Ngozi's Blog

Good morning people!!!

Yeah, so I’m back here again today… I got to the office too early. After whining and bitching about work yesterday, I’m sitting here, already itching for the next challenge. The thing I’ve been working on for the past one week is finally done. I put everything I had into that project… it’s got my blood, sweat and cum in it. It gave me crazy days and sleepless nights but I’m proud of the work I did. And I should get results today…

Meanwhile, I had to seriously edit my last post this morning… I said some things I probably shouldn’t have, and even mentioned names I shouldn’t have. One friend warned me nicely about it, then Nkiru called and threatened to write my resignation letter herself if I didn’t change what I wrote.

I honestly meant no harm… I’m used to telling you guys almost everything! But I guess I shoulda known better. I keep forgetting that things are different now. I can’t be spewing half the nonsense I used to… my ex used to tell me that my big mouth would one day get me slapped or fired. Right now, I would rather be slapped than fired…

So what the hell would we be talking about?

Maybe I should just blog about food and love/relationships and STD cures from now on. Or maybe I should change this blog into one of those ‘Dear Ngozi’ blogs where people can talk about their problems and I can advice them…

Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m actually a bit upset… very upset with myself for being so silly and upset with all the unwritten rules of the corporate world.

And it’s more painful because I’ve been on such good behavior too… I’ve been quiet and well behaved and very hard working. I’ve told no disgusting sex jokes, I haven’t imitated anyone and even when people gbagaun, I don’t laugh in front of them. I always wait till I get home… Generally, I’ve been a good girl.

A few days after I resumed, my boss (the one who reminds me of Jesus) remembered that I have a blog. It wasn’t something I planned to ever mention… somehow, it was in my CV because my brother decided that my old CV was the reason I was so unemployable. So he edited it. By the time he was done, even I wanted to employ me… I looked so damn good on paper!! The CV-me had great interpersonal skills, she could cure cancer and she could even speak basic French. Who woulda thought that “ménage a trois” could pass as basic French?

Anyway, while trying to convince prospective employers of my great writing skills, my bro mentioned that I own a blog. This was the same brother who once told me that my blog should be rated-18 (VSNL)… smh…

So, when I went for the first interview, I went with the edited, blog-less copy. But as luck would have it, they printed out the blog-CV I had sent to their e-mail address. And every other interview or test after that, they had that copy.

Only my Jesus boss noticed it though… and like I said, a few days after I started, he remembered it. He asked, “So, what do you blog about?”

I was this close to saying, “Mostly God stuff, and the Holy spirit and the struggles I face in my Christian race to heaven.” Instead, I just said, “Nothing much sir… I no longer write so often.” Lord knows I didn’t want him here reading my crap.

Whatever!

It’s quiet today and I’m jobless. I think I’m going to hunt for work again. Or maybe I’ll just sit here and think of ways to “move this prestigious organization forward”… just like it says in my CV… 😉

Have a nice day people!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good afternoon my dear people,

It is with great shame that I greet you all…

I can’t believe it’s been exactly 3 weeks and 2 days since my last post. I remember when people used to say that I wouldn’t be able to blog anymore once I get a job… I thought they were telling lies from the pit of hell, trying to destroy my blogging career. Here I am now, almost a month later and I can’t explain why I’ve been away for so long.

How’s the job going you ask?

I have two answers… there’s the Nigerian/Christian answer; “I thank God. God is awesome. I bless his holy name and I praise him for my misery.”

Then there’s the truth; “I hate my job.”

I know I sound ungrateful and I feel bad saying that I despise my job, but it is what it is. And the strange part is that it started out so well… initially, there was nothing to do. We had a few days of training and induction. I used to carry a jotter around and I wrote down every single thing anyone had to say. I honestly thought I was learning HR shit…

After that, I became bored out of my skull… there was literally nothing to do. I was everywhere, bugging people for stuff to do. Everybody kept telling me to relax and enjoy my freedom. They said that a time would come when I would be begging for breathing space… but I didn’t listen. Those days, I felt I had more than enough breathing space… too much breathing space in fact. I had so much breathing space I thought my nostrils had become like OBJ’s own.

