Heavenly Holland

Naija schools don dey beta small-small o! Thanks to the little improvements here and there, two of my lecturers were fortunate to be sent to Holland sometime last year for a few months. This post is about one of those lecturers whom I’ll address as Mr N.

Since Mr N came back a lot of things changed about him. He now wears sneakers and jeans to lectures, with his well-starched, short-sleeved shirt firmly tucked in and a definite new bounce that gives me the impression that his sneaker soles are filled with helium. He also brings only type-written notes to class now as opposed to the hand-written notes (that look like they were written at least 2 decades ago) that is typical of most other lecturers. He is constantly on his computer every time you visit his office which he refuses to stay in whenever there is no light cos according to him, he can’t do without his air-conditioner. Before you start imagining one janded lecturer like this, Mr N is none of that o! He’s a typical Igbo man with “razor blade” = lazor brade syndrome and all.

Anyways, in the course of his lectures last semester, he gave us gist about Holland and if the things he said are anything to go by,

Everlasting life may be found there

According to him, everything needed for life is there, good food, good healthcare, even the weather supposedly contributes. He finds absolutely no reason why anyone should die there. It makes me then wonder why they have a population less than all the area boys from Igbosere to Okokomaiko despite ALL the things that contribute to death here.

Their prime minister moves around in a two-car convoy

This is definitely the main evidence that they don't have an ounce of naija blood in them (forget de white skin) because even wheel barrow pushers here hope to move around in convoys. Infact its my major regret for choosing not to go into politics.

If you don't close your legs while walking, you will be blown away

He was almost blown away himself O! In fact, we thank God for his life… He claims wind speeds are very high there; that he constantly had difficulty getting into his office and the dutch generaate all their electricity via wind power. Maybe Naija should adapt that so we can see wat new excuses the PHCN boss will invent (Militants?)

They worship the sun

No, I'm not referring to ancient Egypt. Modern Holland. Mr N's defintion of worship? The sun is very scarce and whenever it appears, the youth climb to the roofs of their houses and shak (drink) beer without shirts (I wonder if females are involved in this sun-worship activities).

Every prostitute is good enough to take home for a wife...or contest for Miss Universe

Hear him, “My brother, if you go to Holland without a wife its only God that will help you O! because they have very fine, clean girls that the government gives check-up every 2 weeks!” We concluded that he must have ‘committed’ when he added that, “They advertise their numbers on the TV; you don't even have to stress yourself, they will come to you once you call”.

Mr N. must've had loads of fun in Holland cos according to him, the only reason why he came back is because of his family and the next time he goes, oti o!

We have Arrived

Recently, I helped one gurl write a poem she read out at our fellowship’s fresher’s day. The audience liked it so I decided to post it here.

A quiet wind blows

Rustling bushes covered in brown dust

Sweeping over abandoned vehicles eaten by rust

Announcing our arrival

We have arrived

From another planet

Near yet so distant

Similar yet so different

Likened to a mustard seed yet large enough to contain all earthlings

Pristine and untainted by the blood and acrimony that flows through earth’s street

We have arrived

We are welcomed by raging wars

Greeted by the rumbling of earthquakes

Viewed with suspicion and disdain through half-closed shutters as we march through trash-lined avenues

Disease and death is commonplace

Sadness and frustration is the order of the day

We have arrived

We have come to put an end to all this nonsense

To beat swords into plowshares

And AK-47s into garden rakes

To heal the sick and raise the dead

To make everyone be like us

We have arrived

We are up to the task

We are bold

We are brave

We are driven by the Spirit

We are Alien Youth and We have arrived.

(The freshers called themselves “Alien Youth”)

Business and I

I’ve mentioned on this blog before that I have engaged in 5 businesses in my lifetime and all failed cos I ate my capital. I lied…

…Yes, there were 5, perhaps more. Yes they all ended (as opposed to failed), but no not because I ate my capital (at least not in all cases ;-) ).

