Blogging101 on A Geek's Life

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.

In Conversation - Of Coffee and Banter

Thu, 18 Jun 2015 22:13:45 +0000

[ Source] –

I must have looked like shitknackered, or something close by all accounts, if the look the lady at the front desk gave me when I dragged myself, knapsack in hand and windbreaker open all the way down at the front, across the stoop to her desk to get signed in for the day was anything to go by. I was here at my old stomping ground from a few years ago to attend a training course - the first two days of which had lurched from plain boring to an absolute waste of the thousand pounds I’d managed to fork out for it. That my on-off insomnia was back in full pelt could not have helped - four ibuprofren plus notwithstanding - I had flitted in and out of sleep till 6.30am, at which time I gave up, brewed a cup of coffee and got my day started.

The Sense of An Ending

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 11:30:33 +0000

I sit here at my desk, amidst a sea of boxes, piles of paper and open drawers, grateful for the peace and quiet these last few minutes before the lunch break starts afford me. The morning has flown by quickly, lost in the blur of furiously packing, sorting and binning four years worth of work and junk that by the end of the day has to be organised neatly so the office admin staff can get them moved as required. The powers that be in my neck of the woods have decreed - having decided that we have been stuck in our silos for far too long - that moving to an office sharing arrangement that has us clustered functionally will foster a more collaborative approach to work, create synergies and improve efficiencies. Fundamentally democratic - and buzz word heavy - even though the unspoken elephant in the room is that by some quirk in the system the supreme leader has scored a corner office looking out onto the harbour; a far more eye pleasing sight than the endless parade of bus tops that I can just make out from my desk if I squint hard enough. Earned perks of office I guess.

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.