The-Diary on A Geek's Life

Prodigal Benefits and a Reflection on Spring Cleaning...

Sun, 16 Apr 2023 09:47:58 +0000

Cake with I, somewhere on a humid Lagos afternoon

Being a prodigal abroad, in a relatively small, close knit expat community has its perks, not least if you are Nigerian. Truth be told, more often than not, there is a risk of private spaces being invaded, but when they come through, they come through spectacularly. The most recent example of this was Easter Sunday, on which after dragging myself home from work my late evening reverie was interrupted by persistent knocking. At the door was M, the matronly mother figure from three streets over, with a bowl of piping hot egusi soup, some swallow and a tub of fried rice in tow. Whatever misgivings simmered beneath the surface at the intrusion vanished very quickly, wafting away as though borne by the steam still rising from the bowls of food.

The Diary: The Joy In Small Things

Fri, 29 May 2020 12:15:27 +0000

\\\* Seemingly like in the blink of an eye – like play like play in the pidgin English of my youth – we are somehow at the end of May! Summer is finally here, bringing in its wake the realisation that if I had stayed up North, the first of my Nine Fridays of Summer would have just gone past. As it is though, I find myself in an intermission of sorts, loitering in the space between a past life and the future in which an adventure in the sun hovers just out of reach, 70 days late. There are of course worse things than swapping grey granite for verdant green or being cooped up with family, like dying or very nearly dying like so many people, including a few closer to home for me, have over the past few months of this pandemic.

The Diary: Malta

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 18:29:52 +0000

\\\* 4 am on a weekend is far too early to wake up, particularly when it is the next day after a late-night flight, but given my flight the next day is a 7.30am one I have to suck it up. The next day, having rushed through a shower, completed final bag checks and double-checked I have my passport, we find ourselves in a taxi speeding away on the A3 a little after 5am, barely lucid but glad I don’t have to do the driving. At Gatwick, we find lengthy lines bent double on themselves with baggage handlers thin on the ground. That EasyJet, that famously lean airline, deigns to apologise over the state of affairs is perhaps all one needs to know about just how dire the situation is. Thankfully, we make it through baggage drop and security just before 7am; just enough time to grab a Shake Shack breakfast bun and start frantically eyeing the departure boards for signs of our flight. It ends up delayed, no surprise there.

The Diary: The Paphos Files

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 11:02:08 +0000

The first bits of Cyprus we glimpsed as our flight began the descent towards Paphos were wind turbines slowly turning in what must have been a slight evening breeze, and houses which from the height looked like small, matchboxes pressed into the sides of the hilly terrain below us. Although it was only 5.20pm local time, it was quickly growing dark, which at first seemed odd until I realised just how much closer to the equator we were here than in England from where we were arriving. This trip to Cyprus was at the instance of S, ten days in Paphos being her idea of a honeymoon. The hope was to get the chance to catch our breaths after what had been a whirlwind three weeks in which we had managed to get hitched without losing our minds; the pressure of a large Nigerian wedding notwithstanding.

The Diary: Notes From The Northern Isles

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 12:30:42 +0000

What could have been. Image Source

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It is in the middle of shovelling rice and chicken down my throat that just how similar to prison these cubby holes I pop into from time to time are. For one, there are a number of hoops to jump through to get here - in my case a 5.30am check-in followed by a fixed wing flight up to Scatsta in the Shetlands and then a further helicopter flight out to the platform - and the overwhelmingly maleness of everything, tattoos and all. There are also the shared rooms, the strict meal times and the restricted choices there tends to be for meals. The one statistic which goes against the prison narrative is perhaps the proportion of ethnic minorities in prison vis-a-vis the general population, but that is neither here nor there. And of course, we’re all out here by choice, getting paid a premium of sorts for the joy of being out here.

On My Return To the Middle of Nowhere

Sat, 08 Oct 2016 06:04:08 +0000

Back at the heliport for a trip offshore - the first time since March - it feels like a lifetime ago. The last time there was the pressure of my counterpart from the government regulator looking over my shoulder to deal with, this time the roles are reversed as I am the one asking questions of others. Waiting to be checked in, what strikes me is how empty the terminal looks. Spending one’s days in an office which was only recently re-stacked has somehow shielded me from the reality of just how much more reduced offshore activity has been over the last year.

Of Times, Eyes and Seasons

Fri, 16 Sep 2016 20:45:00 +0000

Life - and time - have a penchant for throwing up surprises, ones which are sometimes welcome, but (perhaps more often than not?) unwelcome. Never more obvious is this than in the passage of time as measured by times, seasons and the lives of others. Somehow life in the moment, in the here and now - never seems to move at pace; only with the benefit of hindsight does the amount of time that has elapsed become obvious.