Africa Cup of Nations, Ghana vs Nigeria,

Nigeria have just scraped through the group stages of the Africa Cup of Nations 2008. They are the group B runners up which means they face the Group A Winners, Ghana in the Quarter Finals February 3rd 2008 in Accra.

This evenings game against Benin was very worrying for Nigeria, I feared they were going to "do an England", having lost to Ivory Coast and drawn with Mali they not only needed to win this game, but Mali had to Lose to Ivory Cost, in a game played at the same time today.

The results?

Nigeria won 2 - 0

Ivory Coast won 3 - 0.

I Hope Chxta is happy.

Africa Cup of Nations, Ghana 2008

I'm happy that BBC are covering the Cup of nations this time around. Even if it is on BBCi. It's the only football tournament I'm interested in these days.

Ghana and Guinea are about to kick off, I hope it's a good tournament for Ghana after the world cup, and of course Nigeria.

If you are in the UK and want to watch the match use the red button on bbc one. or look for channels 301-303 on freeview.

Back later.

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".

Reggae Reggae Sauce

I know many of my readers are from the UK so this only applies to them.

How many people, after watching Wednesdays Dragons Den are now desperate to try Reggae Reggae Sauce?

Flying: Your Patriotic Duty

I don't know if you have seen the adverts or not, but I thought it was humorous enough to share.

www.unlimited-spurt.org/

Also check out the alternative viewpoint in the copy of the printed ad.

Are there any sensible alternatives for flying to Nigeria?

Still in the UK

I'm still in the UK, no confirmed dates for my return yet.

I've spent my time working on a new CMS enabled corporate website for my employer, and in my spare time a new template for this blog, hopefully to include the new blogger features.

Apart from the dreadful Christmas Oil Pipeline Explosion that killed 260 people and the complaints about the ongoing fuel shortages, I haven't heard much from Nigeria. Shamefully I admit I haven't been reading much of the Nigerian press websites

It seems every other blog has jumped in on the "Celebrity" Big Brother Racism row. In my opinion Programmes like Big Brother are good reasons to throw away our televisions, but it seems some people do watch avidly including many Nigerian friends here in the UK. I'm not going to add anything to it myself, except suggest you read Nkem's posts (Bigot Brother, Bigot Brother coverage)

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.

I've Escaped!

No I haven't, not at all really, I've just arrived back in the UK for a few weeks. I have a holiday coming up and later two OU exams to sit, so I'll be telecommuting for a while.

I had a really pleasant flight back with Virgin Atlantic, Making up for most of my pain for my last Flight. Actually I received a nice lot of Flying Club miles after the last escapade so I have already forgiven them, although a voucher or just a brown envelope full of cash would have gone down better.

I had a window seat, with a vacant seat next to me. The lady occupying the seat spied an old friend sitting in the back of the plane and joined her for most of the flight. The space next to me gave me enough comfort to sleep quite a bit, always good on a long haul flight if you can do it. Usually with a stranger sat next to me fidgeting I find it very difficult to nod off. I think I'm worried about falling onto their shoulder and dribbling or something.

We arrived in Heathrow on time and exiting the plane was a calm and civilised affair, something quite rare on Lagos flights. There were no sniffer dogs waiting to catch the drug mules, or snail smugglers, whatever they are trying to catch. And my bag appeared not 5 minutes after I had reached the carousel.

I did note the new Iris Scanning machines at the immigration section, I was hoping to register my eyeballs with the government before leaving the UK in June so that I could give these things a go, but I missed the sign for the registration desk just after the security screening and found I wasn't allowed back to give it a go. Maybe next time.

Nothing much to Report. I suspended the Data Entry procedure at 19,000 forms because the remaining forms require a revisit to field to correct ommissions and irregularities before we can enter them. We need another 4,000 to complete this phase of our contract.

In the mean time, if you are missing news from Nigeria please visit the following blogs, all of which I read daily.

African Shirts, Musings of a Naija Man, NaijaBlog

Please note this is not an exhaustive list, I am working on adding a links section to this site after I upgrade the design. sometime soon depending on Google's upgrades to Blogger Beta.