lies and betrayals.....

I hate dwelling on the negatives at a time like this in my life, despite my concious efforts to avoid it i find myslef helplessly drawn to these constant forces that succeed in irritating and annoying me, leaving me to eventually reduce myself to a lesser state of begrudgfull anger and resentment. Time and time again i have prayed to God that he helps me avoid people who cause me to do such things.



Unfortunately that prayer was not answered last week Monday. Not feeling too well on sunday night, i called one of my colleagues to tell her i might not come in to work on monday. Instead she stopped me in mid- sentence, telling me that the reported attempt to change our CDs had been successful, the good part was my colleague and alleged office friend (Flavor) who handled the whole change of CD process intentionally forgot to change her's. I thought we all agreed to forget about the letter and let it dissappear "ministry style", apparently she had grown chicken legs and out of fear of being discovered to not have submitted the letter had decided to submit it without the knowledge of the rest of us. It really felt like betrayal to me.



I found my way to the office first thing monday morning, as usual i was first in, sitting at my desk patiently waiting, planning my mode of attack. I say attack at this point because I interpretted this underhanded move by Flavor as an attack on not only me but on the rest of us corpers in the office. As i waited for who would first show up between Madam V and Flavor (both of whom i believed had conived to perpetuate this slight), I tried to think of the best way to unsettle them. The thing about me is i'm not a strategic type of fighter, i'm only good with first attacks, my follow ups tend to let me down hence my average record of equal numbers of victories and defeats (lol). Now here I was about to engage in a verbal duel with not one but two women who possessed high pitched nasal voices which they would try to use in drowning out what ever point i was trying to make.



Soon I had built up my first attack, which was bound to unsettle them no matter what, my problem as usual was my follow up attack....

you can call me petty but i wasn't going to be undone by two coniving women who had no reason to do what they did but to exercise a bit of what they percieved to be priviledged positions. I had already created a water proof excuse for refusing the CD change in case my proposed duel ended in my utter humiliation and defeat. I wasn't going to loose on two fronts no matter what.



As i sat alone in the Office that morning thinking about the best follow up strategy ever thought up by man, the answer walked right in; the new Corper, Steve who had barely spent more 3 weeks in the department walked in and that was when the idea hit me. Having prior knowledge of the coniving sisters intention to disposses him of his new desk and work station, I unashmedly started working on him, i riled him up, telling him of Madam V and Flavor's plan to take away his seat and install Flavor in his stead while sending him to share my system with me. I already knew there was nothing he could do about that but i made him see reason in not allowing them take away both his desk as well as his system since he was the one who made the effort to clear the space the previous week. This ploy was suitable enough for me considering how sure they had seemed that they would get both the desk and the system(now they were in for a suprise, thanks to my ginger)

When the two women were in the same room i seized the moment to begin my attack, i started by asking Madam V why no corper was consulted before our CD days were changed, she gave me the feeble excuse that the head of HR wasn't happy with the fact that no corper remained in the office on friday, * this was somewhat too late to rectify with respect to the old corpers, considering we had less than three months left to spend, but Steve, the new Corper was willing to change his since he was new. I chided her for not taking our respective schedules into consideration and went ahead to ask directly to put a stop to the whole process, she soon lost her composure, she started accusing me of being rude and antagonistic towards her, instead of replying her i changed focus to her accomplice. Flavor had been expecting me to do something like this so she just sat there quielty until I pointedly accused her of not changing only her CD day, by this time the deputy Director had come into the office and was asking what the argument was all about, when he heard most of the story, i felt i would get an unbiased listening ear, but madam V had her own plans. She went further with the story, claiming that it was a directive from the Director General himself. That undid it all for me, immediatley the deputy Director heard this, he began to chastize me; " I've never known you to be like this so stop confronting your superior, if you have a problem with the directive go to the proper office and lay your complaint rather than shouting at your superior". At this point i refused to give up so i continued with my plan, attacking Flavor, i claimed ; " but she was the one who submitted the letter and she intentionally refused to change her CD". This only sounded more like an attempt to save face rather than an attack, i was obviously loosing this fight.



