Bad Service

It is amazing when people offering a paid service act like they are doing a favour to the customer. In a sense though, they are doing a favour by making available what is desired by the consumer, but one that is returned in payment. A reversible  favour of convenience one might say since payment is always favorable to business.

So when the lady at the reception today looked at me coming through her office entrance but instantly look her gaze off and continued her conversation with an unseen occupant on the other side of the her office, I heard the alarm bell ringing that another bad service was brewing. Although as  I was not directly at her desk yet, it would be impatient of me to assume that she wouldn't give me her undivided attention when I am stationed right in front of her. I walked up to her, said my greeting twice and her eyes drifted to me and away again. For a moment I felt I was invisible in broad day light…and the vain thoughts that come with such supernatural state ran through my head (  go rob bank for example!). After a few giggles with the unseen party, she finally turned to answer me and that, with no apologies.

It was my first time at that office, there was no one else in the waiting area and it was very obvious that I am a prospective client. With that much cold shoulder meted to me, the urge was to tell her how unpleasant she was and then walk away. However,a mixture of the fact that I was reliably referred there and that the business I sought to pursue had been elusive for more than six months, somehow hatched a cool within me. I just wanted to get my business done. The end does justified the means.

Perhaps another reason for holding up from expressing my displeasure today ,was that lately I have had a succession of tirades in matters similar. My energy level has frankly become temporarily low for such confrontations. I was having one of those moments when it is reasonable to hide under the guise that silence can be a strategy in an argument. Better still, that  one’s voice can be loudest when no sound is made!

Bad service has a away of making us us feel violated and can easily cast an unpleasant cloud over an otherwise merry demeanor – which may be carried by the recipient beyond the service point. It is  a disregard for courtesy and a reflection of attitude. Those  who dish  it out have a high rate of repetition. If (as it seems) those that pay bad service don't often see anything wrong with in their approach to life, contesting them isn't always the best the best solution. Unfortunately too, it is just inevitable to avoid people with a foul attitude. While online services come handy in that they cut off the middle man and its attendant frictions, genuine human interactions can be very rewarding – I just alluded to finding  an elusive service from a referral.

It worthy of note that what a client perceives a bad service is not always so. This may arise among others from a client’s lack understanding of the  modus operandi of  an organization, unrealistic (well, uninformed) expectations, bias or from a genuinely unintended miscommunication. Take these away and offer excellent services, some clients are still going to be fastidious and  critical.

Whatever the response to bad service is, be it vilifying the perpetrator or outrightly turning deaf ears, one must guard oneself from the negativity it can create, deal with it there, then and move on. My default position today was to make an excuse for the offender and get my business done. After all, are only truly in control over our own self.

Nigerian Blues

The other title I’d thought to label this post was “Nigerian Chills”, an attempt to convey that I was not writing about  a musical genre of Nigerian extract. However, I didn’t want the reader at first glance to presuppose that the climate in my country of origin is exactly chilly. The plain truth is that my indecisiveness is borne out of the shyness in putting my thoughts to writing.

Part of the reason why I had a reservation to write out my present thoughts on Nigeria is that I am unsure of the reception it will be accorded by you the reader. I know from my conversation among those of us in “the diaspora” (with a smirk on my face) that there is often a tone of ambivalence or outright disinterest when the homeland is the subject. I also did not not want to brandish an article before my non-Nigerian reader who will be emotionally distant from my thoughts or who would be belaboured again to the loud rants of “these Nigerians”! In addition, I felt my experience is inadequate to sum up a country so vast and heterogenous.

However, I was home recently and I’d like to write some thing about the “land that ever draws us homeward”. The fact that Nigeria co-topped the page-view audience in the last month for Heymeyville is also a boost to write about my country. Besides, as this space originated from the need to express my thoughts, overwhelming or fleeting, it’s only justice to the write this post. I have also decided not to be deterred by the fact my thoughts on Nigeria can not be summed up in one piece of writing.

