Conversations

She taps me on the shoulder, seemingly after several attempts to get my attention. In my defence, I have my earphones plugged in, cranked up to the maximum as usual, and have my hands in my fully done up jacket, braced up for the nip in the air, a far cry from the fairly balmy weather we’d had for all of three days that week. I am waiting for the Number 5 bus from Seafield Shops to Union Street, at a little before 20 minutes to 5pm, and besides the slowly lengthening line of cars on the opposite side of the road queuing up to get off Seafield on to Springfield road, there is an uncertain quietness to everything. At the time she tapped my shoulder, the only thing on my mind besides the cold was clearing my head of PRENs, Carbon equivalents, hydrogen embrittlement and all the other buzz words my ears had been filled up with at the training course I was on. ...

There are only so many taxi rides that you can take before you begin to pick up on the subtleties of maintaining inane conversations. And if your default mode of transport is a taxi, you have no choice but to cultivate the art, unless awkward silence is your forte. Here then in no specific order are the non threatening things that keep coming up for me in my journeys in the Aberdeen area. ...

[Source] I seem to have the knack for choosing the shittiest days to go offshore. Last November I end up stuck for an extra three days, thanks to Ambisagrus going berserk and my helicopter flight getting cancelled. Speaking to the heli-admin late on Monday as I confirm my booking, I have her take a quick look at the weather forecast; she confirms there are no extraordinary weather events forecast for the rest of the week. Satisfied, I confirm my check-in time and head out to pack my bags and plan. ...

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. ...

Somehow, my increasingly regular Friday evening/night conversations with Mlle.M had an interesting segue. We had been catching up on weekend plans at the time I believe when we somehow got into the dodgy waters of traditional gender roles, and how they are expressed in modern (Nigerian) marriages and relationships. [The overwhelming feedback I get from the women I talk to is the Nigerian man out there at the moment, irrespective of how learned he is, is one who expects a certain domestication in his women, often with a big dollop of subservience. My experience doesn’t fit that narrative though.] ...

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. ...

On a whim, I decide to wear a yellow shirt to work. There are no dress codes out here, but light greys, shiny whites and spartan blues are the most likely colours that peek out from beneath the heavy, grey jumpers that are de rigueur around these parts. It is a relatively mild seven degrees, less the wind chill and I feel sufficiently warm enough to ditch my heavy overcoat in favour of a lighter jacket. ...

In that productivity black hole that is the half hour before lunch - where the energy and the gusto from an early start have been steadily eroded by the mundanity of work and the insistent prattle of phone calls, emails and the odd buzz-word infested meeting - I stroll for the umpteenth time into the restroom, almost colliding with a man who is fiddling with the zipper on his fly. I least expect to find someone just inside the door, even though this time of the day is one where the restroom shuffle, coffee room trips and huddles of two and three in the hallway are time honoured strategies for the keen time waster. ...

Between bites of peri-peri chicken and sips of Coke Zero, my friend Des asked me if I was happy. She - amongst all my long term friends - complains the least about my propensity to wall them off from the reality that is in my head, but from time to time she insists we meet to ‘catch up’. These meetings haven’t happened a lot recently - thanks to her juggling a return to full time employment with an energetic three year old, and travelling. Skipping merrily through town, as she is wont to these days, she asked if I was up for a bite and a drink, which I accepted. We ordered the usual - a platter to share, bottomless drinks and sides of rice and settled in to talk about the minutiae of life, and all the quotidian pleasures we have enjoyed in the year so far. Then - out of the blue - she asked if I was happy. I suspect I managed to side track her question by rolling out my usual spiel about life being what it was - normal and mundane without anything out of the ordinary. ...

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. ...