Ngozi's Blog

Hello people!

Hope you guys are doing great. Today started out so sloooow… I got to work and for the first few hours, absolutely nothing was happening. This new role of mine is so very different from my last role where Monday mornings were always chaotic. Today, I spent close to an hour taking selfies in the bathroom. I really liked the selfies so I did what my boss always asks us to do- I went the extra mile and took proactive steps and got one of the cleaners to help me take full-length pictures of me in my new dress… I threatened to fire him if he didn’t.

Turns out that he’s a pro… there was no need to threaten him because the guy takes pictures for a lotta girls in the office. When I told him to help me, he asked, “Ahn ahn… Ngozi, since when did you join them?”

My phone is bad and I don’t know if it can be fixed 🙁 Almost 3 weeks ago, it just packed up one day and died… so you guys can imagine all the stuff I’ve lost. I don’t have anyone’s number anymore, except the numbers I’ve always had in my head. And I’m one of those people who keep text messages and chats so it’s painful that I have lost messages from as far back as early last year. I had so many romantic messages from former toasters that I could’ve used to easily destroy their future political careers… I just thank God that all my pictures and porn clips are saved in my memory card and my memory card is fine 😉

Meanwhile, I didn’t tell you guys it was my birthday on the 1^st of July… ( ._.)

It fell smack in the middle of my depressed phase. I planned to put up a blog post that morning because talking to you guys always ALWAYS leaves me feeling better. I was going to list 32 things I’m grateful for…  and I chose 32 because that’s how old I am, but that day came and went and I had nothing to say.

I wasted the day because I had assumed that someone else had made plans. Yes, now I admit that it was very very stupid of me to make that kind of assumption, but it was because he (the someone else) had asked me several times what my plans were for my birthday. Even after I told him I had none, he still asked. Then on that day, he wanted to know exactly where I was at every point in time… Let me know when you get to the office… Where are you now?… Are you leaving the office? How long will you be gone for?… Are you home yet?… After all that, was it wrong for me to have assumed?

Anyway, that’s how it went till my day finished and nothing spectacular happened. I got 20 questions and nothing more. I was still new in Recruitment then and the work load was light, so apart from the fact that I was looking extra nice, it was a normal day like every other. It rained heavily that day so there was demonic traffic on my way home and I didn’t get home till very late. By that time, my friend who came to see me had gone home. I learned a very big lesson that day.

Two days later, to the glory of God, my phone died and I have had peace since then. Peace because the death of my phone brought about the end of all my secret friendships…

Did you ask, “What is a secret friendship?”

Well, I’ll tell you what it is… a secret friendship is one in which you and the person chat all the time on Whatsapp or BBM or whatever chatting mechanism people use these days. You keep up with each other’s lives, down to the tiniest details and yet, you are not friends in real life. You don’t go anywhere together, you’re never seen together, you don’t even see each other, but the person takes up so much of your time. He or she has a real life that you are not part of… their friends and family don’t even know you exist :’(

Who needs that kind of wahala?

Anyway, I’ve decided I’m going to fix another birthday for myself to make up for this very annoying one… I’ll pick a new date (probably sometime after I get paid for the month) and do something nice and small. I will also put up the 32 things I’m grateful for on my new birthday. I’ll let you guys know the date when I decide.

And I would like to thank everyone who sent a birthday message on Facebook… I didn’t see all the messages till the next day :’( and it was too bad because that woulda really made my day. Thank you guys so much!

Here are pictures of my new dress 😀

Have a lovely week!

          

ps- I didn’t really have anything to say… just wanted to show you my dress ( ._.)

Ok bye.

Hello beautiful people!

How have you guys been?

I feel like I’m just crawling out of a very dark hole after weeks in hiding… which is technically what I’m doing. It’s been ages since my last post and A LOT has happened. I stayed away because I thought I would have a different ending to this story, but I don’t. So I will have to tell you as it is…

It started at the end of May when I finally lost my client for good. Again, I was pulled out of their office and brought back to head office and I was stripped of everything; my files, my official line, the project I was working on and most of all, my pride. The only thing they left me with was my underwear. At the start of all this drama, I wasn’t fazed at all… I had been there, done that. In fact, I was over-confident, strutting around the office like I was untouchable. I almost printed a T-shirt with the words;

                                                Do you know who I am? Nigga ask about me!