Upon my return from the visit, folks around me wanted to hear what’s the “gists” at home. The language in which these quizzes were made is often the contraption of the national lingua franca, pidgin as we call it. I remember being reprimanded by a dear friend who visited from Nigeria last year that I spoke too much “broken” English these days. That rebuke stirred my thoughts. Maybe not for the love of every thing imported, but the educated Nigerian in Nigeria prefers syntax that is grammatically correct. But let’s face it, grammar is taught only to Secondary School level and even the undergraduate who majors in English Language isn’t going be tutored on the right sequence of arranging nouns, verbs, plural connotations  or figures of speech. So why the fuss? If every one with a high school education is supposed to be able to speak good English, never mind the tribal ascent, then good syntax is not exactly a status symbol!

The flip side of the foregoing is that parents are generally apprehensive that when their wards are exposed to an “informal” version of English language, they may become deficient in the use of the official medium of learning and communication. This is definitely a valid point. However, Pidgin is different and is not necessarily poor grammar. I was amazed when for the first time I found out other English speaking nationals in my present niche could not follow a conversation in pidgin. For those of us “out” here it is a native code,  a colloquial identity and proudly ours.

It is that swag in our conversation that is sometimes judged as arrogance. Okay, the non-Nigerian does not comprehend the basis upon which we blow our trumpet and so it is considered loud. By default, people tend to mind their business in public and so there is a jolt when Nigerians don't observe the rules. Back at home, it is considered improper when a passer-by does not say a greeting for example. In fact, neighbours would come around the house sometimes just to greet our parents. I guess we are a community. Our culture is deep and our individual families have deeper secrets. That said, cultures are varied.  In as much as the expression of one’s identity need not threaten the existence of another, one should identify the prevailing lifestyle of the environment their abode and live accordingly -  in a positive way.

On my trip, I was also reminded of the vigor with which we express our beliefs. One is tempted to think that Karl Marx had just visited modern Nigeria when he said “religion is the opium of the people”. I wonder if Marx was referring to opium in terms being hallucinogenic. From wall posters to hear-says, religion has become a major determinant of our culture. We have outdone the original missionaries, a fact alluded too by the joke about two people in an elevator. One asked “ are you going up or down?” The other replied “I can only go up in Jesus’ name”! Now that I have been to other climes, I can agree with my sister when those years ago she found me listening an American gospel singer and she said they don't do church like us in America.

The religiosity perhaps is an indication of the hunger within, which by the way is not exclusive to Nigerians. We do have that yearning for a utopia, whether we realize it has more meaning or not. There is always that hope for something better, even when there is no particular basis for it. Maybe, that is why we travel, why we speak loud (so as to be heard), why we want to live large or why we exert so much energy on everything else. Whether it's happiness, wealth, deeper fulfillment, health or just to prove a point, we always find a way to get to where we want to (a classmate calls it the “anyhowness” of Nigerians). What motivates us is both what we are running away from and what we are running towards, I guess. I am Nigerian.

New Beginings

Happy new year to my readers...and followers!

Yesterday was one of those days I had chosen to do some domestic chores. As I am home alone at the moment, everything was going to be done to the sound of loud music. I wanted something from the past and remembered a friend had recently "drop-boxed" some oldies that I had not downloaded.  So I picked the lap top which is seldom used these days and on opening Firefox to access my email, the web browser showed the following message:
"It looks like you haven't started Firefox in a while. Do you want to clean it up for a fresh , like-new experience? And by the way, welcome back!"
I couldn't but let out a smile as my mind drifted to the many things I ought to catch up on, the pages of this blog inclusive.

It's still early in the new year and I remember opening my Facebook page at the end of the 2014 only to be startled by an amazing reality. On my  home page was a post by the site developers summarizing my year. It had only one picture and it was that of my son who was born of the first day of January, 2014. I stared at that photograph on the day, smiled to myself (and intrigued as well). It was  as if a stalker with good intentions had given a concise highlight of my year with a single photo shot. Parenting has been a whole new fascinating experience for me. It is beyond words. Hopefully, as the days evolve, I might be to expand a  recurrent theme and put them up on this forum.