The DD (deputy Director), looked to Flavor and asked her if my claim was true while Madam V raised her voice as i had anticipated and began to deny my allegation ; "how do you know that"? The DD simply looked to Flavor for confirmation. That was when the lie came out of her mouth; "my CD is not on friday any more sir". I fell silent and looked at her intensly, i clenched my fist tightly and looked at her but she averted my eyes easily because the DD was already addressing me, ;" don't make such false accusations anymore, now will you get back to work". I felt as if i had been shot straight in the head, right in front of a senior staff these two women decided to lie.



I had apparently lost this battle, so i only had my second plan left, which was all dependent on Steve, meanwhile i headed straight for the Human resources deparment. I explained myself there without skipping a beat with my story well thought of and laid out, luckily i was heard and cleared without much fuss. By the time i got back to the department my second plan was playing out, with Steve already giving both women a hard time already, i couldn't help myself upon seeing the exasperated expressions on the two of them's faces so much that i burst out laughing at a point and ran out of the office. The issue was finally settled with the removal of the Computer system from Steve's table. I knew things would never be the same again in the office and unknown to her the biggest loser in this case was Flavor (i doubt if she realizes this). My CD is still on friday and Flavor can barely look me in the eye anymore.......

As for the other two corpers, Steve already agreed for his to be changed while Princess seemed to be clueless about the whole thing, she was fine as long as the change didn't affect her yellowing skin or pretty face. We were all good. At the time of documentation of the CD day changes, Flavor's CD day still fell on friday.

Lap dances???......oh yeah.....

I'm not going to start today's post with a rant (not yet that is), cause its a monday, but annoying one at that.

As last weekend appraoched i was praying earnestly to God to make the weekend better than the previous one especially with my present state of Micro- Economic fainancial crisis. So here I was even with out almost a dime, hoping to have a good night out on friday night.

Friday afternoon didn't look like it was going to lead to answered prayers, infact I had to wait till later in the night before my prayers were answered; as at 8:00 Pm i was already tucked in bed reading a Harry potter Novel, contemplating what saturday was going to be like, Mr. Capable, my brother was across the room on his own bed doing the same thing, it was as if we were mirroring ourselves through out that day (except for doing laundry that is). I kept playing around with the idea that something would give and things would just change for the better.......

So i picked up my Glo Line which had barely any credit in it and decided to try flashing SBB. After about 3 attempts with no returned call from SBB, i gave up.

To tell you the truth i just kept fuming inside, how come my sister was out having fun while me, the designated rebel in the house was all up in his room performing the unusual role of the good child, i wasn't about to be upstaged, now i knew i had to do something to overide such mutinous attempts, luckyly it would require no direct confrontation with Sis.

All i have to do is make sure i stay out later than usual then i'll have my Crown back (lol). But the way things were looking right now, there was no going out for me.

8: 30 PM : My MTN line starts blaring out "jocking jay-Z" so i know its one of my close friends, as I head across the room to pick it up from where I left it charging I say a silent prayer that its SBB. My Prayers have been answered!!! Its SBB, he didn't even waist any time telling me to start heading out the door, he was already waiting for me and Mr. Capable out front. Mystery asked us to meet up with him at Blake's resort while he wanted to go pick up Tessy Gwagz.

The last bit of information got me thinking; how serious was Mystery going to take Tessy Gwagz.

In no time we had hooked up with Mystery and were chilling at Blake's but deep down i wasn't feeling the place yet, it felt like i was in an old people's home that served Alchohol and that didnt feel right in the real sense, so i just sat there looking bored, i wasn't sure if the rest of the crew were feeling the place considering there were only two ladies with us; Tessy gwagz and SBB's Facebook girlfriend, the remaining guys; Myself ,Mr. Capable and Ay just sat there doing our best to make conversation. Soon enough everyone seemed to get bored and that was our que to head for Dub-C.

Dub- c proved to be a better clime than Blake's could have been, as soon as I got to the gate I started sporting faces i knew and the place felt more welcoming, the alarming thing was the large amount of people decending on the place.

Dub- C that i had discovered little over a year ago had now turned to a focal point for the average Abuja weekend Night crawler. As I walked through the gates I reflected very briefly back to the days when the place had not attained its present height of popularity. Now all sorts of people were hanging out there, but one thing that couldn't be denied was that it was a cool place to hook up with Friends you would have hardly seen previously.