This is because I was so sure that my client would fight for me again, and would win again, and all would be well with the world once more.  They (my client) kept telling me to not be worried, they were going to bring me back. However, as the days turned to weeks, reality set in. Some other dude was sent to replace me, he was given all my stuff and that was the end. And it wasn’t like I was asked to take my replacement’s former role. I wasn’t assigned any duties at all, I had no desk. Nothing.

I came to work every day and hid in one of the back offices till closing time just to avoid my colleagues. I didn’t want to answer any questions and I didn’t want sympathy, genuine or fake. And because my colleagues were used to me not being around (plus the fact that I had no desk in that big office), no one ever noticed that I was missing. I took advantage of my invisibility by skipping work a few times. One time, I stayed away for two days straight. I was at home, lying in bed, eating like a pig and feeling sorry for myself. I showed up to work on the third day and only the receptionist noticed that she hadn’t seen me the day before.

I went to see our HR a couple of times about assigning me to a new desk and giving me a proper role and she kept promising to look into it. I became terribly depressed… the kind of depression that makes you burst into tears for no reason whatsoever. I was praying I would get fired and save myself the stress of writing a resignation letter. Then one day, as I was sneaking out of the office, I got caught by one of the powers that be and he asked where I was going. I wanted to lie- I’m going to use the ATM… I’m not feeling well… my pet dog is in labour– but there was no point, so I told him the truth, that I was going home.

His eyes almost popped out of his head in shock. His neck vein was throbbing, and it grew to the size of his tie. It was by God’s special grace that he didn’t have a stroke that day. It was actually closing time, but there is an unwritten rule of Ass-kissing that doesn’t allow people leave the office until an hour or two after the official closing time. The very next day, first thing in the morning, I was posted to Recruitment Department and that’s where I have been since.

I am still trying to settle in and it has been so hard. First of all, I got banned from speaking during interviews because, according to my new supervisor, I was giving the candidates a hard time. She said my standards are too high and that I needed to get down from my high horse. Every minute she reminded me; this is not your client’s office o! We don’t do this here or we don’t do that here.

In my short time in this new team, I have met and interviewed like a million people for a million different roles. There are days when that is all I do, from morning till evening. And after meeting all these people, I have come to the conclusion that all Polytechnics and a good number of Universities in Nigeria need to be razed to the ground and converted to cassava farmlands and poultries, or they can just be left as dry desert lands. The products of these schools are proof that our Educational system is in trouble. I have heard gbagauns and I have been told lies that have made me question life.

There are people who claim to have been born in the 80’s or early 90’s but look like they are in the late stages of menopause. You begin to dig deeper and they get confused because they start mixing dates up… then you whip out a calculator and ask them to calculate it themselves. When they are finally backed into a corner, some change their minds and decide that it must be a typo from the cybercafé where they typed the CV. The diehards stick to their story and refuse to admit defeat. You ask one last time… give them a chance to repent and their bogus answer remains the same:

Yes, I graduated from Secondary School at the age of twelve… because I was a gifted child.

Then there was a day I asked another candidate why she wants to leave her current job and she said, “Well, I want to leave because I just want to wide my stethoscopes.” I actually choked on my water. I almost asked her how much she bought her university degree.

And don’t let me start with the email addresses of some of these people! Nigerian youths need to know that they can’t expect to be taken seriously when they send in a CV with their email address as [email protected]…

Or [email protected]

Or [email protected]

I see stuff like that and I am tempted to buy akara and wrap it in that CV. I am trying to console myself with the fact that there must be a reason I am here… maybe God wants me to help people so that they don’t go through half the crap I went through when I was still job searching.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I am now a Recruitment Analyst. It doesn’t sound half as cool as HR Analyst does it? The only good thing is that my new supervisor is a decent human being. Plus I have developed a huge crush on one of my colleagues *bats eyelids and twirls hair*

I should go now… I am so sorry for the ridiculously long post. And I still have more gist o!

