Tv on A Geek's Life

Stripping, (TV) Binges and Thinking About Thinking

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 19:53:03 +0000

By some unexpected twist of fate, I found myself heading into Central London on the hottest day of the year, a fairly tropical 37 degrees Celsius, and that for the first time since last December. The destination was the Nigeria High Commission on Northumberland Avenue, the plan to get my expired Nigerian passport renewed. To get here I had had to jump through several tortuous loops, not helped by the fact that my trips down to England are scheduled months in advance with impromptu trips being aggressively minimised due to the costs. My takeaway from my dealings with the appointment’s system was that the (re)scheduling system could be significantly improved - first, you sign up via a third party web service, pay the booking fees and then get randomly assigned a date, one you can only change to a more suitable one by emailing back and forth, no less than six in my case – which meant in addition to the heat I very much had my mind prepared for a terrible experience which could potentially take the whole day. It might have been my low expectations, but the experience was far less stressful than I expected, sans the slow pace at which things trundled along from picking a ticket to getting called for an initial review and then submitting my biometric details. If there was a silver lining, it was that the slow pace of things – and the very many other Nigerians there for similar purposes – increased the likelihood of running into people I had not seen in a long time; 20 plus years and two kids in one case. That the most unsettling thing from all of that was wondering what the scrawny lad I ended up sitting across from on the tube from Charing Cross to Waterloo was up - to whilst reading from 2nd Corinthians 1 in a huge bible - is a miracle of sorts (events at the High Commission didn’t leave me mentally drained as they have in the past) or perhaps only the symptom of my low expectations.

05. Lessons Learned

Fri, 06 Jan 2017 21:48:00 +0000

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A year ago if you asked me how well I enjoyed my own company, on a scale of 1 to 10 I would place myself somewhere between 9 and 9.5, the 0.5 my attempt at modesty. Pressed for evidence, I would point to the various things I did alone without so much as a flutter of an eyelid — Football Manager, a substantial list of feeds subscribed to in my Feedly, a number of series I watch obsessively and any number of books I have my nose in from time to time.

#64 - Certainly Uncertain

Sun, 06 Mar 2016 22:03:03 +0000

Spent the entire weekend building up to a conversation with L. The arguments and counter arguments were all laid out in my head, in my very worst Ted Mosby imitation. Here on the cusp of the actual meeting, it doesn’t feel so cut and dried in my head anymore, which may or may not be a good thing… I guess I’ll know soon enough how it goes..

#Pensive

#62 - Bonding...

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 23:26:30 +0000

In-between solving a convoluted case in the last episode of NCIS: New Orleans, “Radio Silence” (Season 2, Episode 17), Dwayne Pride has to deal with his daughter’s angst at the pressure she feels he’s put on her to explore her musical talents. In the final scene they reach a resolution of sorts agreeing to finish the semester before revisiting her decision to drop out of music school, and then play out to “Under Pressure”. I hope I can be there for my (future) daughter in the same way, being able to relate and resolve any issues she has…

#60 - Questions for the Universe

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 23:28:37 +0000

#Sleepless

#59 - Mosbytis

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 23:09:18 +0000

Spent the bulk of the weekend re-watching Season 9 of How I Met Your Mother, complete with its unsatisfactory ending in which Ted shoots off to Robin’s after all she put him through. Tsk!!! Tsk!!! Before that though, Ted’s summation of his 9 year journey to finding Tracy did resonate with my inner suppressed romantic:

It was at times a long, difficult road. But I’m glad it was long and difficult, because if I hadn’t gone through hell to get there, the lesson might not have been as clear. You see, kids, right from the moment I met your mom, I knew… I have to love this woman as much as I can for as long as I can, and I can never stop loving her, not even for a second. I carried that lesson with me through every stupid fight we ever had, every 5:00 a.m. Christmas morning, every sleepy Sunday afternoon, through every speed bump. Every pang of jealousy or boredom or uncertainty that came our way, I carried that lesson with me. And I carried it with me when she got sick. Even then, in what can only be called the worst of times, all I could do was look at her and thank God, thank every god there is, or ever was, or will be, and the whole universe, and anyone else I can possibly thank that I saw that beautiful girl on that train platform, and that I had the guts to stand up, walk over to her, tap her on the shoulder, open my mouth, and speak.