top once they were back in, ordered four little packs.

#Bliss

#2 - Savouring the Silence

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 21:46:35 +0000

Each year, on the last day before work officially resumes, I pop into the office to clear my desk. Something about the emptiness and the quietness allows me to, as I put away the detritus of the past year’s work, progressively bring myself to a place where I feel prepared to face the new work year. A large part of that is about trying to ease myself into the routine of work, acclimatising to my work space again after what usually has been two to three weeks of absence, and a food fuelled haze of sorts.

1 - First Run

Sun, 03 Jan 2016 21:54:15 +0000

My first run since I cracked a couple of bones in my foot last October went without incident, all fifteen minutes of it. I took my usual route, up the Beach Boulevard and then towards the Beach Esplanade; the long, straight stretch of which I have come to love for the sense of exhilaration I get as my feet pound the ground in time with whatever song I am listening to.

Lessons Learned...

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 21:07:23 +0000

A Year of Lessons Learned - some at great cost - in no particular order:

Doubts not dealt with at inception are unlikely to go away of their own accord, they are more likely to fester and then lead to a cataclysmic event;
It is almost never ever about you alone, people can (and probably will) get hurt by the fallout of your (in)decisions;
The health, quality and colour of the grass across the fence are notoriously difficult to predict, one is perhaps best minded to live by the dictum ’ a bird in hand is worth two in the bush’ ;
Mutuality - another notoriously difficult thing to predict - is everything;
There is nothing to be gained from overthinking things;
Time is perhaps the greatest contributor to clarity and healing;
God does still come through, only He does have a peculiar sense of timing.

For 2016?

Recapping that 'perfect' year

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 08:07:29 +0000

That perfect year?

In Work: Did finally get offered a staff position somewhere that ticked all the boxes I deeply desired at the beginning of the year (O&G operator, strong technical focus and scope to evolve my role). As a bonus, the official job title is now half a sentence :)
In Women: The G ‘problem’ ended being resolved in dissolution. Sucked but we were clearly headed no where. I suspect it was me tearing things up instead of dealing with them, again. :(
In Faith and Worldview: Not a lot of progress, very easily my worst year faith wise.
In Weight: 1 kg net loss, give or take, I do have the excuse of a broken foot in Q3 to blame here though :)
In (Net) Worth: Stalled again, slight decrease from 2014 actually - not helped by the Naira tanking and wiping out a shed load of my Nigerian savings and investments.:(

F0r 2016? Wash, Rinse, Repeat I guess - but with a lot more fight.

New (old) Job - A Testimony of Sorts

Sun, 06 Dec 2015 23:54:26 +0000

I came into church on the 10th of May feeling deeply distraught, the overwhelming sense being that all was not well. Two main issues drove the sense of disjunction I felt; uncertainties around work and an inner turmoil around a decision in my personal life I had wrestled with for nearly a year.

The message on the day was by Rev Charles Achonwa - one of the first things he said being about surrendering to grace. This spoke directly to where I was at the moment, as I had taken time off a month before to come up with what I felt was the perfect plan with multiple backups and redundancies but had made little progress which fed the sense of frustration I felt.

Coming Up For Air...

Sun, 15 Nov 2015 12:30:19 +0000

It has been that sort of month since I was last here, the sort where the only possible response once the worst of it has passed is one of navel gazing self congratulation, at having survived without too much out of kilter, like a slight limp instead of a compound fracture…Between two trips offshore, a sore foot which required a pitstop at A&E and busyness multiplied exponentially, the past three weeks have sped by like a blur. My continuum? 12 hour work days, deadlines coming thick and fast, and weekends spent trying to catch up on the week’s backlog in time for a fresh load of things to chase for the new week.

Zungzwang...

Mon, 05 Oct 2015 10:05:15 +0000

In chess:

a situation in which the obligation to make a move in one’s turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage.

In real life:

a situation in which one realises that life is speeding by in a state of unstable equilibrium with all the possible moves only likely to lead to more instability, or possibly a catastrophic event…

The solution? To stop, tear everything up and begin again… Maybe..

Letter from St John's

Sun, 27 Sep 2015 10:49:23 +0000

If all goes well, by the time you read this, I will have spent just over 18 hours in St John’s, North America’s oldest city, depending on who you listen to. As I type away in Evernote on my laptop, my view is considerably less fascinating than what I have been looking forward to; the 3 day ginger stubble of the fellow in seat 26D, my notes and the tepid remains of coffee in a Styrofoam cup occupying the full extent of my vision. The map on the entertainment console in front of me indicates that I am now half way across the expanse of the Atlantic stretching between the western edge of the Republic of Ireland and St John’s, not entirely a comforting thought to be surrounded by all that water.

Summer's End..

Fri, 18 Sep 2015 11:30:00 +0000

For the first time since July, I have begun to run again. Once a week - I’d like to make it twice - I don my bright orange jacket, shorts and running shoes and begin at a leisurely pace down Urquhart road, up Links Road and then gradually pick up pace until my feet are pounding the tarmac on the long stretch that is the Beach Esplanade.

Sleep, or more accurately sleeplessness, has been one of the drivers for running again. Once awake sometime between 2am and 4am regardless of when I hit the sack, I find my mind far too active to go back to sleep. That is how I end up awake till it feels like a less ungodly hour to hit the road and run. What running does is afford me time to think - headphones plugged in, I can focus on the rhythm my feet make and the beat of whatever I am listening to. I am not alone in the pursuit of running zen, sometimes I pass other runners in different phases of their own runs, walking a dog or on the odd occasion an elderly couple out and about strolling.

On Language, and Aspiration

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 12:30:00 +0000

In the opening chapter of his autobiography, Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez explores his introduction to the English language, and the strain his commitment to mastering it places on his relationship with his parents. Being Mexican immigrants to America in the 1970’s, their primary language of intimacy and engagement is Spanish, their efforts in English being halting and deeply accented, even though his mother is an excellent speller of words. The emotion most stirred in those early days - when he as the up and coming scholarship boy gets to be out and about with them - is one of embarrassment and perhaps frustration at their limitations. For him, as with most people looking to escape the limitations of a certain kind of background, aspiration is a keen motivator, one that drives him to seek to immerse himself in knowledge and books, and take up the manners, airs and graces of the class and culture he looks up to.

Letting Go...

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 11:30:28 +0000

Image Credit: Sarah Horrigan, Flickr

The one woman I think I loved most in my recent history didn’t quite like me back that way. I was sure she was The One; I was entranced by how her eyes lit up around children and young people, how easy she was to talk to, and how her voice - soft and mellow yet steely when required - seemed to exude this aura of quiet strength. Even her awkward moments seemed cute, the tilt of her chin when she pretended to not see me across the room and the mumbled words when I could tell she was furiously inventing excuses to not meet up.

A Good Year of Sorts - A Playlist

Sat, 15 Aug 2015 09:56:26 +0000

\https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries?list=PLYbuHzHoxFuCf8ksItOz6ZdGAL_L8PR1W&w=800&h=315\

The continuum: loss, numbness, turmoil, (self induced) heartbreak, surrender and (finally) finding a peace of sorts.. Here’s to Beginning, Again…

The Playlist

Mad World - Gary Joules
Wish - Lighthouse Family
This Too Shall Pass - Yolanda Adams
Shadowfeet - Brooke Fraser
Father Me - Rick & Cathy Riso
Read All About It - Emeli Sande
Airplanes - B.O.B
Love Alone Is Worth The Fight - Switchfoot
Volcano - Rapture Ruckus & Jonathan Thulin
Redemption Days - Josh Ojo
Something New - Axwell Ingrosso
Shake - MercyMe

On Being and Identity

Fri, 14 Aug 2015 11:30:22 +0000

Standing here on the cusp of a milestone birthday of sorts, the sense is one of relief - that what has been a deeply emotive, if difficult year, has ended without too much lingering damage. Much of course is relative, depending on that difficult to define quality emotional capacity, or resilience. To my untrained mind, it would appear that like muscles and exercise, the more experience one has had dealing with trauma and difficult, emotionally charged situations, the easier it should get. I suspect the jury is still out on that. Tempering the sense of relief is a sense of clarity, the detached sort that hits in the moments between when a car begins to skid off a bridge and when it hits the icy water beneath. Time, in those moments, seems to stand still, each event on the time line of dying taking on crystal clear quality, like an HD frame, frozen. This birthday has that feeling of being a portal to inevitable change. The facts are what they are, I am now nearer forty than thirty, and that realisation in one fell swoop takes away any remaining pretensions to enduring youth I still have. What this does in addition is bring to the fore the questions of being, identity and direction I have managed to sweep under the carpet over the past few years.

The Weekend Diary - Of Trains and Stolen Things

Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:30:21 +0000

I realise the reservation ‘gods’ have dealt me a dubious hand within five minutes of coming aboard the 11.03 to Edinburgh Waverley. That is all the time it takes for me to spot the trio of old geezers parked in the pair of seats immediately to my right and be swarmed by the posse of loud, giggling women who breeze past on their way to the seats they have reserved a few seats behind me. Between them, they kick up a racket whilst the train loads up, from which I overhear that the men are offshore workers returning home - somewhere beyond Edinburgh - after three weeks offshore, and the women are headed to Edinburgh for a hen do.

On Loss..

Fri, 24 Jul 2015 11:30:20 +0000

[Image Source]

It has been a deeply emotive week for me, bookended as it were by Sunday’s Remembrance Service - a year exactly to the day since we lost H- and the quiet, deathly stillness of my office today as I stand here, cup of coffee in hand looking out at the lunch time crowd milling about. As the week has gone along, the flurry of phone calls, emails and messages of commiseration I have had to field from people has eased off, allowing me some time to begin to reflect on where I am, and how things have evolved over the past year. Not much has changed by all accounts, I still haven’t brought myself to delete H’s details from my phone or my FB page for that matter - deceased 19th July 2014 is the only addition I have made on my phone - which led to a birthday reminder from FB in my feed the other day, as raw a reminder as there could be of the keenness of the loss we still feel.

At The Centre of Things

Fri, 03 Jul 2015 11:30:41 +0000

Photo credits - David Goehring, Flickr

- -

All I remember from the immediate aftermath of hitting the red button which terminates the FaceTime conversation I have been having with G is a feeling of reeling and of sinking, how I imagine the driver of a car suddenly swept off a road into the icy depths of a lake might feel - disoriented, numb and perhaps too taken aback to have any real appreciation of the import of what has just happened. There is good reason to feel this way, given the act - symbolic as it were - is one that brings to an end what has been a good year of sorts, and that only for the third time ever. To reach this place, where what is a painful, hard fought decision has been taken, has required months of agony and wrestling - weighing the pros of trying to save face against the cons of loss, of time and sunken investments. That G and I work, by and large, has made the decision even more difficult; that a milestone birthday of sorts for me has just passed complicates things even more.

A good month of sorts...

Tue, 30 Jun 2015 12:30:00 +0000

Image Credits - Joey Rozier, Flickr

It has been a fascinating month of sorts on here - and also in real life where the issues which drove my sense of dissonance and the need to begin again have eased off. I would be remiss if I said I was out of the woods completely, but there certainly is a sense of significant progress and building traction in the right direction. The money numbers were pretty much bang on plan - just under £0.01 actual vs planned - which allowed me put away twice what I planned at the beginning of the month. I did spend more than planned on transport and purchases, main driver being the need to head down south for a weekend at short notice and the bits and bobs I purchased to support that. For the interested (waves at SisiOnABudget), here are two charts (by category, plan vs actuals) with a little more detail.

Of life and playthings

Mon, 22 Jun 2015 18:01:22 +0000

For today’s Daily Prompt, Toy Story

- - -

There is a real sense in which play was a concept alien to the world in which I grew up. Being the son of two high achieving, austere academicians did that to me; that they adopted a rigorous, all encompasing asceticism merely underlined the near total absence in our lives of anything that didn’t fulfil a function of some sort. The Black & White National television set was the communal alter around which we sacrificed our evenings to learning and current affairs, the gramophone, the vehicle by which nostalgic memories where wheeled out and shared with us younglings.

The Perfect Year - In Five Things

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 11:30:00 +0000

From my notes at the end of March (which kind of triggered this)

In Work: Greater clarity around my role going forward, and dare I say a staff role somewhere that allows me focus (almost) exclusively on developing my technical Materials and Corrosion skills.
In Women: Resolution of my G ‘problem’ - we’ve stalled, we both know it but we’re letting the weight of third party expectations drive our actions.
In Worldview: God and I need to have a proper conversation and make up. This cognitive dissonance is driving me nuts.
In Weight: 8kg over my YE2014 numbers. MUST do better!
In (Net) Worth: Stalled, no increases since YE 2013 inspite of net increase in earnings. Must rein in 2015 spend and take it from there. Hopefully SisiOnABudget comes up with the magic bullet for this soon!

Of Titles and Taglines

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 05:22:49 +0000

I first heard the word Quotidian used in every day parlance in 2010 by one of my favourite authors, the British-Nigerian Poet and Novelist, Chris Abani in his TED 2008 talk On Humanity.

The context within which he uses the word is the retelling of a story from his childhood, growing up as a young Ibo boy in Nigeria, having to kill a goat, but finding himself too sensitive to do so. In the end, Emmanuel an older boy who has been a boy soldier in the Biafran (Nigerian Civil) war comes to his rescue, putting his hands over the goat’s mouth and covering its eyes so he doesn’t have to see them whilst he kills the goat. In the story, Chris is moved by the duty of care the older, hardened ex-soldier exercises over him concerning the simple matter of killing a goat, given that he has been involved in fighting a war widely recognised as having led to the deaths of over a million people. That deeply emotive context seems to have left an indelible mark on me, and driven me to associate a double meaning with the word. Whilst normal, everyday things are quotidian, context often colours them in shades and nuances far more complicated than they seem or should be - hence the title of my blog Quotidian Things.

Beginning, Again

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 11:00:49 +0000

For the umpteenth time I am attempting to begin again. As to triggers for each prior iteration of these beginnings, I can blame various cataclysmic events – a delayed quarter life crisis which ended up with me starting over on a new continent, a short lived romance, and the sense of endlessly treading water being prime examples of some of these. On this occasion however, I cannot pinpoint a singular reason why; such has been the sort of year I have had – between the end of a good year of sorts with G and the significant uncertainties brought about by an unstable oil price regime.

Spring[ing]

Fri, 22 May 2015 23:00:00 +0000

[ Source]

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The sense of something

Brewing; Hope’s shoots, soft, tender-

Beginning, Again

Of Journeys and Endings...

Thu, 07 May 2015 20:35:52 +0000

[ Source]

When March finally dragged itself to an end, I remember thinking that I hadn’t felt as stressed as I did at the time since 2008, 2008 being a nadir of sorts; one that ended up with me quitting my job and heading back to grad school, my version of navigating a delayed quarter life crisis.

So out of sorts and form did I feel that I took myself away to the Starbucks in Union Square, one Sunday after church, ordered the most decadent hot chocolate with cream on offer and proceeded to have a conversation with myself. What quickly became apparent from that exercise was that there were a number of pressure points which were driving my malaise.

NaPoWriMo Day 8 - For H, Something Stolen

Wed, 08 Apr 2015 16:14:59 +0000

For H - untitled, off prompt…

I said I wouldn’t cry Wouldn’t let the quivering of my lips win, break me.

I said I wouldn’t bend, Wouldn’t sag beneath this weight this unrelenting burden of grief

A harsh wind clasps Me by my throbbing throat Enrobing me in the scales Of its cold, wintery fingers.

Something’s stolen you From me, and all I have left Is hope, that when tomorrow comes The Sun will shine.

On praying, and changing...

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 22:35:43 +0000

[ Source]

One day you wake up with a sense of hunger, as though someone - or something - dredged the innards of your soul and all you want to do is talk to Him. The tug is so strong – and insistent – that you think nothing of kneeling on the cold, hard floor and pouring out your heart. It seems to work because by the time you’re done, you feel light headed and ready, ready to take on the world, bad guys, ghouls and all.

