My First Trip: Day Twelve

Disclaimer: This is an edited version of my diary from December 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.

Friday 1st December 2000

December in the Sun

I want my advent calendar! I found a few bars of Toblerone in the fridge this morning so I got a chocolate fix. This was the first piece of chocolate I'd had since the Crunchie I had on the plane. Wow it was good. I've seen some unfamiliar Cadbury products on the shelves at Park 'n' Shop. Something called Tom Tom which is like a menthol éclair according to what I'm told. I'd like to try that just to figure out what on earth it would taste like. There is an advertisement here that celebrates the 30th anniversary of Tom Toms so they are pretty well established here.

J2... had pointed out a couple of problems with my printouts yesterday so I printed some more out. It wasn't my fault. The paper had skewed in the printer so that it didn't look straight. A couple more people turned up today and had nothing to do so they went to J2...'s training session. They needed a certificate for the PowerPoint session they were taking.

Having fun at work

Fridays at the office are the days that most of the staff dress up in traditional African clothing. So to cause a few giggles we decided to go to work in Traditional African clothing too. I hoped we wouldn't be offending anyone. I only had the shirt, which I borrowed from D..., but E..., D..., J2... and K1... each had the full costume without the hats, which seem to only fit black people. M... didn't have his outfit with him so he was the only white person not dressed up. I took my camera to get some pictures of us all. All of the Nigerian staff were very impressed, and thought we'd done something really good. I... the receptionist wanted to know what the celebration was. We just said, "It's Friday."

For most of the day I was sitting around waiting for printouts. We were expecting some quotes for PC's to arrive but nothing had happened. C... from the people offering Dell computers came round to see me again, to find out why we hadn't bought his computers yet. he tells me they require a 75% deposit at the time of the order. I think we'll have to give Dell UK a call to check them out first.

Group Photos

The AC was being serviced at the office in the afternoon, so we went outside for a bit, where there's a slight breeze. We took some group photos of everyone in the office, there were a surprising amount of people. I hope to be able to name every face on the photographs by the time I leave. You might catch a glimpse of me in my African shirt thing too, but I was careful to hide near the back.

At the end of the day, E... was calling everybody into his office to let them know about their pay rise. Everybody came out smiling and very happy. Just wait till they see their bonuses next year if this project takes off.

D... thinks we now have one of the highest paid security guard in Nigeria working for us, and he gets more than the president of Nigeria's Bodyguards get. He was on 12,000 (£70) a month before the pay rise, but with the pay rise and moving to hourly rather than daily rates, (he puts in 80 hour weeks) he's moving up to 40,000 (£230). He got a small promotion because he is one of the few guards that can read and write and he helps the non literate guards fill in their time sheets. All of our guards have a similar amount given them so they are all pretty happy to work for us right now. Obviously, These guys are worth far more than that, but if we paid them what they deserve I think they'd all retire. I'm told the average wage for a security guard here is just 4,000 a month (£23).

Fish - Yuck

That evening it was fish for dinner, yeuch. It was sole with a lemon sauce. If I liked fish I'm sure it would have been great food, but I don't so it was puke. The fish they sell in the fish & chips restaurants here have teeth, Snapper I think its called. Also there's croker or something but I'm not that interested.

Tonight was the grand opening of the dance night-club at Planet 44 and we had an invite from the owner, and since he went to all the trouble of getting us that boat ride we thought we'd better not be too rude. So we went in and had our usual round of Original sins, I couldn't decide what to drink next so E... got me a B52 Bomber (tia maria, baileys and cointreau) while I was thinking. I taught them how to make a brain haemorrhage, although it didn't turn out right, too much grenadine and too narrow a glass. E... calls them Abortions.

Winamp - It really whips the llamas...

Interestingly the DJ at this bar was using winamp, he just had a bunch of playlists running and spent the rest of the time pretending he was doing something with a mixing desk.

Ranni, the owner of Planet 44, is getting a new till that will let you program new cocktails into it so that he can keep track of the booze that is being used. He says he'll let us put our own cocktail recipes in it so we can get whatever we want. This is so cool.

Anyway, lazy day tomorrow so no need to get up early but I was very tired and needed a sleep. so I toddled off home to bed.