The first thing I put my hand in was in secondary school. I started renting telephone cards. Does any of you remember how, before the advent of GSM (and even in GSM’s early days where it was a no-no what with 30K SIM cards and 40K Nokia 3310s) , when phone booths contained more than just a well-worn out rug and plenty of sand; when they contained actual phones that may or may not have been working. We used to make calls at such and such and you didn’t have to own a card of your own; there was always a tout ready to rent you one for amounts ranging from N5 – N15 per unit, God help yu if yu dared called US; na shirt yu go deposit. Well, I kinda figured I could be that ‘tout’ in my boarding house. I hustled N315 and went to NET building on Lagos Island and got myself a 100 unit card. My case was a little complicated cos I very well couldn’t stand at the phone booth waiting for customers. But with a little word of mouth, I exhausted the first card. I was renting at N5 per unit. I got another 100 unit card and folks started calling on credit. Whenever yu go a a business centre and see those printed notices saying

“No credit today come tomorrow” or

“Business succeeds when friends and family pay for services rendered” or, my personal favourite,

“To obtain services on credit, you must be above 80 years old and come with your father and mother”

know they are not joking. “Abeg” killed my phone card business. I went past that second phone card sha (with plenty of my money in IOUs) but not much further; there was a third and last card which also represented my first business partnership. I and Uche (Chevron and Texaco?) pooled money and bought a 200 unit card. I ran the business while he just brought cash and we shared the profit 50-50!!! How much dafter could I get? The more annoying part was that I felt I had a moral obligation to ensure he got all his money back so I bore the debts alone… I left secondary school with some folks owing me as much as N300, let me catch them so I can inform them of the interest rate and how N300 of 2002 has become N300,000 today *wicked smile on my face here*.

In my first year in university I was doing efico; to the extent I said won’t join any organisations till second year; not even a fellowship. Thanks to my eficocity, business wasn’t close to the front of my mind till second year when the bill…em…gates in me was let loose.

I started with tutorials. I and a brilliant friend figured we could do tutorials for jambitos. We also brought in a third not-so-brilliant person as our bouncer. I was to teach Calculus and Chemistry while Kennedy (the brilliant friend) was to teach General Maths and Physics. Uche was the bouncer. We printed flyers, resumed early, selected one of the biggest venues for our tutorials, chopped our fair share of embarrassment distributing the flyers and fantasized about the thousands we would make in this. You might not get it, but in my school, tutorials is big business; in fact one guy is rumoured to have net about half a million last semester in tutorials. We kicked off just fine with 30 – 50 students. Then one day Kennedy who was billed to be teaching came late with our bouncer in tow. I wasn’t around (thankfully).

Some other popular tutorial fellow had occupied our venue and was teaching who we assumed were our students. While Kennedy went up to the tutorial guy (Faraday) to dialogue quietly with him, Uche boldly stepped up to the rest of the class and shouted “Who do you want? Kennedy or Faraday”. I could have swore that I heard the screams of “FARADAY”, “WHO ARE YOU?”, “WE DON’T KNOW YOU”, “GO AWAY” from the other end of school where I was having a fellowship meeting. My guys hung their heads in shame, tails between and legs and abandoned the venue to Faraday, embarrassed but undeterred.

In a quick comeback, we chose a smaller venue and once again we were unpunctual and our venue was taken, once again. This time by an “Uncle Ben” (Cutthroat business huh?). I was present (unthankfully), Uche was smart enough not to assume anything and Kennedy went, once again to dialogue quietly. The dialogue yielded results; Uncle Ben left the venue for us but (of course, there had to be a catch), he left with ALL his students. So we had a venue that could seat over a hundred but just 3 people in it (Kennedy, Uche and crestfallen me).

We changed our business model and did private tutorials; that we completed successfully, earning us 10k each- that is apart from Uche; his services as bouncer were no longer needed and he was flushed from the arrangement.

The next thing I heard was that I could get a ‘brick’ (roll of ten) MTN 1500 recharge cards for as low as 12k. I did some mental Maths, made wonderful projections and assumed I could be making at least 3k a week selling recharge cards. Once again, I called on Kennedy my trusted friend (No Uche this time) and we decided to go into this together.

And Murphy’s law kicked in.