2015 Goals

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 16:59:19 +0000

Three main achievements will make 2015 a ‘perfect’ year, to all intents and purposes, viz:

Spiritual growth as evidenced by a regular routine of bible study and prayer
A new Technical M&C role at an oil and gas operator
Getting married

The wider goals and targets I’m looking to achieve for the year though, aligned with my personal SWOT analysis and the refocused Life Plan are:

Spiritual
- Achieve 80% Daily Bible Reading and Prayer - explore the Lectio Divina process
- Average 6 (of 8) church days per month
- Attend FOL Morning Prayers twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) – 80% target
Physical and Health
- Get fitter – YE target is 15% body fat, weight under 80kg
- Get blood pressure below 140/90 consistently (explore potassium replacement/ supplements as a quantified self project)
- Average 6 hours of sleep/day >80% of the time
- Use the gym 3 times a week (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday) – target 80%
- Track sodium and attempt to bring within recommended limits
Social and People:
- Track B contact time (Target > 1 hour per day); track completions in Habit List
- Host a hangout for my 2015 birthday (Aberdeen)
- Drag my London Blogger peeps today for a meal over summer 2015 (CaramelD, Simeon, NoLimit, ToniAnni, Aloted, MizKeji)
- Maintain weekly phone calls home to Dad
Career & Work
- Become staff M&C Engineer at an O&G Operator;
- Attend monthly industry working group meetings – target 80% of months with a meeting (one of ICorr, IMarEST or AFBE) – track in Habit List
- Deliver Work Projects
  - TI Anomaly Risk Review
  - TI Vibration Fatigue Strategy and Implementation
  - ECE Project
  - Procedure Updates - Integrity Risk Screening (PoF Guidance, DAF Risk Assessment)
  - MU Integrity Management - Inspections and Topside Pressure System Integrity
Financial:
- Save 30% of net earnings,
- Reduce total spend; 2015 YE target of £35k
- Grow net worth by 50% (total - investments + savings + pension growth,+ assets, etc)
- Rebalance net worth and elements; buy a house, build ISA back up to 10k, invest excess in index funds
Mental and Personal Development:
- Deliver on a 25 book reading plan (Aim to cover Christian Classics, Literary Classics, Popular Fiction, Current Christian & Non-fiction with 5 each per category)
- Blog here at archive.rustgeek.me at least once a week (Plan is to post something >500 words every Tuesday)
- Learn to write VBA for Excel and Macros
- Learn to play a musical instrument - need to decide between the acoustic guitar and the saxophone, target is to present something at eXpressions 2015)
- Attend Structural Integrity course at Imperial College
Causes & Charity:
- Catch up on my first fruit offering from pay rise in Q1 2013 (as a one time gift if possible at the end of February)
- Write to Moises and RosieMarie twice each during the year
General, Projects and Bucket List Items
- Complete a modified Whole30 or Ketogenic Diet for an entire month
- Walk or run 5 miles daily for a month
- Read 5 Booker Prize Winners (Bucket List)
- Attend the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
- Watch the Ball drop in New York’s Time Square

Year End Review - 2014

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 22:03:03 +0000

General 2014 was an emotional wringer of a year, perhaps the most difficult one I’ve ever had, thanks in part to losing H, and O, but also because of difficult transitions at work. All in all, it’s been a largely forgettable year, with spots of delirious joy in between. Here, in each of the seven focus areas undergirding the life plan are a little bit more detailed thoughts on how my 2014 went with a (R)ed, (A)mber or (G)reen indicator.

2014 in (Personal) charts

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 14:25:46 +0000

2014 Actions...

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 19:44:45 +0000

A review of the goals I set out to achieve in 2014.

Learn to drive, buy a car: Completed (Passed driving test in April, bought a car in October- completed)
Buy a house: Progressed (Made an unsuccessful offer for a city centre apartment. Waiting on feedback on further developments as winning bid seemed to have fallen through, definitely one to focus on in 2015)
Improve professionally: Completed (Certified to API 571 - Advanced Corrosion and Materials in April and NACE Senior Corrosion Technologist in December, wrote API 580 exam, waiting on results in Q1 2015)
Find two mentors, meet once a month to catch up and review where I am: Progressed (Held regular meetings with O through the year, met G twice and K once, another action to follow up and KPI through 2015)
Travel: Completed (8 London Trips, 2 Manchester ones and an enforced Nigeria trip; failed to complete my Great North American Road Trip for the 35th, one to chase up next year also)
Develop a daily practice of prayer, bible study and meditation: Progressed (Bought NIV Devotional Bible and tracked completions in Habit List)
Blog for 30 days straight: Completed (Used the Art of Manliness 30 Days to a Better Man challenge as a template)
Save minimum of 30% of net earnings, reduce annual spend to pre-2013 levels (£30k): Failed (Car purchase, helps for family and travel to Nigeria made saving especially difficult)
Communicate and Engage the people in my life better: Progressed (Call Dad once a week now, need to give B the focus she also needs as we progress,wrote to sponsored children once each and sent a Christmas gift to RosieMarie)
Deliver on the 30 book reading plan: Failed (Managed 16 of the 30, should do better)
Community Engagement - Church Publications, Tech and Young Adults Group: Completed (Delivered four articles for the publications team and helped with video edits and script delivery for the Broadcasting/ Tech team, c0-sponsored the Young Adults Christmas party)
Get fit and lean: Failed (Up to 90kg in weight and measured body fat at 23%; epic fail)

All in, there or thereabouts with three clear failures (savings and the reading plan). Clear focus areas for 2015 already standing out then I guess.

Building the Life Plan - My SWOT Analysis

Tue, 23 Dec 2014 15:31:30 +0000

Key 2015 Actions

Attend one professional meeting per month - ICorr, IMarEST or NACE Aberdeen - to build professional network and create opportunities to volunteer (AFBE)
Learn VBA programming for Excel
Speak up more/ contribute more vocally at meetings - aim to contribute at least once per work/team meeting
Explore options to close pipelines/subsea/design skills gaps

Rethinking the Life Plan

Sun, 21 Dec 2014 23:52:06 +0000

Several times over the last couple of years, different pieces of my life plan have been documented; seven priorities, three life goals and five core values to name a few. A milestone birthday and the looming end to the year felt like triggers for a thorough review of these various bits and pieces, the objective being to meld these bits and bobs documented at different times into a coherent whole - if that was indeed possible. Thankfully one of the guidance documents that under pinned some of the earlier envisioning activities was Matt Hyatt’s Creating Your Personal Life Plan, which I still had a copy of. That provided some of the high level guidance for this review, modified to better fit my thinking of where I am at the moment. So here goes.

Always Returning

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 19:48:05 +0000

[ Source]

Whilst rustling through my documents at the weekend - I forget what prompted the decision to take on the Sisyphean task of rummaging through drawers filled with several years’ worth of papers of varying vintage - it struck me that it was now nearly five years to the day since I dragged myself, bags in tow, off the East Coast train from Newcastle to Aberdeen to begin a new life of sorts. Ditching my Nigerian job for grad school 18 months before meant that nostalgia - and twenty-something years’ worth of memories - counted for little; pragmatism was very much the defining consideration. In a sense, Newcastle, and then Aberdeen afterwards was about tearing everything up and starting afresh from scratch, pretty much the recovery from a self-imposed apocalypse. The driver for that decision was a sense of injustice at the Nigerian work environment; five years of being unaligned (being from the minority in a minority state didn’t help), a sense of having hit a glass ceiling and the desire to prove myself on a global sense all contributing.

Did We Do Any Learning - Savouring Memories

Sun, 14 Dec 2014 17:17:32 +0000

A few thoughts – with the benefit of a few months since losing H - on living and learning…

Life’s lessons are neither bleeding obvious nor palatable. All we possess for sure are the moments that we share with our friends and loved ones. The challenge is to enjoy and maximise the moments, not putting off the kind word, the lingering touch, or the act of kindness we know they deserve.

Déjà vu

Thu, 20 Nov 2014 03:29:52 +0000

For Mag 246: Highway

A sense that Time has Stood dead still, yet hurtled by; This us, déjà vu

The 90 Day Weight Loss Challenge

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 17:55:36 +0000

Baselines

Weight - 87kg, 26.1% body fat (Tanita Body Composition Monitor)
Waist - 88cm,
Hips - 108cm,

The Plan

Exercise every day - Run (Gym or outdoors) on alternate days, body strength straining at home on other days; utilise the fitnut plan from work.
Eat well - Resetting the diet to same time last year - no grains, rice or gluten containing food; meat, nuts and vegetables primarily

Not my finest hour...

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 05:07:10 +0000

A large pizza, roast chicken topped off with a Ben & Jerry’s. Proof - if ever any was needed - that I need a step change ASAP…

Finally, Fall...

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 17:52:08 +0000

Only a few days ago, the sun was out - weakly warm but out regardless, even though the first day of autumn was officially past. As I made my daily lunch time walk from the office to the Boots Store at the back end of Union Square, the sense was one of making hay whilst the sun still shone, enjoying the final blast of warmth, before Autumn took hold. An old lady, bless her heart, bumped into me as we waited for the little green man before crossing the road into the parking lot adjacent to work. In fairness to her I had my nose in my phone - make of that what you will - but that little bump did create the context for a short quick chat whilst we waited. Not so long ago, the arrival of spring, and the warmth it portended was the focus.

Baselines...

Mon, 01 Sep 2014 22:37:14 +0000

Rude awakening from my GP visit a few days ago with my weight in the region of 90kg from the 82 I weighed at the start of the year - this represents a very comprehensive regression. The target is to return to 80kg by YE. The Plan?

Whole30, starting on 2nd September.
Drink 2 litres of water daily; start the day off with a litre of ice cold water and drink green tea exclusively during the day.
Exercise thrice a week - 30 mins each time

In tandem with the above, the plan is to wake up my various attempts at self tracking -very much against the Whole30 ethos I might add.

Mixed Bag

Wed, 27 Aug 2014 20:17:18 +0000

Popped into the GP’s for my six monthly blood pressure review. Mixed results - good on the blood pressure count (124/82), bad on the weight (up to 88.5kg from a low of 82kg at the turn of the year). Way too much pizza messing with my metabolism I guess. Roll on the Whole30 then - 2 days in!

Turning Thirty Five - The Strategic Five Year Plan

Fri, 15 Aug 2014 23:40:41 +0000

Turning thirty-five could not have come at a less opportune moment - given the summer of loss that we have had. The silver lining though is that it offers an opportunity to pause, take stock and ask oneself what the focus for the next few years should be. My life plan has come together in bits and bobs over the last few years - three life goals, seven priorities and five core values, a tad incoherent if the truth must be told.

The Way The World Ends: On Loss, and Lostness

Wed, 13 Aug 2014 19:09:23 +0000

It is sometime after 5pm – between chomping down on a very meaty beef burger and swigging from a can of apple juice - that the call comes in. Up until then, I have been having the exact weekend I had in mind when I dragged myself away from work to catch the 727 to Aberdeen Dyce airport a few days earlier: go-karting and then a BBQ, with the prospect of Lakeside shopping with B. to come. The scene is one of self-indulgent relaxation; two grills fully stocked with burgers, chicken drumsticks and barbecue meat on the go, little children running about, wives and girlfriends munching on burgers and sharing intimate gossip moments, and men standing around the grill sipping from cans and surveying the scene - wife, 2.5 kids, picket fence and a few hundred quid to burn on a splurge in tow. It takes a while – probably the better part of ten minutes - before the gravity of the news begins to sink in. When I return to the three-way conversation I was having before the call, B senses there is something wrong. In response to her quizzical look, I motion for her to break out of the conversation and explain what has happened. All told, twenty minutes after hearing the news – give or take – my mood has morphed from indulged, self-congratulation to inner turmoil as I attempt to digest the news in the relative quiet of B’s.

For H: What I wanted to say...

Wed, 06 Aug 2014 23:31:58 +0000

I spoke on behalf of the family at H’s funeral. The plan was to go over the points raised here in sequence, mid way through it, I broke down and cried uncontrollably. Here is the original text, for the record…

My earliest, lucid memories of growing up are inextricably linked to green bowls of soup and stew, and Sunday afternoon cooking marathons. Back in those days, in the early eighties, extenuating circumstances required that the family lived in two homes in two different cities. One of the enduring images from that time is the meticulous attention to detail and the foresight to plan long term with which both homes were run with incredible efficiency.

KPIs and Reviews - June 2014

Tue, 01 Jul 2014 18:56:42 +0000

Day 28 - Write a Love Letter

Sat, 28 Jun 2014 19:50:30 +0000

when i first saw you it was not love at first sight - but somehow i sensed it was the start of something momentous. for the first few weeks my mind was elsewhere - stuck in a pain induced haze from the last one i thought could be thd one - against my better judgement. truth was i was stuck in an infinite loop, a bullet train headed to no where but

Day 12 - Create Your Bucket List

Thu, 12 Jun 2014 17:55:52 +0000

Day 12 of the Better Man in 30 days challenge - Create Your Bucket List

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Currently working through my bucket list - aptly (if I say so myself) tagged 40 things by 40 seeing the 40th birthday is the next major birthday on the horizon - and no I am not 35 yet.. Closed out a few things already some of which include making CEng, losing 20kg and taking a boat ride down the Chicago river. A few stand out as sore points on which I have made zero progress whatsoever on - visiting the children I sponsor via WorldVision and reading every book that has been awarded the Man Booker prize being prime examples.

Bait and Switch...

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 21:18:34 +0000

My father, very much like me, is not a great talker- the sum of our conversation over the course of the year is little more than fifteen minutes. In the main these - 3 minutes here, 2 there, and 5 there have mainly come about as intermissions, snuck in between typically lengthy conversations with my mother - if her constant probing and interrogating can count as conversations. When I wake up to find a couple of missed calls from him on my phone , a whatsapp message from my kid sister, and a BBM message from my brother - all relating to the fact that my father has been trying to get hold of me- it sets the alarm bells in my head off. After arriving from my weekend trip to the middle of nowhere (link) I ordered the largest, most decadent pizza I could from PapaJohns - with a barbecue chicken side- devoured it and promptly fell into my bed for sleep, which was how I ended up oblivious to the clamour for my attention.

The March Wrap - Reboots, London and Bits and Bobs...

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 22:05:09 +0000

Down South, the overwhelming narrative is one of a spring in full flow, cue a flood of selfies on Instagram and Facebook, complete with the obligatory sunglasses, sleeveless tops and sandals. Up here, in my North Eastern corner of Ruralshire, the best that we have had is six degree weather and intermittent sunshine - not quite spring, but very nearly as good as it gets up here, being thankful that we are not having snow in March like we did last year.

Spring cleaning...

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 18:33:42 +0000

You Can’t Start The Next Chapter Of Your Life If You Keep Re-Reading The Last One…

I still had LK’s contact details on my phone, and about once a week I would send her a whatsapp message to see how she was getting on; even though our conversations usually involved her unloading on her issues on me - work, friends not taking her seriously anymore and the like. For one, it sent a message that I was still available - a tad too available even, and perhaps that I wasn’t entirely over her. Given the background, her unwavering declaration of not being interested romantically in me and her self declared complexity, it was always crass stupidity on my part..

Getting Directions, Movie-thons and Sunday afternoon conversations

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 21:59:56 +0000

Still slightly depressed from all that’s happened to rock my world over the last few weeks, I drag myself down to Union Square having left work thirty minutes early. I am hoping that a little window shopping – and fresh air – will do my foul mood some good. Thirty minutes later, having made a pit stop at TK Maxx, mooched around Sole Trader and JD Sports I find myself at the Jones shop, pondering the wisdom or otherwise of splurging on a gorgeous pair of Timberland boat shoes I have found.

On Repeat: #10 - Thousand Foot Krutch - Forward Motion

Sun, 09 Mar 2014 21:13:50 +0000

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Let’s keep it moving in a forward motion, If we can hold on, we can cross this ocean, There’s no sense in lettin’ our emotions, Get in the way, until the door keeps closin'

For LK : What I wanted to say...

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 22:02:21 +0000

I never sent this though - in retrospect, I should have, and drawn a line under the sordid, heart rending affair that was my dalliance with LK. Source:

I have given our prospective Thursday evening meetup a lot more thought. Under different circumstances - if we didn’t have the ‘us’ elephant in the room - I would have no reservations whatsoever with popping into London to see you. I enjoy your company that much, and have genuinely looked forward to every second we’ve spent together.

The End of the Beginning

Fri, 28 Feb 2014 20:36:47 +0000

When I first came here, it was not love at first sight. There was no instant click, no immediate sense of belonging; only a sense of tentativeness.The call that set it all off had come out of the blue one Tuesday afternoon, from a Manager I didn’t work for directly. My first response was to email the guy I actually did work for - he took a day and a half to get back to me - by which time the moving train had gathered speed. After less than three months back at the mother lode, following a six month stint sequestered in a client office, I was on the move again.

The Sense of An Ending

Thu, 20 Feb 2014 23:53:32 +0000

Having given the subject of my proposed trip to London to see LK a lot of thought, I resolved that the sensible thing was not to go through it. Two main things stood out in my head as valid reasons for this position - she was due to go away for a much deserved holiday the day after and didn’t deserve to go under a cloud, and perhaps more importantly I felt we were at a level of irritation at which constructive conversation was well nigh impossible. I thus penned a lengthy email exploring my feelings and explaining my decisions which I intended to send through to her after we had had a quick chat.

Tipping point?

Mon, 17 Feb 2014 23:42:46 +0000

LK and I somehow ended up having yet another conversation on the never quite clearly defined subject of ‘us’. Having gone ahead to send through a gift for Valentine’s Day, I did feel a little bit miffed that my efforts had merely provoked a very understated reaction. One thing led to another and I ended up letting rip a broadside around the uncertainties I was having to carry around this connection. All this over whatsapp, and at work, which was criminal on my part I must say.

On Repeat: #7 – Emeli Sande - Abide With Me

Sun, 16 Feb 2014 20:00:55 +0000

For O, who bailed too soon…

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In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

On Repeat: #6 – Hawk Nelson – Faithful

Sun, 09 Feb 2014 13:29:29 +0000

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… No matter how many times I break You promise always to keep me safe You’re my rescue when I’m spinning outta control…

Conversations and Conundrums

Sat, 08 Feb 2014 16:18:41 +0000

Fundamentally, I do like you, but there is a but.

My initial elation very quickly vanished, to be replaced with a more pragmatic mix of angst, exasperation and some curiosity. LK and I had been chatting, catching up, and following up after my London trip, the main driver for which was a (second) date with her. After church at Hillsong - always a great bonus on these trips - I made my way towards the Angel Station where we’d planned to meet and then do lunch and talk.

