Because I Can’t Be Happier Right Now…

The past 3 days have been a bit of a whirlwind. Got my new laptop (an HP Pavillion dv9700, for those who care) on Monday 😀 and it’s been love and bonding ever since. Every night since then, I’ve been getting home and opening her shiny, wonderful new depths. However, I must complain about what I like to dub HP’s presumptuousness about how much unnecessary software they THINK you need. I’ve got like 10 pointless programs loading on startup and I’m actually not sure which to get rid of cos I’m worried I’ll need it. One day. Sort of.

My closer friends are probably THIS close to throttling me cos I can’t stop going on about it. Bus said she wants pics or it isn’t true. *Getting over-dramatic* They just don’t understand. It’s been almost exactly two years since some guy fried my motherboard, and I’ve felt a bit like… like… Voldermort (for all ye Harry Potter fans out there) when he was searching for a body. Empty, confused, stuck using other people’s systems I couldn’t customize to my whim and a crappy desktop that couldn’t … well… be moved. With a sucky set of specs too.

Can’t wait for the weekend, then I’ll have her time. Finally I can rejuvenate my art skills.

Sigh… I’m complete now.

A Li’l Sum’in Sum’in

I feel like such a slacker! No post in almost a week….! OMG! I’m not doing well, I swear, I haven’t given my take on BBA 2, my movie reviews, or a couple of other topics.

So much has gone down, but first, I think it’s only fair to announce:

NYSC ENDS TOMORROW !!! WOOHOO!!!

I feel great. Some friends and I were contemplating having a ceremonial burning of our uniform against throwing it in our irritating Camp co-ordinator’s face. We haven’t decided yet.

I haven’t been to work since Tuesday, and it’s been FUN. Despite the fact that we spent Wed and Thurs on camp, struggling (and by struggling I mean, lying on the tarred campground, reminiscing, gisting, eating and sleeping while waiting for something productive to happen) to sign that stupid register a.k.a. Book of Life. It was interesting, just flashing back to camp, those 3 weeks of torture and actually smiling. We realised that we DID have fun, but no-one would do it again tho. Finally signed 5.30pm on Thursday, after getting there 6.30 AM, and being #116 on the list (don’t some people go HOME?)

This weekend, I swore off Agbara, packed my handbag and headed off to the island for fun and games. Friday, I spoilt myself a little by going to see a movie i.e. Stomp the Yard (should SO MANY fine boys be in one movie? Why are there none in Nigereia?!??!?), and bingeing a bit. 🙂 Then I joined B and her sis and her friend for Salsa, where we did some ‘follow the leader’ moves. Fun stuff. We then decided at the last minute to crash an almost-over party, drink red wine and shamelessly ask for some barbeque to take home in a bag. 😀

Saturday, I was meant to go home, but like B said, I’m almost becoming part of the family. Her mum asked me to stay, and I did. So we took our sweet time in going to some weding, where we went to scout (shamelessly again) for some fine boys. We got there in time for the closing prayer. At the reception. Oops. But yet again, we esp, B’s sis and I took one-and-a-half S-Ice’s and happily smiled to the car, despite us getting no food. All dressed up and nowhere to go, we drove all the way to the Palms, tortured ourselves a bit and left again, to go home and …. hmm, can’t remember.

Sunday, was meant to go home, but once I was asked to stay, and we hit some get-together in Ikeja.

It’s funny, I saw someone when I went to see my movie on Friday, and I told him I was going to stay at B’s. And the first thing he said was, “You’re going to party, aren’t you?”. I said no, and he didn’t believe me. gUES WHY. Only at B’s house.

I’m happy I’m getting out a bit. Once work starts for real, I fear I may be a bit screwed socially. Oh well, fingers crossed. I’m going to go iron my NYSC shirt. 🙂

Alcohol, Girls & Sand

Hm, so it’s been a bit. This is reaching you from the inner recesses of my office. Yeah, I’m at the office on Sunday. But I didn’t come to work. Shh. Just thought I had to share.

Went for this crazy beach party at Alpha Beach on Saturday. It was aptly titled, ‘Alcohol, Girls & Sand’. I think. All of the above was available in excess. Thanks to the woman-like lateness of K, we didn’t leave Anthony until 2.30. And naturally, cos Lekki just sucks like that, we were in traffic for about 50 minutes. We argued with some area boys near the beach who wanted us to pay 200 bucks a person to get past. Finally we gave them 300 for all of us, and experienced a brief moment of confusion when we couldn’t find the venue. That’s when we saw a convoy of four cars, (which was unmistakably a Babcock affair) and we followed.

