I have had one of the most forgettable weekends in ages in terms of my habitual nocturnal activities. I never imagined myself staying home on a Friday night intentionally with only local T. V content for company. Believe you me I so dearly want to forget this weekend, save for Friday afternoon when I totally got wasted before 3:00 PM.
There is one thing people should know about serving in Abuja, it can be wasteful; a Corper is likely to spend his community development days getting drunk half the time. Its double trouble if his CD is on Friday, because the likely hood of going clubbing is calculated into this probability.
After 3:00 PM my day was over, or more like my weekend was over socially, my other only compensation being that I hung out with the usual crew plus a few additions in the form of Diva and Dude. Dude had just come in from Lagos for work while I hadn’t seen Diva in a while.
As usual it was Dub-C through out, though the alcohol to human consumption ratio was a bit more concentrated. Apparently I was one of only 3 people expected to finish a bottle of Vodka, the others being Mr. Capable and Diva. Let me just say at this point that I will sadly not be giving you details of what happened as a result of the consumption of the Vodka (this is because of the gag order imposed on me by one of the participants).
Meanwhile every other seemingly smart person preferred Red wine, it seemed that there was something good about the particular bottle they were drinking cause they were not satisfied with one.
Like I said, the rest of the weekend was forgettable, that is until I watched T.V yesterday. Lil mama was watching E! New in the evening when they did a short on the hottest Australian actors in Hollywood. As most of you know by now, I’ve wanted to do a piece on Sam Worthington, and no it’s not because he’s good looking and Aussie. Rather it’s to rant about the meteoric rise he’s had over the year. Low and behold, there he was smiling on T.V as if to say; “mumu, nothing wey you fit do”(wonder how that will sound ). It really got me pissed I must say. Not like I have any thing against the guy personally, I just wish I knew some of his previous works so that I would know what to expect.
For those of you who don’t know, Sam Worthington is going to be in two major movies this year and they both have Box office dynamite attached to them. Being a movie buff, I’m always accustomed to following the lives of both established and up and coming actors. So I can say I’m able to predict who is next to blow based on their previous works or their present performance. I had always been good at it and if I had a paying job predicting the next big thing out of Hollywood, I’d probably be driving a Ferrari by now. Well that fantasy was threatened recently with the name peddling of Sam Worthington. Who the hell is he you might ask; well the little I can tell you guys about him personally is that he’s Australian, about 30 years of age, and has never done any T.V or movie outside Australia until now.
Right now he’s set to star in James Cameron’s big budget movie; Avatar, as well as the fourth installment of the Terminator franchise directed by McG; Terminator Salvation. Which he will co- star with Christian Bale. All this might seem senseless to you but I honestly don’t understand this particular guy’s quick rise, and as if to kick sand in my face while I was still struggling to understand what was going on, he’s just been confirmed as the lead (Persius) in the remake of Clash of the Titans. Tell me I’m only dreaming folks.
For the sake of the dude’s career I hope all these movies break the bank at the box office, if not he’ll just turn out to be a flash in the pan.
Meanwhile the whole dull weekend had me thinking about life after service. The recurring question going through my head being what I was going to do after service. So I’m just sitting here right now trying to figure that out..
Showing posts with label The Boss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Boss. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
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.
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.
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