30 Day Challenge #1: Daily Prayer and Bible Study

Sat, 01 Feb 2014 20:25:00 +0000

Challenge #1 was to develop a regular routine of prayer and bible study in the morning before heading out to work. The idea was to leverage the Hillsong Maximised Life Devotional - the plethora of social options by which it was delivered an incentive to complete this task. Overall though, I only managed 18 completions from 30, my longest streak being 4 days - terrible.

Given the above, the plan for February is to continue with this challenge as well as add the Paleo diet to the list of habits for February 2014. The key expectations are to stay off sugar, grains and cereals, legumes, dairy and wheat, drink 2 litres of water daily, and Nandos (phew).

White paper....

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 14:20:42 +0000

I want to cover you With words. Ink dots Jumbled together Until they blur Into a scrawl, confused Like the light From a thousand scattered beads

I want to hide myself Within the haze Of my re-memory - To somehow, between life And the afterglow From my tired brain, Re-create the time and space That reality stole.

But your blank, pure Whiteness mocks me, I find the things I want to say don’t come

2014 - The Plan

Fri, 03 Jan 2014 00:33:52 +0000

The prospect of poor health, a milestone birthday of sorts and all round malaise kicked off what was a great plan (in my opinion at least) to deliver change over the course of a year, which as I am wont to do, I tagged with the lofty title ‘ The Year of Living Dangerously’. It started off well – at least with regards to chasing up 52 small changes but the initial enthusiasm seeped out, prompting an attempt to gee myself up for a restart.

2013...

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 23:59:44 +0000

In women, or the lack thereof of… L who proved a bridge too far. In retrospect we were much too different, and there were loads of warning signs. O with whom I had the ‘you’re a great guy but convo… Si for whom I popped into town just before she conveniently picked up a stomach bug, and bailed on me F who I’d had a crush on, on and off for three years and counting, but with whom the stars never aligned… Tee who handed me my second friend zone convo of the year Somewhere in between I swore off the dream to snag the all Nigerian chic.. Or not… 2014 may yet shed more light on this.

Chaos and Nostalgia.. Postscript

Fri, 27 Dec 2013 20:14:21 +0000

In the end this trip - all ten days of it - was about absolution for sins yet to be committed. Unbeknownst to everyone I strove to meet up with, if I had my way, Nigeria would not feature on the holiday destination list for the next three years at least. So this was the last guilty splurge - the second time this year - where I sought to inhale as much of Nigeria and family as I could, like a free-diver does with oxygen before submerging.

Chaos and Nostalgia...5

Tue, 17 Dec 2013 20:49:52 +0000

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I get my sister’s old room back. I have been way for so long that I have to go back two house moves to the time I still had a room here, one that I shared with the kid brother in the house on 3rd Street.

I spend the bulk of the five days I spend in total in a haze of sorts - thanks to the ASUU strike, there’s precious little going on about town. NEPA does it’s very best to limit how much access to my devices I get, battery life being a significant issue of sorts.

Chaos and Nostalgia...4

Mon, 16 Dec 2013 21:37:47 +0000

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By 7.20am, I am in a cab, speeding towards the Yaba Motor Park. The plan is to grab a seat on an early bus to Benin, and then on to Ekpoma. Overnight my Mum has tried to call me several times. My gamble - forwarding my UK mobile to a Skype Out number- has failed spectacularly; no thanks to the dodgy internet I’ve got. The forwarded calls come in but I can’t answer them with any decent quality. :( That early on a Sunday morning, Lagos is already agog – blaring loud speakers, shrill cries of hawkers and bus conductors alike and a steady stream of pedestrians.

Chaos and Nostalgia...3

Sun, 15 Dec 2013 21:25:36 +0000

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I wake up to singing - slightly muffled but loud enough to filter through to that neither here nor there place between sleep and waking up, where ambient sounds meld into dreams, or whatever it is conscious people do with their brains. When I make my way downstairs, it turns out it is the hotel staff having morning prayers.

I am low on cash, I half start to prepare to go out before I am minded to ask my friend V, who confirms an ATM is my best bet. I end up walking a few kilometres to the nearest bank, a Zenith Bank, and empty my cash passport in the process; 20,000 naira should cover an extra day’s hotel costs and the transport fare by road from Lagos to Benin which is next on the agenda.

Chaos and Nostalgia... 2

Sat, 14 Dec 2013 17:08:42 +0000

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Source

Nightfall….It is very nearly half past seven when we begin our final descent into Lagos. From the window, all that is visible is a thick, dense darkness, interrupted by clusters of lights here and there.

I’m surprised it’s not totally dark out there, my seat mate ventures. I shrug. Maybe generators I say. He seems unconvinced. Over the course of the last 6 hours, and some, he and I have conversed intermittently – first about the busyness that engulfs travel hubs like Schiphol and Heathrow, and La Guardia where the first leg of his flight originated. Then a moan about the delays in the cabin crew delivering head phones to use – from which it transpires that on his La Guardia – Schiphol leg he had to ask for them before he got them. The antics of our dear Bini granny also provide fodder for our intermittent, light hearted chatting. Descending into Lagos changes the bent of our conversation into something decidedly more Nigeria focused – mainly how in a few short minutes our motley of people who queued almost impeccably at Schiphol would disintegrate into a seething, boiling mass of one-uppers and corner cutters.

Season of Uncertainty

Wed, 16 Oct 2013 03:46:36 +0000

Sinking… and feeling for rock bottom is the sense of where I feel I am at the moment; very much like the proverbial lead sinking in water. The thing with Tee rather than being the primary cause of this latest bout of malaise helped precipitate it, not least being the most recent of a string of setbacks in the girl department running through the year.

There’s work, and the fact that the guys I currently work for recently lost a major service contract they had held for the better part of 8+ years. With that has come the potential for staff moves, down-sizing and all the other fun and games associated with trying to bring overhead down. Even though my own role seems safe amidst this sea of change, there is the additional complication of the particular client I support shuttering activity on the plant I work for. My UK visa is tied to my employer so the uncertainty associated with work, or not working does leave the mind in jitters. Another layer of complexity is the fact that I want to do something different. Having spent the greater part of the last 10 years - since December 2003 - in topside pressure system asset integrity, I do want to get my teeth into subsea materials and corrosion a lot more than my current role might allow…

Rebooting... Small Change #4: Keep a food journal

Sun, 06 Oct 2013 23:49:29 +0000

It is very nearly a month since I gave the #52SmallChanges project any kind of intentionality. I could blame a mini season of depression occasioned by my fixation on S, or the fact that I have upcoming exams I am freaking out about, or work - which I have had loads of.

Bottom line is I haven’t been on the money with regards to the small changes I was meant to be progressing through till the next birthday. The barely there silver lining though is besides the ‘get more sleep’ change, I’ve pretty much kept up with the new habits I have picked up in the first three weeks.

Going nowhere... fast

Thu, 03 Oct 2013 19:12:53 +0000

Against my better judgement – and that not for the first time – I call S on Sunday evening. Predictably she doesn’t answer her phone. The first and only acknowledgement of the missed call comes on Tuesday night, a full fifty-two hours later, when she texts to apologise for missing my call, citing being tied up with chores and ironing.

Given she is someone I have been trying to get a face to face with since early July; and who pulled out of yet another agreement in principle to meet up the Thursday before the Sunday on which I call her citing busyness again; it does begin to strain the limits of credulity to imagine these are just random, real limitations on time as opposed to a fully intentional strategy to avoid meeting up.

Treading water...

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 20:57:13 +0000

Tee and I have somehow segued into friend zone territory - catching up once a day on average to share the minutiae of life, moan about our respective bosses and all the other things working adults who live alone find the time to complain about.

She has had a lot on her plate lately between work, illness and family visits, as I have been with work and my urgent trip down south to Sheffield to sort out the small matter of a visa.

Small Change #3 - Get off your couch

Sun, 08 Sep 2013 20:28:38 +0000

From the 52 Small Changes book:

An active mind cannot exist in an inactive body

- General George S. Patton

Last week’s change didn’t exactly go down very well - my fitbit sleep data suggests I didn’t do as well as I thought I would (averaged 6 hours 7 minutes of sleep as against 5 hours 52 minutes the week before); still shy of the 7 hour target. On a slightly more positive note, my water drinking challenge continues apace, thanks to my 600ml mug perched right next to my bed it seems.

All clear... Almost...

Thu, 05 Sep 2013 20:00:34 +0000

Battery of tests done and dusted - ECGs, Ultrasound, a plethora of bloods, and numerous appointments with my GP and one up at ARI with the consultant Cardiologist.

The news is there’s nothing majorly wrong with yours truly’s heart - bar some borderline LVH, attributable to the elevated blood pressures I have been carrying for a while.

From now on it will be a steady daily diet of blood pressure meds - calcium channel blockers in the first place and then an ACE inhibitor to try to reverse the LVH…

Small Change #2 - Get Your ZZZs

Sun, 01 Sep 2013 20:49:46 +0000

From the 52 Small Changes book:

Sleep is the best meditation

- Dalai Lama

Last week’s small change went fairly well - bar the odd day on which one coffee just didn’t sort me out. By the end of the week, I was reaching instinctively for my 600ml bottle of water to kick start my day, before anything else. The slightly harder challenge was staying off the cokes, which I did for the most part except for two days - along with a green leaf salad for Wednesday for lunch and on Friday afternoon during my monthly catch up with O. at Nandos. All told there has been noticeable improvement in the quantity of water (and green tea) I drink, which can’t be such a bad thing.

Small Change #1 - Drink Up

Sun, 25 Aug 2013 17:14:05 +0000

From the 52 Small Changes Book:

Water is the driving force of nature

- Leonardo Da Vinci

Or as Fela once famously sang, water no get enemy.

Up until a month ago, Cokes were my default drink, in all its forms - diet, regular, zero and a few non conventional forms too [mixed with all sorts of other liquids], which is why this first small chnage will need some serious getting used to.

Goings On: The almost botched birthday edition

Mon, 19 Aug 2013 18:26:09 +0000

I suppose there are worse ways to spend your birthday than being stuck behind a desk, being one of two members of the team available from a full complement of five, praying and hoping no emergency pops up requiring you to suit up and go offshore at short notice. Thankfully that, getting sent offshore, didn’t happen; and I had the pleasure of spending Friday away from work, catching up with myself…

Waking Up

Sun, 18 Aug 2013 20:00:49 +0000

To the Year of Living Intentionally, or dangerously…

Between standing on the cusp of the 34th birthday, and getting a diagnosis of borderline LVH, I have come very close to freaking out more than a few times over the last few weeks. More so perhaps because in stumbling on an early copy of the 5 year plan - written back in the day when I was an excitable 26 year old with the dream job and the dream girl, and all the important people in my life the small matter of a six hour road trip away - just how far off target in quite a few categories I still am was made very clear.

The List

Sun, 11 Aug 2013 14:20:24 +0000

As I think about the future Mrs S, the list becomes more and more condensed, shrinking to what I think are the 4+1 non-negotiables. This time I thought I’d give some thought to articulating a little bit more just what each of those non-negotiables translates to in plain English.. So here goes…

A passion for God, children and a balanced Judeo-Christian worldview
- Christian, serve in church in some capacity whilst not actively looking to go the whole hog of becoming a missionary to Nepal (trust me I’ve met someone who wanted to do just that). :)
- Willing to explore the more liberal expressions of Christian theology (à la Hillsong/ other interdenominational churches rather than a typically Nigerian one).
The same sense of long term direction
- Has a defined life plan with targets over the next 5+ years that I can contribute to;
- Considers the UK, US or Canada as home in the near to medium term at least;
- Wants to have or adopt children (2 max)
Great conversation
- Someone interested enough in me to want to stay in touch;
- Is able to converse on a range of issues and topics including football, faith/ worldview etc
An appreciation of the arts
- Reads and appreciates reading
- Gets CCM and can relate to quite few of the usual suspects (Hillsong, Delirious, Switchfoot, Audio Adrenaline, Third Day, Tenth Avenue North :) )
- Not opposed to catching a play at the opera or a movie from time to time.
A compatible genotype

Firsts...

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 09:00:53 +0000

Besting 500 calories in one gym session….

The future Mrs S best be pleased :)

Goings on - A few quick hits...

Tue, 16 Jul 2013 19:25:41 +0000

In line at my GP’s, waiting for an audience with the receptionist who I want to confirm an appointment with, I find myself growing impatient despite being only the fifth person in line. It looks, and feels, like everyone and their dog opted to stop by today. It is a warm day and there are at least ten people in various stages of repose on the chairs scattered around the waiting room. Inwardly I am cursing myself and my daftness for choosing lunch to do this. At the head of the queue, a large-ish woman engages the receptionist in a conversation of sorts - if speaking two unrelated languages can be classed as a conversation. She, like me, has an appointment to confirm, unlike me she needs an interpreter to pass her query across. The dour, matronly receptionist seems to be at a loss, unable to determine what is an appropriate response besides saying repeatedly ‘The nurse is not in yet, she’ll call for you when she has an interpreter on the line’. Six times and five minutes later, she has made no headway, and the woman has held the line up for all of that time. Our saving grace is the nurse calling out ‘Olga", allied with a name I can’t recall. Recognising her name, she makes her way to the consulting room to be attended to. Needless to say, I am not at my most gracious at the delay - unnecessarily so.

The life plan...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:56:39 +0000

Distilled into three main components:

Be the best husband, father, brother, son and friend I can be;
Excel in (Corrosion, Materials and Welding) Engineering;
Live in, and contribute to life in, a great church and a great city.

Not quite as simple as it sounds, but tiny first steps are all that count, no?

Lostness

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:12:08 +0000

It was meant to be a quick year off work- away from what had quickly degenerated into a morale sapping, five-year-plan derailing slog complete with over-paid and over-pampered expat bosses more keen to leave a boot in to demonstrate their continuing relevance than develop fresh graduates. That year’s appraisal was the final straw - the spiel about the ranking process being an assessment of the best and the brightest and the slowest driver in a Formula 1 race being a darned good driver somehow put the lie to being ranked firmly in the middle percentile AND yet being offered a position of greater authority.

The Upside to being Ill

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:01:53 +0000

.. is a lot of time to spend in introspection, curled up tight into a ball (or sprawled out like an amorphous mass in my case), unable to lift my head and throat as they were being bombarded by the triune forces of a sore, swollen throat, a fever and a banging headache to boot. And think did I – when I was not obsessively googling home remedies for what turned out to be some flu strain sent from hell.

Crossroads, Again

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:46:15 +0000

A job offer - The right role, for more than the right pay in the wrong location, and not just the wrong location but one that will most certainly draw a line under my life as I have known it for the last four years.

A girl - The right girl by all accounts, whom I have known/ crushed on for the better part of three years with whom the context has never been right.

Subtly falling, or not...

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 22:45:06 +0000

Post London, TOj and I have kept in touch - primarily extended conversations about everything; work, life, failed loves and the stereotypes of Nigerian dudes in London as being primarily baby mama creators rather than the marrying kind.

Not sure where that leaves me, being the never married, single-since-April-2011 dude who has only being in two relationships all his life. We do have a knack for great conversations between us, it must be said, in addition to all the elements of the future Mrs S spreadsheet that she checks.

2013 - The Plan

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 19:39:33 +0000

Develop a daily practice of meditation, prayer and journaling
- Complete 40 consecutive days of prayer
- Make morning prayer meetings @ FOL three times a week (M, W, F)
Weigh 80kg
- Gym thrice a week (M,W, S)
- Improve eating habits - cut down on eba, soup and rice
- Use myfitnesspal.com as food journal
Save 30% of Net earnings
- Min of £1k per month
- Target 12k extra saved this year
Improve Professionally, get Chartered engineer status
- Receive feedback on IMarEST CEng application
- ASME Level 2 Plant Inspector/ NACE Snr Corrosion Technologist certification
- Register for a PhD in corrosion, materials and or welding (Newcastle/ Manchester/Cranfield)
Get a driver’s license:
- Pass theory test,
- Get a driving teacher on retainer
- Get 20 hours practice in
- Get full driver’s license
Resolve long term settlement options
- Base plan - Remain in Aberdeen + progress professional development opportunities(see #4 above)
- Only seek to leave Aberdeen if US/ Canada/Australia opportunities open up
Resolve my dating conundrums; target being in a stable committed relationship by YE 2013:
- Clear all people I’m currently stuck in the friend zone with, gain clarity (Mo, Fola, Ese etc
- Gain knowledge about Dating and Relationships the Godly way;
- Prayerfully pursue the woman God has prepared.
Find a spiritual mentor
Take 2 main trips
- Nigeria
- US (Depending on where I am with Project M by Q3 2013)
  - Oklahoma ?
  - Houston
- Spain or Portugal
Complete a writing project - the3six5N
Buy a house (2 bed)
- Requirements: 2 bed room flat, city centre apartment, parking space, etc
tba

2012 - The wrap

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 23:59:34 +0000

Dickens most eloquently captured the paradox that was the year I had in that most evocative of openings to A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us,

2012: The Twelve Things Wrap

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 18:06:01 +0000

2012 was to be the the year of just 12 things. If I learned anything it is that life’s far removed from the order and clarity of an excel spreadsheet complete with target dates and milestones. Most importantly perhaps was that I gave living a good go in 2012, whether that was a success or not is a whole other conversation.

