Last Blog Entry for the year

Sorry it's been a while, Lots of stuff going on

I got my iRiver and my KiSS DVD both are amazing and highly recommended. The fact I Can browse audio and video files on my PC from my TV and play them is amazing. There's very few files I've found that don't play. I also found out that the iRiver can play movies! They have to be encoded at a specific resolution but my test of an episode of 24 was very good.

All this bad news from south Asia is pretty disturbing, just in case anyone reading this hasn't donated something and wants to, go here.

I was planning to spend New years eve looking for New Window blinds and a duvet for my room in Nigeria before going to see my Cousins in bristol to celebrate new year. I just found out that it's not quite as organised as I thought so I'm trying to think of an alternative.

Well That's it for another year!

Boxing Day is over and I am officially back on my diet. Not looking forward to weighing in the morning.

I've ordered an iriver H320 player, so I can play all my Ogg Vorbis and MP3 files. I'll rip as many of my cd's as I can over the next few days ready to load on to the player.

I'm missing N... like crazy, just wish she could have been here this Christmas. That was the plan but because of money problems there was no way we could sort out her visa. I'm determined to do it by Easter.

I've been trying to make some panoramic photos using an image stitcher but it seems the photos I took from N...'s Balcony aren't suitable as there's too much movement between photos. I might try to get a monopod.

I've been ripping some of the CD's I bought recently that have warnings on them about copy protection. I don't know how they are protected but I'm not having any problem at all ripping them. Maybe it's because I'm using Linux and linux is smart enough to cope with the errors they put on those discs to prevent copying.

I'm trying to get flickr to automatically update my blog with a photo but it doesn't seem to work, anyone got an idea?

Merry Christmas and a happy new year

Just got back from the local curry house 'The British Raj' for our Christmas Eve meal, it was very Quiet. My Grandmother came and so did Jo and Pietro. I managed to get similar things to the things we can get in nigeria but not quite the same. Still managed to finish 2 bottles of chateauneuf de pape between myself and mum so I had a good time.

As you may see I got flickr working for uploading photos from my phone to my blog but it doesn't seem to work automatically, I have to log into flickr and manually do 'blog this' for each picture. I thought it was supposed to be automatic.

I'll try and send some more photos in the morning morning

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

Jo & Pietro and Grandma watching TV

Dan's PC back online

Dan's PC back online
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

I fixed Dan's pc so he's back fragging on doom 3

Winter View

Winter View
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

A mobile photo from my bedroom window.

Got my phone back

Yesterday vodafone sent me a new sim card for myphone after I lost my phone on the way to the airport in September. Gonna try and set up GPRS and try some moblogging with this site.

Not quite sure how it will work yet but I'll figure it out.

Wrapped all my presents and put them under the tree, everybody seemed to like the personalised christmas cards I ordered.

Mum wanted to watch Christmas Vacation last night, that was the DVD I ordered 3 times and I knew she would want to see it before Christmas so I gave it to her last night. It's not her only gift so she will get a gift on Saturday.

I got Dan's pc working after it had been unable to boot for 3 months. I'm sure he's been missing doom 3. Now I've gotta work out what's corrupting his c:/WINNT/System32/Config/SYSTEM file. it happened again today and I had to direct him how to do it himself. if anyone has any ideas please let me know.

My Eye is fine, I'm wondering if there really is an infection or if my eye looked the worse for wear from the dry air and lack of sleep on the plane.

Back in the UK!

I arrived safely this morning at 5am UK time and cought a 7 o'clock bus to Newport. Got to Newport around 10:20am and took a taxi from the bus station to home.

Dan was up thankfully and opened the door for me, Mum had gone to pick up Dad at Cardiff Airport. He flew with KLM which meant he could go from Cardiff via Amsterdam.

In my bedroom was a huge pile of post and parcels, mostly cd's and dvds that I ordered while in Lagos. I've been listening to them all day so far.

I just came back from an appointment at my optitian for a contact lens checkup. Apparently I've just picked up an infection, and I need to stop wearing lenses for a while. Bummer! The infection is only in my left eye so it is only recent. most likely from the plane journey last night!

5 shopping days left!

I ordered a few more DVDs as Christmas presents, apparently they should arrive before Christmas, Let's hope so.