And it was in this spirit that i found "Ginger master", I hadn't seen him in weeks but he seemed to be doing good considerig the mood I found him in plus the fact that he literarily tried to empty a bottle of Absolute Vodka down my throat, after avoiding that little debacle we all soon found ourselves a place to sit even though it was a bit far off from the grooving crowd; (it would be important to note that Dub-c does not have a designated dance floor, still it has a Dj that performs from thursday till Sunday. people actually dance on Gravel).
Then most of the restless people started leaving, leaving the rest of us who knew that Dub- C was going to be our last port of call before we hit the sack. I just sat there sipping my cup of brandy just staring at the rest of the people around me.

There was a couple dancing nearby and the way they moved just got me curious, then that part of my mind that never ceases to amaze me sprang to life; I wanted a lap dance. A brief feeling of a scantily clad woman grinding her behind up and down my laps and groin, not like i wanted to get off from that, i simply felt like being up to some mischief.
I decided to look around, but that proved unnecessary, just a table away from where we were sitting a girl sat by herself, it didn't take me more than a few minutes to determine she was in Dub- C more for business than for pleasure. Despite the fact that i had knowledge of her intentions i felt drawn to her and i knew a part of me had pre-selected her for my adventure for tonight but there was an obstacle i had to overcome. Bruno; a friend of mine who i normally ran into at Dub-C was already chatting her up, this already had derailed my plans, so as I approached I knew I would be treated more as a customer than an aquiantance, so I decided to give her what she expected.
I had her sit just beside me while I started chatting her up, as we talked I took every feature about her in; she was almost 6 feet tall, dark, had partially brown weaves. her skin seemed to glow beneath the moonlight, she had slight mounds of breast which were complimented by a small round waist and a small curved backside.
Then all of a sudden she seemed to loose patience so she just asked me; " do you want me for the night or you're just wasting my time, 'cause if you want any its going to cost you 7000 naira". I was bursting with laughter inside but didn't dare show it, instead I put up a stern face and asked her; " if you're selling me something why don't I know what i'm getting before I give you the money?" As I said this I made the slight gesture of pointing to my thighs, she looked from my eyes to my thighs and smiled, I returned the gesture with a sly smile. We were quiet for almost a minute as we just sat there looking at each other. I had already told my friends what I wanted to do so unknown to her they sat there taking in everything that was said, waiting for her to finally take the bait.

Apparently they had expectded things to take much longer but to thier suprise, in one swift movement i held her gently by the palm as if I was guiding her over a tight rope and she lifted herself off the chair while still looking straight at me, I acted as if none of this suprised me. As she sat on my lap the Dj started playing a new song, this prompted me to whisper in her ears; " i'm not seeing much right now".
Through out all this time I was bracing my self for the worst; being that she would stand up adruptly and walk away. Rather than do that she started grinding her hips and the rhythm of her body said everything. I just sat there with a false frown on my face but inside I was soaked with a feeling of satisfaction while the rest of the guys kept whispering unintelligible things at me that I failed to hear.
It didn't take long before she got up, at that point she kept insisting I pay her before we went any further. Thank God for the cover of darkness cause I couldn't imagine what she would have done if she had seen the smirk on my face. I couldn't play along anymore so I told her to do what any woman in her line of business would never do; she would get paid upon reaching my house, from what i gathered it was a no no, despite this information i still feared she would agree and that would have been my undoing. I stayed calm and still pretended to be interested, holding my breath for a reply. She said no way and started walking away........
I immediatly wasted no time in getting into SBB's car and we were soon heading home.

Na wah for blogging oh!!!!

People see me see trouble oh, i never knew blogging was this tedious or complicated, apparently my entry for to day has been posted as the second entry befor this one.... pleases bear with me. any one who want's to see today's own can check out the one titled " Property Inspection???"

Fuel Queues make me sick

Right now i'm sitting in a car owned by one of my Bosses at the office, queing for fuel.
i heard about the scarcity and made a few observations that there were a few long lines but never thought i'd land right smack in the middle of it. now the heat i've always dreaded is scorching me with a big grin on its face (if it had one).... i wonder what Nigeria is turning into; for no reason at all fuel supply has ceased, the next thing you start hearing is that the whole charade is politicaly motivated, especially with the PDP whatever going on in the middle of town.
I swear the last thing that should happen now is for one smelly convoy carrying one toothless minister or special adviser to stop right beside me, by the time i'm finished with him, he'll wish it was only a piece of my mind I gave him.
Speak of the devil one of them just passed by noisily and as if they knew what was going through my mind they beat the traffic light.
Honestly we Abuja people are lucky but we don't know, back then in lagos, meeting a queue was like running into a brick wall and having no other direction to turn to, what would make things worse was the amount of fillling station attendants you would have to settle (official and unofficial). Here in abuja Queues try to pretend that they are formed by normal well behaved people but something tells me they're all looking for the next "sharp Guy" to emulate.