So here goes:

Develop a daily practice of meditation, prayer and journaling: I struggled with this all year - and for a variety of reasons, not least because work ebbed and flowed through the year, God and I didn’t see eye to eye for the larger part of the year and my 2012 was an emotional roller coaster. I did improve over 2011, but real work, and focus, are required through 2013 on this. Thankfully, I stumbled on this post on the Justin Taylor blog. That should come in handy I suppose.
Lose 20kg: I lost 7 kg - returning to the weight I was in 2008 when I left my Nigerian job. Walking to and from work each day certainly helped, but the big kick came post November when I joined a gym and cycled twice a week for 30 minutes. Losing the remaining 13kg has to be a focus area for 2013 - if I do not end up adding a few more thanks to the swathe of Christmas parties and the associated gin and tonics and rich pudding I had to down all through December.
Read (and review) 25 books in 2012: I read the books - a grand total of twelve - and bar three barely there reviews, this was a colossal failure.
Call parents and siblings once a week: This was the one area I excelled in. A particularly testy November/ December required a lot more phone calls to the family than I am used to. The one small positive from all that is that we have bonded and grown together as a family.
Save £1,000 a month: Plan was to cut out the soft loans which I typically never got back and scaling back on my gadget buying sprees. I did pretty well here until December - and I am blaming the emotional turmoil of navigating my season of detox for the retail therapy I needed to pull through. :)
Get Chartered Engineer status: Ended up gaining professional membership of two institutes. Spending the greater part of the year waiting on a slot for the professional review interview meant this slipped. A chance opening in December ensured I did get the PRI sorted, January should bring confirmation of what the decision is - hopefully it’s a pass and I can check the CEng box after 8+ years of working!
Get a driver’s license: This was about an EPIC fail as possible - I never even got to take the theory test.
Resolve long term settlement options: I flip-flopped on this. At some stage I was certain that the future lay in Canada, and I actually seriously began interviewing for a role in the cold, wintry realms of Fort McMurray. Then L happened, the details of the role I was chasing didn’t quite fit what I wanted (more tailored towards someone with refining and sour gas corrosion experience as against my oil/gas/condensate/offshore pipelines experience and I fell out of love with the idea of (yet another) move. In a sense there was resolution, I am more likely to remain in Aberdeen, unless something significant happens to change my views, which given the history is not unlikely.
Resolve my dating and meeting issues: I did end up de-cluttering my head - in a round about way after nearly eighteen months of moping around. Strangely, it took meeting L, and getting to enjoy her company, to give me the jolt I needed to let go and realise there was a whole sea of smart, likeable women out there. Small mercies, even though it doesn’t look like L and I will work out after all.
Complete FAN integration: Plan was to reengage with the Youth group at church as a way to get some more activity into my life. I did end up leaving this late - the year end party was a blast, and I did sign up to get more involved. Fingers crossed.
Re-engage with FOL service: 2011 was a year to forget - 2012 was marginally better - even though God did find me in early November. Hopefully 2013’s a lot better with my rengagement with the technical/ media team and the Youth group.
Find a mentor: My friend O became a defacto mentor through the course of the year as I pulled my CEng application together and worked through my girl issues, as were Izz and Dee my wing-women-in-chief. On the work front MrG was more pain and bother than help, but it was all in good spirit and helped to ease my various work related transitions through the year.

All told, again a fairly reasonable year - a few misses/ near misses but overall ending in a better place than where I started the year… Hoping 2013’s a lot better too, and the momentum from the last two months of the year carries over. :)

2012 - The Year of the Detox

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:07:30 +0000

Although a year and some ago I thought I had truly gotten over the pain of the EJ debacle, I still managed to spend Christmas stateside attending a wedding, hanging with mutual friends and kind of hoping I would run into her. Neither happened, and when push came to shove I couldn’t bring myself to take the short hop across town to the city where she now lived. Coming into 2012 then, the targe t was to resolve a number of the other friendzoneships I had somehow gotten sucked in over the years.

Blown...Or Not

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:08:38 +0000

Between too many cooks - my friend OO was overly keen to play match maker and may have spilled too much information - and my being a little bit too keen for meetups and hangouts, my girl crush might have been spooked :(

I do need my life back - the controlled, spread sheet driven, ordered experience that it used to be, not one filled with long nights tossing and turning, pondering innumerable what-ifs and why/why not my messages have not been replied…..

Crossroads

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 22:34:36 +0000

Canada: The country after my heart, thanks to stumbling on a description of the low population, arctic in Kurt Koch’s demons and Demonology. Problem is the relatively high entry cost for me - uprooting myself from my life of the last three years, loss of income and the costs of chasing further studies required to break into that part of the world.

A girl: The girl I think I like enough to, in the words of Clay Christensen, devote my life to making happy; and who has only just moved to Aberdeen and is adamant she’s got a two year plan before she buggers off to Nigeria.

Humble pie-d

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 21:52:26 +0000

Further to your application for the position of ***, I am writing to advise that you have not been selected for interview on this occasion.

We have received other applications from candidates whose skills and experience more closely matched the role criteria. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the interest you have shown in this role and we hope our decision will not deter you from applying for any other suitable vacancies in the future.

About Town: Ambles and Musings...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:00:20 +0000

It is no real surprise that I wake up on Saturday morning with an overwhelming urge to leave my house and let the cold, crisp air clear my head; a succession of events having left me feeling emotionally over extended as though more activity had been packed into the preceding two week period than the entirety of the year before that. My friends O and Alf must bear some of the responsibility for catalyzing those events, as does a not quite out-of-the-blue response to an application I had, almost as a matter of last resort, tossed out three months before. A brown roll and an egg chased down with a cup of strong black coffee and a quick Google search later, I am awake enough to grab my water proof jacket and head out into the streets with the Torry Battery as my destination.

Girl Crush-ing... Hypothetically....

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 12:26:24 +0000

I think I have a crush.

…… And what is perhaps most disconcerting about the waxing and waning of this particular attraction is just how atypical its advent has been. For one she is well and truly outside the +/- 2.5 year band that I once swore to live and die by… And perhaps most importantly, the sum of our interaction over the last one month, one week and six days has been fifteen emails, five phone calls and one handshake; hardly a compelling oeuvre for a bloke whose standard MO - bar the not exactly happily-ever-after spring mis adventure from 2009 - has primarily been based on weighing pros and cons, extensive googling due diligence and incremental engagement rather than a full on pursuit.

Baby Birthdays, failed détente and motherly ultimatums

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 21:59:43 +0000

In what must be a first for me, I get invited to a birthday party over WhatsApp. Truth be told, there were mitigating circumstances. Although the parent in question and I have some tenuous familial connection - my grand father and her grand mother somehow managed to get entangled in the far distant haze that is a few generations ago - she and I haven’t stayed much in touch, in spite of us living the the small matter of the length of Union Street apart. I suppose the invitation was one last hopeful punt in my direction. If it was, it worked, the twin attractions of something to do on a Saturday afternoon and proper Nigerian food proving too strong for even I the quintessential recluse. Izzy, the kid in question had just turned One, and her parents keen to celebrate the milestone were putting together a small get together for the guys; for that I was very much a willing eater.

(A Hankering for) Simple(r) Days...

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 16:01:31 +0000

Weekends of debauchery, blasts from the past and a return to a home of sorts

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 22:22:46 +0000

Three quarters of the way through the year, I find I still have just under three weeks of holidays left - and that does not include the productivity black-hole that is the last week of December when all and sundry truly grinds to a halt. Once again, in spite of my plans to not be in this situation, I have ended up hoarding holidays again, the plan being to use them as a make weight in lieu of notice as my plan to swap cold, windy, Aberdeen for the slightly warmer, but more rural climes that are Kirkland Lake. The BossMan has made it clear there will be no carry overs this year, and he has made sure to ping the appropriate warning email in my direction in addition to the automated ones sent by our holiday tracking software. All told after one too many reminders, I log on to Teamseer and fire off holiday requests for an extended weekend.

Milestones, lessons learned and unintended intermissions

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 22:31:02 +0000

It was my birthday a few weeks ago, and what should have been a routine, barely noticeable bump on the flat line that has become the ultra predictable, safety first, thirty-something year old life that is my lot somehow morphed into a swirling mess of mildly depressive emotions. The trigger was an epiphany of sorts, one that I had no business having. If having that epiphany was odd, where it hit was even odder - midway through my morning ablutions, just before the commode gave way to a four minute duel with sensodyne and a power toothbrush. Leading up to it, I was stoking along nicely, keeping up with my annual birthday ritual - deactivating my facebook account, turning off all but my private phone and lobbing a text message in the direction of the one friend I know whose birthday is in the same week as mine.

The Dating Wrap #4

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 22:28:29 +0000

More of the same fare form the last few months I think:

MoSli’s gone dark this last week, prior to that we had good conversations, even providing [largely unhelpful] thoughts on some dresses she was looking to order for her big 3-0 birthday jaunt.
Mme.P emailed out of the blue - I’d missed the opportunity to catch up with her when she was in London and quite frankly I was beginning to think it was an opportunity that was long lost., fingers crossed
Meesha and I have had two telephone conversations which ended very well if i say so, and we’ve a meetup planned.

On a strategy level, I do need to get some clarity in my head. Have been reading the He’s Just Not That Into You, and I suppose some of the excuses hit close home. Long story short, if I really am into a girl, I have to toss off my natural reservations and let her know….. Interesting

Reflection - Some things to be thankful for

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 22:54:25 +0000

Measured against the original iteration of the five year plan, my life couldn’t be more off target than it is at the moment - I had myself getting married at 26 with two children done and dusted by the time I turned 30, a PhD being progressed, and being on course to retire at 40. At the time I was sitting on the veritable cash cow that was a plum job assuring integrity for a Nigerian operator, and the thoughts of retiring at forty were in part due to the very generous pension provisions at the time.

Milestones

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 04:09:13 +0000

As far as epiphanies go, I suspect my latest one - bang in the middle of stooping to grab some soap whilst running a warm shower - stands right there as one of the more unexpected. The epiphany was the realisation, somewhat belatedly from the looks of it, that any pretensions of continuing youth I may have retained no longer hold water. Where once I could hide behind being under 30, and then being just over 30, turning 33 means that I am nearer 35 than 30. There goes what was at best a tenuous grip on wannabe coolness!

Waiting

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 22:23:55 +0000

The worst thing is the waiting - the alternative flip-flopping between the giddy heights of anticipation and the cold, calculated, calmness of detached pragmatism. Somehow or the other I have managed to find myself waiting on responses back from a whole slew of people - the Professor I am looking to work with on the Welding Program at Northern, the PRI Coordinator who needs to revert with a date for my Professional Review Interview and the neither here nor there email and skype exchanges between myself and Mlles S and P.

The Dating Wrap III

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 04:29:35 +0000

The one thing I feared would happen post Sister #2’s wedding was that the pressure to deliver on a steady relationship and marriage would get ratcheted up a few notches, and boy did it happen! the very next morning, Mum tried to visit with the kid brother and I, ostensibly to catch up with us, with the subtle undertone of trying to find out what our demob plans were.

We managed to escape on that morning, but we could only do so for so long. I eventually got a right good earful, with a few recommendations tossed in my direction for follow up - not bad in and of themselves except for the small matter of the fact that these were people from church I didn’t know, and hadn’t seen for close on ten years.

0. Postscript

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 17:00:55 +0000

I struggled to not slip into an overly pessimistic, dystopian view of Nigeria with all its troubles. In the few intervening years I have been away, the Nigerian tragedy has hit close home. As with most other people, it turned out that the Dana air crash had claimed a fairly recent acquaintance of my father’s as it did a couple of friends of friends of Sister #1. It also transpired that she - whether by some quirk of fate, divine orchestration, or plain old chance - had resigned from her poorly paid job as a doctor in the police officers hospital the Friday before the Monday Boko Haram’s bloodbath hit the IG’s offices. One day late and that could have gotten really personal.

6. The Return

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 16:55:49 +0000

MMA International

On a clear, cloudless day, Amsterdam from above looks like a patch work quilt, its greenery criss-crossed by a network of canals, an endlessly repeating pattern; broken only by the shore line, and a little further out the silhouettes of oil rigs, an enduring monument to the Dutch pride of place in the scavenging of North Sea Oil.

On the morning of my return to cold, wet and windy Aberdeen, I find myself half asleep, mentally pulling myself up by my very own bootstraps to remain awake as my City Hopper makes the hour forty five minute hop from Amsterdam to Aberdeen. Ever since an ever so slight snore embarrassed me a few years ago, I have tried to minimise future risks by limiting how often I fall asleep in public places. There were mitigating circumstances then - EJ might be best placed to tell if I indeed snore as a matter of course - I had stayed up all night studying just before a class test and I was very very knackered.

5. In Which I return to old haunts

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 16:50:53 +0000

My return to Benin was less about closure than reacquainting myself with the past all over again. As feared, there was an immediate fall out from the wedding – the next morning, Mother was at the door of the room I was sharing with the kid bro wanting to chat, and there could be no uncertainty about what her primary objective was. It was thus expedient to engineer a move away to the relatively low pressure of Aunt G’s back in Benin. I had an official reason for upping sticks and bailing - chasing up transcripts for the Welding Engineering PhD I may or may not require after all. The other unofficial reason was to catch up with Cousin E and her baby, Dara, the fifth and final member of the clan born since the last time I was out here.

4. On A Nigerian PK Wedding

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 16:47:35 +0000

You know that the bride’s wedding gown will be ultra conservative as will be those for the bridal train. There will be no low cut, cleavage accentuating, eye candy-ish, strapless nonsense, and the hems will be at least an inch below the knee.

You know that there will be at least ten different preachers – each with the belief that he is a colossus in his own right - and where both bride and groom are PKs, they might be nearer fifty than not. You know that the program will be tweaked to provide an opportunity for every one of them to do something – give a word of admonition, pray, or lead the reading of the vows, or take a thanksgiving offering. You know that every speech and every prayer will be interminably long, as though there were an unofficial contest with a prize for the longest, most colourful speech. You know that it will be baking hot, and dry, because the powers that be have ‘decreed’ that there will be no rain.

2. Road trips, small margins and a return to the city of red earth

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 08:05:03 +0000


Hawker, Lagos

Plan A was to catch a flight from Lagos into Benin and then a bus for the final leg of the trip to the small university town of Ekpoma, where the wedding was to hold, but the events of the last few weeks ensured that the one thing my mother insisted on was that the journey out of Lagos would be by road. I thus had to brace myself to navigate the tortuous 3oo km+ trip from Lagos into Benin with minimum fuss.

1. Eastwards

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 07:39:38 +0000

As I stand, satchel slung across my shoulder waiting for the call to board the KLM flight from Schipol to Lagos, I think back wistfully to a similar scene just over three years ago, when I stood within the Departures Lounge at the Murtala Mohammed Airport making the transit in the opposite direction. Then, as with now, it was a wedding - that of Sister #1 - that had lured me across the miles, outside the safety of what had been a year of near total insulation, back to Nigeria. In truth, the time and the distance have been mere blips on the timeline of life, but so total has the lostness been that it almost feels like I need to be reacquainted with everything all over again.

Nigeria Bound...

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 13:07:49 +0000

A few weeks ago when I sat down to identify the five or six things that would make 2012 the perfect year, one of the things that eventually came to the fore was carrying over zero holidays in to next year. That by itself shouldn’t have been significant, but between hoarding my holidays for what I thought would be quarterly jaunts westward and my eventual withdrawal into my time honoured silo, I ended up needing a flurry of trips late in the year to claw back what was a huge holiday backlog. Even that was not enough, I ended up losing four days having carried over the maximum seven days into the new year.

The Dating Wrap - May 2012

Thu, 31 May 2012 05:14:31 +0000

Since the end of Q1 edition, quite a few changes have occurred. It turned out that in addition to the worldview issues Q and I had, she was also a carrier of the haemoglobin S trait (like I am). Given the family history I have got with losing the sister Gracie all those many years ago to sickle cell disease, that effectively put an end to any further involvement.

Interestingly, all the other potentials from the last update have more or less slipped off the front burner. AJ effectively broke contact, and I quite frankly made no effort to keep in touch, Ify’s proximity (and the fact that she lives close by) probably means that there are no real opportunities to progress in that direction anymore; and as for TheB, I suspect I am well and truly over her. Liz got back in touch after quite a few months, and we had a frank conversation, however I think we may have crossed the rubicon here.

Bitter-sweet

Tue, 29 May 2012 19:09:10 +0000

I have spent the last few days offsite attending the SPE’s Oilfield Corrosion Conference in Aberdeen. When the email invite first came through, I knew I had to be part of it. The one main gripe I have about my job is the lack of real technical content in it on an ongoing basis. I tend to get sucked into the fire fighting, reactive mode that prevents me from applying my specialist Corrosion & Materials engineering knowledge.

Eight things I Wished I knew Eight Years Ago...

Mon, 21 May 2012 16:36:11 +0000

Eight years ago, I was a wee lad, barely 23, fresh off my year of serving the nation in the foothills of Sango; with the mellifluous, if unintelligible, sounds of the music that consistently wafted upwards from the traders that surrounded my very modest lodgings at Maraba still ringing in my ears. I was none the wiser of the ways of the world at the time – like the good son of my Mother that I still was, in addition to being the pitifully shy, introspective bloke, I still greeted older males and females as ‘Sir’ and’Ma’ - a predisposition which perhaps made me fall prey to the shenanigans of a couple of police men on my first day at work.

