Happy New Year

Hey guys,

It's 2008 and I have not left the shores of the United Kingdom in the past year. The issues that have prevented me returning to Nigeria are still ongoing and seem just as close to being resolved as they have been for the past 12 months or so.

I have moved on, I'm working self employed as a consultant engineer at a large IT firm. The work is a little boring, and I am starting to detest driving long distances (400 mile round trips sometimes.)

My OU courses finished well, I didn't get the Distinctions I was after, but had to settle with Grade 2 or 'B' for both courses. I don't know if it was the extra workload with the 90 points instead of 60 that I have done in previous courses, the fact that one of the courses was really difficult for me, or if it is the extra long hours of driving around like a sales rep struggling to hit their target.

I've more or less decided to stick to 60 points for this coming year, but I haven't selected which course yet. I need to choose soon though.

I do plan to update this blog more often with News from Nigeria, but it all depends on the time I have available.

Old News Update part 1 : Umaru Yar'Adua's inauguration

I have just finished a rather difficult assignment for OU which has been taking up most of my free time the last few weeks. So now I will finally get around to making a few updates which should have been done a while ago.

Yar'Adua Inaugurated as President of Nigeria

If you remember, I made some comments on the Nigerian Election and Yar'Adua's successful bid for the presidency. He has since been sworn in and visited the G8 summit in Germany and made promises to improve the election process.

He has declared his personal assets of $5 Million. He has now decided to form a "Government of National Unity" inviting members of the All Nigeria Peoples Party(ANPP), Action Congress (AC), Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) to join with Yar'Aduas Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to form a government... I am sure this will take a lot of effort to sort out.

Meanwhile, there has been a long wait for the government to be formed and it looks like, finally, there will be a government in Nigeria very soon.

I am sure there are plenty of contracts to be signed when they finally get to work.

Update

Hey

I haven't updated since April, mostly because I've had little to report, and I'm feeling a bit down that I have been out of 9ja over 6 months now.

I've been making notes on some blog posts I'd like to do, and hopefully those will come out over the next few days. I've also been working on the new template for this blog. I've worked out a colour scheme I love, and now I'm just piecing together the CSS file so that everything will look, great. Should be ready any day, given enough free time.

Personally things are looking better for me, I have some work here in the UK. Nothing particularly challenging to be honest, just lots of driving around and lugging computer bits about, but it pays reasonably well. I'm still on the look out for the perfect job.

I have been continuing my OU studies and I have to say T209 is the most difficult course I have done yet. I am not enjoying it, yet I know I am learning some valuable skills in report writing and reading technical documents. I'm also trying to learn speed reading, because of the vast volumes of material I have had to read, but so far I'm not much better. My other course, M256 is going great.

Sad to see some Nigerian bloggers (Nkem and Chrome) have taken the red pill. Let's hope they find their way back here soon.

Nigeria and Me.

I've had a number of comments asking why I'm not back in Nigeria.

Simple fact is that I was Supposed to be starting work on a new project in Nigeria at the beginning of the year but as those of you who have done business in Nigeria will no doubt know, such things very rarely happen on time in Nigeria, especially when elections are due.

I work with a formula, which I'm sure is a re-utterance of many other more enlightened people:

Time to do Business in Nigeria = Time Anticipated * Nigerian Factor

The Nigerian Factor is a concept quite hard to grasp without spending time in Nigeria. In my experience, in this formula it can be expressed as a number between 2 and infinity. The number is proportional to the number of people involved in the contract process with weighting for the political seniority of those involved and inversely proportional to the amount of bribes thrown around. Clearly bribery is out of the question if we want to keep our morals intact, so waiting is what we do.

Unless the miracle happens and a contract is signed I will be sitting here in the UK. I can't wait forever, so I may be making some difficult choices soon.

Meanwhile, I am just submitting my first sets of coursework for my two OU courses for this year, M256: "Software Development with Java" and T209: "Information and Communication Technologies: people and interactions".

Home for Christmas

I'm back in the UK for Christmas, Cold, Damp and Foggy, just how Christmas should be IMHO. Lots to do before the day, so I doubt I will be blogging much.

I also have got the results of my two OU exams, as well as the overall course results.

For M255 (Object Oriented Programming with Java) I got 88% in the exam, with my overall coursework mark of 99% gives me a Distinction.

For MT262 (Putting Computer Systems to Work) I got 95%, with my overall coursework mark of 97% also gives me a Distinction.

Oddly before I started the courses I would have said I knew Java better, but perhaps that was a hindrance considering that I achieved a much better score in the C++ exam (MT262) than the Java (M255). It's surely a testament to the OU teaching material anyway.

Exams done.

Finished my second and last exam for 2006 this afternoon with over an hour to spare. I spent 20 minutes checking through and tweaking some answers and then left.

Reading the OU forums for the course I see that many other people left early. I'm not sure but I think we are the first year to sit this course as there were no past papers available for revision, except a specimen exam sent with the course.

I noticed a few errors in some questions which was quite annoying. You'd think someone would have proof read it?

Well I'm still hopefull of a distinction (85+%) but time will tell. Results should be available near Christmas. I've almost settled on which courses to take next year but quite shocked at the price rise. I'm going to need to find £950 just for next year!

I will now be rushing around preparing for my return to Lagos very shortly.

Technorati Tags: Lagos, Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria, exam, Open University, M255

One down...

My exam went well. Questions were quite taxing but I think I may have scraped it. It was nice to see quite a few people my own age there, or maybe I'm just getting older?

So MT262 (putting computer systems to work) is finished now. I hope to gain a distinction but one can never really tell how well one did until the results come, can you?

M255 (object-oriented programming with Java) is coming up next week, and I'm more comfortable with that one than todays.

The results of my last TMA coursework assignments were, 94% and 100% for MT262 and M255 respectively.

Exams are coming

I've just submitted my final piece of coursework for my Studies with OU in 2006. I am anticipating a very high overall score for the coursework in both courses, however I must still achieve 85% in the exam to achieve the Distinction grade I am aiming for. I managed it last year with T224 but this year I have two exams and both are very technical, requiring a lot of study.

I have a few things I'd like to complete for the various projects in Nigeria while I am home, and also I am off to Rhodes next week for a short vacation. On top of that I need to find time to go and reapply for my Nigerian visa in London, and visit friends and family.

Then if I have time there's the usual household maintenance that normally occupies me here. I can see a gate that needs creosote and a lawn that needs some TLC from my window right now...

Technorati Tags: Nigeria, Open University, Exam