Life

__ It seems as though scarcely a blink has passed, yet somehow it is the end of March, a quarter of the year having sped past. Winter, a not particularly difficult one as I recall, has been and gone. Incessant rain interspersed with sunshine, longer days and the first sight of flowers blossoming all point to spring on the horizon, and how have I needed that! There is also the small matter of a milestone of sorts - four months in the new gig. A semblance of routine has taken root: Monday night flights to the continent, three days of hard work, and a late return to London on Thursday nights, followed by some work from home on Fridays. ...

Turning forty four sometime last year (where did the time go) seems to have been a trigger for thoughts about legacy rising to the fore in my mind, the end result of which was packing up my bags and swapping the sand dunes for Surrey. The decision being made, it still took the better part of six months to execute; lining up something this side of the dunes, rolling up the detritus of 1200 days of life and navigating notice periods amongst other things. Tnere was a lot of hand wringing, offer/counter offer and a little bit of emotional blackmail (of the good sort) but in the end what had to be done had to be done and I was on a flight heading bacck to good old Blighty. ...

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. ...

Never one to miss the opportunity proffered by a long weekend, I drag myself and my back pack in the wee hours of the morning of the 27th to the airport to catch two flights - first to Dubai and then to London. The third trip of the sort this year, it is my ongoing attempt to manage this year of distributed domestication, one in which S and L having returned to London for good I am left shuttling back and forth every few months. Unlike the last time, I do not run into anyone I know, for which I am thankful for the company of Ike Anya’s Small by Small. Beautifully short and deeply evocative of my own memories of growing up, I find myself going down mental rabbit holes, fleshing out the (typically) well written prose with my own experiences. Not being of a medical persuasion myself - engineering saved me from all that - the extensive overlap with friends and family does leave me with enough knowledge to appreciate his specific travails. with the memories of growing up on a university campus it drew in. ...

I may have waxed lyrical about taxis too soon, and in so doing vexed the taxi demi-gods, which is the only explanation of how on the one day I needed a taxi badly, I ended up with a guy who barely spoke English and whose understanding of Google Maps was minimal at best. Well, that or [Sod’s Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod's_law). The fault lay, at least partly, with me. It had been my first full day back at work since the beginning of Ramadan and my hunger addled brain failed to register the fact that the bus which would ferry me back from the middle of nowhere which was my work station for that day would arrive 30 minutes earlier than usual. On the phone to the taxi dispatcher, he explained that the earliest he could get someone out to me was an hour and thirty minutes, which seeing as I had no choice I accepted. Although he had my location, he somehow ended up at a site thirty minutes away. There was much hand wringing, and plenty more oohs and ahhs when he finally turned up, a full two hours later than had first been envisaged. I could only sit and fester for the whole of the 45 minute back to semi-civility and the comfort of my couch. Truth me told, umbrage is a luxury only those who have choices can take. I still hold the view that taxi rides are underated delights, the one caveat though is that there isn’t an insurmountable language barrier. ...

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. ...

Time as a trickster of sorts is a theme I find myself coming back to again and again, the key motif being how in the moment life and time can seem like drudgery, but when viewed from the vantage point of hindsight it can seem compressed, like a video watched at 2x speed. My thoughts as I packed up my bags and began to prepare for the short hop back were very much in that vein, not helped I suspect by the long hard year I had had. Between L, her boundless energy and various work related niggles, I was running on empty for the final few weeks before I left. Awaiting me on the other side - in addition to reintegrating myself back - were a big house move, and the mother of all Nigerian parties on the other side of town. If there was any anticipation, it was hope that I would finally get to sink my teeth into a juicy burger, indulge in all the bacon and sausages I could manage, and hop along to the odd Parkrun. As it turns out, all of my fears - and none of the things I was looking forward to - materialized.As is its wont, Reality and expectation never quite matched up. ...

Photo by Matthieu Joannon on Unsplash ** The heat hangs heavy on the head, the way a wet blanket only partially wrung dry after being pounded by feet in a washbasin hangs listlessly in a barely-there breeze. The short afternoon walks to the canteen, to grab some combination of a salad, chicken and rice is beginning to feel like a chore, not helped by the sand which has become a permanent fixture it seems. Some days G and I wonder if the haze is from fog or dust but the loud whirl of my air purifier settles it for me; dust it is - that most irritating kind that finds its way through every tiny crinkle in our armour, covering everything with a fine layer of brown. Not far away in their ubiquity are the flies which flit around everything, their persistent buzz the soundtrack to life in these baking summer months. With Ramadan behind us, it is the season of long vacations and every other day it seems someone else in the wider team disappears for a few weeks. My turn to disappear is in about a month, and for the first time in a long time, I am looking forward to kicking back, waking up at my leisure then sticking L in her stroller and grabbing brunch with real bacon. Adding a few more Parkruns to my total - with maybe one push for a new PB - would be a welcome bonus. ...

Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash ** It feels somewhat trite, given what is afoot in the world, to be riled up about life in my gilded prison corner of the world. The Ukraine and Russia conflict looms large of course, but for all the outpouring of support - and some might say posturing - it feels more like a cause célèbre, than anything else. As others have pointed out thousands more have lost their lives in Yemen,. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were hardly less gruesome for ordinary civilians. Closer home, it seems like Nigeria teeters more on the edge of imploding, with power, security and the general hardship levels all running away in the wrong direction. Of course, concurrent occurrences of bad things does not make any of them less ‘bad’. One can only hope that the energies expended in mobilizing and blanketing the air waves with the plight of Ukrainians is also extended to other (blacker and browner) bodies. ...

Photo by Kenza Benaouda on Unsplash ** Of the things that still irk me, more than a year into my Arabian Odyssey, the sheer inefficiencies which seem baked into the system stand out for particular ire. Case in point: this past week to spend ten minutes picking up a letter from my employer and then delivering it at a government office fifteen kilometres away, I had to drive 250+kilometres. To my mind, it is something that can and should dare I say, be managed via an online portal but I found to my pain that this was not the case. It is no wonder then that in the short space of over a month I have driven just shy of three thousand kilometres, mainly between my outpost in the middle of nowhere, work (twice), the big city next door (multiple times) and the occasional trip to the provincial capital for some government thing or the other twice too. ...