Pouring when it rains

Wed, 16 May 2012 22:33:31 +0000

The morning after the evening when I finally decided I had had enough - of playing second fiddle to all the lasses who were or were not in my life, of being the simple nice guy whose remit was providing the shoulder to cry on and all, and seeking unilateral closure via radical surgery, I got a text message from MmeK. Apparently, she’d not been feeling very well, which was the driver for the extended period of silence. That turned out to merely be the first salvo in what would be a barrage, seemingly orchestrated by whoever runs the world, to test my staying-away-from-women resolve.

0 - Closure (The end of an era)

Sun, 13 May 2012 18:24:57 +0000

Sometime between sending an SMS that went unanswered for very nearly a day and me slipping into one of my more pensive moments, something clicked in my head - TheB is not for me. My trip westward at the back end of last year had come at some personal cost. I had been invited for an interview at one of the Nigerian multi-nationals, and given the job description, it seemed a fairly reasonable job that fit in with my longer term life direction. I chose instead to head out to Chicago, prioritising clarity around my situation with TheB higher than snagging a dream Nigerian job. Unfortunately my nervousness and her busy-ness ended up putting paid to any serious conversations.

The perfect year....

Fri, 11 May 2012 19:48:06 +0000

If I had the power to invent a perfect 2012 it would have:

A new £60k+ job in the subsea and pipelines corrosion and materials engineering sector (I think I am finally reaching saturation point with the whole topsides asset integrity engineering thing in the UK, I could use a subsea materials and welding role somewhere sunnier, like Houston or Perth :) )
Me as a Chartered Engineer
Meeting TheOne (if indeed she still exists)
Resolving my long term settlement options

Sealed with a 100 pound seed offering at church too… Fingers crossed….

Getting Ahead of Myself

Sat, 05 May 2012 15:55:05 +0000

I may have met a woman who checks a lot of the boxes on my (pared down) list:

aged between 27 and 29,
Nigerian,
a clear sense of direction and self worth,
a largely Christian world-view,
great at conversation,
and a deep appreciation and interest in the arts and travel.

The only snag is she’s half way around the world, and the last time I let myself go very quickly, I ended up burnt (with TheB). Given my history with LDRs, I would be loath to knowingly get into one. The truth though is that I may just be getting ahead of myself here…. Sigh…

Holding Pattern

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:42:11 +0000

There is treading water. And then there is lostness and the bland, depressing sameness, of everything.

There are bad night’s dreams. And then there are visions of the night - in which one writhes and like a knotted string snarled back upon itself one- finds himself at the self same starting point.

In the beat of the drums of the delirious priest and the frenzied dance that is our Faustian pact, Hope like a stubborn root - peeks out from between a rock and a hard place. And the unwilling lethargy of a quiescent dawn is forgotten, as it fades like the memory of a quick frolic in the shade of water side palms dies in the heat of a baking desert sun.

Weekday debaucheries...

Tue, 01 May 2012 17:25:07 +0000

I caught my first whiff of light headedness half way through my second pint of Guinness Extra Cold – in all its frothy, 3.5 degree chilled gloriousness. The group from work – ever happy for an excuse to hit the town and splurge on the brew – had decided they were up for a second night out, a mere two months after our February jaunt, and that on a Wednesday evening no less.

114 days in...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 05:19:56 +0000

This year I decided I would only have seven focus areas - from which twelve things for 2012 were derived. Interestingly, whilst there has been progress in some areas, quite a few other areas have been the equivalent of a Lagos traffic jam for progress. 114 days in, here’s my review.

Develop a daily practice of prayer and meditation: This has come along in fits and starts. there definitely has been some progress, but nothing sustained so far. I’d rate myself as ‘poor’ here.
Lose 20 kg: An epic fail here. I suspect I may have actually gained half a kilogram!
Read and review 25 books: Currently on book number four. No real reviews have been completed so far. I’ll need to decide a format and start progressing these ASAP.
Call Parents and siblings at least once a week: I’ve made some progress on here with phone calls, but again not on the level of consistency that I’d be hoping for.
Save £1,000 each month: One of the areas where I’d say I have performed very well.
Get Chartered Engineer Status: In progress, I hope to send in my initial applications this May and kick start the process of getting C.Eng registration through the IMarEST.
Get a Driver’s Licence: A couple of false starts here. The intent is to get the CEng application done and dusted and then focus on studying for the theory test and passing it in May 2012.
Resolve long term settlement options: Canada featured heavily in the plan for a while, but at the moment it’s looking like the UK is the base plan. The intent is to sort out the CEng status and then take it from there.
Resolve my dating issues: Not quite progress here. Met Q who ticks a lot of the boxes (geek, recovering bookworm, under 31 yrs of age, Nigerian with the added benefit of real life mutual friends/ connections). The one quirk is she’s very into the Grail Message thing which ended up scuttling my dalliance with EJ from back in the day. I’m not quite sure I can risk lettnig my heart go when there are these issues.
FAN integration/FOL Service: One word, abysmal.
Find a mentor: Some progress, O’s essentially become my non work mentor what with his interest in getting me married and his listening ears, and the three gorgeous kids he’s got. :) On the work front, I’m getting along quite nicely with the QNX* team now - RG seems like a good candidate for a work mentor. Getting him to sponsor my CEng application cxould be the key.
Finding a hobby: New item on the lsit, thanks to pressure from CS & NP at QNX and my buddy Chizz. I’ve signed up for the company touch rugby team - hopefully that pans out nicely.

All in all, there’s been areas of progress and some of none. The top targets for Q2 through end of June are getting the CEng application through, passing the theory test and heading off to Nigeria.

First dance...

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:54:19 +0000

To God be the Glory.. :)

Conversations

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 21:05:46 +0000

My lazy Saturday - the slightly chillier air put paid to any pretensions of activity I had planned for the day - ended being defined by three conversations. In all honesty, two were conversations I could have done without, but I ended up caught up in them anyways.

I wake up to see an offline message from my Q, my friend of just under a week. She’s a Geek’s Geek complete with geeky glasses and loads of tech speech. We end up talking about everything and nothing for the better part of three hours. In a sense it feels like de ja vu all over again - the easy conversation, shared interests and comfort even in silence were hallmarks of the early days of my bonding with EJ. Probably still early days, but there does seem to be a real opportunity for something to develop here.

Lessons Learned: On (online) dating

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:55:40 +0000

My little experiment in online dating comes to an end over the next few weeks, thanks to expiring subscriptions. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that online dating may not be for me.

If my experience is typical, it would appear the Nigerian man trying online dating has three strikes against him. First is the perception in the wider world of Nigerians as being inherently scam artists. A bevy of websites has sprung up whose MO appears solely to be defining tactics and strategies for identifying Nigerian scam artists and outing them. The three or so women on eHarmony who I made it past guided communication into emailing with suddenly became reticent when I declared I was Nigerian. From a couple of emails a day, things segued into an email a couple of days and then them leaving my emails un-replied.

Forgotten milestones, unexpected positives and 2012 reading

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:36:08 +0000

Amidst the bedlam that was a return to work after almost three weeks away, I completely forgot the small matter of having passed the second-year anniversary of my starting at my current job. The lads at HR though were not exactly keen to let me forget ; and I was suitably reminded via a letter in my home post box advising me of my eligibility to enrol on the company enhanced pension plan. Bar a few moments of drudgery, it has never really felt like I have been stuck out here for the past two years, even though I’ve twice come close to leaving; once to Nigeria, and the other time to our biggest competitor across town.

2012 in Twelve Things

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:55:14 +0000

In what is going to be a first for me, I will cross over into the new year aboard an airplane, albeit one headed homeward. It certainly is a far cry from how 2011 started, but perhaps this unconventional start will afford me the chance to pause and ponder a few days early, and agree on 12 things for 2012 all aligned with my seven priorities for life. Here goes:

Develop a daily practice of meditation, prayer and journaling: Taking time out to examine life, capture things as they happen and improve daily has to be a key component of my daily routine going forward. The seven priorities are great on paper, but unless progress on the continuum towards achieving them is measured and recorded, I suspect the end of the year will come, and I will still be where I am as of today, stuck in a rut. Target: 4 of 5 days a week of reading the identified text in the Our Daily Bread app.
Lose 20kg: I am overweight – no amount of faffing around can gloss over that simple fact. I tried for a month, before slipping back into my my routine of Nandos, large potions and baguettes at work. Losing weight has to be a focus in 2012, the target is to lose 20kg for a return to c. 80kg weight and a healthy BMI. Target: Walk to and from work daily, take 2 days in the week to eat only fruits (seedless grapes, bananas and apples only), stay off coffee, eat half of what I would normally eat.
Read (and review) 25 books in 2012.
Call parents and siblings once a week: Quick phone call to Dad/Mum every two weeks; hopefully I can catch the siblings weekly for a quick chat.
Save £1,000 a month: The YE spend data for 2011 was abysmal. For a net (ex. taxes) increase in pay of c. 600 pounds, I ended up doubling my expenditure versus 2010. Some of it was unavoidable – the house move in late 2010, increased bills and rents hit for the full year 2011 versus the one quarter in 2010, but large swathes of cash remained unaccounted for. The plan is to move 1,000 each month from my net pay prior to any expenses coming through, as well as refuse to get involved in providing soft loans to the lads.
Get chartered engineer status: I didn’t make a lot of progress professionally in 2011. There were no conferences attended or certifications gained. This is a focus area for 2012 – I am looking to get at least one of either the C.Eng designation or complete my NACE certifications before YE 2012.
Get a driver’s license: I have had a provisional drivers license for over a year already. The focus in 2012 will be to use the 1st quarter to write and pass the theory test, and the summer months to practice for and pass the practical test for a full drivers’ license. Given my traumatic car crash from 2008, and the fact that I haven ‘t driven since then, I suspect this will not be a trivial pursuit.
Resolve long term settlement options: 2012 will be crucial for me as I decide where I will lay down my long term routes. TheBZ would be a good place, but the increasingly louder anti-immigrant rhetoric is a niggling issue at the bottom of my mind. Canada seems to be a longer term option – one that I will explore to a greater extent in 2012.
Resolve my dating and meeting issues: I am at a stage where I can truly say that I have let got of my EJ issues. Having said that there remain pockets of memories I need to ditch finally. The target through 2012 is to bring myself to the place where I can truly say I have forgotten and moved on, a position where I am free in my head to meet and date again. 2012 in this regards has to be the year of de-cluttering.
Complete FAN integration: Given my constant moaning about how mind numbingly boring the little city I live in is, that I am not taking advantage of what opportunities there are to meet people is a shame. Through 2012, the intention is to reconnect with the Youth and Singles group at church once a month.
Re-engage with FOL service: My service in the group I work with in church was shocking in 2011. Granted, part of it was a busier, less controlled work load, but my worldview issues also contributed in no small measure. The plan in 2012 is to reconnect and reengage with the group, and be useful once again.
Find a mentor: I’m looking to get more intentionality in life, a mentor would definitely help for the accountability bits here.

2011 - The Cliff Notes Version

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:26:59 +0000

If I had to drill it down:

Shitty in large bits, quotidian for the most part, a few big decisions taken, family milestones and ending the year realizing there’s a lot to be thankful for…..

But that’s life after all isn’t it… Happy new Year peeps…

Rejigging the list

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:55:48 +0000

One of the unintended consequences of taking my mate search more seriously has been taking time out to define what the absolute must-haves in the woman I date and eventually marry are. Given the changes that have happened in my life, I am hoping the list is more realistic, and more real-worldly… So here goes.

A Nigerian: Ideally the mate would be Nigerian. If you listened to my mother she would have to be Edo, Delta or Yoruba. I like to imagine I am more egalitarian and would be open to dating outside those very narrow confines. When push comes to shove, even though a Nigerian mate is preferred, I suspect I may be open to dating from other nationalities.
Be on a similar time-line with me: Ideally, I would like to get hitched by YE 2012 (if I remain in the UK), or in 2013 (if I go down the Welding and Materials Engineering PhD route). Granted, it is impossible to legislate for oneself, much less others, but ideally, the mate I pursue should be looking to get married on a similar time-line.
Between 27 and 31 by YE 2013: Research indicates that the ideal age gap between spouses is 5 years. Given I will be 34 by YE 2013, the potential mate would need to be 29 at the time. Rather than apply this mechanistically, I reckon a band of +/-2 years around the mean is a good compromise. Additionally, I do find from talking to my female friends that age 25 appears to be the age when women tend to get serious. Before then, they usually are looking to get a boyfriend for hanging out interminably with. At the age I am, I’m looking for a bit more intentionality which is why I think my future mate would be in this age bracket.
Have a healthy acceptance of the importance of family: The kid brother and I are really close, a legacy of years spent sharing a room, and being co-conspirators against the totalitarian regime of the parents. Same goes for my kid sister who virtually still worships me. :) Any potential mates will ideally recognize that family is important and be willing to make changes to accommodate them, ultimately prioritizing US over other connections though.
A more outgoing personality: The one accusation I am unable to refute is that I am somewhat picky when it comes to selecting friends. In general, I tend to be the one behind the scenes, observing and analyzing rather than being the life of the party. My ideal partner would be someone who is more outgoing than I am to offset my natural inclination to be reserved.
Possess sufficient ‘General Intelligence’ to converse well: A number of topics engage my energies and passions - football, public policy, some politics and social justice issues in general. The ideal mate would be someone who is able to appreciate these things and more, and is able to engage in an intellectual discussion, being able to coherently engage a variety of topics. An appreciation for the arts – the lyrical flow of Yusef Komunyakaa, the exquisite prose of Soyinka, the mellifluous tunes of Coltrane amongst others - would definitely be a plus.
Focused and driven to succeed: The ideal mate would have a fully developed life with drives and passions that I can contribute to. Marriage to me should be a symbiotic partnership, where both parties far exceed their individual abilities thanks to the influence of the other. As I have aged, I have transited from believing that a bloke is the alpha-and-omega to a model of shared growth.
Has developed a coherent worldview that is essentially Judeo-Christian: Whilst I joke about being in a state of relapsed faith, my worldview is still essentially Christian, and one of my seven priorities for 2012 is sorting out that dissonance.The ideal mate would have a similar worldview, even if it is not lived out in a rabidly spiritual way and have a heart for God and people.
Same sense of long term direction: Social justice, engaging younger people and being useful in the context of local community are big issues for me. The ideal mate would recognise this and buy into them, or at least appreciate them, if not actively participating.

In summary then, the ideal mate would be between 26 and 29 now, be between 4-11’ and 5-8’ tall, broadly subscribe to Christian values and ethics, and be looking for a serious relationship at the time..

Seven Priorities for Life

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 08:37:05 +0000

I spent the weekend going through Michael Hyatt’s cute little e-book Creating Your Personal Life Plan. In no particular order, below are the things I feel need to be priorities going forward:

God: World-view, faith, God and how these interact in defining a moral compass for me is a crucial part of my developing fully into the sort of bloke I need to become. It is time for me to start engaging my various proclivities which are preventing me from gaining the clarity of thought and direction that I need.
Health: Whilst I have not had any major health scares, truth is I am overweight by some. A few years ago, I had blood pressures that were way out of the ‘safe’ and ’normal’ zone [Thankfully, I passed my last offshore medical in flying colours]. Keeping fit, counting calories and staying health has to be one of my priorities going forward.
Family: Whilst I remain single at the moment, deep in my heart is a longing to meet someone, find love and raise a family together. Two dimensions stand out here - finding the one and being the sort of bloke she’d want to be with. These both have to be priorities going forward - engaging the ‘knowledgable others’ in my circle and being open enough to solicit, accept and implement honest feedback where it is offered on areas where personal improvement is required.
Personal Development: Learning continuously, and always reviewing where I am versus where I should be has to be a key component of my life. Big things are expected of me, and getting those done depends on continuously improving and finding the over arching knowledge and foresight required to grow into those big roles. This will have two facets: Career, in which I develop into a globally recognised Corrosion/Materials/Integrity Engineer, and personally where I progress and develop my public speaking, and writing skills.
Friends: Given the large number of acquaintances I have, the few real friends I have (and I would count O & I as the two stand out ones at the moment) who time and time again have proven they are worth their weight in gold, and more, deserve some reciprocal attention. They are going to have to be priorities going forward - they’ve earned it!
Finances: Finances are a key part of fulfilling the responsibilities that I will have as a Father, Husband, Son and social justice campaigner. Learning how to manage and grow my money is a critical part of the me I will become.
Service: One more priority is taking all the gifts and blessings that I have been given and pouring them all out in service to others. The details of this are not exactly clear at the moment - especially considering the significant evolution my world view is going through at the moment - but finding the time and the place to make a difference for others ’less blessed’ as to be a priority going forward.

Falling for my Dalglish Conjecture

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:00:46 +0000

The one thing laying the ghosts of the EJ debacle to rest did was to finally free me up mentally to move on after what had been a horrendous six months of torture. On here as in real life, I was beginning to sound like a broken record with my endless whining and musing about what was a lost cause from day zero. In looking to go forward, I made the basic error of falling for the Dalglish conjecture. [The Dalglish conjecture is the fancy way I describe one party in a good friend situation suddenly developing romantic feelings and hoping they will be reciprocated, almost as a rebound.]

Full circle (the anatomy of a heart break)

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 22:15:00 +0000

They say there are five stages of grief… First there is denial. Everything slows down to an almost imperceptible crawl, leaving you with the numbness of disbelief and a full blown Fariku Singularity. You replay that final scene in your head again and again until it is etched in your mind like an indelible tattoo. You deconstruct the words hoping to find an iota of comfort; and when the lads ask you about her, you pretend the phone lines garbled that bit of speech, or mutter various incomprehensible answers.

