Hafiz Adewuyi

How to tell which municipality/district a place in Vilnius is in

2022-10-23T14:19:00.000+01:00

This is a question that I have asked myself a lot of times but always had to approximate an answer to by looking at Google maps. See the picture below, for example. Can you tell for sure whether "Kauno gatvė (street), 1" is in the Naujamiestis (Vilnius New Town) municipality or the Senamiestis (Vilnius Old Town) one?

Is Kauno gatvė (street) 1 in Vilnius Old town or New town? 🤔

Fed up with my inability to answer this question with precision, I recently asked a question in the Foreigners in Vilnius group and lo and behold, within a few hours, a Lithuanian (I assume from the name) gentleman called Mykolas came through with a great answer.

From Mykolas' answer, I now am able to answer this question about the municipality of a place in Vilnius by following a few short steps:

Open the Vilnius maps website municipalities page
In the search box on the top right corner (web, not mobile web), enter the specific address whose municipality/district you want to figure out (make sure to add the building number)
Choose the right option from the auto-complete options that will appear under the search box. A pop-up "Search result" will appear with the address and the municipality/district right after the address.

How to tell which municipality/district a place in Vilnius is in

Now, I know that Kauno gatvė (street) is in Vilnius old town (Senamiestis), not in Naujamiestis. Sweet!

Get to know the heart of Lithuania (Lietuva)

2020-07-27T20:56:00.006+01:00

Settling down in a new country is hard in so many ways that living in just one city for most of your life just cannot prepare you for. Without the unfiltered actions of love which I received from the people in this article, I don't think I would now be in the process of extending my stay in Lithuania.

Edvinas

Edvinas, laying the stage for an early summer barbecue in Kaunas

He's a man, but after all that he's done for me, I now think of him as my Lithuanian mummy. WTF? Well, before I was 16 (high school completion age), everywhere I went to, my mum drove me in her car. Market, school, Mr Biggs, amusement park... you name it.

Likewise, since I came to Lithuania, I can't count the number of times when I have reached out to Edvinas about needing to buy something and he would:

offer to come to pick me up and take me to the market/mall
drive 15 minutes over to my place, pick me up and take me to whatever in his opinion is the best place to buy that something
serve as my shopping guide and adviser for as long as I need to tick off my shopping list
insist on paying if we decide to grab a post-shopping meal together
drive me back home

All without knowing me from Adam. And at the end, he never asked for or even accepted reimbursement for a single dime when I offered. Not for fuel, not for his assistance and not for the post-shopping meal. This sort of kindness used to make me apprehensive and still does to some extent. Why not? When for so long, I had a mindset that every gift comes with an expectation, even when not explicitly stated.

Perhaps, one day, if I continue to receive Edvinas' flavour of kindness, that inherent apprehension I feel when I receive unmerited love will be all but gone.

Laura

Laura's free kettle

Several days before my arrival in Lithuania, Laura announced via the Digital Explorers buddies group that she has a few electric kettles to gift out to whoever needed one on arrival. A couple of days after I arrived, I took her up on her offer.

She told me she was somewhere in the city centre, close to my office. Some 30 minutes later, I was having a chat with her on the ground floor of the Zalgiris Arena, which holds my office. After she handed me my free kettle (which has served me till date), we chatted about her living in Portugal and deciding to come back to Lithuania for the career.

Mindaugas

Hafiz and Mindaugas at a company event

My colleague at TransUnion Lithuania, he opted to be my office buddy before I landed in Lithuania. The office buddy is your first port of call for all problems as a new joiner settles into the company. Mindaugas' first token of love was to make a lot of recommendations for everything:

Where to eat
Where to see in the city
What to cook
What to do on the weekends
Where to go for walks

After following up with me a few times and I told him that I've not followed a lot of his sightseeing suggestions, Mindaugas inquired to know why. "Bad knee. I wish I had a bicycle", I told him. Walking more than a few hundreds of metres at a time is not my forte these days. After a few iterations of this conversation, he remembered having his teenage bicycle in his basement and decided he would give that to me. A few days later, he delivered the bike to me from the boot of his car at the office parking lot.

The bicycle was gifted to Mindaugas when he was only 16 by a family friend/member, and even then, it was not new. "No one will steal this bicycle, you don't have to keep it inside your apartment", Mindaugas reassured me.

One fun fact thing about Mindaugas is that I live on a street named after him.

Monika

On Saturday, one day after I arrived Lithuania, I received a message from Monika. Monika is one of the Digital Explorers local buddies (a group of big-hearted Lithuanians living in Lithuania), just like Edvinas. She offered to take me grocery shopping the next day: Sunday.

After a lone shopping experience in the morning, which was excruciating (because I had google translate the labels), I met up with Monika at Kaunas Akropolis (shopping mall) on Sunday evening. Our shopping trip lasted for almost two hours because I made a super long list. She had offered to help with grocery shopping, but yours-sincerely made a list of everything I needed; including clothes!

We didn't end up buying clothes, though. All our shopping was done at the Maxima superstore in Akropolis, situated only 1km away from my house. Monika was extremely patient and helpful, freely offering advice when I wasn't sure what I wanted. One other thing about Monika which stuck with me is her passion for the environment. Thanks to her, I bought:

a bio-degradable garbage bag instead of a cheaper generic one
a wooden spoon, instead of a metallic one that would destroy my pots and pans prematurely

Wooden spoon and eco-friendly waste bag

Afriko: Egle

For the first few weeks in, I called her my mummy in Lithuania. Egle, a member of Afriko, was (and is still) always there to help the Digital Explorers with anything and everything. Having her there and easy to reach was super helpful in helping me settle into the country. Here are some memorable ways that Egle helped me settle into Kaunas:

She accompanied me to my flat in Kaunas after a full day of training in Vilnius and helped me settle in
She offered advice from how to lay my bed to how to ensure water from the tap in the morning is clean for drinking
She brought me my transport card at the office which was my key to bus transport in Kaunas
Biggest of all, she let me know that she was always a call/IM away if I ever needed help with anything

Most notably, when I was having trouble taking the initiative at work a few months in, I discussed with Egle on a trip from Vilnius to Kaunas. At the end of an hour-long talk, she left me with one quote: "Just Do It"! There is no saying, how much courage that this talk with Egle imbued me with, in the ensuing months. Thank you, Egle!

Afriko: Eugenija and Mante

Without the passion of these two (the co-founders of Afriko - the company that organised the Digital Explorers programme), I would never have made it to Lithuania in the first place. First, I was satisfied with my then job at Carbon. Also, it was not feasible for me based on my job schedule to fully participate in the five-full-day selection stage of the Digital Explorers program. However, with a lot of reassurance, kindness and encouragement from this duo, I was able to muster the will to participate, and here we are.

On Friday morning when I arrived Lithuania, Mante came alone to welcome me at the Vilnius airport with a pretty Digital Explorer flag. She seemed so delighted, almost as delighted as me whose long-term dream of living and working abroad had just been realised. It was a nice 4ºC in Vilnius, so she had brought me a scarf - I had mentioned not having one before leaving Nigeria on Thursday evening.

When last did I smile so widely? Maybe time to pursue the next dream?

The rest of my first day in Lithuania was filled with different activities which left me feeling completely at home at the end of the day. Without a doubt, I can say that this was not a coincidence. No. It was that way because of how conscientious Eugenija and Mante, the leaders of the Digital Explorers programme are. Bless their souls!

The HR women of TransUnion: Marija and Sandra

My two-hour talk with Marija over a video call after I received an offer letter from TransUnion helped seal the deal. First, I thought it really cool that she agreed to talk with me out-of-office hours. During the call, she was super patient and her passion for the company and her work shined through. She answered all my questions to the best detail and with examples where possible. Also, she reiterated all the perks of working at TransUnion, which the hiring manager had run through at interview stage.

Hafiz and Marija at the TransUnion 2019 end-of-year party

On my first day in Lithuania, I received a welcome email from TransUnion that also contained the most jaw-dropping news: Marija would be driving me from my house to the office on the first day! And so did it happen that at 8:30 on Monday, I received a call from Marija, HR manager at TransUnion. She was waiting for me downstairs.

As we drove the 1.2km between my house and the office, we had chit-chat. During the ride, I learned a few things like the immensity of the office and how there were scooters to facilitate moving around the office. Once at the office, she handed me over to her colleague, Sandra, who I spent the rest of the day with (induction).

The first thing that Sandra gets my admiration for is her extreme care that I was following during the induction session. She regularly stopped to reassure me that it was okay to stop her at any time to ask questions or indicate a lack of comprehension on my part. Besides this, it was her very first time of administering the induction session in English. Despite that, her communication was clear and sharp.

Another loving thing about Sandra is the positive aura that she always radiates as she goes around the office. She is always in a cheery mood and spreads that joy through her smile and demeanour. Whenever I am in the office and not at my best emotionally, I stroll over to the HR office. She always greets me warmly and offers chit-chat readily, complemented by the assorted treats on the stool by her desk. Fortunately, I'm a sweet tooth, and I always leave these visits to Sandra re-energized and ready to face anything the day has got to throw at me.

Unsatisfying internet conversations: Episode 1

2020-07-06T21:10:00.003+01:00

PLEASE READ BELOW CONVERSATION BEFORE PROCEEDING:

EXHIBIT: A WhatsApp status-inspired conversation on July 7, 2020

I hate the fact that this conversation left me feeling like a weirdo. That WhatsApp status was a f**king bid for connection!!! I posted it in the hopes that someone else who feels the same way about dull weather would reach out and let me know.

To digress, I have a personal issue with the branding of sunny summer days as "time to be happy" and "time to have fun". And with the correlated bashing of any summer day which is not bright and warm as a bad weather day. I take it personally when people describe storms as lousy weather because I enjoy going out for walks in the middle of the night. I feel a strong urge to go out and let the raindrops in a storm assault my skin relentlessly. I feel alive when the rain soaks my clothes and causes my torso to respond with shivers and skin with goosebumps. I savour the smell of the damp dust in the air; the smell of rain. "How dare you call it a bad day when the very nature of it makes me feel so good"?.

