My First Trip: Day Twenty Four

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 13th December 2000

Today was the Christmas party at the office. Since E... was leaving today and needed to pack, D... was called upon to conduct the award ceremony where those who have been with the company x amount of years get an award. We've been too busy to sort out anything special so the awards this time which were all for 5 years service were just a simple $100 bill. They seemed very happy with it though. for 10 years they get a big screen TV.

The staff all seemed to enjoy themselves, M4... and M3... had brought food from the house and served it out for us.

Cosmas turned up during the party to confirm that the delivery of computers would be on Friday, too late for me to supervise.

All the staff at our office in Akure, had come to Lagos to join our party. Last year D... and M1... were working in Akure where they butchered and barbecued a goat (not themselves obviously) to celebrate Christmas. No goat this year thankfully. Just Pork Chops, Chicken and Rice, there was free beer that had been brought from our house for everyone. E... likes to tell the tale of him working on the expenses sheet and having to type in, "one goat". He was wondering what sort of response would arise in Calgary but nobody noticed. Probably because it was so inexpensive. There seemed to be a bit of confusion with M4... and he didn't manage to get the food to the office until 2pm and we didn't start eating until 3 because they wanted to get the award ceremony out of the way first. We decided that having a final meal with E... at 5 would be stretching things a bit far so we cancelled our dinner with M4... and arranged to go out.

At about 4:30 I went back to the house to see E... go back to Calgary, about an hour later we had a phone-call to say he'd made it through customs and was now sitting in the bar in the departure lounge drinking a pint of becks.

At 9pm we went to planet 44 for a snack, we were all pretty full from lunch. I had an egg burger which was more of a meal really. E... had left a cheque for us to take to Ranni to pay our bills for the last few weeks. I looked over one of them and we had spent N20,000 (£120) in one night on drinks. No wonder Ranni is always pleased to see us.