Dear God...

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 20:49:15 +0000

I want the next woman, who comes into my life, and loves me to stay for the long run. To love me, as I love her, to give me butterflies in my stomach and awaken my inner protector….

Surely, not too much to ask? I think I’ve thrown walls up around my heart for too long.. Sigh

Closure

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 08:14:44 +0000

In my head all I want is….

To truly forget
To know that I did my best to make it work
To not have to ponder the what-ifs and maybe’s
To truly move on
And start afresh

Sigh…

On F

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:12:34 +0000

I have only officially dated two women - although there have been a slew of girls-that-almost-were. EJ and I lasted nine months; the other woman was the one I’ll call F and we lasted just over two years.

I met F at a Christian young peoples’ conference. It was Easter 2006, and on a whim I decided to attend the annual conference hosted by the group I used to attend on Campus. My little brother at the time was fairly well known in those circles, so hanging out with him got me some attention. That was where I saw her. And when their bus needed re-fuelling on the way back, my big fat more-than-I-could-use pay check from XOM came in handy.

The first day

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 21:47:48 +0000

…Of the last year. I suspect that today was my Newcastle moment; the day when my decision to head out to pastures new was taken. The UK is looking increasingly hostile ( I may be reading the comments section of the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph too much), but it certainly hasn’t helped that some drunk wanna-be pirate complete with an eye patch called me a f*ucking black bastard in broad day light in Aberdeen. Even conversations at work occasionally centre around immigrants - mainly Poles, but surely its a short hop from Poles to Nigerians.

Intermission: What a Bloke Wants

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 09:36:43 +0000

What a bloke wants:

Great conversation
An appreciation of the arts
A balanced Judeo-Christian worldview…
The same sense of long term direction..

And not having to travel half way around the world to get them….

Surely, not too much to ask for? Or is it?

Sigh…

Decisions, again

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:37:14 +0000

I turned down another job offer, opting to stay with the safer option (yet again). The first time it was to a competitor in my city, this time it was back to Nigeria, and a return to UX5 where I cut my teeth and learned the bulk of everything I know. There were a number of issues - a few powerful interests stacked up against me courtesy of toes I’d stepped on in the past, and the fact that I’d seen all that and done that before. The key sticking point was that the pay on offer was ridiculous - clearly designed to price me out of accepting (plus rumour has it that on of the lead engineers on the project had a candidate)..

Re-birth

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 01:15:00 +0000

I have died- Seven times but one; Crushed beneath the weight- Of pain’s unrelenting Hammer blows.

Straight right. Left hook. Right uppercut. Left jab. Right hook. Left uppercut. Cheek bones splintered- Lip leaking blood, Teeth- Bludgeoned until loose.

Head spinning. Time, space Distance blending- Into a confused blur. Then over-hand right - And sight mercifully fades- Into blissful blackness.

I have died– Seven times but one; But like a rubber ball Squashed flat against a hard place, I rebound seven times, Reborn.

Calorie Counting

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:41:50 +0000

Up until this week, I didn’t know that lumbering along at a fairly respectable 4.5km/hr for 1.3km only burned calories the equivalent of a 34.5g bag of Walkers ready salted potato crisps.

I blame my sister for that. She - all sharp mouthed, 5’-4", verbal terrorist Edo woman that she is - decided that last Saturday was the day to put her foot down and insist that something had to be done about my burgeoning waistline. I couldn’t have guessed our little chat would segue into those matters, if I did I would have invented a network failure and hung up. She, the mistress of subterfuge, began by regaling me with our usual fare - stories about the nieces and cousins, about who was seeing whom and all the other mundanities - before mentioning that she had run into an old schoolmate of mine. Said schoolmate was this huge, built-like-a-wardrobe bully who terrorised us all those many years ago in primary school. We had a nickname for him, puff-puff, only used when he was out of earshot; given because he looked like a hurriedly fried, misshapen ball of puff puff. I hadn’t seen him in years, but by my sister’s account he had morphed from puff-puff into a Fally Ipupa clone.

Taking charge

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:28:45 +0000

My sister, the doctor, says I am morbidly obese. That is as brutal as they come. When I have looked at myself in the mirror, I have rationalised my size by looking at other people, or by blaming the mirror for being too convex. The harsh cold truth though is that I am at my heaviest ever. Whilst I can count to a plethora of reasons why, the fact remains that my current weight is a health risk.

Mid Year Thoughts

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 17:34:05 +0000

An unintended consequence of daily quotidian pursuits is the possibility of being sucked into a rut. Sleep, food, mind numbing work, the occasional tryst, the odd night out with the lads repeated ad nauseum and suddenly it is the middle of the year.

In truth it has been a so-so year - the break up with EJ, a job offer that I eventually turned down, issues with my father and all the other niggling issues I am having to contend with. Amidst all this, the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the UK appears to have gone a level higher - everyone from layman to political leader is jumping on the bandwagon to decry the scourge of the immigrant. The latest changes been mooted are to limit migrant visas to a maximum five year term. That has significant implications for my ‘business model’. My decision to leave my Nigerian job and head back to school is increasingly looking daft. A Nigerian equivalent, the Petroleum Industry Bill which is meant to fundamentally reshape the industry and focus Nigerian Content Development has been in the works for a few years now, and is probably no where near being signed into law.

TGIF - The getting grief edition

Fri, 20 May 2011 22:03:47 +0000

Friday night just happened. A flat battery led to two of the guys hitching a ride with a third back to the city centre. The fourth guy happened to be home alone after his wife and kids travelled to Nigeria, and I the perpetually ‘alone’ guy was asked to tag along. All five of us piled into our friend K’s 4-wheeler and we decided to hit the an African spot to unwind.

Thankful... for breathers

Thu, 19 May 2011 12:33:51 +0000

The pointlessness of most work is never more obvious than when it is suddenly cut short. Like an unexpected breath of fresh the relentless flow of work in my direction has suddenly stopped, even if only for a day. In it’s stopping it has become clear that a lot of what I had- as a matter of course- sifted through daily was unnecessary.

It is the team day off, and the brilliant sunshine currently bathing the city in its glow makes it seem like a particularly potent rainmaker was contracted to make it a success. Usually by this time, I have been on the phone five or six times to clarify one issue or the other with my offshore counterpart (who I outrank on paper, but earn way much less than), attended a couple of meetings and or have had to respond to a request for information.

Ctrl+Alt+Del

Sun, 15 May 2011 06:35:55 +0000

If only life were like a jammed computer where ctrl+alt+del could restart.. sigh.

(Image source GearFuse)

Coming clean...

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:17:34 +0000

On the surface, I live a life that most people would envy - 5 years working for a Fortune 500 company in Nigeria, followed by a well recognized MSc and then a job working for one of the industry leaders in my sector of the Oil industry. On the family side, it would appear that I have it all sorted - the quintessential good son, with proud, loving and doting parents. The true picture couldn’t be further from the truth.

Ninety Days of Solitude...

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 06:55:05 +0000

Between listening to Josh Harris share Tiffany’s story at New Attitude 2004 and listening to the message preached at church last Sunday, I realise there is a lot that needs to change in my life. From being the poster child for the good, dutiful, spiritual one, I have morphed into a self serving, increasingly desperate, relationship obsessed wreck. Albert Einstein is said to have noted that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. From where I stand, that defines me at the moment. I’m deciding to do things different for the next 90 days, to see if I get different outcomes.

Getting the growlies..

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:47:55 +0000

*Grosspost alert*

I wake up with a disturbing case of the growlies. Last night I binged on chocolate flavoured milk, an impulse buy as I trawled the aisles at my local Coop shop sorting out my groceries. The thing is lactose intolerance for me is hit and miss. Some days I can ingest a lot of milk and yet not get any serious symptoms. On other days, even a little has my stomach in cramps and me passing gas.

Resolving my credibility deficit

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:22:49 +0000

If there is one thing I have learned from returning to work after a year and a half off studying, it is that there is a very tangible credibility deficit that us early-mid-career professionals have to make up when they switch jobs. I define the early-mid-career phase as that stage of the working life between the five year mark and the ten year mark generally corresponding to the period within which the professional exceeds 10,000 working hours.

Re: Conundrums...

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:28:51 +0000

It seems like a bloke is forever bound to trawl life, f aced with conundrums every step of the way - safety versus adventure versus satisfaction… Sigh…

Update: Miss Complicated got married last Saturday.. One less conundrum then.

2008.... Again..

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 22:14:05 +0000

I suspect that the truest measure of how sensibly one has aged is how well one is able to take a long hard look at choices - and their potential long term effects - before acting. Time, that most elusive of customers, respects no one. From the day that we are born, our share - ladled without so much as an explanation lobbed in our direction - ineluctably runs out like sand in an hour glass. Each passing second once spent is lost, left to float in the seething morass that is the conflation of opportunities missed, acts of omission and of omission and perhaps on the odd occasion windows of opportunity fully utilised.

The 2011 Plan

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 14:17:08 +0000

This is slowly becoming a yearly thing on this blog. The 2009 and 2010 Versions are linked. Since 2010 I have opted for focus areas rather than a list.. So here goes the 2011 plan.

God/Faith: Failed to make any headway in this regards last year - It’s a new year.. Let’s hope we fare better this year with resolving the God issues and getting back into a church community.
Work & Career: I safely navigated getting back into work after a poorly thought out decision led to me quitting my last job. This year the focus is on chasing a couple of certifications to boost my profile as an independent contributor. This is slightly complicated by the Girlfriend being stuck in North America. This year I intend to get my professional membership of at least one UK and one North American Engineering body sorted.
People and Socials: Last year was the year I splurged on social media connections. This year, I need to have a strategy for social media interaction. The goal of this strategy is to focus on sharing information, keeping the loose chatter to an absolute minimum. For real life connections, I have been blessed with having a couple of old friends from undergrad in my city, so as a minimum, I should hang out with them once every couple of months..
Health and Weight: 2010 was the year, the bulge finally beat me. The keg ballooned out of control. I bought a home treadmill in my attempt to regain control. This year, I hope to win the battle - running thrice weekly on the treadmill.
Family: The family connection hasn’t been great up to the end of the year. This year I hope to call the parents and siblings at least once each week.
Financial: The numbers from last year indicated I saved approximately 25% of my gross earnings - in spite of significant expenditure on trips to the US and gadgets. This year, I hope to up the percentage to 30%. In conjunction with a promised pay rise at work, it should be a good year - if I avoid splurging on any new gadgets.

Reflections.... The Year in Happenings..

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:29:58 +0000

Having earned (if I say so) the right to put my feet up and relax at the end of what has been a particularly hectic year of working, travelling, reading and volunteering, one has the luxury of reflecting on how the year has panned out on a personal note. This time last year I had just packed up my bags, cut my final ties and jumped on the East Coast train service up north to Aberdeen. There was the small matter of needing to restart life on a number of fronts - new job, new city, new house, new friends and all. The first few weeks took getting used to, especially as the job description involved a change of focus - from being the bossy, fastidious-to-a-fault, hard to please client to being part of a service delivery team. January was spent managing the work transition, eased somewhat by having the use of shared company accommodation alongside a colleague with Geordie connections. There were many nights of discussions on a motley of topics well into the night as we both grappled with coming to terms with redemption and second chances - he after invasive heart surgery, me upon returning to daily work after a messy resignation.

2010: The Year in.... Cabs

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:05:04 +0000

I think cab drivers are a microcosm of the larger society and that if a sufficiently large sample is analysed, one can gain critical insights into the mind of a city. This has to be the year where I used cabs the most. Tight deadlines at work, atrocious weather conditions, moving houses and a few late night jaunts around town conspired to leave me needing cabs at various times this year. The downside was largely financial – I ended up racking up significant costs on renting cabs over the year. On the plus side, I think I gained a window into the mindset of this city.

#Subliminals

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 14:55:52 +0000

There has never been anything false about HOPE

Except where the HOPEr has blatantly ignored signs to the contrary…,

Swearing off dancing...

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 12:08:11 +0000

The final lingering vestiges of self deceit died today. Against the incontrovertible evidence, I had remained hopeful that I had the ability to transcend my well documented phobia for dancing. Sometime between Ose O Jesu and some other Yoruba song which has escaped my memory, I realized that my rather feeble attempts at ‘dancing’ - clapping rhythmically, nodding my head from time to time, and shuffling from side to side - bore as much resemblance to dancing as a bee buzzing through the air bore to a fish swimming.. My sense of unease was worsened by the fact that it was a thanksgiving Sunday and we had to dance to the offering box. Interestingly, if the number of dancing worshippers was a significant sample of the larger community, then I am fighting a lost cause in refusing not learning to dance.

All I want for Christmas...

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 23:19:53 +0000

Dear Santa, I have been a good bloke this year.. Kindly review and revert…

Images do not belong to me…… unfortunately…

#30daysOfTruth: Day 0

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 21:38:37 +0000

I told The Friend I wanted something to occupy me all December….Bar the first two weeks of December - when I get to wrap up multiple work projects - I will be lazing around on an extended holiday… She knows I have a thing for writers… and writing…. and that I’m more comfortable writing stuff than saying stuff… So we thought I’d blog every day for sixty days.. First thirty will be following the 30 days of truth meme over at Hope Blog; the next thirty… I’m yet to decide… Hopefully, its therapeutic…. Even I am slightly concerned at what I might see when I begin to dig beneath the surface of me….

Why there's only a 5% chance I'll make it to church today..

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 09:35:31 +0000

The Big Freeze hits…. [Pics included]

Sigh….

A Modicum of Regret..

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 23:57:54 +0000

One of my essential life principles is never allowing myself to exercise regret. Time and time again, when decisions appear in hindsight to have been poorly thought out, I try to prevent myself from slipping into regret mode.. I am of the opinion that time spent in regret analysing the what-might-have-beens would be better served breaking the problem into smaller bits and devising a means of resolving its constituents. Recently though, I have allowed that tightly held principle to slip from my grasp.

Unlearning solitude....

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:21:52 +0000

Or an apology for all the nights you worry about me…..

One of my mother’s slightly more compelling arguments against the notion of - in her words - entrenched singleness is the false simplicity that being single and responsible for only oneself brings. Over the past ten years I have learnt to do my things, my way and in my time - considering the consequences only as they impact me. That has been useful when I have had to make potentially life changing decisions - like quitting my day job at a fairly well known engineering firm to head back to full time study in 2008 or loaning a friend a hefty pile of money (which he is vacillating on paying back by the way). Mother is wrong on one count - my being single isn’t the only cause; there is after all my natural proclivity to be a loner of sorts. Perpetually plugged into my iPod, having my nose stuck in books, emailing and SMSing friends instead of calling have all contributed to my increasingly tenuous connections with the real world. Living alone for all those years hasn’t helped either.

For more than my belly...

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 23:52:48 +0000

Almost on a whim, I signed up to sponsor a child via World Vision. The decision was taken without much thought whilst passing through the Mall at Union Square. November 11th is a special day in the RustGeek household; its the day the patriarch and the matriarch completed their nuptials as well as the day the one we lost to the genes was born. In the part of the world where I am, it is also Remembrance day.

For Gracie...

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 11:11:52 +0000

For Gracie, who the genes took…

You never saw the thirteenth summer through- before the genes claimed you.

You always were - the sallow one, knuckle- kneed, paper thin, but - the lights in your jaundiced eyes shone: through pain and fear, and hope and tears.

The strength in your voice never dimmed, never waned, until the genes - like a belligerent marabout’s curse - turned you, to a mound of red- dead earth

Lessons learned...

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 20:27:16 +0000

A bloke can do no worse than believe his own hype…

Sigh.

Stuff About Some Women I still Don't Understand..

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 22:10:45 +0000

Things about some women I still don’t understand…..

How they manage to go from hag to wag in twenty short minutes on bus 23: Each day I get on the bus, I am treated to a minor miracle. The ladies - and they are the same ‘offenders’ in the main - unfailingly whip out their boxes and mirrors and get to work. Within the space of a short bus ride, the transformation is complete. Several brushes, colours and peeks in the mirror later, they are virtually unrecognizable. Just why that couldn’t be achieved at home before hopping on the bus beats me hollow though.
Why odd coloured shoes make it into the aso-ebi list: Last April, I was hounded well nigh to death by purple shoes. Thing was a good friend of mine had to keep up appearances attend some function - the specifics of which escape me. The clothes were done and dusted - only problem was that purple shoes were required. It just so happened that purple shoes were out of stock in all the shops she knew to check, and yours truly was called upon to devise a solution. Needless to say I failed woefully - not through lack of effort as I even went the distance of setting up a conference call just for them shoes - but due to the sheer absurdity of the choice of colour. My theory is that the first women who had aso-ebi’s had major shares in a shoe manufacturer and chose odd colours so that the shoes could not be re-used thereby guaranteeing increased revenues!
Why some people think lime-green eyeliner works on their ebony-black face: Whilst quickly looking through lounging on amebobook the other day, I stumbled on a picture of some random chic with lime-green eyeliner. You know how a friend of a friend comments on a picture and amebobook somehow manages to put them onto your news feed in all their gory glory - that was it. Granted it was in the spirit of the Nigerian Independence celebrations, and people had to pretend to be patriotic by wearing green-ish stuff, but surely there were mirrors at home… and in the rare event of there not being mirrors, friends and family could have alerted said chic to the incongruity of the eye-liner?
How they manage to still feign surprise over stuff they knew would happen anyways: The ladies at MO Corp have banded themselves into some sort of fraternity. Ladies-only lunches, baby club discussions (at my desk no less), and the ‘official’ baby shower for the pregged ladies on their last day of work. Its all well and good to have baby showers - great pizza, us blokes get to leave a wee bit early on a Friday and all, but I never can quite get over the false sense of surprise them ladies seem to muster. I mean, its standard practice that you’ll get a baby shower. Expect it, and spare us the excessive oohs ahhhs, and the drama! arghhh…
Why you wear ‘six’ inch heels to church and then take them off midway through the service: I am an ‘apostle’ of functionality which is why them ladies who wear six inch heels and then take them off midway leave me worried. Surely, the shoes can’t be so uncomfortable that they can’t stay on for two and a half hours only?
Why you manage to tear up ever so freely in church: Every time I get the misfortune of being sat next to a particular young lady in church, I groan inwardly. Problem is not that she’s got a massive dose of BO, but that she manages to contort her face in so many twists and turns that I’m left wondering if I am safe. 90% of the time, she’ll cry during the worship - often times that is the precise moment I am discreetly reviewing my twitter timeline, an indicator of just how bored with the whole experience I am. It really is just the worship right?I have a sneaky feeling, that it might be more than just the worship, perhaps she is remembering what Bro Okon did the night before…

Sigh…

Going Vegetarian..