But then people started to take advantage of my over-eagerness to work. One lady put me to work addressing envelopes for almost a whole day. Another one left me in a room full of files stacked from floor to ceiling. I had to look for one file… it was like searching for dignity in Miley Cyrus. Needless to say, I didn’t find it. Then I started spending time in another department, but those ones had me doing manual labor as well. I realized that people had heard my gist and they knew me as that girl who was hungry for work… I might as well have been going around with a sign that said, “WILL WORK FOR WORK”.

So I went into my Spider Solitaire phase. I would sit in my office for hours, trying to beat my own high score. I learned how to pull the perfect frown in front of my laptop screen… it was a frown that said, “Leave me the fuck alone… I’m not playing Solitaire, I’m attending to serious company HR tinz n’ shii” so whenever my boss checked on me, I looked like I was indeed attending to serious company HR tinz n’ shii.

I love my boss. I have many bosses but I really like this one. He’s so nice, and very soft spoken and I like that he treats me like a child, even though I suspect that the age difference between us isn’t so much. He’s just the way I imagined Jesus would look if Jesus was black and balding.

Speaking of age, my colleagues think I’m much younger than I really am. I don’t mind, but the problem is that I’ve got Yoruba women who are almost my age expecting me to refer to them as Ma’m, not because they are above me in rank, but because they THINK they are older than me. And we all know how respectful Yoruba people can be…

smh…

Anyway, after loafing around for a while, things changed and all of a sudden, work started… and I’ve been miserable ever since. My friend said that I’ve become a shadow of my former self. I went from being a bored-yet-content Spider Solitaire champion to an over-worked, cranky, suicidal  bitch over night. My brother says the only difference , to him, is that I’m over-worked.

I’ve even changed location. I’m now in another office… I’m representing my company there and doing HR tinz. The people here refer to me as their Consultant. My first day here, I called my entire family to tell them that my name had changed along with my level… I wanted to kill a cow when I was called an “HR Analyst”. I almost shit in my pants when I was called “Consultant”. I was so excited because the only time anyone ever consults me is for XXX-rated jokes.

Little did I know that “Consultant” is just another way of saying “Shit-eating problem solverer”.

Work is hard, but I’m surviving. My second day here, two of the ladies here asked me to read their dress code. Of course, I didn’t have it, so one of them actually e-mailed it to me. It had a list of things I can and cannot wear, and they are very particular about colors; strictly grey, black, blue and white.

I el-o-eld (LOLed) when I read it… and I’ve decided that when I get paid, just to spite them, I’m going to invest in a few bright pink and neon green shirts. And strappy sandals… and huge metal earrings that will spark whenever I’m near their transformer. Then, just for fun, I might get an ankle tattoo… of a snake with their company’s logo in it’s mouth. That should teach them to not tell me what to wear.

The worst part is that there’s no free lunch in this new office… I don’t want to make a big deal out of it really. It seems like such a petty thing to complain about. Besides, it’s not like I enjoyed the free lunch at headquarters. I don’t know what culinary school the chef attended… cos someone didn’t teach him that beef is supposed to be cooked. The meat used to be so tough and raw-looking that if you listened to it, you could actually hear it “Moo”. And I figured that, if I collect all the oil in his stew, by early 2014 I should own an oil block…

I’m done with stuff I’ve been working on for the past 5 days. That’s why I had some time to relax so I decided to spend it gisting with you guys. And I’m sorry for being away for so long 🙁 I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again ok?

God bless.

xo

Good morning people!!!

And HAPPY NEW MONTH!!! I started writing this yesterday but I was so depressed… and it was supposed to be a happy post so I kept it aside. I have a lot to be grateful for, but I’ve got so much shit in my head I need to deal with…

I don’t know if I am the only one who felt like throwing a party when August ended.. It’s strange, but August was simultaneously my best and worst month of the year so far. So much happened! It started out great with the outings and socializing… then I fell seriously ill and had to deal with that. I attended so many interviews that I became an expert on the process. I even considered writing a book for employers and calling it “Employees guide to lowering self-esteem: How to drive potential employees to suicide”.  