My point is that I wouldn't be here ranting about a WhatsApp conversation if my friend had actually responded with something more than an emoji. How about:

"Oh. That's weird. I can't relate to that. How on earth can someone be happy in the dark?" or
"I know what you mean. I also can't say that I'm always in a great mood in 'good weather'"

On the other hand, I know you can say that nothing stops me also from asking my friend if dull weather is always associated with bad moods for him. And you won't be wrong. But I didn't, because I just don't care enough since he didn't take the initiative. Which of course absolves my friend of his lack of satisfactory engagement with my bid for connection.

Am I taking life too seriously? I hate it when people say I am, so if you love your knee, you'd better not respond in the positive.

Person at pub: Do you smoke?

2020-07-06T20:16:00.000+01:00

Me: No

Person at pub: Ok. I'm going outside now to smoke. See you around

Me: *Oh, no!!! Not another tragic end to a great conversation 💔*

This exchange has happened to me too many times since I came to Lithuania for me to ignore. Since no person in real life will satisfactorily respond to my frustrations with this experience, I decided that the close alternative of ranting to no one on the internet would do.

About me and smoking, let's just say I suck at it. And that is something which I am secretly excited about. Otherwise, who's to say that these random moments of peer pressure would not have transformed me into a daily smoker by now. Good conversation is actually so rare in my everyday life that if I didn't suck at smoking, I would go with the person at the pub for a smoking break each time they offer. Notwithstanding that I love my health and want to live long and healthy like most other people.

Gosh! What if the reality is that being with me drained them so much that they needed to go smoke to restore their sanity? Am I an energy drain in conversations? Maybe I was the only one enjoying these conversations after all.

Far from the Madding crowd

2020-07-06T19:36:00.000+01:00

My first encounter with that phrase was through Deezer (music streaming app). The classical music track named "Far from the Madding crowd" was automatically recommended to me based on my listening history. I loved it so much, I saved it to my favourites. This encounter eventually led me to become a fan of Angele Dubeau, the composer.

A few months down the line, I encountered the term a second time after reading a feminism-related article on Medium. My curiosity about this uncommon term: "Far from the Madding crowd" was effectively stoked. My eventual Google search of the phrase taught me that my beloved Deezer track is actually a movie soundtrack.

Spoiler alert: This movie poster actually gives away the culmination of the love story

"Far from the Madding crowd: The movie" is a tale of love and conflict amongst the four people in the poster above. Like the soundtrack which I first discovered, the 2-hour long movie also found an instant home in my heart. Read the little snippet from the movie's Wikipedia article below to see if it might be your cup of tea. It definitely was mine, so much so that I have watched it twice already this year.

The film is set in about 1870 in Britain. While Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) is working on her aunt's farm in Dorset, she meets a neighbouring farmer, Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts). As they get to know one another, he proposes, but the headstrong Bathsheba declines, saying she is too independent. One night a new sheepdog chases Gabriel's entire flock off a cliff. After settling his debts, he is penniless, and leaves in search of work. In contrast, Bathsheba inherits a farm from her uncle and leaves to take charge of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_from_the_Madding_Crowd_(2015_film)

And finally, the book. It had been sitting in my Amazon shopping cart for months until a month ago (June 2020). I finally ordered it along with several other items. For the first time, I will enjoy the privilege of reading a book after having watched the movie. Maybe when I finish the book, I'll be inspired to rewatch the film, then write a movie vs book article. Or perhaps not - sounds difficult.

Kennedy's bicycle was stolen from his yard in the Šančiai district of Kaunas

2020-03-18T23:52:00.000+01:00

As part of my ramping up to get out of bed routine every morning, I check WhatsApp. A bad habit I know. But I think it helps to keep me from snoozing my alarm for another cycle. This morning, one of the first messages I saw was from a group that I and Kennedy, a fellow Digital Explorer are in. My heart might have skipped a beat the moment I absorbed his message.

This is where my own bicycle sleeps in Kaunas; by the entrance to my apartment building

Instantly, the picture that you see above appeared in my mind. That's my bicycle, and every day, I park it outside, close to the entrance of the apartment block where I live, close to the city centre of Kaunas. It is secured only with the bike-lock which came along with the bicycle when it was handed as a gift to me by my colleague and buddy, Mindaugas in late 2019.

L - R, then background: Mindaugas, Hafiz; their colleagues

I was overwhelmed by a sudden but fleeting fear that a band of bicycle thieves had swept through town last night and that like Kennedy's, my bike must have also fallen victim. I felt the urge to quickly go check that my bicycle was still in place in front of the apartment but my laziness made sure that instead of doing that, I opted for the option to ask Kennedy if his bicycle had been chained down when he had it stolen. It surely wasn't worth the 0.5 calories it would cost me to go down one flight of stairs from my flat to go check that I still had a bicycle before I confirmed whether or not Kennedy's fate had been due to his lack of basic care in making sure his bicycle is not easy picking.

I felt some relief a couple of hours later when I read a WhatsApp reply from Kennedy that indeed, his bicycle was not chained up when he left it outside last night. Indeed, his bicycle was easy picking and that is the primary reason why it was stolen. "Yay, I have no new thing to worry about", my subconscious declared with the victory of knowing that no new vaccination needed to be invented today!

I am fundraising to get Kennedy a new bike as summer is on the way and he will surely need it for all the exploring that is ahead of him. Click here to support this brotherly cause

The story of the theft of Kennedy's bicycle is one that is particularly important for me because, for me, it's an important source of information to update my belief about my environment. "I feel really safe"; that was one of the first things I said when asked about my first impressions of Kaunas two months after my arrival in the city, in an interview with the media arm of the Kaunas city municipality. Even though I'm not the one whose bicycle was stolen this time, for me, this single incidence will make it less likely that I'll repeat that statement again if asked how I feel about living in Kaunas.

Of course, I still feel safe. Just a tad bit less safe than I felt that four months ago when I granted an interview to KaunasIN. My apartment is in a building right by one of the larger and busier streets in Kaunas, yet it's got nothing of the semblance of a fence. To enter the building (of which once you're in, all you need to get into my safe space is give a nice sturdy flying-kick to my wooden door), all you need do is open a transparent glass door with metal frames. There's an electronic keypad lock by the door which is meant to keep the door locked, but it stopped working several months ago and entrance to the building is now free for all. I guess the main reason that I haven't complained about this security vulnerability is the same thing, I still feel safe (partly due to the fact that I actually desperately want to feel safe here).

I feel safe. But I think that this would be less surprising to you after I tell you that since I came to Kaunas, I've not seen a burglary proof on any window in a residential or business building. Yes. In case that electronic lock starts working, don't fret much - if you've got your eyes on my goods. All you'd need-do is scale the "pseudo-balcony" behind my bedroom windows and again, give what?... You guessed it, ... a sturdy flying-kick to those metal-framed glass windows and in you are, into my bedroom. My goods are yours for the taking.

Because I'm opportunistic about sharing details from my life, I think that now is a perfect time to talk about the fact that I actually have an experiment that has been running since shortly after I got my own bicycle from Mindaugas. This experiment is designed to help calibrate my safety-meter for Kaunas. Here's how it goes:

THE DETACHABLE BICYCLE-LIGHT PAIR EXPERIMENT

The lights look just like this. (Source: Amazon.com)

I bought a pair of flashing bicycle lights for my bicycle: a white one that goes in-front and a red one placed at the back, along the rod holding up the seat. Each of these lights is peculiar in that it is attached to the bicycle by a clip-on which is designed into the body of the light. This means that it's very easy for any passerby to detach any of these lights and walk away with it.

The pair of lights cost me around 5 or 6 Euros but I thought that a small enough token to sacrifice for the sake of true knowledge. I really value true knowledge because growing up has taught me that everyone sees things through different lenses and that taking advice from people at face value about any subject matter at all without any allowance for yourself to test the claims safely can be quite, limiting.

So, apart from the first couple of days after I bought these lights and affixed them to my bicycle, I never detach them from the bicycle when I park it in-front-of my apartment building. Even when I ride the bicycle out and have to park it in a public place that has much more human traffic than the front of my apartment, I only detach the lights in the rare situation that I feel like the parking area has a heavy footfall and increases the chances that I will lose my bicycle lights.

Again, this experiment is so important for me because every morning that I come out of the apartment exit and find that the bicycle lights survived the perilous night is a morning that my preferred (and naive) belief that my environment in Kaunas is safe, loses some of its fictitiousness.

The results of my detachable bicycle-light experiment (so far) are astonishing! (at least for me). After over four months of leaving my bicycle in several public places in Kaunas (chained-down, of course), with two flashy detachable lights, actually, one of the lights has been stolen: the red one in the rear of the bicycle. If my memory and observation serve me right, this theft was performed right at the spot where I park my bicycle at home: under the porch that holds the door which I use to access my apartment building entrance.

I still feel safe though, as I've been waiting ever since then for the other half of the light pair to be stolen as well, so I can just get another pair and once again, become a fully-compliant night bicycle rider in the Republic of Lithuania. When I do that, you can be sure that I'll be apt to detach these lights every time I'm leaving my bicycle outside for an extended period of time.

Back to Kennedy's bicycle, I feel really sorry for him. If I were in his shoes, I know how much new suffering it would mean for me to start doing small errands on my feet again; and I don't say that lightly. As far as I know, he might consider reporting the theft to the local police and is seeking some advice from some locals on how to approach the situation. Can't wait to see how that unfolds and I really hope that somehow, he gets the bicycle back. Cos' I know how important of a possession it was to him. Kennedy is in love with the outdoors.

Travelling by bus in Kaunas, Lithuania - a Nigerian's perspective

2020-01-19T20:43:00.001+01:00

Troleibusas Kaune snieguotą dieną (Trolleybus in Kaunas on a snowy day)

I have found it to be super convenient to travel around Kaunas by bus since I arrived Lithuania in October 2019. My office is a 10-minute walk away from my house, so I don't have to use any vehicle for my daily commute. However, whenever I am travelling farther from home than my office or the nearby Kaunas Akropolis mall, I usually opt to take a bus.