( ._.)

We’ll continue catching up tomorrow.

Have a great weekend guys!

 

Hello wonderful people!

Good morning… How are you this beautiful morning? In case you can’t tell, I’m in a great mood 😀 and I’ll tell you why…

I have a colleague who lives with her sister and brother-in-law in my area. Whenever I have to go to the mainland for work, I usually get a ride with them. Her brother-in-law drops us off in front of the office and it makes life a million times easier for both of us. However, her bro-in-law is a bawse… nigga can wake up on any day of the week and decide to not go to work or he can decide to show up in his office at wheneverthefuckhefeelslike o’clock. On days like that, getting to work can be a real pain. We have to stand at our bus stop for ages before we get a straight bus going our way. We still get dropped off in front of our office, but the difference is that the buses are not air-conditioned like our bro-in-law’s car and in the buses, we get squished under random people’s armpits… and our perfumes get mixed up :’(

Today was one of those bus days. We were on the expressway, not far from the office and our idiot driver was on full speed. Another idiot, also on full speed attempted to enter the same lane our driver was entering. Neither idiot stopped and as people screamed and shouted and called for the blood of Jesus, our bus rammed into the car and spun a bit till  the idiot driver managed to get it under control. Luckily for us, no other car was around so no one else was involved. Both vehicles were badly dented but the guy in the car didn’t stop… he sped off and continued on his way to wherever.

The other passengers were still shook up after the accident and a few of the ladies were still screaming. Me, I was just excited that I had a new blog post. And not just that… here’s the real reason I’m excited;

Two weeks ago, there was a prayer thing in church. It was for some days and we met every evening to pray. At the start of each meeting, our pastor would encourage people to share their testimonies. The idea was so that other people would be encouraged when they hear testimonies… like a reassurance that their prayers are not in vain and will be answered.

So, one day, I was moved to share my testimony. It was about reconnecting with two people I’ve been trying to reach for over a year… one person I’d been trying to reach is in the right position to help me get a better job, possibly that oil block I’ve been dreaming of and the other person has the power make me president  (-_-)

As I said, reaching them has been near impossible so when I got those phone calls from both of them at different times within that week, you bet I thought of it as a miracle… it was a testimony worth sharing. However, immediately after sharing this testimony, I felt stupid. The hall went quiet and people were staring at me with blank faces. I could hear crickets in the background. In their minds, they were like, “You got two phones calls and so what? Shall we then tear our pant in excitement?” It was the pastor who saved me when he started to applaud and only a few people picked up and clapped along with him before the applause  died down. Talk about awkward moments! I sat down in shame and vowed that I would never embarrass myself like that again!

You see, my church likes juicy testimonies… the kind that make people gasp in shock and then rejoice at the ending. So, if you did not wake up in a coven surrounded by witches boiling your destiny in a huge pot, or if you were not in a car accident in which the car somersaulted at least five times and caught fire, then you better keep that shit to yourself. No one wants to hear about your phone calls… unless the phone call was from a dead relative, warning you about some future mishap.

And that’s why I’m in such a great mood! I finally have a testimony that will get a round of applause… and if I deliver it well enough, maybe embellish it with one or two somersaults, the choir might burst into song and dance. I could even add that my spirit told me not to go anywhere this morning… or say that the driver was drunk. I’m overwhelmed with all the possibilities!!

Do you guys think I should give a special number first? Should I start crying during the special number or in the middle of the testimony? My fear is that I have a tendency to get carried away… I might mistakenly start singing that Dorobuchi song while the choir is singing. Or am I the only one who thinks it sounds like a church song? I’m getting confused…

I gotta go now… I need to practice my delivery.

Have a wonderful day!