August also gave me a lot of man trouble… it was crazy! For someone as single as I am, I had (and am still having) a disturbing amount of Man-trouble. No one is talking to me on the phone late at night, whispering sweet nothings in my ear… there’s no guy making my toes curl beneath the sheets… I pay my own bills (with the help of my siblings), and I take myself out to nice places whenever I can afford it. So how the hell did I end up with man-trouble?

It’s one of the shitty things I’m dealing with right now… hopefully, I’ll be good soon.

Anyway, remember how I mentioned that I have a surprise for you guys today? Before some of you start getting excited, it’s not a video of me twerking. And no, it’s not a confession… I didn’t sit on my pastor’s laps. The dude is slim… I might break his legs if I do.

The surprise?

Well, I’m pleased to announce that today is my very first day of work!!!

*waits for applause to die down*

Yes people… one of those many interviews and exams FINALLY resulted in something good and I am officially a “working class woman” 😀

I picked up my appointment letter on Friday and started work this morning. I was a crazy mixture of emotions… excited, happy, nervous and scared shitless.

Why was I scared? Well, even though I’ve been screaming about how I want a job, I think having a steady job takes a lotta hard work and discipline. This is not industrial training where I can show up hours late and flash my tits to my boss so that he pardons me… this is not NYSC where I can decide not to show up at all as punishment to the government for making me serve. This is real life work… I’ve always admired people who have the discipline to wake up every morning, get dressed and just go to an office to face stress.

I’ll be working as a Human Resources Analyst in a consulting firm. It sounds like a really big deal right? I love how the job title sounds so important… even though I’ve never resourcefully analyzed a human being before. Truth is, right now, I can’t even say exactly what the hell it is I’ll be doing. But I’m in a nice little office… it’s a temporary office till they clear a space for me. I don’t really want them to clear a space. I quite like being here alone. Only down side is that my fingers are frozen cos of the air conditioning. Hopefully, they thaw out before I get home…

The people here are nice to me… too nice. And they are all smiling. In fact, it’s a scary kind of niceness. I feel like I’m in that Stepford movie where everyone was pleasant and acting like a robot. Or maybe it’s just the crankiness in me… maybe by the time I work here for a while, I might start smiling all the time too.

God forbid though… we can’t afford to turn this blog into a happy blog can we?

I’m rushing this and I might not have time to read through properly so pardon the dis-jointed-ness of the post. I’m currently in the middle of my induction… it’s interesting but I’m waiting for the question and answer session at the end. Cos alls I wanna is;

Where the free lunch at?!

Have a blessed new month people!

Good morning people…

I don’t usually blog during weekends. I write stuff but I don’t put it up cos my statistics show that ya’ll don’t really enjoy reading during weekends… it’s either that or you just prefer using the internet in your office…

So, what have I been up to? As usual, it’s been one job interview after another, but the most interesting thing that happened recently was my trip to Illorin. I actually went for a friend’s wedding, but in the process, I killed two birds with one stone. My Plan-C guy… or my former Plan-C guy stays in Illorin and we’ve been talking about me visiting for a while now, so it was a chance to see him as well.

It was a fun trip… but getting there was just horrible! No one warned me about how dusty it would be and there was no air-conditioning in the car. By the time I got to Illorin, I was covered in red sand, looking like a fat carrot. One of the passengers, a lady, is a regular with that line so she was very familiar with the driver. Because of that, we stopped for her to buy groundnuts, then stopped again for her to buy bread, then roasted plantain… and I lost count of the number of times she had to pee.

Naturally, the other passengers started getting very irritated and were complaining… I just sat there, thinking about how constipated she would be by the end of the day. Another reason I was quiet was that I was the only non-Yoruba person in the car. So, from Lagos to Illorin, all the gist was in Yoruba. I had my nose in a book the entire journey. A few times, they tried to rope me into the conversation, but then gave up eventually when it was obvious I wasn’t interested.

I don’t mind the Yoruba… I don’t mind when people speak it at all. We grew up with many Yoruba family friends so it’s nothing new. What I don’t get is why someone would just walk up to me, assume that I am Yoruba and start spitting Yoruba with rapid fire intensity. Ki lo de? Is it because I’m dark? I should probably start wearing v-neck shirts that expose my chest hair… that way, there’s no doubt that I’m a proud Igbo girl.