Today, I went with N... to her house, She's had her microwave fixed by the same people that fitted our mirrors and windows. Sounds weird but only the glass on the front of the microwave was broken. It was also an opportunity to try and fix her PC so that she can watch '24' on the cds and dvd-roms I gave her. Her hard drive was corrupt with bad sectors so I found a replacement. However when I was just setting up windows, the monitor suddenly made a fizzing sound and sweet smelling smoke came pouring out. I'm guess a capacitor burst, there's no way I could fix it without the right tools so I had to leave it, it's better to have it repaired by professionals anyway. I think she needs to get a new voltage regulator and have the batteries replaced in her UPS before we repair it.

I saw N...'s neighbour Mikey on the way out. He's a Motorbike Nut, and a regular at Bob's bar, he's been asking me to come over for ages to play on his PS2 and drink Beer, He doesn't understand why I can't drink beer on my diet. He seemed quite disappointed I was leaving, I promised to call in when I am there next, besides it'd be kinda fun.

I drove myself to N...'s house, something I've been doing since I got my Nigerian license. Dad thinks I should be using it as my driving license in the UK since legally I am resident in Nigeria. I only drive on weekends, and usually Sunday's because it's much quieter. On weekends we only have 1 driver on duty so having to go where everyone else wants to go is too restrictive so I just jump in the Car and go where I want. I'm sensible about it of course, I know Lagos quite well now so I know which areas to avoid and where police checkpoints are likely to be. They can be a problem if you don't have a small bribe to hand. I haven't been stopped while driving yet but when I've been stopped with one of our Nigerian drivers I've been able to joke my way through some of them, by using the little bit of Yoruba and pidgin English I know. But then there's other times when a bribe is the ONLY way I'll get moving again.

We all went for dinner at Pats bar, I like Pat's food, good British pub grub, none of this pepper fish soup and pounded yam nonsense.

Got a busy day tomorrow closing up the office and stuff. I'm always rushing around in the days before I travel, I'm glad I had today to take some time for myself.

Last Saturday before Christmas done and dusted

Heard my sister had a car accident yesterday, busted off her wing mirror reversing out of her friends drive. Sorry Jo!

I had to have a shout today, I went to the office to see how well they were doing with the data entry and found only one person actually doing any! Grrr, I doubt we'll have even half of the data for Ikoyi verified before monday so I just have to give them what I can.

Kayode, The MD of one of our subcontractor firms took us all out for dinner tonight at the Golden Gate Chinese Restaurant. Kayode's wife who's been sick in hostpital for a long time was there too. Somehow I've always missed these dinners before because I was in the UK so it was good to have an oportunity to go. It was my first time to visit that restaurant and it was very nice.

Came home to find that the work that had been done to the diesel tanks today wasn't right. There was diesel dripping out on to the floor. Of course we called the man who worked on it today to come and fix it and while we were waiting for him NEPA 'took our light'. So we were outside with torches trying to stop the drips so we can start the generator. Eventually the guy turned up and was still unable to stop the dripping so we had to just make do with another tank and make sure the diesel wouldn't syphon out.

Why do I have to keep coming up with Titles?

So another friday has passed.

I was awoken this morning with news that the plumber wanted to come and take a look at my water heater. Bad news because that meant I couldn't shower until he's finished.

Mike headed out early to Ogba to see about getting our Diesel depot opened again. Since Diesel is becoming scarce it would be good to have a stock of 25,000 litres. It requires all kinds of license hoops to be leapt through but we've done it before.

I waited till lunch time for my shower but the plumber decided he had to go out and get a new valve or something and that meant I had to cope with being dirty.

Yesterday we had new mirrors installed in the bedrooms and I had a new bathroom mirror to replace mine. It needs levelling, as usual, but I'll probably save that to do whenever I come in 2005. We also had a second pane of glass placed over our windows to hopefully reduce the heat coming through from outside, and some of the noise from the generator. it helps a bit but the smell of the glue they used was dreadful and I couldn't sleep well.

The verification started properly today and they did quite well. Only problem they were being too thorough. My thought is that we don't have time to check every detail on the form but we should try to get the basic details of the address right. so at least the bills go to the right place.

Went for a curry tonight as usual and went over to bobs for a little while. most sensible people have travelled by now as this is the last weekend before christmas, but because of a promise of a christmas party that never really happened both I and mike changed our planned return dates to a later date to be in Nigeria this weekend for this party. But no real party is planned.

Grr, big con job. could have been in UK tomorrow.

My Name in The NY Times!

Check out 3rd row after "Are you fed up with your web browser?" split.

