My First Trip: Day Eight

Disclaimer: This is an edited version of my diary from November 2000. Some information contained may be incorrect, and opinions I expressed then are not the opinions of Aaron Rowe in 2006. I have posted it purely for the Novelty value.

Monday 27th November 2000

Back to work

Got up for breakfast feeling pretty good, and had the usual grapefruit, pineapple, Banana, Mango and Passion Fruit. followed by toast and coffee.

I went to the office knowing that I was going to have to do some proper work today. D... had sent me on a mission to go with a Nigerian colleague and get some prices for his new laptop. A Toshiba Tecra 8100 600Mhz P3 only with 256MB or Ram instead of the usual 64. Getting such equipment was a bit of a job but after visiting 4 companies that advertised in the local paper, we negotiated some pretty good prices. Well, I told the people what I wanted and my Nigerian Colleague shouted at them for a bit in Pidgin English and Yoruba until happy with the price they offered. We ended up getting three quotes and most at prices lower than those advertised in Computer Shopper in the UK.

Lagos by Day

Travelling around Lagos is never boring, there are just so many people everywhere it's hard not to find something interesting. Whether its the signs on the walls saying "DO NOT URINATE HERE" or the signs for the HUGE religious gatherings they hold here. D... says once a year they hold a gathering in the Lagos Churches and there are over 12 million that attend. Some individual churches getting 250,000 people.

By far the most interesting signs say. "This Property is NOT for sale. It is the Property of Suchandsuch. Beware of 419". A 419 is somebody who pretends to be something they aren't. Such as selling you a piece of land they don't actually own, or offering you a share of a fortune they don't actually have. When a country invents its own words and symbols for things like that you know they have a problem there.

FOOD

By the time we'd finished travelling around Lagos, and I'd seen quite a bit by now, it was time for lunch. It was too late to get back to the House since V... is only happy to make food at a set time which is between 12 and 1. and it was now nearly 2. I was offered a "Shawarma" and taking a gamble I asked "Is That like a Kebab?". "Yes" I was told. I knew that because I've had Shawarma Kebabs before. It's a bit like a Tortilla wrap. You get meat (Chicken or Beef) stuffed into a pancake type thing with vegetables and chilli sauce. I felt a bit sorry for our Driver B2... who as a Muslim, was on the third day of his fast for Ramadan. He had to take us to this place. He asked me to join with him in the Fast but I said I'd rather not. I'm hungry.

My first patient

Well that was all kinds of fun. I headed back to the office where there was a laptop waiting to be fixed on my desk. It was about to be handed over to one of the Nigerian staff and they wanted to make sure that all unnecessary software was removed, and that everything worked OK. There were a couple of simple problems that needed fixing, and once done, I ran scandisk and defrag. It looked like this had NEVER been done before so It took quite a while. But I handed it back in much better shape than I received it in.

While it was defragging D... had me work out a minimum Spec for 15 PCs that we'll be purchasing soon. These are for staff workstations and I wanted to put together something with a bit of meat on it for an office half-life Championship sometime in the future ;-). I've decided on 600MHz P3 with 128 MB Ram 20GB HDD and 100Mbs Networking. 17" Monitors all round. Should be fun. We're going to need another 10 or so to fill all the desks here and in the houses so, with the laptops as well were going to have a pretty large network to organise. We've got a really good UPS system at the office so that when NEPA fails we can keep everything running until the Generator starts.

So at 5pm the laptop finished defragging just in time to go home and it was back to the house for Dinner. I got a quick shower and a change of clothes and ate the chicken soup followed by marinated steak and potatoes.

After dinner I worked on the last few days of diaries and went to bed at 9:30 or so. They'd got the old generator back now so things were far far quieter.