Hello people! :'(

I’m ill… I had a funky piece of turkey from the office yesterday. It looked funny, but the chef claimed that it was grilled  turkey so I ordered it. I should’ve suspected something was wrong when I could hear it clucking and flapping it’s wings, but I was hungry, so I ate it for dinner when I got home. Then I had my bath and went to bed pretty early…

I woke up in the middle of the night (around the time my pastor says that witches start their meetings)… almost 1:00am and I felt terrible. My intestines were dancing skelewu in slow motion. I didn’t have to think too hard about what the problem was… I knew it was that demonic turkey fighting to be let out. What I wasn’t sure of was which end it wanted to be let out of.

I had some water and walked around the house a bit so that he (yes, I decided it was a male piece of turkey) could move around and make up his mind. Finally, I threw up. And I’ve been projectile vomiting all over the place since then. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep. By this morning, I was sure there was nothing left inside of me… I literally puked out my guts and some brain matter. Still feeling like crap, I got ready for work and called my colleague, a lady I go to work with. I told her what happened and she asked, “Who are you trying to impress by going to work? Do you want to be puking every 30minutes?”

I thought about all the pregnancy rumors that would start going round the office if I was running to the bathroom to throw up every 30minutes… or what if he, the turkey, turns around and decides to start coming out the other end? All my silent farting, a skill that I am quite proud of, will no longer be so silent… it might even yield unwanted results. So I stayed back.

I’m grossing you guys out right? Sorry… I just never imagined that my first day off would be like this. First of all, I never imagined that when I take a day off claiming to be ill that I would actually be ill. I should be on my way to the cinemas to watch 4/5 movies at a stretch or running personal errands or even going to visit friends, not lying in bed trying to hold in my farts.

Another reason it’s annoying me is that I’m a record keeper. Most of my records are personal records and almost all of them don’t make sense, but I still keep them. Yesterday morning, I was bragging to two of my colleagues that I am the only one in the company who has never taken a day off for any reason. I also added that I’m the only one who has never been sick and had to go to the hospital. It’s pointless records like that that I like to keep… like there’s ever going to be a cash prize for being the only person in my office bold enough to turn off the AC that day the adapter caught fire. Big deal. If I had been roasted alive by the socket that day, life would go on…

Anyway, I’ve broken my own record and I’m home for the day. I’m feeling much better actually… but I honestly don’t know what to do with myself. I might go get some groceries later and make a nice large salad. I’ve had coffee this morning and I don’t have appetite for anything else, but a salad should be safe enough abi? Then, if I’m good enough, I’ll probably go for a run in the evening… *sigh*

I don’t know… Enjoy your day people :-*

Hello beautiful people!!…

I’ve been meaning to tell you about church on Sunday. This was supposed to be Monday morning’s post but so much has happened this week.

It started some months ago, when we had this program in church. It was in our head parish in Port-Harcourt and three quarters of my church traveled to Rivers state for the program. Throughout the program, a number of guest pastors ministered. I didn’t keep up with the events but from all the posters around church, I knew that the star of the show- the show stopping pastor, the one for whom the church had raised so much hype- was reserved for the last day of the program.

The last day was on a Sunday and the rest of us in Lagos didn’t have church service as usual. There was the customary praise, worship, prayers and offering, but instead of a normal sermon, we watched the Port-Harcourt service on a large Tv screen via live feed.

It was an… intriguing service. That is really the best way I can describe it. I sat in church and watched (on Tv) as people were called out one after the other. The guy (show-stopper) would walk down an aisle, with his eyes roaming the crowd as he preached. The closer he got, the more uneasy people became. Some would stiffen and almost hold their breaths till he passed while others would shift uncomfortably in their seats. They might look in his general direction to show that they were paying attention to the sermon, but they all avoided any eye-contact.

Finally, he would pause somewhere and pick his next victim.

“You…” he would say and everyone would turn to look at him. “Your name is So-and-so.”

So-and-so would then stand up gently and nod solemnly. The crowd around So-and-so would immediately relax because they are not So-and-so. They are out of danger and will therefore not have their dirty linen aired in public. But even though they are relieved, they are also slightly disappointed because they know they might not get the sensational answers to their life’s problems that they came looking for. Show-stopper pastor would then ask So-and-so a series of questions in the form of statements.