It was like a BU Class of 2006 reunion. People from our department, people from other departments, all of whom were supposed to be serving, many of which were not even supposed to be in the state. all there. It was mad. For lack of better words. I saw an old secondary school classmate who, well, looked very different. And from his behaviour (or maybe he was just drunk), he seemed to be seeing me in a whole new light. Most people arrived like 4 or 5, and by that point people were already beginning to get in the ‘spirit’ – in more ways than one. On entering, everyone was given a cup of something, which looked and almost tasted like mouthwash. I had to abandon it. The booze and barbeque were passing around freely, and B, her bf and I watched (and photographed) in safe and sober amusement as the sanity level of the people present gradually degenerated.

K, on one hand, was a tragedy WAITING to happen. He and D came with a rather larger bottle of Smirnoff, and he more or less downed about � of it, mixed with whatever new energy drink they’ve got going on these days. From experience, I know he’s almost gone when he starts going on his knees under the guise of dancing. By 5.30, 6, he’d gone down about 5 times. D was off somewhere clinging to some other guy’s girl and doing weird dance moves. He kept insisting he was alright, but we knew better. He couldn’t even look me properly in the eye. By 6.30, K disappeared, after spending the past 15 minutes randomly staring into space. We’d find out later he went to turn out his insides. Through the wrong way.

I took so many incriminating photos. People were dancing and looking a little crazy, and I wasn’t too inspired to dance, cos almost all the guys were tipsy and I didn’t feel like being groped. B and I made a half-hearted attempt to steal the other D’s Blackberry, and I would find out later that my blog was being ‘watched’. Hey, I gotta express myself, and if you think you’ve been mentioned in the mix. smile, you’re on the World Wide Web. 🙂

We finally left at 7.30pm, wondering how most of the guys there were going to get home in their varied states of drunkenness. We half-carried K to the guy and kept giving him water. B ordered us not to let him try and get home by himself; he finally did at the end, but he was with someone so we knew he won’t be stolen. He slept some of it off in the car. All the way back, D and I laughed, thinking of how much grief we’d give him when he finally sobered up, and all the foolishness the guys at the party were up to. The night ended rather unexpectedly.

It was fun. At least, I had fun watching the madness anyway. And I have PICTURES to prove it. They’ll be up soon. I promise.

Peace.

NYSC, Strange Parties and Potter!

Hmm, I guess I appeared sooner than I expected. Considering the events of Friday, I feel it might be even longer before I resume work.

It was HELL. People were pushing, screaming, cursing and fighting. And to make things worse. It was RAINING. I couldn’t believe it. I was soaked to the skin, looking well and ready for a wet t-shirt competition, water was slushing around in my over-sized boots, and my hair turned to frizz. I did a lot of things, but after 4 hours of standing, i finally made it into the Zonal Inspector’s office.

I was turned into an improptu errand girl, told to go and get free mosquito nets for all the officers. At least, it gave me the opportunity to help out a friend. I gave her some of the nets, and after much swearing and squeezing, we got in again.

Just so I’ll be told that I have to do 4 more weeks. I had a flash of emotion where I thought I was going to cry, then it passed and I became sadly impassive. Later on, though, a bunch of us with the same issue pleaded and reasoned, and one of the officers told us not to worry, that we should just come back Monday after everyone has gotten their clearance.

I can’t do another month. The domino effect of that is too large to think about. It will be hell for me to get my certificate after pass out day, and my office will continue to treat me like a corper till I can show it to them.

Sigh. Afterwards, though we went to B’s house, where her sister mistakenly locked the car keys in the car, and also forgot it in gear, so we couldn’t move it. It was hilarious. We sat on the curb, waving down any Camry that passed to see if we could use their keys. At the end of the day, we had to get a panel beater to jack the car.

Some more friends came over after getting back too late from Convenant’s grad, and around 10 we decided to go for some birthday party for a classmate I hadn’t seen in 5 years. Only in her house.

We got lost. But i’ve never had so much fun getting lost. B’s sister was high for some reason and we laughed all the way there. The party was full of FREAKS. All the guys were oddly high and i think, a bit immature, and tended to harass us with BAD lines and even worse dance moves. The DJ was drunk and played the same songs over and over again.

We gave up at after 12 and went home to discuss the mess that was the party’s guests.

Saturday was a blur of picture-taking and being forgotten while B went off cavorting with her bf. Me and her sister spent some minutes feeling sorry for ourselves and truly mystified at why we were still single at that point.