One working day in my second week in Kaunas, a member of Afriko came over to my office to hand me my Kaunas bus card which was preloaded with 5 Euros. The bus card has a wallet which can be loaded with money for buying bus tickets. Also, each bus card is tied to an individual passenger account which can be accessed through through the Kaunas public transport website. Via the website, the card wallet can be loaded, period-based subscription tickets can be purchased, the wallet balance and travel history can be checked among other things.

Kaunas public transport account online dashboard

The night I dumped my Kaunas bus card for a Žiogas eBus-ticket profile

Not long after I got my Kaunas bus card, I took my first bus trip in Kaunas to only God remembers where. One evening, when I had almost used up the initial 5 € on my bus card, I recharged the card at the Narvesen retail shop in the Kaunas bus station. The cashier took my bus card from me and in three seconds, the transaction was done. I was a bit worried though when she gave me a slip of paper and referred to it as a ticket. I feared that I might have bought a 5 € paper ticket instead of having my card wallet loaded with that amount. However, when I took a moment to sit and login to my online account, I discovered that contrary to my fears, I now had 5 € more in my Kaunas bus wallet.

Another evening in early November 2019, I was about to get on my way back from an appointment in another part of Kaunas where I had traveled to by bus. I checked my online bus account and saw that I had only 70 cents left - just enough money for a one-off bus trip. However, I had noticed from my previous bus trips that sometimes, it takes a few minutes for the balance of the bus card to synchronize to the online account. So I feared that I might actually not have enough money to take a bus trip back home.

Fortunately, there was an IKI retail shop close to my location. I walked into the store and asked a uniformed staffer who was busy with some shelf arrangement to confirm if I could reload my Kaunas bus card in that store. "Unfortunately, you cannot do that here", she said. Disappointed, I walked back out of the store onto a sidewalk inside the same 'prematurely' dark Tuesday evening where I had stood earlier while checking my online bus account.

Žiogas: Kaunas bus tickets mobile app

After taking a few moments to contemplate my next steps, I remembered that Eglė, my main contact at Afriko had mentioned on the Digital Explorers Lithuanian culture training day that we could use a mobile app: Žiogas to buy bus tickets. I went on to download the Žiogas app from the Play store to my Tecno Android phone and loaded it with 3.5 € - enough money for 5 trips. Ever since that evening, I have abandoned the Kaunas bus card in my wardrobe on a shelf on my home wardrobe, as the convenience of funding the Žiogas app outstrips that of the bus card.

Thinking about it, I can actually also fund my bus card wallet online. But ever since I tried to do that and abandoned the payment, the button for online funding of my bus card has disappeared from my profile on the website. Apparently I need to complete that payment which I have no easy way of finding my way to ever again.

One thing I quickly noticed about the Žiogas app which I liked was that it actually adds up the amounts of your one-off bus tickets in a calendar month until it's up to the price of a monthly bus pass, after which all your subsequent trips will be free. I like this because it actually removes the incentive to buy a monthly pass upfront at no extra cost. Sweet deal!

I don't take a lot of bus trips in Kaunas so I've never spent up to 28 € for one-off tickets in a month

Cross section of your typical bus trip in Kaunas

1. Planning your Kaunastic bus trip

A bus trip in Kaunas always starts in the mind and then proceeds to your phone or computer. If you have never been to a place in Kaunas, days ahead, you would consult Google maps and apply some considerations to the different routes that are applicable for the intended arrival date+time:

How long does it take to walk to the target bus-stop?
How long is the trip for?
How long is the walk from the target bus-stop to my final destination?
What side of the road is the bus-station on; will you have to cross the road on your way to/from the source/destination bus-stop?
Is the destination close enough and the roads level enough for you to cycle in sub-10 degrees Celsius weather?

Based on a combination those considerations, you would then make a mental note of your preferred route and if the search was done on a PC, send the route as a push notification or text message to your phone.

2. Waiting for your Kaunastic bus

The next step is to remember to get yourself out of the house or office early enough to reach the bus-station at least, 5 minutes before the scheduled departure time. Yes. Even though the buses are more often than not, either right on time or at most, 1 or 2 minutes late, it has happened a few times when you reached the bus stop just a few seconds short of catching the bus, even though you were 1.50 minutes early according to the schedule on the maps.

Enough of you for a minute. My most frequent bus stations to leave from in Kaunas are:

S. Daukanto gatve - the closest stop to work at TransUnion, Zalgiris arena; howbeit a long 7-minute walk away
Kaunakiemio gatve - a paltry 2-minute walk away from home; the closest stop to home
Geležinkelio tiltas: This is a 5-minute walk away from home; the second closest stop to home

Except for once in a blue moon, you often have to walk between 3 and 10 minutes from your departure point to the nearest bus stop. Once there, you step under the bus stop shelter in the hopes that they do something to reduce the effect on the cold wind on your real temperature feel while you await the bus. You would consider sitting on the chair in the shade but a look at them suggests that it's been a while since anyone bothered to clean it.

So you stand in wait, hoping that the data in Google maps is accurate and that your wait this evening is not in vain. Sometimes, your paranoia would drive you to open Trafi (another bus mobile app which also has local bus routes) and confirm that the suggested route matches that on Google maps - the one that told you to come to this stop in the first place.

Your first impression of waiting for a bus in Kaunas is cold hands. Those few seconds of bringing out your phone to cross-reference your bus route on Trafi often cost some precious body heat from your poorly circulated hands.

3. Getting on board your Kaunastic bus

With up to a 2-minute error rate, your bus will arrive at the bus stop right on time. It always fills you with relief; seeing the bus approach from the distance. Even after 4 months, you have not been able to do away with your fear that the schedule might change because for example, the bus broke down at the previous stop.

As the bus slows down to let alighting and boarding passengers do their thing, you divert your attention to the Žiogas sticker close to the front door on the right side of the bus. While waiting, you had taken a moment to open the Žiogas app. The Žiogas sticker displays a 3-digit code and a QR code, either of which can be entered or scanned respectively into the Žiogas app on your phone.

As it takes some time to scan a QR code and people typically hurry into the bus, you memorize the bus code at a glance of the sticker and enter it into Žiogas at the same time as you step onto the bus. By the time you're passing by the driver's cabin, your one-off ticket is ready for inspection. You turn your phone screen around and show it briefly to the driver through his tall cabin window - if they are paying any attention and not just staring straight ahead.

Most times, the Kaunastic driver seems not to care about your in-app e-ticket. You never used to display your ticket to the driver until that one time when you had the driver request to see your ticket after you'd breezed through him to a seat right behind him. During that trip, you read the instructions poster in the bus and learned from it your obligation as a passenger to display your ticket to the driver while boarding.

[Picture of Žiogas bus sticker with QR code]

The boarding process is a little different if you're using a Kaunas bus card. In that case, there is no ticket to show to the driver. Instead, you would simply have to tap your bus card against one of the yellow NFC scanners on the bus: right by the driver's cabin or near the back of the bus. This was the case for me in my first several weeks in Kaunas before I ditched my card for Žiogas.

[Picture of Kaunas bus NFC card reader]

After ensuring that you are not a freeloader on the current bus, the next priority is to find yourself a good spot for the rest of the trip. As it appears that the people of Lithuania generally love their personal space, your ideal seat is a vacant two-seater and that is what you try to spot initially. If that is not available, the next option is to find a seat next to a person who based on mental heuristics, is least likely to be flustered by having you seat beside them.

If I could guess, I would say that a friendly face/welcoming aura is the most important factor in this calculation. Which in your opinion is not so easy to come by. Your understanding of a friendly face is... far fetched from what generally obtains in this new home of yours. Or maybe you're just paranoid; still have not recovered from the culture shock.

4. Riding on a Kaunas city bus

The seats are pretty comfortable; wide enough for an average person to sit comfortably. Also, while not all the seats have a lot of leg room for vertically gifted folks like yourself, it's easy to find that kind of seat on any bus that is not much more than half full - which is often the case in Kaunas judging by your bus trips so far.

The most crowded bus that I myself have boarded since my arrival in Lithuania last October was in Vilnius last Friday on my way back from a Digital explorers Deep Learning training at the Vilnius Tech Park. The bus travelling towards the Vilnius Stotis stop was so full that it felt like I was in an Oshodi Molue all over again. However, after 4 or 5 stops, the crowding reduced and I was able to find myself a seat.

Most of the bus trips that you take are 30 minutes long - or more or less. Anywhere that is not that far away by bus is likely better reached on foot or by bicycle. During these short bus trips, you would spend your time doing one of three things:

Taking in the faces of the people around you, hoping not to catch anyone's eye because someone might find that creepy?
If the bus trip is up to 30 minutes long, you might pop out a physical book to occupy your mind and make you look smart to absolutely no one
Sometimes you also enjoy looking out the window to get a better sense of your new city

Knowing that all of these are activities that you quite enjoy, I dare to say that many an intra-city bus trip in Kaunas passes too quickly for you.

5. Alighting from a Kaunas city bus

But as an adult, you've got to do what you've got to do. You noticed from your first couple of bus trips that passengers would move from their seat to a standing position close to one of the two exit doors of the regular sized Kaunas bus/trolleybus. At first, you thought, "Why the rush? Why not just wait till the bus arrives at your target stop, then walk briskly from your seat to the exit?". However you stopped asking this question and just learned to follow suit after that time when the driver opened the door at your target stop and closed it almost immediately before you reached the exit door. Just before opening the doors, he must have seen from his camera and/or convex mirror view that no one was standing at the door to alight.

As you always have Google maps navigation on during your Kaunas city bus trips, the voice would prompt you one or two stops before your final stop to prepare to alight which is really useful as there is the thin chance that you get carried away reading a book and also not hear the stop announcement since you always have your ears blocked with headphones.

Ears covered with headphones on a Kaunas city bus

That one time I encountered passenger control in Kaunas

In the "getting on board" section of this article, you might have noticed that there is easy opportunity to be a freeloader on a bus trip in Kaunas.