“You are not married…” *So-and-so nods*

“You were in a relationship for 6 years and the man dumped you and married your tenant, the same woman he cheated on you with.”  *So-and-so nods and then starts to sob*

“You vowed to never trust another man again…”  *So-and-so is weeping*

“In fact, you have been going through one heart break, after another. Men have promised you marriage many times and just when you think it’s about to happen, they leave you.” There’s no need for So-and-so to nod anymore because by now, a member of the technical crew is standing beside her and shoves a microphone close to her lips so that we can hear her breathe heavily and mumble a weak “Yes”.

The crowd is silent and watching with rapt attention.

Finally, the part they’ve all been waiting for comes:

“There is a tree…” he drags out the word ‘treeee’ “…in the middle of your father’s compound in the village. Many years ago, your grandfather raised an alter to the deity in your village. He vowed that no woman in his family will ever get married.”

The crowd gasps and erupts with Chai!’s and Blood-of–Jisox!’s. There’s some God forbid’s and also a lot of head shaking.

“When you were a baby, he buried one of your used diapers under that tree and said that any attempt to settle down with a man will turn to shit”, he adds as the crowd exclaims even louder.

What then follows is intense prayers and, depending on the size of her grandpa’s treeee and how much poop was in the dirty diaper, So-and-so might fall to the floor under the anointing. He reassures her, after praying, that “the chains have been broken” and the crowd cheers and whistles and bursts into song and dance.

He continues the sermon and the cycle repeats itself with a different victim.

Fast forward 6 months later and I found myself sitting in church, holding my breath and hoping secretly that I too will not be called out. The week before, we had been given flyers and posters and were told to invite our neighbors, our friends and enemies… apparently, while I made paper planes out of my flyers, people invited other people because our church hall was packed and I was lucky to get a seat towards the back.

I’m laughing about it now but on that day, it wasn’t so funny. All of us had one thing in common; we all wanted answers, the only difference being that some were more desperate for answers than others. Some of you reading this might understand, the rest of you might not. Whatever the case, you gotta admit that there are crazy problems or situations you find yourself in that you can’t make sense of. You can’t explain why. Things get so bad that you begin to wonder if it’s normal… coupled with the fact that we are Nigerians and we were born naturally suspicious.

Different people handle it in their own ways. Strong people get up every day and fight. The not-so-strong barely manage to stay hopeful while the weak give up and accept the treeee and the buried dirty diaper. They wait for the miraculous solution from a show-stopping pastor.

I’m not judging anyone… I’ve had my moments of desperation and weakness. I was sitting in that church wasn’t I? And even though I didn’t want to be called out, it would have been vindicating to hear that grandpa buried my baby CV under a tree when I was still a baby and vowed that my first job would suck. That would be easier to accept than the fact that maybe I’m not qualified for the kind of oil-block job I want.  I don’t have a better job because of my baby CV buried under my uncle’s tree… and if I’m lucky, no one will question why a 6 month old baby had a CV in the first place.

Another thing is, the baby CV story would’ve been better than the guy calling me out to tell me that the Holy Spirit is unhappy about my incessant wanking… one can never tell with these things so I preferred to go unnoticed.

Our service wasn’t as dramatic as the one we watched last year, but it was interesting enough. I wasn’t called out, but I got some answers. I even went for the evening service which was supposed to be a seminar for married couples. There were other single people there so it wasn’t weird being there at all.

I gotta go now cos I’ve exceeded my word limit. Maybe we will continue this conversation another time.

How about you guys though… do you believe in winch? I didn’t say ‘witch’ so you don’t imagine a pretty woman with a long crooked nose, wearing a black cloak and fancy black leather boots. I mean the real Nigerian destiny-destroying, progress-halting, coven-living winsh…

Do you believe or have you not yet gotten to that level of desperation? Or do you not have those kinds of problems?

I don’t know if I’ve made any sense today… smh.

Have a great weekend!