Verification Under Way

So, I finally trained up the data entry staff to verify forms, hopefully tomorrow they'll have completed Ikoyi as planned, or perhaps most of it so that I can submit Ikoyi data to our clients IT department before we wrap up for Christmas.

Aaaaargh! Gambling is stupid

I wanted to order a DVD for someone for christmas, and found it was out of stock everywhere. I thought I'd work the system a bit and ordered the dvd from 3 different suppliers, when I got notification that one was on it's way I'd cancel the others. easy!

I just logged on this evening to discover that ALL 3 are on their way...

I think I can send the back or give them out as presents to other people so I may get away with it. But I won't gamble that way again.

I didn't get around to training anyone for verification today as I planned I now MUST do it tomorrow or it will be too late.

One of our data entry reached 372 forms yesterday, quite incredible.

Got Diesel?

We finally got a large quantity of Diesel today, 2000 litres!

That means we can relax for a while before we buy more, probably we should try to get some when we use 1000.

Yesterday was a quiet day, Highlights were Nanayah got me a thermal coffee travel mug thing that I've been looking for. It acually works. I can stick hot coffee in just before I leave the house for the office and it's safe in my bag being transported through any Lagos Pot-hole. And it is still hot when I get to the office, even an hour later it's warm to drink. I think you can use things at starbucks and get a discount for using your own mug.

Discovered Dan's Blog today, well done Dan. Who else is gonna start one?

updates

I got the results from TMA02. 90%! It would have been better had I not made a stupid mistake converting hexadecimal number to decimal...

Also, I weighed in this morning at 86.3Kg and I'm very very happy. I may still meet my target of 85 by Christmas!

One more Nigerian Sunday in 2004

At the project office yesterday we had 10 people in! See what money can do! 5 of the missing utility company people showed up, so I guess that proves that they appreciate being part of the bonus scheme.

Last night we ran out of diesel so we had to shut down the generator so that we could have some power to go to bed with, brushing teeth, A/C and reading lights make life better. So rather than sit in the dark for hours we went to Pats bar. Pats has a 'disco' night on Saturday, just european club tunes dished out by an incompetent DJ, but it's still quite fun especially the antics of 'Indian Dancing Man'. An Indian Gentleman who dances alone all night just stopping to drink a glass of water once in a while.

Sunday was a late starter because of us not having power much through the night, we headed out for lunch at about 1pm and we went to Victoria Palace Hotel where they do an indian Buffet.

After Lunch I took a shower and then went to get my hair cut, I drove myself, which is fun on Sundays because there is very little traffic but it's a nightmare any other day of the week. Then we went to the Ikoyi Golf Club for the afternoon to sit in the cool breeze and enjoy water and wine.

So this is my Penultimate Sunday in Nigeria, I probably shouldn't write here exactly when I'm travelling back for christmas. I'm wondering if I should try and get to the beach next sunday, better than snow when I get home.

Yesterday was an average friday, went to the project office about 3 and tried to do as much as I could with the Ikoyi data, we are really pushing the data entry now, Yesterday they reached 89,500 forms, that's 4,500 since tuesday afternoon. We tried to encourage as many as possible to come in on Saturday to help us enter as many as possible.

Had a curry at Victoria Palace hotel, a place in walking distance of the house but we have to drive to avoid the danger of falling down a ditch. After dinner we went over to Bob's I stayed for just an hour because I was quite bored there.

Now, Today, Saturday I'm waiting for Mike and Dad to get back from shopping so that I can go over to the project office to see how well things are going over there. I'm expecting there to be at least 3 people there. Not really enough but because they are paid per form today I expect them to enter more than on an average day.

More later if I find time to write.

Music and Stuff I miss

I've ordered the new Green Day album, based purely on the 'Boulevard of Broken dreams' track. I liked 'American Idiot' but it was a tad too political for me to want to buy it, but BoBD is to me, an example of REAL music. I'm tired of all the Coldplay clones that have dominated all the tracks I've been hearing, finally a real rock record, not a 'Greatest Hits' (Pixies) and with no 'tongue in cheek' (The Darkness).

I'm also looking forward to the manic street preachers lifeblood album, mainly because it's the first new album since 'Know Your Enemy' and I thought the Love of Richard Nixon Track was a bit weak, probably because I don't really care about Richard Nixon, except he's Quite funny in Futurama, but 1985 is a Manics classic, and according to reviews this album is one of their greats.