First, if you're using a bus card, you have total justification to enter through the back door after which you have the choice to tap (or not) your card against the reader as there is no official on the bus to get you to do that. Even if you are using the Žiogas app, the driver more often than not looks like they don’t care to see your e-ticket or if they do, do not scrutinize it. Hence, even if you are going through the front door, you can choose to just walk past the driver's cabin if you notice that the driver is not intent on the queue of passengers streaming through the front door.

The white passenger-control bus has "Keleivių kontrolė" written in blue just above the window. The red bus (taking off) has just been checked for freeloaders

The Kaunas city bus transport company's response to the ever-present risk of freeloaders is a system known as Passenger control - Keleivių kontrolė. This is a group of uniformed officials who drive in a labelled minibus between bus stations, conducting random checks on the passengers of buses/trolleybuses that stop at whatever bus station they happen to be at.

To be found on a bus without a valid ticket or e-ticket is to be liable to pay a fine of up to 30 Euros. Despite this control measure, it is pretty clear to see that the Kaunas bus transport operation is relying mostly on the propensity of the commuter to do what is right. I have been in Kaunas for 16 weeks now and in all that time - after at least 20 bus trips - I've had only one encounter with passenger control officials.

If someone is really intent on freeloading, it is pretty easy because they could simply keep watch from the window and buy an e-ticket as soon as they spot a passenger control bus at the next stop which is rarely. Every other time - most of the time, they actually get the chance to travel for free. But I guess that's not how Kaunas people do, so this trust based system works just fine. In Kaunas, I have encountered several instances of public systems that betray an assumption of trust on the public, but my impression of this unfamiliar reality deserves an article of its own.

My cold-room experience on an old Kaunastic Trolleybus

An old Kaunas trolley bus - KaunasIn

Two weeks ago, on the way back from an appointment in another part of Kaunas, I took bus 14 from the Pakraščio g. stop to the S. Daukanto g. stop where I had parked my bicycle when leaving home base a couple of hours earlier. From the street art on the trolley bus, I could tell that it was an old bus, perhaps one of those that had been in an exhibition in Kaunas in late 2019.

After settling into the bus, I removed my gloves and unzipped my jacket as I am wont to do when I step into a newer model Kaunas bus/trolleybus - whose internal temperature is always conducive for that. However, after sitting for a few minutes in this case, I realized that instead of getting warmer, I was actually feeling colder! Well, the moment I realized this, I promptly jumped back into my warm clothing (winter jacket and woolen gloves).

Inside an old Kaunas bus with a cold interior temperature

My Vilnius bus trips compared to Kaunas bus trips

Two Saturdays ago, I traveled from Kaunas to Vilnius by train for a Digital Explorers machine learning training. From the Stotis bus stop (right outside the Vilnius train station), I had boarded a bus to Sauletekis Valley Science and Technology park - training center. A few things about this bus trip were different from the typical one in Kaunas.

For one, the mobile app for buying tickets in Vilnius is Trafi (versus Žiogas in Kaunas) - I had first learned of this difference from Emmanuel (a fellow Digital explorer who lives and works in Vilnius) during one of our training sessions in Kaunas. The Trafi wallet operates quite differently from the Žiogas one in that while you have to buy one or multiple one-off tickets (or other types of longer-period tickets) in Trafi while paying, Žiogas allows you to fund your wallet with any amount and buy tickets only when you're checking in to a bus. Hence, while you can have a one-off ticket that is not attached to any bus in Trafi, all one-off Žiogas tickets are attached to a single bus number.

Another major difference between the Vilnius and Kaunas mobile bus e-tickets is that while for Kaunas, a one-off ticket is valid for a single trip irrespective of how long it is, the Vilnius one is only valid for either 30 minutes or 60 minutes. This means that as a passenger, one needs to do the added trouble of mapping the expected length of their trip to a ticket that covers for that period; if they are not a dishonest freeloader that is.

By hook or by crook, you will achieve this goal on your own

2019-12-09T23:24:00.002+01:00

Just a minute ago, while folding the clothes from my weekend laundry, I found myself thinking about an upcoming Christmas party being organized by a couple of fellow Digital Explorers who live together in a big Kaunas city center flat, just five minutes drive away from mine.

I received communication from the organizers this evening that each of the 11 (or 12 😪) Digital Explorers currently in Lithuania will be contributing 15 Euros to fund the party. It's not a lot of money, but also I would not call it a pittance. In fact, we had one or two explorers protesting that the price tag for the party was a little steep.

Anyway, my idle mind lapsed into gear F (frugal) mode and its first quest was to justify my parting with 15 Euros for a plate of Jollof rice and fried meat. Not much to my surprise, my mind's answer at the end of that quest was that a secondary reward for me would be to have a granular view into how the funds for the party will be spent.

Not because I suspect that the funds (which as a whole, cannot solve any significant financial problem for any Digital explorer) will be misappropriated, but because standing in one corner of my living room tonight, my mind had already created a beautiful picture of an article through which I open-source Christmas house-party planning information. I dreamed of how majestic the article would be if I could make it just as juicy (detailed) as this beautiful creation from the stables of Paystack where they shared their journey of setting up billboards in Lagos, Nigeria for the first time.

The next thing I thought was, "yes, before I send my contribution for that party, I will demand that the organizers ensure that they keep all the receipts and take out the time to share all line items with the rest of us once the budget is closed". After a few seconds though, I spotted the folly of this idea. It isn't hard for me to imagine how approaching my goal this way can easily lead to conflict when one or two of the organizers feels disrespected by concluding that the reason for my request is that I suspect that funds might be misappropriated.

This one time, I feel lucky to be an over-thinker (I was last reminded of this part of my nature last Thursday by my date at the Ten Walls and the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra concert in Zalgiris arena, Kaunas). Apart from feeling insulted, I understand that it can be difficult to remain meticulous when you have a lot to handle, which would definitely be the case for the party's organizers the moment they start to shop for the party. I was not optimistic that any of the organizers would be stoked to take on the 'pointless' responsibility of storing up receipts and extracting line items from each of them. After all, we are all contributing the same amount of money.

Again, without prompting me, my mind switched to gear H (humane) and quickly revealed to me that there is a natural and guaranteed conflict-free way for me to achieve my goal of having bird's eye view of the financial planning of this party.

"Easy, just let them know you would like to assist with the planning of the party. That way, you can have access to the receipts without ruffling any feathers. Win-win. Also, new experience as you have never planned a party in your life and you definitely need to take more social initiatives in this dreary life of yours".

PROBLEM SOLVED

---

Finally, my mind went to gear N (nostalgia), taking me back to one hot Lagos afternoon in 2015. At the time, I was a software developer at Fidelity Bank head office and I was having a chat with Nnanna (my manager) in his office. It was about some work milestone which I was struggling to reach because I was having trouble enlisting the necessary help of another team in the bank (probably the really difficult to work with systems administration team).

I was there to have him intervene on the matter as an oga-at-the-top, as I had faced a bit of resistance in trying to get the team to grant me my wish. However, he insisted that the responsibility of getting the systems admin. team to grant me my request falls solely on me this time.

The phrase which stays with me from that interaction with Nnanna and often replays in my head when I ponder how I handle many a difficult situation in my life these days is:

"Whether it is that you will go and fight with them or whether you want to make friends with them to achieve this goal, it is entirely up to you. All I know is that you must get this done and I will not step in to help you".

For that particular difficult situation at my work, even though I can't remember the specific details or even how the issue was finally resolved, I know instinctively that I chose to take the friendly, rather than aggressive approach in getting the systems admin. team to help me out. Most likely because I was sure that even if by some sheer stroke of luck (I had zero authority over anyone in systems admin. and also did not consider myself capable of intimidating anyone), I had managed to achieve my goal in a violent way, it was not a sustainable way to work. It would poison me as well as the victims (or perhaps, just me the perpetrator) without commensurate reward.

Looking back, I realize how a lot of my philosophy today is built strongly on that foundation of seeking first to solve problems amicably. Of being willing to risk having my plug take advantage of my appearing to be at their mercy, instead of demanding my well-deserved way to a desired goal. Of not coming to the table floating on a cloud of entitlement, even if as a matter of fact, I am entitled to receive a certain favor from a person.

My favorite feature on Revolut: Request payment

2019-11-21T06:06:00.001+01:00

Two Saturdays ago, I and three other fellow Digital Explorers took a Bolt cab together to a 'friend''s birthday party. I was the one who requested the ride, so at the end of the ride, a payment of €6.8 was deducted from my Revolut virtual card (which I now use for all online/in-app payments since I arrived in Lithuania). As we made our way towards the party house, I vocally broadcasted the total ride cost to the other explorers, as well as the per-head cost: €1.7.

Now, refunding me was pretty straightforward for everyone. Upon arrival in Lithuania, we had each opened a Revolut account. This was one of the few viable options for us, as we had found out (shortly before arrival) that to open an account with a Lithuanian bank with our class of visa, we would have to pay upwards of €100 to the bank (as account opening fee, not as account opening balance). On the other hand, it is completely free to open a fully-fledged European bank account with Revolut. Besides, Revolut lets you send money in a few simple steps to any other Revolut user anywhere in the world, as long as you have their phone number or there are somewhere nearby.

Because I really like money, know how easy it is for someone to forget a debt so insignificant and also, how wary I am of reaching out in person to remind someone to repay a debt (especially peanuts like €1.7), I became uneasy when 10 minutes into the event, not one of the explorers had sent me a refund.

By this time, every one else had settled either into playing the PES 2019 soccer game, being an enthusiastic spectator, doing jackshit on their phone or enjoying some of the treats at the birthday party. It was surely a bad time now to remind my micro-debtors to send my money (lest they forget all about it by the end of the day). At some point, I remembered the "Request payment" feature of Revolut which I had noticed many times before while using the "Send payment" feature.

Without further ado, I opened my Revolut app and sent e-invoices of €1.7 to each one of my three debtors, using a simple three-step process (Select contact => Enter amount => Request payment). There are two optional steps also (see picture below): you can add a description (narration) and a GIF!!!