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 20:50:00 +0000

The sudden realization, that it took me only a month and a half to fill a Nandos loyalty card has left me with a mixture of sadness and fear - sadness at the sheer number of chicken that have lost their lives to feed my lust for peri-peri chicken, and fear at what those loads of chemical laced proteins is doing to my innards… So for a week - to pacify my conscience, i will eat vegetarian only… That will be difficult because my early morning bacon sandwich and coffee from Sainsbury, my company paid bacon/egg/mushroom roll on Fridays, and all the other good meaty stuff I live for will get tossed out.. Healthy eating was one of the four critical categories for 2010, I need to get a jump on it….

Of unintended consequences...

Sat, 09 Oct 2010 06:03:58 +0000

Sometimes even the best laid plains falter- tripped up by the most mundane of details which to the planner were irrelevant. What then can we do but stoically shrug, and move on to the next one….

When things unplanned lead to desired- yet unintended- consequences we must also hail our good fortune and take the chance proffered with both hands. It was Leonard Ravenhill who said:

’the opportunity of a lifetime must be harnessed in the lifetime of the opportunity’….

Resolutions: The (almost) Mid-Year Edition

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:10:52 +0000

What I need to do to have had a successful year…..

Deliver an updated website for the Church Media Team
Complete my 2010 reading list
Deliver my two ‘main’ work projects for the year
Visit my H-town peep..

Not too much to ask I guess!!!

15x08d9.....

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:38:30 +0000

To new beginnings… and hope that when tomorrow comes the sun will shine…

Selah..

Ctrl+Alt+Del

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:49:48 +0000

To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish -

- Yiddish saying via Malcolm Gladwell

Second chances - clean sheets wiped clear from all the smudges, memories obliterated, people lost in the maelstrom of life - are great… If only they were as easy as Ctrl+Alt+Del…. Sigh.

World Cup 2010 - Lessons (un) Learned

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:26:49 +0000

A moment of rashness by a certain Sani Kaita will go down as the defining moment of Nigeria’s World Cup - when the tenuous grip of one hundred and fifty million people was savagely hacked off. At that time Nigeria was 1-0 up - thanks to a somewhat fortuitous goal – and had largely being untroubled by the Greeks who had been pedestrian all through. The rest, as they say, is history and Greece went on to win to put Nigeria’s world cup dreams effectively on hold for four more years.

Ponderings...

Fri, 14 May 2010 19:06:38 +0000

I’ve spent the last few months probing - looking to find a rationale for blogging that is not inextricably connected to feeding the over arching desire of my inner narcissist to be heard above the din that is the blogosphere….

2009 was different…. I followed over 1,000 blogs, I bounced from blog to blog leaving comments, there was banter, there was drama, there was poetry on a level I’d only dreamed of, there were blog collabos…. and a few crushes…. My old favorites were still around, and a few newbies served up delicious stuff… Oh.. the Anons spiced things up too…

An epilogue of sorts......

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:46:45 +0000

I have begun dreaming of things best left unsaid, things best left to gently slide into oblivion far beyond the edge of consciousness. Here there are voices, and fleeting faces, floating by as though swimming in some nebulous unseen ether. I would blame malaria or the slew of unknown brews at Dame Hayatou’s, but these are things I have seen in the flesh - less the twisting, less the turning in the dead of night and the turmoil that brings them back to mind. These are the memories of a not so distant past, of what-ifs and maybes and could-haves blatantly refusing to accept the cold hard facts..

Yay..

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 05:07:06 +0000

The first quarter performance review was short and sweet - I think… The recovery is under way.. Now we need to secure it… (as Gordon Brown likes to put it)

The only thing worse than boredom..

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:54:00 +0000

The only thing worse than boredom is routine. I find myself living each day like a dream - sleep, wake, eat, work and sleep - Waiting expectantly for the 3pm chime that alerts me to the impending freedom from boredom - and then the bus that takes me home.

Each day passes - sometimes like a bore, sometimes like a breeze - living for the weekend - and then the dread as the weekend ends - and the grind starts all over again. This is the life of me!

If wishes were horses

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:57:38 +0000

If wishes were horses… I’d be out playing golf at the moment; not crunching numbers and telling lies giving expert advice to clients. This glorious sunshine is simply begging for a game of golf!

Sadly, I am neither kith nor kin to Dangote nor to Mutallab Snr; and my dear father (bless his overly patriotic heart) turned down the offer of a tenure at Bristol back in the day :(

Re: 2010

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:06:00 +0000

Coming into 2010, it was clear this was the year that could potentially make or break me. Coming off a mid-life crisis in 2009 a nasty break up in 2008 that was finally formalized in 2009, and major changes that seemed intent on tossing my well laid plans aside, I thought four things would be a small number of items to focus on - turns out even those four are a big ask.

Random musings...

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 06:09:05 +0000

So John Terry lost the England football captaincy - strange to me considering the quite public exploits of Sven Goran Ericksson and Mark Pallios back in the day; the recent activities of Avram Grant and the fact that none of the names being touted as Terry replacements have covered themselves in glory in the past. He should simply have listened to the Vera show - and stayed off the friend’s ex… The bloke in the pod next to mine at work says footballers count money in millions of pounds and sense in pence.. Haterade maybe.. But this list of top ten gaffes makes an intriguing read..

Living Dangerously...

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:34:56 +0000

Talent is the desire to practice…..It is that you love something so much that you are willing to make an enormous sacrifice and an enormous commitment to that, whatever it is – task, game, sport, what have you.

- Malcom Gladwell

Last year I closed out a fair bit of my plans - at least I was waaay above the average 12%. This year, I decided I would only do one thing - Live Dangerously.

TGIF..

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:36:00 +0000

TGIF… I get to stay awake till the wee hours of the morning without thinking about any repercussions!

The last bout of insomnia I have struggled with yielded dividends today. A solution that popped up duirng one of those nights sailed through at work today! And in a funny way, I am kinda sad that the insomnia faded significantly.. I miss the late night/ wee hours of the morning pleasure I had for a week :(

Me, Insomniac

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 03:10:00 +0000

Hi, My name is theOOhj and I am an insomniac… And I have been this way for all of three years!

My friend agony aunt Titi asked me if it was physiological or psychological…..100% gibberish… plenty grammar.. All I know is that I can’t sleep…. and when I do manage to sleep I dream.. of different things.. people.. places…. events… and of her….. the one who chose to fade to black…. her voice is still etched in my mind’s ear like the striations of a fatigue crack.. and I am left with the questions.. the could haves, the would haves and the should haves…..Each day, I remind myself that it is over… dead… that we are done……but……

2010 - The Plan

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:54:00 +0000

Last year was about a laundry list - 20 things I wanted to get sorted by year’s end. I did Ok.. Never got to learn french and missed out on the distinction..This year I want to have focus areas - key directions in which my energies will be focused.

Career: Manage my transition to a new job/ new city; target getting confirmed on the job and a raise by year end.
God and Faith: Get back into the regular church thing - sort out my niggling God issues.
Weight and Health: Get a full physical exam - for info - and shed the excess weight sharp-ish.
Love and Loving: End my girl hiatus; actively get back into the meeting and friendship scene again.

One more, which doesn’t count as a specific goal I think, but which is needed nonetheless, is to toughen up. I fear for the past few years I have grown too soft, more altruistic than is necessary. 2010 is my year.. of living dangerously..

Randoms....

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 09:31:00 +0000

Christmas was ok.. It was WHITE at the third time of asking- wish I took pictures of me trying to move around in knee deep snow. Got invited out to a bash by the guys where there was a wee bit too much alcohol. That is guaranteed to loosen up a few tongues - and I heard a lot about certain people I shouldn’t have heard! Thankfully I’m out of here in a bit, so I can forget I ever heard those things.

Menus, shopping lists and healthy eating.

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:30:00 +0000

The rude shock of seeing the bathroom scale inching steadily towards 100kg has given me the proverbial kick up the back side. I need to start eating healthy ASAP. Eighteen months of binging on KFC, Greggs and Pizza Hut has done my weight in, and added a few inches to the waist line.

The big problem though is I have zilch experience in drawing up menus and creating shopping lists. I’m good when its a crowd going shopping, and I can eyeball what they are buying and decide. Like the googlephile I am, i jumped to google, to see if there were any hints I could get. I stumbled on the UK Food Safety Agency’s Eat well website. Loads of useful information even though it seemed overwhelming at times!

In Retrospect...

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 09:13:33 +0000

This has been one hell of a ride. There was change aplenty - the good, the bad and the iffy. In hindsight, maybe some decisions in 2008 were hasty, maybe they were not…Bottom line is that I survived..

Call them random occurrences, put them down to luck or whatever – I think it was Divine Providence that pulled me through some really difficult times. It had to be – from getting THE opportunity after it had closed, to significant delays on bus timings that enabled me catch the train that got the ball rolling, to having a friend leave her house at the just the right time I needed a new house to stay in a new city (P you totally rock!), to getting Brooke Fraser’s Shadowfeet at the time things felt the bleakest, there had to be some orchestration behind it all. The plus side is I learned a few hard lessons - still learning even newer, harder ones.

Its complicated..

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:41:40 +0000

This provides some background to this and this (number five)

She still wore her hair in a ‘fro… still wore only lip gloss… still wore a yellow shirt and black pants….still followed Liverpool… still had the dimple on her left cheek…. still wrote with her left hand… still kept a big jar of peanut butter in her fridge….still laughed at my inane jokes…still hummed whilst making her mean stew!

I could be forgiven for thinking that time had stood still…. and it was the first day again….. only she was more grown up… More alluring.. more woman less girl…

Becoming a Bum?

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:52:32 +0000

The last few months for me have been quotidian - bereft of any but the most mundane exertions of eating, sleeping and surfing the internet. Thanks to the fortuitous event of my getting a real job a few months ahead of schedule, I have convinced myself that all I should be doing at this time is to rest and prepare for the big challenge ahead. Sadly, its been a lot more of rest and ungodly amounts of sleep than any real study or preparation. Am I becoming a bum? January can’t come quickly enough for me it seems.

Should I have? Would i?

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:13:44 +0000

By the time you read this, I would have completed the penultimate item on version 6.02 of the five year plan.

26k pounds in expenses, 52k pounds in deferred lost earnings, 4 months of second guessing myself, wondering if this was the right move in retrospect…. And all I get were two short minutes of fame…. 2 minutes where I donned the cape, got the hood and took the twelve steps eastward across the stage to lose my hand in his pudgy one!

Burning the bridges..... Friday Night Blues...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:43:00 +0000

I hate that you are always on my mind. I tell myself I really don’t mind that we do not talk any more. The brutal truth is that I mind! And worse, that it hurts - like a deeply seated wound that no salve can reach. Only a few months ago, it seemed the world was at our feet and that the sun would shine forever. A part of me wants to believe that you still care, that you still remember - I’m not sure it matters either way. We are done.

Strictly (not) dancing...

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:25:24 +0000

I think I have never danced in my entire life - not in church, not on my solitary foray into a night club, not at all the birthday parties I attended as a kid, not ever. I don’t remember if it was a concious decision, or if it was/still is a result of a deep seated phobia even I am unaware of, or if I have always lacked that seemingly natural ability to coordinate the limbs in resonance with external tunes, or if I just plain can’t be bothered.

Life's Like That..

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:07:20 +0000

In retrospect…. Life happens.. With or without our consents…. And in its wake often comes change.. which we by default detest. Over time, we develop safe routines, coping mechanisms and default positions to deal with life - ultimately acquiring some semblance of balance.

Sometimes change is subtle; imperceptibly modifying the place where we are on the continuum of life, instigating minor perturbations - little oscillations if you like - around our equilibrium positions. The pragmatic thing to do then is to try to hold the fort, to resist change and maintain the status quo.

Random simple things.......

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:50:14 +0000

Chris Abani, speaking at TED in 2008 makes a statement I largely agree with;

The world is not saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of every day acts of compassion..

In the last month I,

Saw a bottle of palm wine explode: The chic was taking some palm wine to her father for a traditional wedding. She failed to consult knowledgeable others and left the bottle of palm wine corked. 67.5mm Hg of pressure (that is the saturated vapour pressure of ethanol at 20 deg C) ripped the bottle to pieces, and showered us in palm wine!
Met @medianemesis -- dude is really cool, smart.. and everything I imagined he was and more. Y’all need to follow him on Twitter and read his old blogs - fabulous!
Attended Chill and Relax. Been a long while I chilled and listened to sublimely intelligent minds speak the language of poetry. I should attend when next I am in the vicinity. Thanks to Cerberus for sending a timely reminder.
Went on a ‘date’ with my friend EC: It was her birthday, I was in town doing nothing so she dragged me along to go grab a bite and just catch up on old times. This was just old friends hanging out after a year of us both zipping around the world without actually seeing each other.
Got recruited as a husband finder, so send in the resumes for your brothers, nephews, uncles and (gulp) good ex- boy friends for consideration. The chic in question is uber smart, pwreeety, focused, - world class in short….. and she needs to sort this out in 2010 unfailingly…
Discovered I miss my campus bistro: My morning breakfast bun - the white bread + bacon + sausages + a hot cup of coffee has grown on me in the last 13 months..
Saw a rainbow - and it actually lifted my spirits. Was up since 2.30am, it was wet and windy, and then suddenly as my train came out of the tunnel just north of Edinburgh the sun broke out and the rainbow appeared - Priceless!
Thought I liked her enough to jettison the 5-year plan, then thought it was a passing fancy and then ultimately decided to fast track certain portions of the plan as opposed to whole sale changes.. Oh, and this is not one of the usual suspects……
Was reminded of the one we lost to the genes. She would have been 29 today!
Saw a different spin on love: They have been married for 55 years, she is now confined to a wheel chair, but each day, he takes her for a ‘walk’, he pushes the wheel chair and they chat as they ‘walk’. That in my mind seemed like true for better for worse.
Watched Imagine That, yes it’s kinda mushy, its cheesy, it runs against belief, but I liked it. Sue me! I need me my twin daughters already

Friends.....

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:26:00 +0000

Caught up with Olu again - he and I sat down in the car, engines revving pouring our hearts out on the various issues in our lives. After being so similar for such a long time, our lives cannot be more divergent going forward. He is heading back to Nigeria semi-permanently, I am looking forward to yet another winter here.

Life is good though, and the time spent chatting up has thrown up a few new directions. That is what friends are for I suspect.

UX5... The Memories..

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:01:55 +0000

I have unfinished business in this town. I had always sensed that when the time came to finally cut my ties, I would still have to come here one last time, to cast my eyes over the horizon and remind myself of all the things this town means to me.

Today I lug my knapsack to the park and ask for a cab. I point in the general direction I am headed in, the dirty strip of land bordering the ocean that became my chill spot during those long arduous weekends. Unsurprisingly, the fare has doubled from the last time I was here, as it did for every one of the years I spent here. We haggle a little over the price. He retorts that there is no fuel, and that I shouldn’t be a cheap skate, after all I am a big boy. Perhaps I look the part - a knapsack that looks like it has a laptop, I wear glasses, am plugged into an iPod, and am speaking English untainted by the default accent one acquires around these parts. Truth is I might have once been one of them, but I am not now, which is why my trip to the waterside could end up being painful. I am off to eyeball UX5 for the last time.

Not pining.. Just saying...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:59:22 +0000

Moments like these, when insomnia induced by deep thought strikes, are when the harsh reality of the things we try to suppress often come to the fore. The overwhelming desire of my heart and my hand is to pick up my phone and call long distance. But my head - ever pragmatic - intervenes, short circuiting the commands and forcing me to think.

I wonder if she remembers me, or if indeed there is someone else making her laugh, hearing all her foibles and making her giggle at pointless jokes and wise cracks into the wee hours of the morning.

In retrospect..... everything.

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:12:38 +0000

When I was younger, I secretly believed my mother could fly. To be honest, those heels could delude anyone into believing they could - add a full flowing boubou and you had a superman woman right there, complete with boots and a cape! She certainly was not ultra light – all us kids, and her aversion to wastage in any and every form meant she was always only just under a healthy weight. For all my reading of Essential Biology I should have known that real mothers could not fly; only fairy god mothers could - but the anecdotal evidence seemed to suggest that mine did, for the sheer number of times she caught me pants down – no pun intended.