A ‘brick’ of recharge cards wasn’t that cheap. You would be lucky to find one for 13.5k; most times it cost above 14k and 1500 cards were usually sold for less than 1500, sometimes, as low as 1450 and there went our ‘wonderful’ profit margin. Nevertheless, we decided that since we had started, we might as well continue. From there on, I suffered a series of misfortunes

Firstly, some of my money was stolen. I was to travel back home one day and while doing my packing the night before, after looking over my shoulder several times to ensure everyone was sleeping, I put the money in one of my trouser pockets and sandwiched the trouser between others. Some folks were obviously good at pretending cos when I got to Warri, I discovered the theft. I cried that night (yeah, I know, Big Boys Don’t Cry but at least popsi replaced the money).

Secondly, shortly after we started, there was a scarcity of cards. Don’t forget that our capital consisted of our chow money as well and boys gat to eat so there went a good portion of the capital. To add insult to injury, some “friend” in the business “managed” to hustle us a brick of cards at a high rate typical of the scarcity period…the only thing, the scarcity had ended (unknown to us).

Of course yu know wat came next: Camel’s back + last straw = broken.

Then I got my first computer.

Being the spiro I am, I promised God that I wouldn’t put any secular music on it…don’t ask what became of the promise but then in order to fulfil my large appetite for music, I had to hustle hundreds of gospel songs and shortly after, my next business idea hit me; why not start selling music…people would come listen to them on my computer, then I’ll burn the customised CD. Perfect right? Wrong. To start with, I didn’t have a CD writer so I had to make some kind of arrangement with my not-so-reliable friend who coincidentally is one of my closest friends and now roommate (those last 2 additions are just consolation prizes in case he ever reads this; the actual adjective of interest is unreliability). As you can guess, that contributed a lot to the business failing added to the fact that some folk would come and waste my time, tying up my system for hours and want just one CD or none sef. Then my stock of music consisted of a lot of rock which y’all know sucks here in naija.

Are we counting here? How many businesses now? I’ve done a lot of other stuff but I’m kinda tired of rehashing my not-so-rosy history so I think I’ll round up with one-liners of the other stuff I tried like doing online research for cash (bumight take note). That one hit well but I got tired of sitting in cyber cafes for 6+ hours).

I also did a class on computer hardware with my not-so-reliable friend-turned-roommate (we didn’t get the tens of students we hoped for but we made some money there too).

What about the computer program I wrote for some final year students’ project (made the most money ever there; considering a career in programming? Onydchic? Hopeful B?).

Then, I helped (and still help) a cousin sell flash drives and mp3 players that his sister brings into the country; I don’t do it for money but it might have contributed some to getting an mp3 player for free.

I tried to start a computer lesson at home once too. Pasted a couple of posters around the estate we live in; unfortunately no one turned up.

Lets see…is that it? Well that’s the much I can remember; I don’t need you to tell me I’ll soon be giving Dangote a run for his money. Don’t worry I won’t forget any of my blogsville peeps then. You’ll all sit on an imaginary blogsville board. Hope that’ll be good enough.

Revelation...I'm not confessing to anything o!

Eureka! Eureka! I’ve finally solved the mystery called women. I now know why nothing would have worked between me and big crush. Surpised; are yu? After making so much noise about big crush, I bone just like that? Welcome to my life. Or welcome to the life of girls I have tripped for.

Initially something might fascinate them about me from afar but when they get past the eye and ear candy, they all lose interest. I don tire. I’m having no more. No more talking about women, thinking about them, planning for them. No more.

Problem is *sigh* I’ve heard me say that before…and I’ve also heard me rush with excitement to tell my cousin about the new gurl I just met days after. So who’s going to be the new gurl now? ******? *******? *******? (Edited out cos of you, Chisom)

Do you feel like you had skipped some previous posts? I don’t blame you. The last time I blogged about big crush I was talking double-layered chocolate cakes now I’m ranting rubbish like a heart-broken sod. The actual change in the status quo wasn’t so sudden; I just wasn’t feeling her on the phone anymore and I decided to let her matter go. Just before I closed the chapter sha, I wanted more evidence so I sent the following message to my friend, Paul who is a lot closer to her

Wats up? How u dey?U still dey lag? U’ve hung out wit big crush a bit. Right?In ur opinion wat are my chances wit her? Personally I think I’m signing out of her case

Hours later, I get the following response.