Fancy how my mind won't let go of Bolt's old name: Taxify

The fact that you can add a GIF to a transaction is what I consider the icing on the cake of Revolut's peer-to-peer payment suite. In the case of requesting payment, for me, being able to add a GIF to a repayment request presents an unmatchable opportunity to introduce some humor, which mitigates the tension that can often surround financial exchanges such as the topic one.

While at it, I also requested payment from Abib* who had requested me to help buy him Aboniki balm and a tub of Vaseline petroleum jelly, shortly before leaving Lagos for Kaunas (he left Lagos for Kaunas a week before me). It was at least, 6 hours already since I had delivered the package to Abib and sent him the payment details (my Nigerian bank account) on WhatsApp, yet a quick check at the party revealed that the payment (however insignificant: ₦1100) was yet to be made. I kindly converted the payment to Euros at 400:1 and sent Abib a payment request on Revolut.

By the end of the day, I had received my 4 payments (3 from fellow Bolters, one from Abib), all without saying a single word to any of my debtors. Soft life 💯! There is no parallel universe but I would put a stake on the chance that at least, one of these 4 people would have needed me to remind them about their debt at least once within the next few days to not totally forget about it. I hope you see now, why I am stoked enough by this feature to spend 2 irredeemable hours of my mediocre life writing about it?

Interestingly, after the "Request payment" transactions had been finalized, Revolut automatically reminded me (through an in-app popup) of the "Split bill" feature - which would have significantly shortened the process of requesting refunds from my 3 co-Bolters. The Revolut "Split bill" feature allows me to select a single transaction from my Revolut debit history and split the amount between myself and any number of Revolut users in my address book.

Split a bill with other Revolut users

In recent days, I cannot help but think back home to Nigeria and how this kind of feature is long overdue, at least for the mobile banking app of many of the country's commercial banks. While I am not ignorant of the challenges to adoption that having 23 commercial banks with mobile apps which are for all practical purposes, isolated from one another, a "Request payment" feature would still be really handy for small groups which are by formulation, a cluster of a single bank's customers. Think a group of Access bank staff turned fine-dining/drinking buddies or a nuclear family that is loyal to GTBank.

Writing this story also reminds me of my not-so-long-ago days at Carbon when similar peer-to-peer payments were an almost daily occurrence between me and my colleagues. One of us would make a payment for some product or service on behalf of several others and we would simply have to settle him/her with a refund to his/her Carbon wallet.

Every so often, when I made a payment on behalf of Titi*, I usually would have to remind him in person at least, once and at the worst, up to two times, before I received a refund. In the period in-between two consecutive reminders, I would severally waive the instinct to remind Titi of his debt, telling myself: "Come on! You earn so much more than ₦700 - and probably Titi -, so you can easily waive this change. Abeg, let it go". Unarguably, my life would have been much easier back then if the Carbon app (which is a great app actually) had allowed me to request payment and/or split a bill, just like I can with Revolut. In addition, it would have spared me having to watch Titi vocally beat up himself for being so forgetful, whenever I reminded him of a debt, like 3 weeks after the fact.

* Name was changed for anonymity as I did not inform any of these persons before mentioning them in my story. IOW, be intentional in how you treat a writer, as you never know when you will end up as the subject of a story that the whole world can read. And they needn't be as discreet as I am being here 🦊.

Kaunas city municipality waste sorting guide - English

2019-11-17T16:55:00.001+01:00

Two days ago (Friday), one day to the end of my sixth week in Kaunas, I observed with mild irritation the cluttered nature of my kitchen counter. The feeling was enough to drive me to do something about it this time. I started to pick up the items on the counter, one after the other, putting each one in its designated place. A few of the items on the counter were waste: paper towels, empty milk cartons and the likes.

In the process of deciding what to do with the empty milk cartons, my mind wandered back to my first major grocery shopping trip in Lithuania. A day after I arrived in Lithuania's capital city - Vilnius - Monika (a Lithuanian buddy) had graciously reached out to me and offered to be my grocery shopping guide. The grocery trip happened on my third evening in Kaunas, and the destination was the Maxima XXX store in the Kaunas Akropolis.

During that trip, when it was time to buy waste bags, I got to know that Monika - my human shopping guide - shared my affection for the environment and its conservation. The moment I reached for the default black bag that I am used to, she asked if we had waste recycling bins back at my apartment. As far as I had seen, the biggest trash can in my flat had only one compartment. Besides, it was only my second day in the apartment, so I had yet to walk around my apartment block to know where the garbage bins stood.

Seeing that I was struggling to answer her question, she quickly excused herself, saying it was fine if I got the regular bag for now and came back for the recycling color-coded bags when I was well-settled in. "As a makeshift, you can get the green, bio-degradable plastic bags for now, which are way better for the environment than the black ones", she advised. I agreed.

A roll of green eco-friendly (tautology?) garbage bags

This Friday, while decluttering my kitchen counter, I decided that it's about time I started doing my bit on this recycling thing. A few weeks ago during a walk round the block, I had spotted the regular garbage bins as well as the three large and brightly-colored bins in the area behind my apartment block. "No more obstacles now, apart from getting the color-coded garbage bags".

Kaunas municipality waste recycling bins on Kaunakiemio street, Centras, Kaunas
L-R: Green - Glass, Yellow - Plastics and metals, Blue: Papers and cardboards

Right away, a wrote a new to-do item into my small notepad to get waste recycling bags on my next visit to the grocery store. The next day though, before I could do that, I figured that I could simply use some of the plastic and paper bags which I have accumulated from different shopping trips. Each time any of the bags for the recyclables was full, I would simply transfer its contents into the appropriate municipality recycling bin, and re-use the same bag for as long as it holds.

The next and final step was to be sure I was sorting my waste correctly. The stickers on each of the recycling bins display some textual instructions for what was items are allowed and prohibited. Unfortunately, the text is in Lithuanian and I'm still at the beginning of my journey in learning the basics of the language.

Logically, I went online to find Kaunas waste sorting instructions. My search led me, first, to a webpage belonging to - what I assume is - the biggest waste-management company in Kaunas (Kauno Švara). There, I found 4 nice infographic flyers, with image and text instructions on what does and what doesn't fall into each of the four categories of waste: Glass (Stiklas), Plastics and Metals (Plastmase), Paper and cardboard (Popierius/Kartonas) and General household waste (Mišrios Komunalinės Atliekos).

While the images on the Kauno Švara infographics were useful in helping me realize my culpability for gross-misconduct in my recent waste-sorting activities at the office which has indoor recycling bins (I had been putting used paper towels into the Paper and cardboard section of the bin), the infographic text, again, was not of much use to me as it was also in Lithuanian.

Hence, I continued my search for waste sorting guides in Kaunas which did not take long to lead me to a PDF file containing the same sorting instructions on the Kaunas municipality recycling bins and on the Kauno Švara infographics, again in Lithuanian 😁. This was a huge step forward though, as it is not much of a hassle to copy text from a PDF into Google translate. I decided that after translating the Kaunas waste sorting PDF guide for myself, it would be useful to make the English version public as well. Ergo, here we are!

Here's the link to the English version of the Kaunas city municipality waste sorting guide, which I translated from Lithuanian to English with immense help from Google Translate. Hopefully, in the near future, one or two fellow tree-hugging, English-speaking foreigners in Kaunas find this useful.

Halloween-themed night out at Lost Escape room, Kaunas

2019-11-03T20:59:00.001+01:00

As Halloween approached, Edvinas (the Lithuanian buddy who has earned himself the title of social prefect for the Digital Explorers' buddy group) suggested that we attend a scary escape room in the spirit of the season. In the course of the next few days, I and four other explorers/buddies signed up to join Edvinas at 9pm on the Friday after Halloween on a trip to a Kaunas escape room which he had learned was English-speaker compatible 😁.

There was no reason to say no really, as apart from being new here, I also live alone in my flat. Hence, I'll say yes to almost every opportunity to socialize and spend leisure time with other people. The only cases where I would be prone to saying no are when the event interferes with my night's sleep and the activity is not something I'm sure to find exciting. Also, it was a public holiday - All Saints Day and I did not exactly have other plans for that day.

On Friday evening, after spending some time chit-chatting at Kennedy's place, I and the rest of the crew were ferried in two batches to the rather creepy (isolated and dark) location of Lost Escape, Kaunas in Laura's red salon car. In less than five minutes, I and the other people in the first batch arrived the building; the only light coming out of it being from a window on the topmost floor where a young man stood alone. Earlier at Kennedy's place, we had joked about how many back home might consider us insane for voluntarily inserting ourselves into a horror-movie scene. "After all the Oyinbo horror movies you've watched, you still haven't learned anything"?

We climbed three flights of stairs to the topmost floor of the building where the young man who had been at the window welcomed us from behind the lobby desk where he stood. While going up the stairs, Edvinas showed us the door to the Pjūklas (Saw movie themed) escape room which was the one that we'd selected (it fit the scariness bill).

Source: Lost Escape Kaunas website

As we waited for Laura and the second batch to arrive the comfy reception room, the reception guy asked to know which of the 4 available escape rooms that we'd selected. On hearing "Pjūklas", he went on to ask if any of us had been in an escape room before. Out of the six of us, only Laura and Edvinas (the two Lithuanians in the group) had ever been to one. Solving an escape room was a first time thing for any of us Digital explorers - who comprised the rest of the group.

The attendant went on to advise us to reconsider our choice of Pjūklas as it happens to be the most difficult room. It made sense that as a group which has 4 out of 6 members as escape-room noobs, we do not choose the most difficult room. After a short consultation between each other, we decided to go for the ancient-Egypt themed "Faraono Prakeiksmas" (Pharaoh's curse) room instead.

A few minutes to 21:00, shortly after the arrival of the second batch (and us watching another group celebrate their escape from the most difficult Pjūklas room in only 63 minutes), we were invited to a closed room for a briefing by the attendant. He gave us a few tips and basic information which include:

the time limit of 60 minutes
not to brute force our way through any obstacle
every clue/key that we needed being within eye level
how to identify escape room artefacts that are not to be touched
how to opt-out of the challenge

The briefing took less than 5 minutes and then in we went into the Pharaoh's cursed tomb. This is the part where I go into every detail of our progression through the several sections of this room. Except that I am experienced enough to know how easily that can be interpreted as a contemptible move, both by the Lost Escape establishment and for other people looking to buy this experience in the future.

