Family on A Geek's Life

44: Legacy

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 12:28:00 +0000

The year of being 43 was meant to be the Year of Disciplined Execution, drawing from the Sean Covey book, namely : focus on the wildly important, act on the lead measures, keep a compelling scorecard and create a cadence of accountability. Looking back it is fair to say delivery on this was middling at best, with both high and low lights, summarised below:

Highlights

Daily Bible App story helped me maintain a semblance of devotional life
Highest ever plant performance ranking at work in several categories, increased recognition at the plant of my M&C skills with several key solutions delivered
Good earnings supplemented by decent performance in the stock markets
Greater clarity around the next type of role for me: stay in Upstream M&C Corrosion Management, not necessarily projects etc
Offered roles at bp and Shell after rigorous interviews, great boost to the morale that I can still mix it with the good guys
Bonding with L, despite the distance and intermittent visits from me

Lowlights

Weight stayed high, didn’t manage to bring it down to the low 90s as anticipated
Health was middling, a number of developing issues to keep a eye on as I transition into my late forties
Beginning to feel like I am in a rut at my current job
Didn’t blog/ write as much as I would have wanted

44: Legacy

For the next run around the sun, the word which has bubbled to the fore of my mind is Legacy. It is one which has guided the core of my activities and decisions over the past few years albeit without being explicitly expressed. In a sense, it is a continuation of the Year of Disciplined Execution, as Legacy and its underpinnings should drive the definition of what is wildly important which is then executed in a disciplined manner. Legacy is also inextricably linked to the three interaction clusters of my life plan, personal, professional and public. Of particular importance for me in this context then is being healthy in every dimension of my life whilst adding value in each of those three clusters.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 7, Father

Sat, 07 Apr 2018 22:11:09 +0000

My father looms Like a colossus in my mind His voice, tinged with righteous anger The lyric of my powerless youth But now in my season of adulthood, I see him as he is, A man who tried his very best But was human too.

Honour Thy Father

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 04:19:19 +0000

Image Source: (c)Nathan Anderson

–

It is to a stroke of fortune that I owe listening to the final episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast three times over the last week. The first of the series of events which led to that was upgrading to iOs11 which messed up my podcasts, led me to seeking out Overcast as a replacement, and then having to decide on which ones to subscribe to or which to bin. That episode, Basement Tapes, explores a son’s reaction to finding out he has played a part in debunking to some of extent what has been the essence of his father’s work. The son, Robert Frantz is contacted out of the blue by a researcher, Chris Ramsden (Scientific American describes as the Indiana Jones of science), who is looking to acquire raw data from an experiment conducted by Robert’s father, Ivan, in Minnesota between 1968 and 1973. What results from Chris’s analysis of the data is a fundamental questioning of the conclusions of that study and the diet-heart hypothesis which claimed a linkage between a low saturated fat diet and the low blood cholesterol levels it produces and a reduction of the associated death rate (or adverse outcomes, as the study euphemistically puts it).

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.

Of Weddings, Cheesecake and Paper Planes

Tue, 10 May 2016 20:58:31 +0000

The somewhat impromptu trip to Lagos was designed around three main objectives; making an appearance at a (self-proclaimed) protege’s wedding, dinner with the Lagos based elements of my old work crew and appeasing my father, who as early as New Year’s Day had begun to sound his dissatisfaction at my conspiring to avoid making what used to be an annual trip to Nigeria last year. For the wedding, the plan was to arrive at 10.00 am, 9.00 am invitation notwithstanding. That decision was one I rationalised away by assuming that as with all things Nigerian, a certain element of tardiness was expected. By the time I arrived at 10.30 am - sweating profusely following my ill thought out attempt to walk till I found a yellow cab - I was as undressed as I could be, my tie slackened to let what precious little fresh air there was get to my skin and my suit dispensed with. That meant I had to find somewhere to cool off for a few extra minutes and get my outfit put together again before popping into the venue. In the end I had to settle for the wing mirror on a parked car, studiously avoiding the gaze of the soldiers sat on the bench only a few feet away. Once in the building proper, I managed to find a seat next to a rotating fan to ease my pain.

#98 - Party Time

Sat, 09 Apr 2016 16:39:02 +0000

Gate crashed. The perfect response to the wet, windy zero degree April weather. Bonus was getting to hang with the cousin and his family.

#Should.Do.More

#19 - Sister, Remembered...

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 22:29:18 +0000

In which I pretend to be young and free…. Chicago, 2011

#Throwback #Missed

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.

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.

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.

In pictures.. Bits and Bobs...

Fri, 20 Dec 2013 22:14:30 +0000

Facebook Fail

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:12:26 +0000

I woke up to five missed calls on my phone. I had felt, rather than heard its insistent buzz deep within lalaland but sheer tiredness had kept me from waking up. Instead, the phone’s chirpy ringtone somehow ended up blending itself in with the background to some weird dream I promptly forgot on waking.

Of the five missed calls, three were from my mother, one from my father’s phone and one from a private number. This has more or less become her standard M.O. - when she feels I am intentionally refusing to answer her phone calls that is. That she’d called five times suggested it was important, so I groaned inwardly, punched in the numbers for my calling card and made the phone call to Nigeria.

London calling...

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:22:47 +0000

London calls… Having manfully beaten its lure over the holidays to enable a much needed season of introspection, I had to cave in to summons over the phone from my Uncle C, especially because he and el madre seemed to be in cahoots on this one.

Ostensibly, the reason for the summons are my lack of endeavour in the girl stakes. My strategy has been to keep them in the dark on the details of my love life/ non-love life. Somehow Uncle C convinced Mum that our corner of the world up in Scotland is a hell hole of sorts with next to zero prospects of meeting eligible women, hence the need to get me out there in London.

Thankful Thursdays #46

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:31:43 +0000

Thankful for:

Progress with Mum’s health. Got sucked into an emergency surgery but by all accounts she’s getting close to the all clear.
Progress on two main job chasing fronts - CNRL & Maersk. Fingers crossed!
Finally reaching a place where I am slowly weaning myself off my intense fixation on L.
Three day work weeks, and options aplenty to pick and choose form.

Bring on the harvest dear God!