I got HARRY POTTER today. Can’t wait to go home and lie down with it. It cost me half of what I own, but I don’t care. He’s worth it. 🙂

Weekend Runs

Because I’m a darling (and also cos I got a lot to write about), you’re going to get 3 posts from me today!
Might as well start with my weekend.
I watched HARRY POTTER!!!! 😀 My review will show up later in the day.
Anyway, courtesy of a flippant suggestion by his gf in Abuja, we decided to take K out for his b-day on her behalf. We would have gone on Friday, but we had our NYSC head count so it had to be Saturday.
Speaking of which, can I just say that government workers are the scourge of the nation? They made almost 2000+ corpers just stand around all DAY. We didn’t start the ‘count’ till past 1, and many of the officials were forming difficult. It took ages to find my queue, and when I did, I saw a friend in front and was INVITED to join her. The other people on the queue however, weren’t so enthusiastic. There were people (3 women and a very tall guy) literally attacking me and preventing me from reaching the front. One girl used her chest (and what a large, scary chest it was) to block me. I had to lie I wasn’t going to sign, and on my way back, I put on 3 layers of thick skin to ignore the stink eyes and quiet swears thrown at me. To be fair, I was with the person in front previously, but we got separated in our search. That, and the fact that we’re both former Babcock students and shunting was our way of life. 🙂
Saturday we hopped down to Silverbird to watch Harry Potter. The guys (being the cheapskates they are) only paid for their own tickets. We tried to make them buy the food, but they didn’t do that either. Later though, K bought me popcorn. I had fun. I spent the entire movie explaining the movie to K(who, for some reason, doesn’t like reading, and as such, has never read the books) while B explained to her bf (who, also for for SOME reason, thinks the books are not worth reading…HELLO!). After 10 minutes, some white woman turned and told us to keep quiet. We were quiet enough, but for the rest of the film I continued to pretend like I was going to throw popcorn in her hair (which, judging by the large fluff on her head, she would have never felt).
Afterward, we did a LOT of moping, disapproving of the really young girls prancing around in itsy-bitsy skirts and making fun of kids that were trying to skate. Four of us got invited to be on Siverbird TV where we would more or less embarass ourselves trying to pronounce Ali Baba( the comedian)’s real name. That guy has a long messed up name, man.
Then, bored, we moved over to B’s house where I suddenly became the target of slightly frustrating mockery till I left for Agbara. I don’t even know why I went home, there was hardly any light, and my mum was just pissing me off and exaggerating issues up till Sunday night, at which point she just stopped talking to me altogether.
Ah, well, it was fun while it lasted. This is supposed to be NYSC week, but I’m at work, cos I thought I’d be able to browse. Ironically, the server’s down. For the first time, like, ever.

8 Random Facts

Ok, apparently I got tagged by Merja to do this. It’s gonna be an issue finding other people to tag however cos I don’t  have that many  blogger allies. Sad. Because of this, then, I’m going to just INGORE the rules.

Eight random facts about me that you don’t know?!? Let’s see now…

 

1. I have a crush on Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy.
2. I like the smell of burnt onions…
3. I practice moves in front of the mirror. Daily.
4. In my past life I was probably a super-hero chick with water-related powers that could fly.
5. I hate mint, tomatoes, onions, pepper, & all vegetables.
6. I talk to myself. all the time. As in, one-on-one conversations.
7. I make a mean plate of spaghetti
8. I get homicidal tendencies off-the-cuff.

The Morning After

Had a great weekend. That’s just the best way to describe it. Well, not counting the fact that it started off with me getting drenched by the rain (check previous post), and somehow being convinced to buy a 3k top off-the-cuff, it ended up rocking. Saturday we had this 1st bday bash for a former classmate. I had actually planed to get out before the party but I’d stayed up till 3 or so watching Heroes, again. I’m so loving that show right now. But anyway,I was dead tired, and we still had to clear out our room, cos of Rat. Pushing away the bed showed that my sister was 99% responsible for the depressing junk we found. Yet she chose to not be too helpful. I tried to avoid an argument cos we seem to be on better, but fragile terms these days, mostly cos of our mutual aversion to rodents.