Yeah, didn’t really knw how 2 say it but I think that’d b d right decision to make. She aight tho but I dunno if she’s ready 4 anythin more n friendship.

Confirmation.

To mourn (celebrate) the end of the big crush project, I fashed studying for the night, OD’d on bread, extended my bedtime by 1 hour and waking time by 3 hours, 30 minutes.

And for those of you still scratching your heads and tapping your weavons trying to figure out what on earth the title of this post had to do with the actual content, here’s a tip: “Revelation” is the last book of the bible and in this big head maps to the end of anything.

Revelation.

One long overdue post about a birthday cakes, ATMs and all what not

December 4th was BIG CRUSH’s birthday.

For months I had been plotting how I would get her a 2-layer chocolate cake with a layer of cream in between, home-delivered, elicit an excited scream from her (which I wont have the pleasure of witnessing) and an even more excited phone call afterwards. I live for moments like that.

I had been plotting, planning, saving and the week finally came.

My first line of action was to get a good baker. I already had one in mind – Cactus cakes, I think. Unfortunately, I got to find out that they didn’t do home delivery to places as far as Festac (she lives there). It then occurred to me that it would probably make more sense to get a baker in Festac. I did some asking around but came up with no suitable suggestions. Infact, at a point, I would’ve have asked Princesa but by the time I remembered, it would have been too late considering that like many of us that added blogging to our job profiles, she won’t have seen my question till Monday when it would have been too late.

December 4th was a Tuesday.

On the Saturday before, I decided to go to Festac and search on my own (humongous mistake). I asked two friends that lived around there for ideas but got no really good suggestions. After over one hour on the road and 3 buses in between, I arrived Festac dusty, tired, with a frown hidden behind my cheap aviators.

I started my search at a Mr Biggs outlet. They don’t home deliver.
Another Mr Biggs, same story.
Goodies, same story…

At this point, I should mention one kain prayer I prayed in the bus on my way there. (Ejura please no comments about me being prophet Ejijah). I wasn’t sure if getting a cake was the right way to go, remember that I’m a bit new to this whole thing, and I had been getting a lot contrasting advice. So I prayed that if God didn’t think a cake was the right way to go, He shouldn’t let me get one. Personally, I’ve not received any evidence of recent that God and me were still on that kain levels (I haven’t fasted in eons, preached to anyone in longer, I still got a ‘B’ in my EE 453 as opposed to the ‘A’ I was praying for etc). I sha prayed the prayer so that if I got the cake, I could safely console myself that He sanctioned it.

Now, back to Goodies, No home delivery. At this point, I remembered the prayer.
I tried some other baker I passed along the way, Angel cakes (I think) she wasn’t around.

Tantalisers.
Yes, they did home delivery.
No they didn’t make the kind of chocolate cake I wanted (they make what I call chocolate coloured/flavoured cake).
No, there could be no cream in it.

I was discouraged but happy that they did home delivery (at least) but I decided to give one more eatery a try before I settled for them. Choices (abi na Choicest?) was around the corner so I gave it a shot. Same old story: no home delivery. I ran back to Tantalisers before they could change their mind. Alas, I was too late; they had changed their mind. There was home delivery for everything except cakes. God is great.

I wasn’t quite done yet (my determination, especially in women affairs, knows little limits). I was directed to another Tantalisers outlet. Getting there, I was told I could get home delivery on a cake with all the options I was offered at the other outlet. I settled for a regular sponge cake with raisins and some customised icing. Not too bad.

Payment time.

Take note that all this while, I had been biking around most of Festac. My wallet was almost empty, I barely had transport money for the return trip and I was relying on the fact that I could top up at any ATM machine. So I went to the closest bank to top up my wallet and withdraw enough to pay for the cake. God is greater than great.