Men i don suffer, after spending more than six years hustling to get a degree from a federal university i eventually entered the mandatory Youth service corps about seven months ago. so far the best work i've done couldn't earn me enough regard to escape this sort of errand. As i sit here in self pity wondering why I didn't settle for one obscure posting in the middle of no where rather than staying in Abuja.
My heart goes out to Drivers in Nigeria, often ignored and unknowingly mistreated by their employers, considering what they have to go through in times like these; sitting in thier oga's cars under the hot sun with no plans of retirement, benefit or health insurance. Gosh! life really is unfair.
hhhmmmmm........ after almost two hours of waiting I can now see the bend leading up to the filling station entrance now one of the scariest things going through my mind just above the possibility of the filling station catching fire is the attendants telling me they're out of fuel when its just about my turn. I bet you i'll scoop every last available drop they've got even if it means me using a teaspoon. i'm trying to banish such negative thoughts from my mind but its hard since i'm so close, besides these fellow drivers i thought i had formed a bond with through the whole ordeal don't seem to recognize me anymore; they all now look like fuel sucking vampires, maybe my face too has changed......

Property Inspection???

There are a lot of people who believe that writers are depressed little people who sit in unlit rooms, suffering from OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder)and hardly have any form of social life. Well the truth is that a lot of us spend a lot of our lives in the open, mixing and socialising and if i could go a bit far, i'll say we're have the best receptive responses when it comes to experiences.



Well most of the time i've always found experience through my passive observation of things around me and this normally leads me to experence all sorts of emotions along with other people, truth is they might never know i feel this way, but i take in everything as a new experience; i am alive..

so waiting in line to buy fuel was annoying in a way but it gave me a new perspective on the things professional private drivers go through.

Part of the experiences i enjoy in Abuja for now is the fact that as a corper i'm required to spend a day out of the five working days of the week performing community development (CD), but seeing that most of the communities within the Abuja metropolis are government developed there isn't much else to do, especially as my own CD group is sanitation and hold on a friday, i cherish the lack of the need to pick up a broom or rake or what ever form of sanitation equipment/ tool. All i am required to do is pay the hush money which is adequatly named CD dues and make sure i show up every friday to answer present.

"Well that now is being threatened oh"... i just came across an outgoing mail to the director of NYSC asking him to change all the CD days of the corp members in my office. most annoying is that no one CD is to fall on a friday if this letter is acted upon. Well that is if it is acted upon, i mean even if they had still left someone's CD on a friday at least i would have had someone to resent for the next 4 months.

for now lets just say the letter is being "taken care of ministry style" (i'll expalin that to you later).

Meanwhile i had a busy day at the office yesterday, so as much as i wanted to post something new, i barely had time, i was turned into virtually everything an office staff was required to do, from fixing extension boxes to typing memos. The jobs kept coming in thick and fast and i could barely catch a break.

Then an interesting offer came in; one of my deputy directors and The the boss were going round abuja to inspect the properties owned by the property wing of the NNPC within the FCT. It was basically routine appraisals to confirm the conditions of the properties before proceeding ahead with sale or privatisation.
i jumped at the chance immediatly since i happened to be the only one in the office at this point in time (the rest of the corpers had vanished into thin air).

So out we went, 7 of us; The Boss, deputy Director, Senior enterprise officer in charge of NNPC properties, myself , two consultants to the properties and the driver....
We ended up heading for a six hecter land in Maraba first of all, this land had been enchroached upon by illegal builders who apparently had done more development in 5 years than the local area council could do in 25... they had built several houses and a handful of mini estates (i mean large face me i face you compounds) every where. This was obviously going to pose a problem if the land was to be sold. Meanwhile the consultants claimed to have been attacked by illegal builders the last time they had visited the property, immediately i heard this i became uncomfortable, not just because i had seen some hard worn faces on the way in to the place but because i feared that running in any direction would not do me any favours. My survival instincts kicked in the funniest way; my slight frame became enlarged in my mind because i had widened my hands by my sides and walked as if there were medium sized balls under my armpits, this i figured amplified the effects of my inflated chest which i had done by sucking in as much air as i could. i figure i could discourage a few aggressive attackers who believed in sizing up the opposition (though my somewhat childish face didn't do me much favours).

