My weekend was better than yours

I hadn’t left finally and got all this wailing. Yeah? Like Fantasy Queen guessed, I was kinda enjoying it. Yes, I know I didn’t reply any comments to indicate that I was still around but that was because I was swamped with work. Here, they want to squeeze out all the juice from me, eat the insides before feeding the back to goats so I can come out as shit. And, handing over isn’t fun especially when I have to explain 4 months of arduous mental work to someone else. Phew!!! Perhaps I should hand over my blog as well cos it constituted a major part of my job profile ;). On the other hand the whole observation of the wailing from a vantage viewpoint makes me to wonder if God will let me observe my funeral from heaven. Enough now with the wailing…

…Enough???

My exit from the company has generated quite some activity. We spent last weekend at Hermitage Ranch Resort, Akodo (OK, its not “ranch” but it’s the closest thing to Obudu I have ever stayed at). A whole weekend of fun, sand, good food and more sand imagine…and all because of me? Well, not quite…but it coincided with my exit so I like to see it as a send-forth of sorts. This post is about the weekend.

We arrived at the resort on Friday after “travelling” for over an hour. I didn’t really notice the distance tho’ cos I was busy getting the office version of a school mum and trying to chat up the COO’s PA.

Shortly after we arrived, we had one long session like this where the company vision, structure etc was explained to us. Everybody got to see where they stood in the company. My name was there too…at the bottom of technology hierarchy where it belonged; but I wasn’t expecting anything else. The folks I pity are the ones who got some unpleasant surprises. We also had some indoor games and a couple of outdoor games.

Outdoor games didn’t favour some people especially when the first game was a sack race. Oh my!!! All the olemputus had to fit into the sack and run on the tiring beach sand. Even me and my bighead was panting so hard afterwards that I must’ve used up half the oxygen on the beach.

The next day we did some early morning exercises…and yet again that didn’t favour many people too. But we survived.

Then we had looooong sessions for most of the day before we were let go to chill out and have a breather before the night’s BBQ party. That’s the one that seemed to favour quite a number of people.

On Sunday we packed our stuff and left and Monday, its back to work.

At the retreat, we were promised 80% fun and 20% work. We got that and 100% slide presentations. No offense intended but all these people talking stuff that cannot be easily classified into correct or incorrect weary me.

Highlights of the retreat…I splashed around in the pool, drank 20 litres of chlorinated water (at least), and learnt to swim…Yes I did!!! I can swim. So I can now go for that Total Oil interview or Olympics 2008… Who knows?

I got to meet a lot of people too; company staff who barely knew my name, a couple of MTN staff who were on a retreat as well and a certain TV producer of one show I am positive yu have heard of (for reasons best unknown to me, I don’t want to be specific about the name of the show).

Now the food…

Yes THE FOOD

I pity the folks who got used to it; their wives and/or pockets go hear am this week. We ate like mad. The meals were buffets and better than anything Mama Ekene ever sold. I learnt valuable lessons like

S*** due to good food smells worst.

Don’t select everything in a buffet.

Don’t judge the capacity of a man’s stomach by its size; the pot-bellied ones eat less.

In addition to all that, I played volleyball, attempted football, fantasized about surfing, listened to a moving speech by our MD; I could have sold my father’s house and given it to the company during the speech. Luckily, I wasn’t with the necessary documents and I’m back to my senses now.

Have I talked about the food??? It almost deserves a second mention.

The weekend was fun for me, Hope urs was too. Gat to get back to work now.