The turn of the year also afforded me an opportunity to meet a few more readers (do I dear say followers?!) of this blog. In plain terms, I travelled and reunited with people as well as said my seasons' greeting to many during the holidays. As conversations were being made, people referred to a one theme or the other from my older blog posts. The origins of people's bond these days are unfathomable, isn't it? It's always nice to know people heard you speak. More so when such a  hearing has to be derived from a deliberate effort on web so wide! However, as the update on the pages of the blog have been non-existent recently, I usually felt a guilt after those conversations, one of the disappointing emotions that I hope has gone with last year.

I am of the opinion that people should never turn their back on what has brought them recognition even if the line of activity is not preferred. For example, it was an anticlimax when Michael Jordan side-tracked into baseball those years ago. The quest for something new is always exciting but the things we have always done were at least a springboard to our present realities. So here is to  unending inspirations ...and many blog postings!

Happy new year to everyone again and I hope that my belated greetings are still in order for those who I haven't reached this year. New Year days, birthdays, anniversaries and the like often arrive with much elation. For me, there are seasons in life. It is for us to know where our drives are in each season, make the most of and find happiness in it. So if the turn of this year translates to your new season, then I wish you all the best now or whenever it comes.
Many Cheers.

A SIGH OF RELIEF?



At the car park after wrapping things up

"Exams are over, I feel light". Those were my paraphrased words a week ago after I had finished with my research presentation and which basically drew the curtains of my post grad training. At the beginning of this endeavor, I alluded in a blog post then that "learning never ends". This is true as being a student of health science means that one has to keep abreast of an ever evolving discipline. However, there is a sigh of relief at the moment, one that is a let-out steam and which indicates that some feat has been completed.

The mental alertness that one bears during prolonged study comes at a price. These last few weeks have needed a real shut down from every other thing that entangles the mind. Life as I knew it was relegated to the background of my thoughts. Friends and relatives who did not reach out heard very little from me; my video club membership went inactive; I even timed my meal time to coincide with when my club's game was being aired on TV once! Only the basics and essential became my custom. Perhaps attesting to the fact that only few things really matter in life.

At last, I breathe some other air. The world of assignments, exams, online discussion boards that one must initiate and then contribute to, logbooks (!) and sundry deadlines are over. Not that these are a burden in themselves, considering that they squeeze the juice out of us over time, making us thoroughbred in the career  of our choice. In addition, studying gives us the opportunity to genuinely interact with other people from varying educational and cultural backgrounds. There is also the privilege of gleaning the the fields of knowledge possessed by one's teachers (especially if like me, your thesis supervisor is a national name of the discipline of study). Isaac Newton got it spot-on when he said "if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants".

One can never really take a pause from learning though. The bulk of what we know is acquired passively. When the students of science from old concluded that the characteristics of living things included adaptation, one could say they meant learning. Just a day after the final exams, I went to the stores to arm myself with some books on parenting (yes, the subject of another blog post...hopefully soon) and a collection of political thriller novels. I guess it means I am alive!

So my sigh of relief is by no means the last of such. Brief as it may, I will revel in it.    

Also, here is to say happy cheers to those colleagues who became friends while we studied together

HAVE I EMERGED?

Alas, I have composed myself to write something that can be blogged. A few weeks ago I thought about the dearth in my blog updates. Since I have done a number of traveling this past year, I had concluded that I would upload pictures of my own shots, somehow to assert that notion that " a picture is worth a thousand words". The rundown of Heymeyville obviously attests to the fact that I am yet to do this!

I wish I could thrust my pointing finger to a single reason why I have not written much lately, but I am reminded that what we have time for is a choice. The other day, my pastor said in church that "time is priority". So where is my writing  priority? What happened to my organized self? Have I found a new way to debrief, make my perspective or smile at the world?

Writing helps me create perspective.  My activities have created pattern. The pattern that I have emerged with since my last blog post perhaps reflects the perspective I have gained all this time. It's not that writing is no longer on my priorities, but accumulated perspectives have produced an outcome: other priorities. So why I might not have punched out written words, I have actually been trying to live within the components of my perspective on life. There comes those seasons of life when we pursue what we have previously evaluated. It does not matter whether we achieve all, but we pull the plug and the process of life is expressed.

It does occur to me that the reality in which I will live in from henceforth have changed. Family, career, social interaction and even necessities have assumed new levels and I must live in the context of these. All that said, how I love to write again. Perhaps soon enough.
I miss writing.