My First Trip: Day Seventeen

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.

Wednesday 6th December 2000

Bye Bye V...

I came down for breakfast this morning at 7:15 and I was the first up. V... greeted me and asked me how I spelled my name. He thought it was spelled Haran for some reason, so I corrected him. Quite a few people who have asked my name have asked me if I'm Jewish, LOL, V... didn't though. Eventually the other guys turned up and they all looked worried, about how they day would turn out. I had made sure I'd be tucked out of the way when they gave this poor man the bad news.

So off we went to the office, my main mission today was to finalise the deal for the computers. This is fun, I've never been responsible for 2.6 million before even if it is only Naira. So I went off to Surulere where this company, Computer Warehouse, is based. I arrived and met Cosmas, our contact and told him we were ready to place the order, and after a little confusion over the delivery dates we were agreed. So we are about to leave and Cosmas asks me for my LPO. I had no idea what he meant. He showed me an example and it was an official company headed Purchase order form with all the details of the order enclosed. So we had to head back to the office and get that sorted. We needed to get some quotes for networking installation and I asked Cosmas before leaving if they could do it. He called this other guy to see me and we arranged for him to call at the office that afternoon to measure up.

Enter M3...

While all this was going on poor V... was getting booted out and the new guy M3... was preparing lunch for the first time. it was now nearly 1pm and I was going to miss this first meal. I had some cash so before going back to the office we went to Mr Biggs for food. I had Special Fried Rice and Chicken which cost me 180 Naira. about £1.06.

I got back to the office and D... came in just after me with a wrapped sandwich for me. M3... had made me food after all and they brought it for me to eat. it was good. Similar to V..'s with more red onions. Mmmmm.

What's an LPO anyway?

D... had a meeting with people that afternoon and locked himself away in E...s office. He left me to deal with getting this LPO sorted and showing the network guy around. To get the LPO L... told me I had to talk to M4... who had all the letterheads on her computer. She wasn't around and nobody knew where she was. So I had to go and explain this to Cosmas. He told me he could start the order process if the quotation was signed and dated with a note to say that the offer was accepted. I had to interrupt the meeting to get D... to sign the quotation. Then the Networking guy needed taking around to measure each of the rooms and be told where we would like the workstations to have access points. So that was my job and I was just making wild guesses about some of the locations, but I think I got most of it right. The guy seemed happy enough with my description and seemed capable enough himself. I knew he'd asked me the right questions to get the job done properly.

Fish

With all that out of the way it was time to get some dinner. M3...'s first dinner. Well, it was battered fish, so I wasn't too impressed but all the other guys thought it was great and had extra helpings of it. I just had the one piece of fish and a pile of rice. there was plenty of dressings available to hide the fish with so I managed OK.

This was also the first time I had met M3..., and we weren't properly introduced. I think M2... has told him all he might need to know about us, he seemed familiar with the fridges and locations of bottle openers and things so I think he'll be OK.

There was a film on the TV called Go! which entertained me for a while until I got fed up with the British guy in it. The Matrix is on this channel on Sunday and E... and M1... have never seen it so I hope we are around to watch it.