New Year Photos?

Nikki and I decided to have a Hogmanay/House Warming party and invited a bunch of friends and our neighbours. A good time was had by all. There was good food, homebrewed beer, normal beer, loads of wine, spirits, men in kilts, drunk people in hot tubs, drunker people in swimming pools. Oh, how I wish Jen hadn't stolen our camera the day before.

Alex and Fi took photos, but despite the fact they never ever update their blog they wouldn't leave me any photos, in case I posted the good stuff before them. Sometime around the middle of 2008 they will get around to posting their pictures. If you think it looked like fun you can try and rearrange your schedule to be in Houston for New Year 08/09.

Anyway, Happy New Year to one and all. Hope you all have as good a 2007 as we had a 2006.

New Quotes

Another late candidate, from my favourite brother this time. When suggesting Jen should have another drink:

"Have a drink you Big Fat Girl"

He's still alive, but Jen did check which knives were sharpest before heading for "bed".

Xmas in Review

Got an Xbox 360. And a lawnmower

May never have time to blog again.

Quote of the year

A late candidate for sure, but I think it might just win the prize.

Nikki, last night, with a steely look of determination in her eyes turned down a couple of empty calories but left no doubt that Christmas was upon us by announcing to Alex, Fi and I:

"The diet stops tomorrow!"

Merry Christmas

Alex and Fi have fought their way through the fog and should be arriving in Houston today, albeit a couple of hours late. Blogging may be light until they leave, since they usually force Nikki and I to consume more alcohol than we want to, so we'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Have fun, be safe, remember that it's better to give than to receive and don't forget the batteries.

The above photo was taken by and is therefore copyright of Bruno and is used without his permission. I'm too young to know better and too old to care. Welcome to the Wild Wild Web. He has a website with more photos from the same party, but some of them are incriminating, (of Nikki obviously, not me) so I'm not linking to it.

Bizarre Sighting

Have I mentioned that camera phones are crap? Well, at night, they're worse. Also, I'm at Lagos airport and the internet connection isn't great, so I shrank the photos even more. Which is all a long winded of way of saying you may have to take my word for it.

Last night me and the lads went, for a couple of beers, to the Eko Hotel in Lagos. It's a nice bar, the girls don't bother you, you're out by the pool and you can relax...except last night, Old School rap legend LL Cool J was in the h-iz-ouse.

That's him, in the white, sitting down, being entertained by some of Nigeria's favourite rap artists. I didn't catch their names as the fella with the mic was a bit excited. At one point I thought he introduced someone as MC Paul Hammers, which is a pretty good rap name, but he was white and in a suit and when I asked around he may well have been, event sponsor, Nigeria Breweries, M(anaging) D(irector) Paul Harmers.

A slightly closer, blurrier view of the man who calls himself Mr. Ladies Love Cool James. But do they?

While James was at the pool watching MC Paul Hammers, someone was off making friends...nice going LL Cool Vijay

Who You Gonna Call?

Working in IT in Nigeria means that you have to adopt some procedures that perhaps would not be necessary elsewhere. The camp is 150 acres, and PC's are spread all over it. Most of the offices get dusty, especially at this time of year when the Harmattan is dumping half the Sahara in my server rooms. Johnny and his guys don't have the time or resources to clean every machine regularly, but every one that comes to the office gets the deluxe treatment.

A fine coat of dust covers everything inside the PC.

Johnny fires up a contraption he put together after watching Ghostbusters...

...and in a couple of minutes, it's good as new. 

Farming News

I forgot to tell you that our lettuce finally arrived. Damaged. We will receive a new lettuce in a couple of weeks, which just about settles it. Farmer Brown is never seeing his two extra onions again. Ever. I shall lose no sleep.

More snaps from Nigeria

I hope the driving school owners have a keen sense of irony and this is here so that they can demonstrate it to the rest of Lagos. I suspect however, that the truth is far scarier.

These giraffes were for sale at the Lekki market. They would look great in our living room, but I'm not sure they would fit in my suitcase. The market was a lot of fun. I enjoy the haggling, the guys at the market are good at it and I'm sure they make a lot of money every time they see someone like us. It took Vijay a little bit to get into the spirit, but once he figured out the exchange rate and realised he could have fun there was no stopping him. When he finally traded a tiny half full sample bottle of Armani cologne for a wooden elephant I knew it was time to get out of there.


That's right. Any questions?

More photos are here:

Nigeria December 06

On The Road Again

It's my turn this time. Dang. Looks like the Christmas shopping is getting done at the airport again.
The M25. Wednesday 8:02AM GMT. An all too brief stop in the UK to change airports. On the bus from Gatwick to Heathrow, the other side of the road zooms on by. On the Clockwise side, we're at a complete stop. Again.

The view from seat 12J. BA075, shortly before takeoff, en route to Lagos with several hundred souls on board. Okay, heading back to Nigeria this close to Christmas isn't going to be fun, but at least I'm in business class. My company has a deal with Lufthansa, where we get cheap business class and that is usually the only time it's allowed. This is a short notice trip, booking the flight the day before I left meant my options were limited and almost everything was full, so I got to go BA. Excellent - "water, orange juice or champagne, sir?"

Vijay is clearly excited by his first visit to Africa. It doesn't matter where you are in the world though...you can call it a man-purse all you want, it's still a purse on this continent too.