Almost There.....

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:29:27 +0000

… at the end of the raging storm.… finally a silver lining appears… one victory.. but it is a crucial change of momentum!

Dear God, Deliver me from Greggs!

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:54:08 +0000

Each morning, my nostrils awake to redolent scents, wafting outward from the Greggs eatery next to my house. Sadly, this particular branch is close enough to allow some of the scents find their way in, but just far enough to befuddle my sense of smell in such a way that I cannot precisely tell which is which.

Some days I can almost bet my sweet life that they are arranging hot piping amala there. At other times, I am positive I have heard inhaled the smell of akara, of moi moi and even party jollof rice! Problem though is there is no way any of these can smell like the above; unless there is a Naija chic surreptitiously boiling her own things on the side..

The Thing about 'Definition'.....

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:40:04 +0000

I am all for defining my people connections upfront (DTRs) …… The thing about them though is that they are tricky……. Too soon, and you run the risk of permanently pulverizing some real bridges before they even get built…….. Too late, and you’re mired in the morass of the ‘just friends’ zone…..

That night we had the inevitable talk and faced the ineluctable moment of truth….. Faced with a choice she said…..

A spot of bother..

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:37:00 +0000

Mum is running scared. A lot more scared than even I am.. And she doesn’t know the full scale of the issue. All I have told her is that I may not be returning to my old job in Nigeria. The truth is that I have quit already. As is typical with her she is bothered; wondering if I have enough funds to survive the job search, if I am seeking temporary work whilst all my documentation pulls through, the whole lanyards.

Of Exes and Mother's Angst

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:39:35 +0000

Dear Lawwd! Matters came to a head today over SpiriChic. Thing is Mother and I have spent the past few months locked in a mental war – losing it is inconceivable for me, because it would constitue such a loss of face that I couldn’t possibly put my foot down on any thing with her in future.

SpiriChic, one of two young ladies I ever seriously dated, is a certain un-official ex from a few years ago now, whose existence was leaked by a parroting sibling in a moment of crass indiscretion. Said ex and Mother got to meet and hit if off instantly, which should have raised red flags in my mind at the time. My assumption has always been though, that as long as I hadn’t told the parents anything, whatever mother assumes is just that, an assumption.

Clarity calls.....

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:57:55 +0000

I don’t wanna feel like this tomorrow I don’t wanna live like this today Make me feel better I wanna feel better Stay with me here now And never surrender

Today, in a bizarre moment of clarity, I realized I had parked my bus for way too long at a bus stop that wasn’t mine… A lot of energy was dissipated, focus diluted and time irretrievably wasted in the process.. Funnily, I knew a year ago very clearly what I should have done - it was reiterated very strongly five months ago - but the deeply seated nostalgic memories continued to keep me deluded, holding me in a mistaken belief that it could work and banishing my usually ruthless streak to the background…

Business as usual...

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:03:21 +0000

I turned in my dissertation today. So to all intents and purposes, it should be ‘business as usual’ going forward. I need to get the final bits of utility out of Football Manager 2009 first though.. and get some summer loving…. ;) Oh and some reading too.

A Lost Son...

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:52:41 +0000

In moments like these, the stark reality hits me like a blow to the solar plexus - I am lost….caught in the neverland between two worlds - never fitting into either one. My lostness is multi-faceted; spawned by the dissonance being caught between the fervent patriotism of a son who once believed he had something big to offer his country and the hard nosed pragmatism of a thirty plus bloke who realizes - a trifle late - that finding his place in this world is more important in the near term than the anonymit y of sacrifice.

Aha.......My Epiphany

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:17 +0000

……..when the vehicle becomes more important than the Journey or even the Journey -er, a time out to ponder becomes expedient……..

Ponderings.......

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:30:02 +0000

A Journey is a gradual passage from one state to another. It may be a translation of spatial coordinates- in which case an object physically changes location, or it may merely be metaphorical - an evolution of an idea from a crude, undeveloped state to a more refined one. Sometimes the journey is deterministic – the number of steps is known from the beginning; at other times it is iterative - involving little steps that seek to approximate an unknown solution. There may be fellow Journey -ers; there may also be assistance in the form of vehicles that seek to mitigate the drudgery of the journey. The key though is that change occurs and hopefully there are clearly defined metrics that show that progress is being made. When all is told though, there is an end in view, a destination, a target box if you like, within which the Journey terminates………….

The Hot Seat......

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:33:23 +0000

For Me….In the midst of potentially destabilizing change…

The hot seat …..is the hot seat…. The place where you are put on the spot, and come under the most intense scrutiny possible. Here, the basis of your Faith is rigorously examined and the coherence of your worldview is systematically evaluated. It is the zone where well meaning words become dry platitudes devoid of any soothing balm, where textbook solutions fall apart, where time tested strategies cannot even begin to scratch the surface of the sickness that a hope deferred brings.

Dear Mom...

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:04:37 +0000

Dear Mom.. It’s that time of the year again, when we should gather to celebrate you and the influence you have been on our lives. Unfortunately, yet again I am far away, so far this time that I cannot even remotely be part of the event. Knowing you, I know its typically low key, a gathering of the special people in your life – which is basically Dad and us – the brood you’ve given your all for. We are all scattered far and wide now – me, kid bro, both sisters and all the numerous cousins but you have a special place in our hearts.

"Mene mene tekel parsin"

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:17:27 +0000

Its midway through the year already…. 2009 has sped by with alarming inerrancy…. And the midway point will soon be reached…….I find myself musing, questioning, probing and sifting through the evidence hoping to find proof that I have indeed focused on the right things so far that will make the most difference when push comes to shove and the bricks fall down as though ripped to shreds by a tsunami of cataclysmic proportions……….The big chronological milestone approaches too, and with it comes a sense of dread - I will officially become ‘old’ in my book - but then on the other hand is some gratefulness for still being alive against all odds….. …… Its taking stock time here………….I really hope the verdict is not “mene mene tekel parsin”

On.. The seduction of words............

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:38:13 +0000

Are words merely words on a page, or are they snippets of a hidden soul that have somehow escaped to grant a preview to the uninitiated of the intangibles that lie beneath the surface? Perhaps, words in reality bear no extant connection to the mind that inspired the hand that bore the pen that crafted them and are devoid of a life of their own; only sketching a reality that is at best virtual and concocted.

On... The Crux of the Matter

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:27:49 +0000

First off.. Our PROJECT is live……. Stop over and show us some love aight! ABlackJamesBond asked a particularly intriguing question on the last post on his blog - contemplating.

Would the boy you were yesterday be proud of the man you are today?

I wish I had straight forward answers, a Yes or a No. But I’m finding out that the more I think about it, the more it seems the answer is both Yes and No. Yes, I’ve met and exceeded most of my targets; No because in some regards, I have done stuff the boy of yesterday, who stood with great enthusiasm on the cusp of greatness would cringe to even hear of. Deep down sometimes I argue with myself, wondering if perhaps I have even delivered on the huge potentials I know I once had.

Letter to the future...

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:39:45 +0000

It seems only like yesterday that I stood in your shoes, on the verge of turning twenty-one. My mind was a maelstrom of feelings; not all of which I could understand. On the one hand was nostalgia for all the memories of growing up and on the other trepidation. I had just left the University and I was going to miss the ‘mountain top experiences’ - the uninhibited exuberance of worshiping together on a Sunday afternoon, the wonderful friendships that had been developed over the tenure of my stay, the nights spent in raucous laughter as we talked about everything under the sun - everything. I felt some trepidation, a nagging concern at the monstrous changes that I was on the verge of undergoing. Lots of issues swirled around my mind – what final grade would I make? Where would I be deployed to serve the nation? Would I get a job? Was a Masters’ Degree the ultimate coup de grace I needed to launch myself into my chosen career? Had I learned all I needed to succeed in life? I had plans, that had me doing things I had only seen in my dreams.

On stuff........This side of Heaven

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:20:36 +0000

Yours truly spent the weekend; the part not spent on Facebook, Twitter or playing Football Manager that is, thinking about all the things I need to sort out in the next phase of life for my aging self! Here are the Seven things I have to get done, in no particular order, before Heaven beckons….

Marry the akara making Halle berry/ Gordon Ramsay/ Martha Stewart superwoman of my dreams!
Write the best-selling collection of poems and or the book that gets me on the cover of TIME magazine and rave reviews as the new Shakespeare (speaking at TED would be a great alternative!)
Swivel in my chair and dictate global Pipeline Integrity Policy from my corner office at Corporate HQ on 800 Bell street for at least 20 years..
Walk a tight-rope stretched taut over the Niagara falls (or if my keg prevents me, pretend to!)
Get to retire to my yacht in the Caribbean and watch the sun set for at least another 20 years!
Make a one time donation of at least ten million dollars to World Vision, Compassion, or preferably Stepping Stones Nigeria.
Last and not the least, get some legit toe-curling, head twisting, mind boggling you-know-what..

Daaaayuuum…. Its a Sunday.. Enough of the day dreams - I’m off to Church!

The Action Item List

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:09:00 +0000

I identified a few key things that I need to work on in my life to improve on myself majorly. The prioritized list I will be working off is below:

Develop a reading schedule: financial, self motivation, self esteem, writing and career related books.
Schedule times for laptop gaming, internet and other non essential activites.
Build a plan for improving my life in the categories of Al Mohler’s excellent piece - The Marks of Real Manhood.
Develop a plan for regular bible study and prayer, determine a time and stick to it
Document my peculiar sin vulnerabilities: identify the triggers and fight for the life of me!
Identify two mentors - one in the workplace and one for my personal life. Set up weekly teleconferences or meetings as appropriate.
De-clutter my life. Reassess all my people connections and downsize to a manageable number.
Complete my MSc, identify critical modules I will require in the work place and read up on them before I get to resume work.
Get a complete physical exam done. Identify any potential health vulnerabilities and ensure they are in line for focused attention.
Maintain my weight - can’t afford to increase health risk levels by bulking up.
Develop mechanisms for tracking and assessing need before expenditure. Consider adding a need assessment module to my excel tracking sheet.
Read up on investment opportunities in Nigeria. Develop mechanisms for assessing investments and prioritizing them for action.
Identify worthy causes and get plugged into a couple.

Hopefully, I will be able to state categorically at the end of the year that I have worked through the list.. I then shall measure effectiveness and decide which new directions I need to chase!

On six pack abs, and my all new 6-week mega program!

Fri, 08 May 2009 01:55:19 +0000

I never had a six pack. Even at the height of my athletic prowess, back in the day when I was the starting defensive midfielder a la Dietmar Hamman for my departmental soccer team (hey, only for two games, but I was first choice!), I still had that tell- tale bele– the ineluctable consequence of blasting moles of eba at Mama Clara’s Buka 12. Way back then, it was still possible to grab three wraps of eba, and a ring of fish with a mixture of egusi and ogbono soups for all of twenty naira. And us kpakorized Engineering boys duly worked it to a fault, thanks to Mama Clara delivering piping hot eba timed to perfection. Thursday with Baba Sala was our nadir; 7 straight hours of back breaking, morale sapping, soul mortifying Engineering drawing made us prime candidates for a double dose of the Campus-famous eba and mixture that was Buka 12’s specialty - first at 8.30am enroute DO2 and then by 4.30pm on the way back.

The Mid-life Crisis - well sort of...

Sat, 02 May 2009 18:57:00 +0000

Sometimes clarity hits you suddenly, at other times the obvious slowly becomes apparent. I don’t quite know any more which case my epiphany was – bottom line though is that at some stage I finally realized that I had the beginnings of a mid life crisis in hand. On the surface though, life was great - good prospects, nice reputation, the whole nice guy persona, great friends and a life most people would envy. The harsh reality though is that life couldn’t be farther than that!

Finally Home.

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:48:00 +0000

For TheB, and all the other broken hearts…

Though tears like a river course down like rain, And your heart by cupid’s fiery barbs is rent. Although your cracked voice breaks out in wails, And hell with all its fury and fiends seem sent. Be still, Stay strong, you’ll make it home.

Though fear like a cloak your mind enshrouds, And rabid voices, your reasoning besiege. Though Night descends, your dreams to hound, And heart beats resonate to a symphony of rage. Be still, Stay strong, you’ll make it home.

The curious case of my not so idiopathic insomnia and two memes

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:37:42 +0000

Its almost 2am and I can’t sleep… Some dude got me mightily worked up this evening and my vexation almost knew no bounds.. That prompted me to spew my shortlived rant, which I’ve thankfully deleted. Sowwrry for over exciting you over nothing. I’m over it now anyways…Since I am awake, I might as well do these memes that have been hanging over my head for a whiles now.. First off Naijababe tagged me in February and then both Tigress and Poeticallytinted tagged me with the honest scrap award fairly recently. Since Naijababe’s list is lonnger than 10 items, i will take that as a neccesary and sufficient condition to claim the honesty award! Here goes…

Rediscovering Me

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:15:00 +0000

The wind is moving, but I am standing still A life of pages, waiting to be filled A heart that’s hopeful, a head that’s full of dreams But this becoming, is harder than it seems Feels like I’m Looking for a reason, roamin’ through the night to find My place in this world, my place in this world Not a lot to lean on, I need your light to help me find My place in this world, my place in this world

Gaining weight -- What options?

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:01:00 +0000

Is it “un-African” to be a slim girl? I ask because I was talking to an old friend of mine a couple of days ago. She’d seen a picture of moi on FB with like 10 kg extra from my suffering University years and was lamenting that she had stayed the same weight over all the years..

Apparently the big issue was that at some Houston party, some dude tried to “toast” her by saying she looked like his younger sister who was still in High School.. Quite rightly, my friend was indignant especially considering she’s 28ish at the moment and the dude in question was barely out of college. Her solution to that is that she needs to bulk up and “push out a bit of hips n backassi” to “look slightly like my ancestors”. Unfortunately, I have acquired a reputation for dispensing advice (although I don’t take my own advice), so her question was what options did she have for bulking up…

Finally, the exams....Going MIA...

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:08:00 +0000

WOW.. Finally the 1st semester exams are here… 3+ months of course work, lectures, field trips, discussion classes and library work are going to be put through a comprehensive test over the course of the next two weeks…. I’ve got this nervy, on-the-edge feeling – which in the past has served me so well.. Hopefully, I can harness it again and make a strong statement of intent per this MSc program… The stakes are kinda high – was grudgingly granted approval to pursue the Msc by my 9ja bosses – so I need to lay down a marker and let them know it was worth the gamble…..

The 2009 Master Plan...

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:24:00 +0000

2008…What a year…Seems like it was only yesterday when my friend and I drove to church to attend the New year Service and to get the year rolling……Lots of stuff have happened to and around me.. Wonder what the highlights were tho…

On a personal note heading back to school ranks up there… One humid March evening, I finally decided I’d had enough of working on the edge; after spending the 4th straight weekend at work trying to troubleshoot a pipeline problem…. Got home that night,and started the online application that has landed me on the MSc program I’m currently on…..apparently to the distaste of my bosses - who told me they thought I was doing fine without the MSc and that it was unnecessary….Who cares? I needed to keep my sanity……My cause can’t be helped by the fact that a number of chaps also decided to flee in my wake too… duh…

Exam Fever II...

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

WOW..took some advice from y’all on blogsville and joined a discussion group plus reactivated my library card… Have averaged 4 hrs of serious book work a day since sunday… I should be on course to smash my exams at this rate..

Hmm - Just curious but can guys and girls be “just friends”? What do y’all think? I know a dude who’s stuck in limbo land over some young lady who he is “just friends” with and i’m wondering if that category even exists in the first place……. Fire away y’all…

Rattled by the Fire Alarm...

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:52:00 +0000

Meen – Haven’t felt this miffed in a veery long time… Had a 9am class today, woke up at 6.30am, browsed through blogsville to catch up on all I’d missed over the weekend and popped into the bath.. only for the fire alarm to sound… The silly porters had decided that 8.15am on a Monday morning was the best time to have a fire drill…

The resulting 30 min delay meant i only completed preparation for classes at 9.00am and finally arrived the lecture hall a full 30mins after the lecture had started… Doubt I learned anything form it by the way……

Birthdays, KPIs and Mama's Calls

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 21:34:00 +0000

Phew – I’ve survived another year – Another year of living and working in 9ja with all its attendant issues. I had several close shaves with death in the past 1 year - two car crashes that almost claimed my life (the last one finally totalled my 2001 3.25i BMW and left me with a cut on my head), a massive re-org at work that left 160 people considering what might have been if they’d opted for a different first job instead of tying up with an Oil & Gas major, two flights to and fro Lagos every month inspite of the real issues with the 9ja Aviation industry, several gruelling trips to Benin City from my enclave in the 9ja Delta (a 16hr round trip every 2 months) and most importantly another 1 year of surviving inspite of Mama’s phone calls..

Haunted by a YearBook...

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:55:00 +0000

Phew – The “danger” of documentation was brought home to me very forcibly a couple of days ago.. A friend of mine stumbled across an old year book from my campus fellowship (from which I graduated in 2002).

First off the “me” in the picture was several pounds lighter, with bushier hair and the talk – gist of launching my very own ISP wthin 10 years of quititng campus, writing songs and all what not – was a far cry from what I’d actually gone on to do .. Only my name connected the picture of the scrawny 20-something year old guy with the “buff” guy I’d become..