The party, I ended up following D, cos we lived close by and it made more sense. He came 30 minutes late, and we got stuck in an unusual and annoying amount of traffic, not to mention that we partly got lost. We got 2.45 , a whole 2hrs 45 minutes late, and the guest list still wasn’t up to 15. It was the rain. It took a while to take off, but meanwhile we hung out with B, her bf and K. All of a sudden, around 5, people came swarming in. It was a predominantly Babcock Uni/Computer Dept affair. The DJ was absolute rubbish, however, and it took a lot of complaints before he started playing good stuff. I, was on a personal mission to see how much Gordons Spark I could take before I felt funny. It didn’t take long. By the half way mark of the second one I began to feel sleepy. Go figure. The sleepiness quickly became a strange dizziness/restlessness, and I proceeded to dance non-stop for the next 2 hours. I actually would have liked to experiment with a third bottle, but God probably knew better. The drink finished.

K, mid-dance, proclaimed to me that he was on his sixth big bottle of Heiny. I thought it was funny. It was fun.B had left around 6, but was parked in, and came back for some more. My thighs burned but I didn’t sit down. An old classmate who I used to harass just stood in one corner, watching me grind and wind in amused disbelief. I frankly didn’t give a toss. I hadn’t gotten my groove on in over a year.

Of course, as is always the issue at such events I jammed an admirer who tried to chat me up. But I was still restless and wanted to get back on the floor. He then proceeded to say he was failing in love with me, and I was like NO, man, that was a BAD line. I lied that I was with someone (why doesn’t this EVER work?), and to counter that he thought it would be a good idea to say, ‘U are going to fall in love with me’. RIGHT. I somehow escaped him, and B and D said they would have rescued me, but thought I didn’t need it. Friends.

We all started trickling out about 8.30, some people to go on drinking, me and D to go sleep. Another guy I’ve know for a couple of years now, confessed that he’d had a crush on me for the past 2 years. I knew it. I blame it all on the drink.

We actually got lost in Anthony. Dunno how, but D just proceeded to follow the car in his front til we got to familiar terf. B called me later to ask if I was still hyper. I wasn’t. I was BEAT. But like I told her, i needed that.

I’m paying for it now, though. I actually found the energy to go back to agbara and loosen my hair. I’m so tired man. But I think June was generally a good month. I need more like it.

Planes, Parties, Work and Stuff

Well, this was some sort of weekend. I got out of work Thursday still trying to figure out how I was going to go to my bash, make sure my father didn’t starve himself and still get home in time to get some sleep. He popped over to Ghana for some IT convention thingy, and thought it would be a good idea to take the keys to our Agbara crib with him.

Friday, after making my usual cameo at CD, I get over to Bu’s house so we could go see B off to Abuja at the airport. I recall stressing that we ought to leave on time cos we were meant to be there 11, 11.30. But as is always the Nigerian mentality (which includes not making provision for emergencies, and not believing in “the earlier the better”), I was put aside, and made to act like I was being ridiculous since the place is kinda near. So we left at 11. Before we could star the car, we realised (shock!) that there was barely enough fuel to get us to the mainland, talk of the airport. Alas, there’s fuel scarcity too! So after passing about 5 or 6 scary queues, we had to end up at Mobil in Maryland. This was 20 minutes to 12. B’s plane left at 1. I quietly mumbled, “this is why I said we should leave earlier…” Bu snapped that I was implying that i knew there’d be a queue. I said that I always leave early in case of EMERGENCIES.
We got to the airport at 12.20-something.

I haven’t been to an airport since I was 5 or 6. That makes twice now, and sadly, I wasn’t going anywhere both times. I also recall the airport being much nicer. We only had time for a 15 minute chat, and B had to go check in. We hung around a bit, waiting for B’s bf. Hadn’t seen him in a while. Also, some old, ugly dude hit on Bu and gave her his no. Eeurgh.

After, we popped over to some eatery near where I did my IT in ’05. I didn’t notice this until I saw 3 of my former colleagues from there.One of them asked why I bailed after just 2 days of work last summer. I told them I refused to be a victim of ‘bad blood’. The HR woman hated me (but now I think of it, stupid cow probably hated everyone), the Graphics guy had an inferiority complex with me and refused to let me join his dept, and frankly, the job I was given SUCKED. The company’s going to the dogs anyway, cos the MD left to head Microsoft Nigeria or something, and put the HR chick in charge. Oh the injustice.

I watched Shrek3 that night, but didn’t get to the last 7-10 minutes cos my sis came back (nuff said). My review looms.

I got a call Friday night that I had to come to work on Saturday. It was like a horror movie. Guess why.To research on our MD’s speech. It didn’t even click that that was what I was doing until afternoon, and I was VEXED. WTF??? I was there from 10 to 5. It was a stupid, unsearchable topic, and I acquired a headache from the biting cold in the office. I wanted go out, but it was too late.