L-R: Defeated Explorer Mofe, Buddy Laura, Buddy Edvinas, Explorer Hafiz, Explorer Kennedy and Explorer Godsman

It is sad to say though that despite our best efforts, my group of 6 lost what was meant to be the easiest escape room of the lot. We managed to finish in 71 minutes (instead of the designated 60). And I doubt that we would have made it out of the room in even twice that amount of time without the - at least 6 - hints we received from an invisible voice in the room.

Of course, to keep us challenged, these hints came only at the times when it was obvious from our lack of progress for minutes at a time that we had hit a bottleneck. It would be nice to know the percentage of groups that actually manage to escape from the Faraono Prakeiksmas room with absolutely no hints. The hints from the hidden voice ranged from it asking us to direct attention to something in particular, to letting us know that we needed to be accurate with a specific puzzle we had struggled with for like 5 minutes.

As the final exit of the escape room popped open, indicating our losing escape, we were welcomed back to the real world by a young lady who had apparently taken over from the guy who led us in. She led us back into the escape room to take a few questions from us after which she offered to take a group picture of us in the section of the escape room where we were stuck the longest.

With the rest of the group in seemingly high spirits from the adventure we all just mutually experienced, I left the escape room feeling rather incompetent and deflated as I couldn't help but ruminate over how useless I was to my group in the escape room. Looking in, I guess my disappointment stems from me expecting that many of the ideas to decode the puzzles in the room would come from me. Unfortunately, that did not happen as save for one or two minor ideas, my main contribution to the group was as a mere artefact transporter 😔😢😔.

Even in hindsight, I don't see how I could have arrived at the breakthrough ideas in the record time (if ever) that some members of the group did. Reminds me of how getting into university made me realize that I'm not as absolutely smart as previous stages of education had made me believe.

What my visit to the Kaunas Lost Escape room did to my ego

Around 22:30, as Laura drove our group of 6 away from the creepy area that the Lost Escape building calls home, past the nearby cemetery which looked ethereally beautiful in the dark and cold night (the graves had been adorned with thousands of candles by the ones left behind in the spirit of the Lithuanian All Saints Day), we considered taking a walk through the cemetery to wrap up our Friday night. While I and a few other members of the group were up for it, for Laura, this was too much of a creepy thing to do in the dead of night, so she generously drove us right past the cemetery 😭 and on to each of our homes.

From Lagos to Kaunas

2019-10-10T05:20:00.000+01:00

I'm writing this one from a living room, in a one- (or two-) bedroom flat which lies along on Karaliaus Mindaugo avenue, Kaunas Lithuania. I'm sat behind a stark white four-seater dining table that is right below a chandelier whose white light beautifully illuminates the keys of my silver-painted HP laptop. It's been nearly 4 hours since I closed from work today and I'm feeling cheerful, positive, happy, grateful, privileged, blessed. Right now, there are no negative feelings in here.

This living room that I write from is the one which if all goes as planned, will be my abode for the next 11 months. It is hands down the best living space (by multiple indices) that I've ever lived in since I started paying rent in late 2016. And arguably the best overall space I've ever lived in since I was born (definitely top 2 though). I moved in here last weekend: Saturday. Since then, there's been no power outage in my flat.

Digital Explorers advert from the daily TechCabal newsletter

I've come a long way to be here, 7000+ km if you draw a sort-of-straight line between Lagos and Kaunas. It's a journey which all started serendipitously in early March 2019, when I learned about Digital Explorers from the daily TechCabal newsletter. At the time, I was over my then job at Access Bank and was eager for the next thing already. The first time I noticed the Digital explorers advert, I opened the link to the website, read about the program and found my way to the application form. The form looked intimidating though: about 20 questions and on top of that, I had to submit a video of me talking about myself. I can imagine that I started filling the form; with all the basic details about myself and then I must have stopped at the "Why do you want to be a part of the Digital explorers program" question. Difficult question, you'll agree? Looks too much to me like one whose answer is most likely to make or break your application. Nonetheless, I left the Chrome tab open.

Around the same period, even though I didn't complete the Digital explorers application myself, I made sure to inform a few colleagues of mine at the Access Bank head office: budding developers who were looking for opportunities to accelerate their programming skills. As chance would have it, one of them: Bayo actually followed through and completed this application.

April 1, 2019: the day that applications were closing for the first-ever track of the Digital explorers program, I got into an office corridor chat with Bayo. That was when he told me that he had actually completed his application. Remembering that one of the reasons I didn't complete my application was that I had to record a video 🙍‍♂️, I asked Bayo for how he'd crossed that hurdle. He explained that he had not uploaded the video as the application had requested. However, he was ready to send the video when Digital explorers got back to let him know that the video was missing from his application - who's to know if that’s the only reason that he didn't move past the application stage?

Not having much to do at work that day - I'd actually already dropped a resignation notice at Access Bank, I decided to go through with it; if Bayo can do it, why can't I? And so was it that I soon made my way that fateful Monday afternoon to the loo of the staff recreation centre to record myself talking about my career and my motivation for applying to be a Digital explorer. In another one or two hours, I had submitted my application and that came with a tinge of fulfilment.

Less than 24 hours later, I received an email with a link to a Codility coding challenge which I had to complete. If I remember correctly, I had a perfect score and I finished in good time. In other words, the test was not a tough one for me - who knows, maybe it's because I've been programming professionally for almost 7 years now. Within the next two weeks, I had completed a motivation and personality interview over a phone call with a member of the Afriko team (Afriko is the Lithuanian company leading the Digital explorers program). One week after the phone interview, I was invited to the final step of the program: a week-long training and hackathon program in Abuja Nigeria, happening in the second week of May 2019.

Interestingly, when this invite came, I was less than one week away from resuming as a software engineer at Carbon. For that reason, it was impractical for me to request time off to attend the Abuja Digital Explorers event. How would it sound that I was just three weeks into a job, still learning the ropes and then I'm requesting for a whole week off of work? First, I valued the opportunity to work at Carbon quite highly. Also, one of my highest values at this time of my life is honesty (it's actually because it's hard to think up lies and I'm mentally lazy), so going the route of lying about why I could not be at work for a whole week was not an option for me.

My response to the invite from Digital explorers was first of all tentative, then after I had discussed with my manager about me wanting to try out this opportunity to work abroad, I decided not to take time off work to attend the Abuja event. "Abroad work opportunity will come when I become even more adept at what I do through my job at Carbon", I consoled myself. However, the strong, personable and empathetic people of Afriko would not have it and they ensured that I attended the program, even if only for the last day. "The trip from Lagos to Abuja is an all-expense-paid one", they said. I had nothing to lose, so I said yes and flew to Abuja after work on May 10, 2019, for a jolly weekend of mixing with an ambitious crop of Nigerian techies and sleeping two nights in a room that is much nicer than my Lagos one at the time. Since I was aware that my chances of getting a job offer from a Lithuanian company after the program were slightly reduced as I was not able to participate in most of the week-long program, my main mission in Abuja was to chillax big time; mini-vacation if you will.

Just as I had expected, at the end of the hackathon Saturday (May 11, 2019), none of the companies who had representatives in Abuja had offered to interview me. I resigned myself to one more night of blissful sleep in a nice big Abuja hotel room and promised myself to double-down on my new Carbon job so I'd be better prepared to grab the next desirable abroad-work opportunity that I found.

Roughly one month after the Abuja hackathon - when I had absolutely no more hopes of becoming a Digital explorer, I got an email from an Afriko person. Receiving that email made my day. I remember jumping up from my office chair and telling my colleague Precious that I had just received an email that has made my day. This was before 8:00 in Lagos and I felt fulfilled enough to not do any other work for that day. Of course, my employer would have begged to differ, so as you would expect, I stayed back at work.

The email said that I had been invited for an interview for next week Tuesday by a hiring Manager at TransUnion Baltics. I confirmed my availability for the proposed time and went ahead to prepare for the interview. I went to the company website, read enough to get a sense of what they are all about - I was interested. Afterwards, I compiled a few questions that I would like to ask the panel during the interview.

Because the interview was on a weekday morning, I asked a friend to let me use his office for the interview. My plan was to complete the interview - which based on schedule would eat at most, one hour deep into my workday and then head to my office. My interview with three members of the engineering team at TransUnion went well, even though I couldn't place a bet on that I would proceed to the next stage. I made a few oversights in the live coding session and I didn’t even finish the tasks in the allotted time. I considered it a positive sign though that the hiring manager took his time to explain to me what it was like to work at his company and in his team after I had asked one or two of the plenty questions that I had prepared beforehand.

Roughly a week after the interview, I got an offer letter to join the TransUnion Baltics as a Senior Software Engineer 😭😭😭. After a bit of back and forth, I accepted the offer and well, here we are.

Welcome to Lithuania picture - Vilnius Airport

Tomorrow (Friday) marks the start of my second week in Lithuania. I am a pacesetter and I would love it to be that at the end of this journey, my company is happy to hire many more willing people from Nigeria who want to explore their world through working abroad. I am an ambassador for millions of talented humans back home with inadequate opportunities and I will be keeping some doors closed if I mess up this opportunity. Hopefully, I don't get carried away and I am able to keep that active in my subconscious throughout my time in Lithuania. Also, I am in for a year-long adventurous time in this beautiful and cold Baltic country. Care to come along?
-
Ačiū

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PS

Do you have any questions for me related to the subject of this article? Ask quickly, anonymously if you want, by clicking here.

Why I don't blog as often as I would love to

2019-08-25T23:49:00.000+01:00

Can you even imagine that I stepped out of the middle of writing another blog post to write this one? I have problems 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️.

Well, I'm writing this because it just happens that writing this happens to feel more exciting, and easier than the one I was on. And this says a whole lot about why most of my articles end up as drafts that will never get revisited by me or anyone else.

Comment which of these articles (if any) that you're eager to read

A lot of times when I get the idea to write an article, it's because I had something of a light-bulb moment where it feels like the best idea in the world right now is to execute that writing idea. Usually, it's due to a memory I recalled, something I just experienced or any other such trigger that leads to me feeling excited about sharing an idea/experience.