…smh…

Anyway, Illorin turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It’s one of those places you hear about, and maybe read about, but it never occurs to you that it actually exists… or maybe it’s just me. I was shocked to discover that it’s a proper, nice little town with clean, fresh air and ridiculously cheap transportation!

My former Plan-C guy has a friend who has been trying to set P with me for a while now… so this friend was more than happy to take us out on Sunday. We all went to the zoo, just outside University of Illorin. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to take my camera along. I probably felt that I wasn’t going to see any wild animal that I haven’t seen in my neighbour’s back yard before… but boy was I wrong!!!

For the first time, I heard a real life lion’s roar… it was pretty impressive, but it was nothing compared to the time I told my mum that I was dropping out of Med school to become the first female member of The Wu Tang Clan.

The rest of my trip was spent drinking wine with fried meat… 😀

But, I missed my brother’s birthday… it was on Sunday, the 25th and I felt HORRIBLE about it. I’ve been thinking of ways to make it up to him… especially since he made my birthday a very special one.

Right now, I’m sitting at home, waiting for my friend who’s coming into town today. I’m so excited cos I haven’t seen her in almost a year.

I should go now. I just wanted to say hi… I’ll be back on here tomorrow for our “Happy New Month” post and I’ll be here again on Monday morning cos I’ve got something I want to show you guys. It’s a surprise 😉

Till then, have a lovely weekend…

Good day people!!

I had a very uneventful weekend so don’t be expecting any stories about celeb weddings and birthday parties. I’m supposed to still be “taking things easy”… that’s what the doctor ordered. I still have very bad headaches, but Lord knows I feel a million times better than before.

It was a quiet weekend, spent mostly in bed reading a novel and watching movies. On Sunday I went to church where the pastor made us pray for our enemies to die by fire. I haven’t been out today so I’m not sure which of my neighbours and my exes is still alive…Anyway, a strange thing happened to me last week… There’s no way to explain it without sounding jealous or insane, but I’ll try anyways.

It’s my Plan-C guy. This guy is one of my bestest friends in the whole wide world, someone who knows me better than most…

He told me last week that he proposed to a girl and I’m still trying to pick my jaw up from the floor… I’m in shock. I can’t explain it… it’s like, one day, it was me and him against the world; we believed in love, but we just didn’t do love. In fact, we always laughed at people who were in love. We thought marriage was something secretly designed by God to punish both men and women and we kind of decided (although it was an unspoken agreement) that we would be single forever. Next thing I know, dude fell in love and proposed to a girl…

And he wasn’t even in a relationship! He was miserable in his last relationship so I we he recently broke up with his ex. The girl he proposed to was just his friend before he suddenly realized he was in love with her!!! Only good thing about all this is that she’s a really decent person…

But now, it’s got me thinking… if my Plan-C guy is getting married, then maybe I really have to get my act together. I have to start thinking about settling down and finding the right guy and all that crap. And where the hell am I supposed to start from???!!

The idea behind having a Plan-C guy is so that if a time comes when I start to feel my eggs shriveling up in my ovaries, bad-as-e-bad, I would hold a gun to his head, propose to him and marry him. It would be a marriage of convenience but at least I would have my kids “in my husband’s house” (just the way society likes it) and I might even let him play with the kids once in a while… His parents would be happy that he found a good wife (as long as they don’t read my blog) and my father would be happy to have someone take me off his hands. My dad might even offer to pay them a bride price… just to get rid of me 🙁

Two of my girlfriends each offered to hook me up with a friend of theirs, but I’m just not in the mood to meet another “great” guy who is a successful lawyer & church usher by day, but a crack-addicted male dominatrix by night. I’ve told them that I’m still closed for business…

Sometimes, when I think of all the work that goes into relationships- being nice, being decent, constant communication, keeping my armpits and er… other body parts clean shaven all the time- I just get so discouraged… I’d rather stay in bed and eat and let the hair grow wildly.

As you were people… I’m just rambling today.

Have a blessed week!