The party was cool. And EXPENSIVE. It was at Saipan. Strict guest lists, masks (yea, we wore masks), all you can eat Chinese buffet, free BOOZE, and DJ Humility. Unfortunately, I realised that if guys had to choose between free alcohol and chicks, they’d die alone and drunk. They just sat there. They served the cakes with those sparkly, firework thingies. Very swank. We left at 11.30 however, cos we were the only ones we knew there beyond the birthday girl.

Sunday I went home early, and my dad had little to say about the fact that I stayed over at Bu’s place. At least I thought so till evening when he mumbled it to my mum. I’m not sure what he thinks I’m doing when I go to her place. But the man likes taking things upon himself anyway. I was also surprised to see that he was more capable of taking care of himself than he likes to show.

Had a dream about dying. Here it is in summary:
– dreamt I flew to L.A. ( i blame that bit on my airport trip)
– Paris Hilton and I (yeah, who’d have thunk it) went to a hot spot named Saipan … (see the pattern)
– the guy friend we saw at the airport and I were in a bus and it swerved and fell down a Looooong hill.
– I had an outer body experience where I watched myself dying and I became hysterical, but I ended up living.

Yeah, so I guess the weekend was okay. Not super-wonderful, and I didn’t meet any new people, but it beats sleeping.

Hot Waves, Hot Food, Hot Sauce

Yeah, so I wanted to write a nice, long entry about the Lagos Public Transport system, but I’ve decided to do that later.

I had a cool weekend. At least, it was a nice change of pace from my usual “home-on-Friday, sleep-sleep-sleep, work on Monday” routine.

I went for my “alma mater”, Babcock University’s 5th Graduation yesterday. Yes, it was on a Sunday, because of the whole 7-Day Adventist thing. To be really honest, we didn’t really have an intelligent reason to go, and on the way to Shagamu, while waiting for Mr Biggs to open (SOME of us were hungry, and Mr Biggs was apparently out to piss people off by not opening on time), we actually asked ourselves WHY we were going. But we were dressed to the nines and even though we only knew about 4 or 5 people there, and fuel is not only scarce but EXPENSIVE, we zoomed off.

I honestly FORGOT how HOT Babcock was. It took years to park, and none of us was really willing to go in till we did, cos it meant abandoning the air-conditioned confines of the car. Ironically, I only met 3 people I knew that were graduating, but a bunch of us from last year’s set, ‘Platinum Graduating Class of 2006’, thank you very much. Mostly Computer Science babes though. It was amazing how good they looked. You spend 4 years seeing someone dressed to the minimum, short hair, no jewelry, barely existent make-up, baggy skirts… and then you see them all working class a year later; it’s nice. *Sniff* We took so many pictures they practically threw us out of the School Guest Caf. I saw an old friend that still has a year to go; we used to have the best discussions…

But after a few hours, my top was sticking to my back, and my feet hurt from my heels, and we decided it was time to go.

After there, we took an hour’s break at my friend’s and headed off to VI for someone’s mum’s birthday. He was apparently in our class, but I honestly couldn’t remember his face. We were all there for the free food (I’m ashamed to admit). But it was GOOD free food. There were menus, and shockingly efficient waiters. There was meant to be an after party at VGC, but my groove hasn’t reached that level. All day long, the rain poured and poured. On our way out from THAT party, we had to cross the road. And it was flooded. It was torturous. VI needs to address their drainage issues, man. We took off our heels, rolled up our trews, and sloshed through very questionable, murky waters.

And then, on a whim, cos that always happens with my friends, we went salsa dancing. It was fun. I picked up a lot pretty quickly, from this guy, but then another guy attempted to teach me, and pissed me off. I got home around 9, vaguely thrilled. This month looks promising. I got a party next Friday and probably one this Friday. Yeah, go me. Oh, and I got my hair did. It was painful, expensive, but the compliments have been quite rewarding. Mwahaaha.

I’ve realized I’m young, my time with my friends is running out, and I just need to get out more. A friend depressed me again on Saturday, but that’s another entry for another day.

Peace.

I Recommend! "We Feel Fine!"

Link:—>We Feel Fine / by Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar

UPDATE: I put a nice big “link” next to the link cos apparently it wasn’t obvious…

It won’t do anything for your career path, but it’s quite a fascinating experience (if you have the computer memory & internet connection) 🙂 ! Go to the link, and click on the big heart. Play around with the settings at the top of the flying dots!

Excerpt:
Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling”. When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the “feeling” expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved.
The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 – 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine’s Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on…