When I get such an urge to write an article, depending on where I am or what I'm doing, I would do one of these things:

write a draft
synthesize the outline of the article in my head
just shelve the idea for the ensuing weekend or
if the universe aligns (which is rarely), actual bang out the article on the spot (like this one).

Except in the last instance where I have the opportunity to write the article at the moment when the article idea was born, the chance of my article idea seeing the light of day is less than 1%. Even in that scenario, a lot of times, before I'm halfway through, I either get bored or distracted by something irrelevant. In either case, I always find a way to tell myself that I would be back to complete the article. One of the greatest lies ever told I wonder how I still manage to believe it, given how many times I've told it to myself.

As you might expect, the next time I get the urge to - or decide to - write, the idea in the spotlight is entirely different and going back to continue an article I was writing even just last weekend feels like utter grunt work. It literally feels like: "who's the idiot that dared to imagine that this was a good thing to write"?

Two weekends ago, I started to write an article about a day in my life at Carbon - my current workplace. I had drafted the article and cranked out at least 500 words. However, I had to leave it at some point because it was looking like a rather long one and I felt deserving of a break for the good work done so far. Since then, I've not even as much as opened it to see how far I've gone. At this moment, I have a little more than zero interest in seeing that article completed, the opposite of how I was feeling when I jumped on it two weeks ago.

All that having been said, I guess one tip that might work for me is to direct energy towards simpler article ideas like this one. I'm an explainer, so that means I tend to spare no words in going into as much detail as I think contributes to the comprehension and readability of my article. That, of course, translates to articles that - for a short-attention-span human like me - are long enough to be challenging to finish in one sitting.

Besides that, since all of my distractions are on the internet, it can be useful to make the first draft on a good offline editor - I tend to prefer writing in the blogger WYSIWYG editor because it feels like it increases the chances that I'll get to publish the article. Editing, which might need some internet research and image-sourcing can then be done online.

Blogger WYSIWYG editor

Another thing that comes to mind as a way to improve my completion rate is to enforce a rule that all new article ideas go into a backlog and will not get executed until I complete articles already in the queue. Now, that might sound straightforward but I fear that it might be a death spell to my writing career because I just might never be able to summon up the will to ramp up on an old draft. I know it's an irrational fear though, since most times, it actually takes just a few minutes of labouring to get into the rhythm and resurrect the emotions that were behind an old draft.

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ASIDE: While editing this article, I came upon an incomplete sentence (in the previous paragraph) and I found that hilarious. Every time I'm writing an article, it happens to me that in the middle of constructing a sentence, the content of the next sentence would drop straight into my mind and that would feel so much more compelling at the moment that I have to stop the current sentence midway to pen down the next sentence just so I would not forget. I'm curious as to how common this phenomenon is amongst writers.
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The best outcome for this article is that fellow writers who can relate to this completion challenge can read this and share me some tips that I can actually use which will increase my completion rate.

Now, I would go right back to try to complete the now boring article I started writing yesterday morning - before my day took an unproductive plunge - but I want to sleep. Let's see how early tomorrow morning works. I really need to find a rhythm for my non-work activities again - writing is close to the top - because I feel unsatisfied about the fact that of recent, I tend to spend all my free time only on self-gratifying and consumptive activities.

Lagos-based Toyota Corrola salon car goes into retirement

2019-08-02T00:10:00.000+01:00

Recently, I read a blog post that I wrote in 2013. For me, apart from being a nostalgic and entertaining read, it made me remember the days when my writing was not all serious and targeted. I used to write just because I got a creative impulse and I thought it'd be interesting to put that to use. I was writing for myself and in a sense, the writing was an end in and of itself.

Along the line though, perhaps triggered by the success of some people around me in commercializing blogs, my attention gradually shifted to stuff like page visits and page rank. I became particularly interested in the potential reach of my writings, more than my enjoyment of writing as a hobby. Ever since then, most article ideas that flow through my head get discarded because "this doesn't help anyone else" or "no one is going to be interested in this".

With that mindset, my writing became less and less frequent, because of the sheer stress involved in the filtering process. Most times, by the time I'm done thinking about how to present an idea in the way most beneficial to the supposedly reading public, I've already lost the zeal to write it.

This evening, while I was doing a few dishes, my eyes picked up the sheen of my car under the dim compound lighting through the kitchen window. Seeing the car shine gave me joy in that I can lay total claim to such a beautiful object. I think the reason that I actually took notice was that it had actually been a while since I'd seen the car shine that way. Yes, until this past weekend, the car had not gotten a wash for at least, one month 😳😳😳.

In the few seconds that followed that moment, a few thoughts followed. How happy I was when I first lay my eyes on that car 3 years ago. I also considered how little use the thing now gets used since I moved within 4 miles of my workplace in June. And of course, at that moment, the idea for this article was born. And to my surprise, my helpful article filter allowed it to pass. Surely, the filtration process has relaxed since I read that 2013 article.

I'm excited about this development because it just might mean that I'll be able to achieve better consistency in my writing. I don't know if I've ever said it publicly but I feel a burning desire to blog consistently. To make it clear, this desire does not exist to fulfil an end which consistently blogging is bound to lead me to. No. Blogging, which in the style that I do, generally means documenting my own experiences in a way that is freely and widely accessible to other people is in itself, an end for me.

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My Green Toyota Corolla in a fine Lekki house

My car went into retirement in the last week of June 2019. This coincides with my relocating to a house which is 4 kilometres closer to my workplace than my previous place. The location of the new house means that I can get a Keke directly from the front of my house to the front of my workplace for 200 Naira (55 cents). On realizing this, I think it would have been silly for me on many levels to still keep driving my car to work on the regular.

Level 1: Transportation cost

My Toyota Corolla car is fuel economical. Hence, between my old place and my workplace, I used to spend between 500 and 600 Naira on petrol per day, which when you add the benefit of comfort of privacy you get in a car versus a Keke, it can't really be said to be expensive. That is until you remember that every day, yours sincerely had to shell out 360 Naira every day to pass through the Lekki Admiralty toll plaza. That takes my former daily transportation costs up to 900 Naira; more than twice what it now costs me for my daily work commute.

Level 2: Car maintenance

Beyond the running costings for using a car being more on a day-to-day basis, there's also the fact that the more use a car gets, the more frequently it has to be maintained. These days, I drive my car only on Saturdays and Sundays, mostly within my neighbourhood. In numbers, this means that my car now gets 71% more rest than it used to in the days when I drove it to work every day. Now, if that's not retirement, please tell me what is.

In terms of cost, using my car less than one-third the time that I used to means that instead of servicing it three or four times a year, I can now do that just once or if I'm being generous (or paranoid) twice a year. Similarly, the unexpected faults that tend to rear their heads every once in a while, leading to unanticipated spending are less likely to occur due to reduce wear and tear on the car.

Finally, if I was driving to work every day from my current house, I would be driving the car through some not-so-level roads. Every single day! That would take away a few more points from my well-maintained car scorecard.

Level 3: Commuting time

Beyond being a car spoiler, the poor state of the roads in the Lekki-VI alternative route (they're actually not that bad but I hate to drive on anything other than a paved road) between home and work means that a car can't be driven any much faster than a Keke can. The roads are quite bumpy, right from around Newmarket (Akiogun) road in Lekki until you get to Ligali Ayorinde street in VI.

Of course, the commuting time takes a leap at rush hour times. Again, at such times, I'd rather not be stuck in my car wasting away in traffic that I could breeze through using a Keke or Okada. When I used to drive to work every day, I regularly had to wait at the office till at least, 8 PM for rush-hour traffic to ease out enough to be tolerable for me.

However, since I started taking Keke to work with my car parked at home, I've been regularly leaving my work for home between 5 and 6 pm. In the worst traffic situations on my route, Kekes still manage to get through much faster than any car can. Also, if it's a total standstill, I'm free to walk or bike my way out of such before joining a Keke that has gone past the traffic.

Having said all that, I hereby wish my car a happy retirement.

PS

I think this article is lame. But what's wrong with being lame? Whenever I'm hesitant to do something because I might be seen as lame, I like to encourage myself by reminding myself that lameness is actually a positive trait in that it gives other people a reason to laugh. Hence, in as much as I manage to take the mockery light-heartedly, my lameness actually has a net positive effect in the world, so long as it does not involve directly causing damage to someone or something.

I took a GBoat from Lekki to Victoria Island last Monday. Here's how it went

2019-06-24T03:11:00.000+01:00

Shameless admission: I stole the format for the title of this article from the first review of GBoat (at least according to Google). I'm trying to be the second review and also, I hope to have my article appear on the first page when anyone in Nigeria searches for GBoat.

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Gossy's giveaway tweet for GBoat Nigeria

After stumbling on a tweet from Gossy that was offering giving a free GBoat ride and drinks on Friday, I decided to be an early adopter by booking a Lekki to Victoria Island (V.I.) trip for the next Monday's work commute. What's the worst that could happen? It costs only 200 Naira. I don't know if I've ever looked forward to Monday morning like I did throughout the ensuing weekend. I shared my excitement via my Whatsapp statuses and before Monday, 4 of my contacts requested that they'd love to know how it goes. So here I am fulfilling that wish for all of them and hopefully, many other people.

My first GBoat booking. 7:00 on a Monday morning

I got to the jetty at 6:55 on Monday, barely five minutes before departure, even though the ticket e-mail had said to be at departure point 15 minutes ahead. I had to take an okada from Ikate roundabout bus-stop in Lekki all the way to the junction of Wole Olateju crescent and Admiralty way after waiting to no avail for a bus that would drop me at Lekki Phase 1 gate for about 5 minutes.

6:49 on Admiralty way; Luka couldn't go fast enough

I paid off the Okada guy (Luka - I know his name because I paid him via bank transfer) and hurried towards Marcopolo restaurant which is right in front of the jetty. Since it was that early, I had to explain to the gateman that I had a ride for 7 a.m. that morning before he allowed me to make my way around to the back. "By this time?", he'd said after I explained to him. Obviously, he was not aware of the arrangement. On getting to the jetty, there was no boat in sight. Also, the only humans in sight were some 'staffs' of Kingfisher restaurant who were fast asleep under the waterfront shed.