I've got notification that a huge pile of cd's and dvds have arrived at home so I'm hoping these are among them, ready for me to enjoy when I get home.

N... got to see a pharmacist today about her eye that's been giving her trouble since a policeman slapped her. Unfortunately the Pharmacist only specialised in Gynaecology so that wasn't much use! She didn't have time to get to the optician so she promised me she'll try tomorrow.

The Data Entry staff are really responding to the new Bonus system most of them are really trying to get over 150 forms entered a day, some are even approaching 250! I just hope they are keeping up with the quality.

The Utility company want to see the Ikoyi forms next week so I've promised to try to clean up some of the more obvious problems. I personally started work on checking the forms, and I hope to get over early tomorrow to work on them. The Utility company staff haven't been turning up, just making us wonder where they are exactly.

Just heard on Sky news that board games are selling very well this year. Weird, I was browsing amazon for board games yesterday but couldn't find any of the ones recommended to me. If you want a good board game, look at what the Germans are playing. Germans are to Board Games what Canadians are to Maple Syrup.

Nigerian Police & NEPA, A product of government corruption and sanctions

N... had a serious problem last night, she was on her way to buy some food in a taxi, when the car in front of them suddenly veered off the road into a gate. Fearing people might be injured and needing help she asked the taxi driver to go over and see if they were ok.

Suddenly the police show up and try to arrest everybody for 'Armed Robbery'. The fact that nobody was armed, and nobody was robbed didn't matter to them. It seems the gates that were hit belonged to the home of some general or other and the police assumed it was an attempted break in, and treated the 'suspects' accordingly. N..., a 25 year old girl, was kicked, slapped and beaten just for being a good samaritan. These idiot police obviously saw that there was no threat, and just took the opportunity to extort some money. You can guarantee that if real armed robbers came they'd be driving off in the other direction as fast as possible.

Eventually, after 4 hours or so of beatings and threatening behaviour, shooting out the tyres of the two cars, these criminals let her call somebody to come ad vouch for her. She couldn't call me, as soon as the police saw me they'd know that there's more money here. Luckily a friend of ours, Joey, happens to be the son of ex Deputy Governor of Lagos State (Mrs Kofo Bucknor-Akerele) and he lives near to the area N... was in. Connections matter a lot here. So she called Joey to come and vouch for her and help her out. He was very happy to come and shout at them, and eventually after a big fat bribe, they let everybody go, even appologising for not listening to their protests of innocence.

I only found out in the morning when she came to see me, with a bruised face. I'd Better get Joey a bottle of whisky to say thanks.

Other than that we had an eventful day with NEPA. We recieved the bill today and it was even higher than last months, and we've had very little nepa in that period. So Mike went down to complain about it and came back with a NEPA inspector to see our meter.



Apparenty somewhere in that mess is an ILLEGAL CONNECTION! Well, we certainly would never knowingly do that, and we always hire an electrician to do any work on it. But it seems he was right, we have some lights that show us when nepa is on so that we know we can change over from the generator. These lights had been wired in to each of the three phases BEFORE the meter. Not good. We've had it corrected now and hopefully we can go back on the NEPAs metered rate, rather than their extortionate fixed rate.

I forgot to mention that the new accountant did start on Monday, Her name is Ome (oh may) and she seems smart. She's finished all the accounts up to the end of 2003, so we've decided to just move her over to the project office for a week or so to help out with our data entry, so we can finish up over there.

12 days to go,?

Finally got to have our meeting today, to discuss the data that we are handing over to the utility company. I was a bit aprehensive, worrying about what problems they were going to find. Did our Data entry staff mess up? Did the enumerators just make up rubbish in an office somewhere to put on our forms. Nope, It was all good!

I'm glad I stuck to my guns to make the data sanitation and verification system as strict as possible. The Nigerians wanted me to relax the rules so that we could push the forms through faster. Somehow they just don't understand that old americanism of garbage in, garbage out.
People are supposed to get bills from this data and if we can get complete and correct information then why shouldn't we? I get the blame for all the problems the data entry staff have to handle. Now I can see all the stress was worth it.

That's not to say there's not much work left to do, there's a lot of problems in the data, and we'll need a number of people to be going through those. But the vast majority are looking good.

I had hours of fun clicking through the trophy room at http://www.419eater.com last night. My favourite by far is this fellow. It's given me the inspiration for a new hobby, just can't wait for my next 419 spam email.