Oceanic bank, “ATM not working”.
GTB, “Financial institution not available”.
Zenith, “Transaction timed out”.
Skye, “Financial institution not available”.
UBA, “Financial institution…”

Now I got really worried. I was far from home in an area I didn’t know well, my wallet was now dangerously low cos I had to do some biking to get to these banks, my credit was too low to call for help and the only friend I could call on in Festac was at work. Even big crush was out of town. I had to find my way to and trek (under the hot sun) to the kain Tantalisers to cancel the order. I was afraid to even buy a drink.

Somehow, I got to Ojuelegba which was close to home so I decided to try out a few more ATMs. I really needed money cos I was planning to travel the next day and I didn’t even have money to buy my bus ticket. The first ATM I tried managed to show my account balance. On trying to withdraw, my account was debited but no cash came out (something I discovered after trying 2 more ATMs). At this point, I felt I wasn’t just prevented from buying a cake; I was being punished for attempting it.

I somehow withdrew some cash from another machine anyway but I couldn’t travel the next day anymore so I could visit the bank and sort out the ATM-stole-my-money issue (something I later discovered could be (not) done from any branch).

Sorting out the issue took very little time and I had more than enough time to return to Festac and complete the cake matter…but of course, fear catch me. Maybe this time na kidnap dem for kidnap me.

December 4th came.

I called her and sent her an SMS in the morning. At night, just before I went to bed, I called again to ask how the day went. Out of curiousity, I asked if she got any cake. Her response:

I didn’t o! Nobody loves me that much.

If only she knew. God is the greatest.

30 days of thankfulness - Day 10

30 days of thankfulness. I never really understood the whole tagging thing. I mean, I was seeing people taggin others and getting tagged themselves but it didn’t mean much to me plus the fact that I was secretly hoping never to get tagged. Trust fantasy queen to commit the highest abomination in the land and tag me (yu have to get 2 white cows and 3 black hens for the purification rites). To make matters worse, she explained what it meant and what I had to do so I had no excuse. And as a reminder, I saw a backup explanation on afrobabe’s blog the other day. But trust me to submit every assignment late. So here’s mine:

I’m thankful for a God that loves me a whole lot. To the extent that I don’t have to understand or even know the reasons behind his actions and decisions; I can just rest assured in the fact that they were born out of love and I’m better off that way. I’m also thankful that He is always willing to receive me regardless of how far I drift away.

I’m thankful for a family that loves me and whom I love dearly too. Parents constantly bending over backwards to ensure we are well-provided for. Pretty sisters (abi the bribe…erm… bride price will be high) whose education is working out and a brilliant brother; the only person I can boast to without the feeling of condescension or pride.

I’m also thankful for a blogsville family who have succeeded in mis-leading me to believe that I have a bit of writing skill in addition to my other super powers (tele-kinesis, tele-pathy, tele-portation and tele-vision).

I’m thankful for my fellowship in school and the accompanying privilege of knowing more girls than I would’ve known otherwise. I guess I should also mention that the fellowship has done a whole lot in shaping my character, spirit and leadership abilities.

I thank God for good results, a good number of which I feel I don’t deserve.

I thank God for money…for an extra plate of fufu with egusi and ofe ora.

I thank God for IT, accommodating relatives and cousins, none of which are bold enough to admit they’ll miss me. Stuck and her anonymous sister for starters.

I’m thankfully for being created fine, grew finer and then…the pimples came, the beard took its time and the pot-belly appeared overnight yet I still manage to make them heads turn (I’m joking about the pot-belly o; I meant to say six-pack).

I’m thankful for a new computer and phone.

I’m thankful for quick understanding.

I’m thankful for healing for those around me and ensuring that I never need healing badly enough to become a prayer point outside my immediate family.

I’m thankful for music and bands like Paramore, Falling Up and Anberlin.

I’m thankful for a whole lot of stuff but *yawns* I *yawns* need peels *yawns* I mean sleep.

P.S: I gather that I’m supposed to tag a couple of other people but everybody seems to have done theirs some 2 months ago so I won’t bother but if yu are reading this and yu haven’t done yours, then yu’ve been tagged!!! You are IT!!!

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.