Work

The one last, irrevocable act that settles the inevitability of these trips is the phone call, typically sometime between 3.30pm and 5.00pm, confirming a check-in time for the next day. Beyond that, it is a fairly straight forward routine - wake up just past 5.00am, sort out my morning ablutions and then proceed to drag my two pieces of luggage down Park Road, up Kings and up to the bus station just outside Union Square. Thereafter there is a wait - between five and twenty minutes depending on when I arrive - before the 727 to the airport begins its crawl towards Dyce and the airport. ...

Thirty odd people, myself included, cluster around a table in a somewhat private corner of the Monkey House. Once a quarter, the guys and girls from work all pile in here to de-stress, and let our hair down. Rumour has it that after enough beers have gone around, fortuitous slips centred around what certain bosses actually think about certain staff have been known to occur. Usually, the evening starts with a few beers and nibbles - fish fingers, spring rolls, and all the other light food we’d collectively call small chops in my other world, the small matter of a few thousand miles away. ...

Just because… AJ McSedge CEng does have a nice ring to it, if I say so myself… Leaving XCorp in 2008 does feel that bit more justified now.. :)

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. ...

An altogether forgettable weekend - and at my age they all are - is bookended by a pit stop at Union Square for lunch with a friend of a friend. A random conversation a couple of weeks ago about (yet another) mutual friend and my lack of proactivity had ended up in a challenge of sorts being issued in my direction. Three phone calls later - with a few text messages thrown in - I end up making my way up the stairs towards the safe bet that is Nandos for a quick bite and chat. I arrive early - knowing Union Square, getting a table can be a hassle on sunny Sunday afternoons - the added advantage being that I get to see her first, and the satisfaction that she fits the image I have of her in my head. We order simple food - lime and herb flavoured chicken with a mixed leaf salad for me and a ratatouille for her and bottomless drinks and make small talk over the course of an hour and a half. All told it is a pleasant afternoon, and but for the fact that I have dodgy genes, and family history I would already be inventing scenarios involving white picket fences and 2.1 kids in my head. :) Given the choice, I would most certainly like an encore by all accounts. ...

A sudden bout of hunger assails me just before the clock chimes 5.00pm and I find myself making a detour - turning left at Guild Street and then making a beeline for the KFC on Union Street. Usually at this time of the day the singular focus is to get myself home, settle on my couch with a bowl of cold cereal and unwind with a Big Bang Theory/How I Met Your Mother TV marathon. Even the spectre of steaming morsels of eba potentially chasing themselves down my throat in short order is not enough to draw me home - the coup de grâce is, I suspect, the fact that it has been the better part of six months since I have savoured the fiery goodness of battered, deep fried chicken. ...

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. ...

I get the call late – sometime between 5.00 and 5.30pm on Monday evening - as I drag my bone weary self homeward, plowing a lone furrow down Guild and up Union through the masses of people heading home in the opposite direction. A sudden change of plans on The Project has thrown the curveball that is being the designated short term relief in my direction, and being the young, unmarried bloke on the team I get first dibs at the possibility of catching a 9.30 am flight the next morning. With the prospect of performance reviews due in a mere two weeks, I’m not exactly keen to refuse an opportunity to demonstrate my ability to ‘handle changing priorities’, so I shrug inwardly, accept my lot and grumble all the way home. ...

Note: If a few of the following characterizations seem stereotyped and larger than life, they probably are. Others more intelligent than I have chalked it up to Time, and how it conflates memory and reflection into a blended - often distorted - whole. Given the marked paucity of females in my sector of the industry, I was amazed a few days ago by just how many women have left their marks – both in positive and negative ways - on my career till date. I am coming up to what would have been the eighth anniversary of my resuming at my first job - if I had not packed my bags one November morning, deciding I had had enough. In the main, I find that five women stand out from that phase of my life: ...

Huddled around the lone telephone in Meeting Room Twelve, how we end up talking about the potentially explosive subjects of immigration and living on the dole escapes me, but once the first, tentative blows are struck, it all takes off from there. There is me - very Nigerian, Ahmed – devout Muslim, Pakistani – born, but as English as they come and Steph – part free thinker, part new-ager, also British. We are waiting for the phone call which will initiate a teleconference – one which should have started a full ten minutes earlier. ...