TMA02 done

Just finished TMA02 for my OU course, I just have to email it to my tutor tomorrow after checking it through in the morning.

Nothing much going on today, I didn't go to the beach because I wanted to complete this course work, but I hope to get there at least once before christmas, just so when I get back to the UK I can say, 'I was sunbathing on the beach just a few days ago'.

We've got a new accountant starting tomorrow morning, she'll be working at our VI office. I haven't met her yet, but mike interviewed her and thinks she's smart enough to figure out the logic of our filing system.

All Curried Up And Ready For Bed

Hah, I'm such a leader!

Now Dad and Mike have started my diet! Dad's Even given up Beer! He went to Bob's Bar tonight and only drank Water, pretty good going. Mikes Been on the diet for 2 weeks now but Now my dad has started he's staying on phase 1 an extra week or so to give moral support. I'm happy to have a go at shedding a few more kilos before the christmas bulk up.

Went out for Curry tonight and the only rice we had on the table was Nanayah's Biriyani, (she's not on the diet). The Waitress wasn't happy complaining it will be 'too much gravy' for us... I'm loving the Dal curries, and Tikka kebabs combination.

Work was pretty uneventful, only 6 data entry showed up. We also delivered a memo to let staff know of layoffs at the end of the year. I made sure to say that 4 of the most efficient data entry staff would be kept next year for essential verification work.

We are seriously considering hiring a British CAD engineer. It took our guys 10 hours to draw a canal on an A4 map today...

The Generator at the house is going mental I think, I'm guessing the voltage regulator or something. The tone of the motor keeps changing making it impossible to sleep, and it upsets the lights and all the UPSs. We're trying to get Daniel our Belgian, Accordian-Playing Maintenance Guy to get over and look at it but he's been busy with bigger customers, like the local Cinema's Christmas decorations. Na Wa O!

This must be Thursday...

So I've worked out I've got 2 more Thursdays In Nigeria this year, I'll be glad to get home but I was hoping to be a little further with the project by now.

I just started ordering my Christmas pressies, should hopefully all arrive before I get home. I'm gonna be freezing I'm sure coming for 35°c every day to what, < 0 ?

Still, can't wait any more...

CAVEAT AUDITOR

The Auditors were in today for our corporate accounts, I had a headache so stayed in bed trying to shift it but came down to find my office full of people going through accounts. I didn't even have a chair to sit in to check my email.

About 2pm they annouced that it is usual for us to provide them lunch. 'We don't eat lunch here.' we told them truthfully. 'Well you can send out for some'. they reply. I can't stand being taken advantage of, especially someone as lousy as a tax auditor. Needless to say I didn't get any work done untill they left, meaning I had no time to go to the project office to hand over the sallary cheques, I needed to calculate the bonus the data entry staff are due first. The Auditors are coming back tomorrow too, thanks.

As it's the first day of the month I opened my Advent Calendar today, Thanks mum. I haven't had chocolate for months.

Forgive my latin, it's a long time since I've written it and I'm sure I'm using the wrong declension or participle here.

Wahala dey! [There's a problem]

So yesterday, we had a meeting arranged at our Project office with the head of IT of the utility company, the idea being to finally get down to some of the issues with our data that need to be resolved before we hand over the bulk of it.

Mike and I arrived at the Project office exactly on time despite us having to climb the stairs, The Generator was on since there's no mains power and apparently that 'can't carry' the lift. There's a big downside to having a top floor office! We waited in our office for confirmation of the meetings office, and just as I was logging on to the server to collect some statistics, to take to the meeting the generator cut out leaving us in darkness and the pitiful cry of 15 UPS. Great I thought, NEPA is back! The whole of Lagos seemed to be without power, including us on V.I. for the previous 24 hours so perhaps they'd fixed the problem. 5 minutes later we are still in darkness and I have to start running around shutting down the server and PC's before the UPS batteries die.

So were no sat in the dark, no AC, very little ventilation from the windows that overlook the central courtyard of the ring doughnut shaped building. At 2pm (an hour late) one of the people due to appear at the meeting calls into our office, but he did not know where the meeting was, and did not know where the department head was. We waited and waited, until 4pm when everyone was closing up and we decided to go home.

At 5 pm the head of IT calls us to find out where we are, he's apparently been in his office all day. A shame he couldn't answer our calls that we made before the power went out!

So that was yesterday.