Each turn on the dirt paths we took had me braced for a rather directionless sprint, experience in hostile areas made me stare straight into the eyes of any onlooker we encountered but it just so happened most of the people i came across were either toddlers who were half naked or semi obese women who sat in front of their stalls selling small biscuits and soaps.. the stares i got back in return were either repraochful or curious ones. meanwhile the consultants who had raised my terror alert from green right up to red kept on repeating a paricular statment while failing to hide their apprehensions, they kept saying ;" in fact if you see the amount of people that came out to fight us ehn". it was around the 43rd time they mentioned it that i realized i wasn't the only one who was feeling insecure so i relaxed a bit knowing i wasn't the only one who was anticipating one form of ambush or the other. We spent about 45 mins on this particular property though by the 30th minute i was beginning to suspect my purpose for this trip.

We left Maraba and began our journey to another property closer to town and that made me more relaxed and tired after the animalisitic attempts at potraying an alfa male in, so i dosed off a bit on the way to the next property and started dreaming of gallops and dirt roads, it seemed as if that was the only way i could stay asleep since the route had a lot of bumps and port holes. from this point on we encountered no more problems that required me to utilize my alfa male dominance. I just relaxed and took in all i saw. i hope NNPC don't have more properties located in similar areas cause it seems the rest of my group didn't even notice anything i did.... since no one offered me lunch.

Difficult Me....

I'm a conundrum i must confess, a difficult one at that. i'd like to say first off that no one should take this with any sense of humour at all because i'm serious here...... i see things in a different perspective from other human beings (seriously!!). even my own siblings give me the beaten look just after they make the statement; "we just dey manage you, na so God make you"... it might seem a joke each time they say it but honestly i know its the serious truth.
most times my frequent out bursts are a result of impatience and a lack of tolerance towards others, yet i'm the most tolorated brat living in my side of town(i can't stop laughing).
but there was atime when i was much worse, flying into fits of rage without thinking and always throwing up tantrums whenever i didn't get my way, but i soon grew up, suprisingly it was sooner than others expected but it did happen and now i'm calmer to an extent, yet those episodes still spring up from time to time; that's why i thought of the name Griffin. any one who's read quite a good number of mythology or fairytales would have heardof the animal, having the head of an eagle and the body of a lion, it hardly trusts anyone and has a short temper meaning it easily feels threatened.
in contrast i have siblings who appear to be the direct opposits of what i am, out of the four of them; my older brother and second younger sister have this ability to attract just about anybody, they're endearing and carefree loving people while my immediate younger sister posseses an undescribable and assuring personality that makes you feel safe and warm. the youngest on the other hand is a bit similar to me but can get away with almost anything. infact she has the same mannerisms as me save for a disarmig smile that tears away all defences or forms of aggression. so it is within this midst of people like this that i find myself, helplessly the odd one out. people have tried everything from teasing to informal counseling but nothing seems to have worked, their efforts no doubt had me thinking, so i tried changing somethings about me, but it soon mademe realized something; it wasn't that i was so difficult, i was just being me and its hard for me to change because these are the things that make me "Teni", stopping those things would be like character assasination, realizing this made me even prouder. so each morning i sayto myself; you are special because peop-le don't see things the way you see them. hopefully they'll come around(lol). hope you guys come around soon.

Is this for real?

i'm asking myself if this is for real cause i never thought i'd ever do this, i've always loved writing don't get me wrong, i just never thought i'd take it this seriously so soon. well for those of you who get to read this for the first time, just assume the name is Griffin. i grew up in lagos and and have lived in the capital city for the past 4 years (or is it 5), things have turned out better than i expected so far, i've made new friends and had new experiences. I'll leave you guys to judge for your selves what kind of person i am, but i must warn you not to expect too much from me, i thrive on going out and interacting and lately i've not being doing much of that (don't know why), maybe its because i'm a bit short on cash at the moment. i'd love to tell you alot about life here in abuja and other stuff, but don't get scared if i go all philosophical because i tend to do that sometimes
it still feels sureal if you ask me. i never though i'd be starting a blog.