Kingfisher restaurant, Lekki

My thinking was that the booking website contained the wrong departure location. I thought that might be the case because in the pulse.ng article, the departure point was Pavilion Jetty, Lekki. So I consulted the ticket email that I got from "Lagos boats" after my booking to see if this might be the case. To my relief, the departure point on the ticket was also Kingfisher, Lekki. This surely was not my mistake.

I waited around for at most, 2 minutes before accepting that alas, I had to follow the boring route to work that morning. As I walked back towards the Marcopolo exit, I couldn't help but stew in anger. Just as I walked through the Marcopolo gate though, I heard my phone ring. It was Gossy, the founder of "Lagos boats". On the call, he confirmed my availability for the trip. I told him I was at the jetty already, after which he let me know the boat would be there shortly.

Back at the jetty, at 7:12, I saw a boat pull into the jetty. As soon as the driver was within earshot, I confirmed from him that it was a GBoat. So, las las, rush-hour traffic is not my portion this morning. He took about 4 minutes to dock the boat at the jetty, right after which he beckoned me to come through. The jetty gate was locked though, so I couldn't go through. Village people

GBoat boat approaching the Kingfisher Lekki Jetty

As soon as I told the GBoat driver about the locked gate, he had a conversation with the gateman guy who had let him in, of which that one just clear him, telling him the person with the jetty keys was not on duty 😱. Next, the driver made a call, after which he told me that feedback was on the way from the person on the other end of the line.

The GBoat driver making a call on my behalf for the gate to be unlocked

Not 5 minutes after that, Gossy arrived. Likely, he's the one the driver had been talking with over the phone. After we exchanged pleasantries, he told me that the person with the key was on the way. By now, it was at least, 7:30 and I feared I'd not make it to my office on time that morning. However, he allayed my fears by sharing the detail that the ride takes between 5 and 8 minutes. While waiting for the key-guy, we talked about different topics like:

my price sensitivity and how I might not be able to keep up if the GBoat fare increases
how the waterways in Lagos have a mixture of fresh and salt water and how these can be distinguished by the wave pattern on the surface (flat vs. rough)
the cost of importing a boat from Dubai and the boat he's building

After waiting for another 8 minutes, Gossy decided that we'd go through the gate. Cool!!! 😄. He led the way, and I followed as soon as he was over the gate. I mounted the boat right after him too and within a minute, off we went. Departure was at 7:42. I know because Gossy asked me to check the time so I'd know how long the trip takes.

What to say now about the ride? It went fast, really faster, faster than I wanted. I also enjoyed the fact that I had enough personal space to myself since it was just me, Gossy and the boat driver on board. During the ride, I busied myself with taking pictures and videos and in hindsight, I think that took away some enjoyment of the experience for me. We arrived at Paradise Jetty in V.I. at 7:50 (8-minutes after departure from Lekki).

I and Gossy; happy about takeoff I guess

The GBoat arrives at the Paradise Jetty, Victoria Island

Something beautiful about how the rays bounce off of these buildings, opposite the Paradise Jetty

The entrance of Paradise Jetty, Victoria Island

The walk from Paradise Jetty to Kofo Abayomi junction where I got a Keke Napep to drop me at work is a short one

Right now, it's 2:38 a.m. on Monday and my next GBoat ride is less than 5 hours away (7:35). Except there's something particularly striking, I'll keep my phone and its accompanying camera in my pocket and just enjoy the ride through my eyes and skin. My body tends to protest and pay deaf ears to alarm clocks when I get less than 5 hours of sleep though. Hopefully, that does not happen today because I don't want to miss my GBoat ride 🙏. That sure won't be a good way to start a week.

If you hate bank charges in Nigeria, you should know what I do about the Carbon wallet

2019-06-16T12:11:00.000+01:00

If you, like me, hate Nigerian bank charges and you regularly pay/make more than two bills/transfers every month, you should definitely read this to the end. It will save you a few dimes every month and above that (if you're anything like me), give you the petty sense of gratification that you've been able to beat the establishment.

First things first, if you don't know about the Carbon wallet, here you go:

Carbon is the product formerly known as Paylater. It was rebranded recently (April 2019).
Aside: don't you just love the colour purple?

Now that you know what the Carbon wallet is, I'll just go right ahead to let you in on the important deets only. My Carbon wallet has become indispensable for my monthly bills - which are usually paid right after I receive that most exciting SMS message for employees the world over. For me, there's simply no better alternative today for my bill payments. Having said that, my only goal for writing this article is to show you how I arrived at that conclusion.

The table below compares the charges I pay when I use my Nigerian bank's mobile or internet banking app versus when I use the Carbon wallet for my monthly bill payments.

Bill name	Bill amount	Bank surcharge	Carbon wallet surcharge
Mum's DSTV bill	4,000 Naira	100 Naira	0 Naira (free)
Lekki Concession company (LCC) toll gate	10,000 Naira	100 Naira	50 Naira
Interbank transfer of monthly allowance to Ms Foo	16,000 Naira	52.5 Naira	10 Naira
Interbank transfer of monthly allowance to Mr Bar	10,000 Naira	52.5 Naira	10 Naira
Total		305 Naira	70 Naira

Apart from being more than 300% cheaper than using my bank's USSD, mobile or internet banking applications, my Carbon wallet also helps me save time on these bill payments. The first time that I made each of these payments via the Carbon app, I had the option to flag each one as a recurring bill. A recurring bill on the Carbon app is automatically replayed on a certain day every month (for me, this is two days after payday, to accommodate any delays 😉😉).

Hence, with my Carbon wallet, instead of doing 4 different transactions one after the other (which on top of costing me more money, used to take me at least 20 minutes to complete), all I need to do on payday now is fund my Carbon wallet with the total of my bills (+ 70 Naira for surcharges) from my salary account and then, I can just go right back to the worthwhile business of earning the next month's pay.

Do you know what else is so cheap, it's free? Moving money from my Nigerian bank account to my Carbon wallet! It's hard to believe, but yes, it's true. Whether I'm funding my wallet with my card or directly with my bank account, the amount that reflects in my Carbon wallet is the exact same amount that left my bank account.

Funding my Carbon wallet is free of charge

Stoked? You can find out more about the Carbon wallet on the Carbon FAQs page. Ready to dive in? All you need to get started is to download the app to your Android phone.

Bad customer service example in Nigeria: Airpeace or Air Peace 🙄🙄

2019-05-12T15:53:00.000+01:00

Foreword

I used to write a lot of bad reviews about Nigerian businesses in my younger years, on this blog. In my younger years, I had no chill on that matter. You're a business, you cross me, you're ending up in a no details spared rant on my blog. In a power-imbalanced situation like the one I'm in now, this is the easiest way I have to respond to getting bullied.

Over the years though, I started to understand that humans make mistakes and this necessarily extends to the businesses that they create. Also, a respected person in my network expressed their disappointment over an article I'd written about a small business which could potentially hurt its patronage. As a result, I decided that writing factually correct but defaming articles about organizations was not worth my time anymore. Besides, it's not like any of my articles had caused any observable change anyway. My life could do without some negativity.

Today though, I'm compelled to do it again. I can't see any reason why not to. This is more gratifying and easier than spending time trying to get redress from Airpeace for this annoyance.

Timeline of events

Booked return flight ticket (search link here) from Lagos to Abuja with Airpeace (5th May)
Got an email saying the flight time has been shifted by over an hour (6th May)
Sent an email to Airpeace customer care to cancel and refund the Lagos to Abuja flight since the new schedule would not work for me. This was after I'd checked Arik and seen that they actually had a flight whose timing worked for me and at a good price too. (7th May)
Booked Arik one-way ticket to replace the cancelled first leg of my Airpeace flight (7th May)
Had Arik Air leave my Lagos to Abuja ticket open (for a future date) as I decided to backdate my flight by one day and none of their flight times for that day worked for me. I would have asked for a refund but I didn't want to trigger another 4-week long refund process. I also didn't know if I would get a full refund since their website is missing an FAQ page (Hyperlink: https://www.arikair.com/arik-air-faqs)(HTTP 404: NOT FOUND). Also, their terms and conditions page is a pop-up on the home page containing human-unreadable information (8th May)
Booked another Lagos to Abuja one-way ticket with Airpeace with new money, even though I had money with them that I would only see again in 4 weeks' time. "This process cannot be reversed", they said when I reached out via email to ask if they cancel delay their 4-week long refund so I could use the money to buy another ticket, with them! (8th May)
Travelled from Lagos to Abuja with Airpeace (10th May)
Couple of hours to the end of the day before returning to Lagos, I decided to select a seat on my return flight (Abuja to Lagos). Only to discover that even though my instruction to Airpeace on 7th May was specific about which flight leg was to be cancelled and refunded (because they had re-scheduled it), they had also cancelled and 'initiated' refund for the return leg of my trip. They cancelled the entire ticket!

The possibility of such stupidity didn't even cross my mind for once before that moment and I'd legit have gone to the airport the next day expecting to use a nullified ticket if not that I serendipitously got prompted by my Uber driver to select a seat in advance (11th May)

Yes sir, we do quick refunds. Only that our own quick refund takes four weeks - Airpeace
After panicking and successfully suppressing my panic, I sent Airpeace an email asking for a redress for their error as I had to be in Lagos 'tomorrow'. Then picked up my phone to call because 'this is urgent'! Was further infuriated by Airpeace's taking the liberty to play me an advert for one full minute before the IVR menu was presented to me. "Why can't this advert be delayed till the waiting period", I thought to myself. (11th May)
Due to a combination of the delays and the wrongly positioned adverts (which I had to hear three times) and getting dropped off the call right after laying my complaint (and not getting a callback; cos who cares right?), I spent 25 minutes of airtime ($1) to get told that nothing could be done to redress their error and that my only option was to pay to book another ticket. (11th May)
I first tried to book my Abuja to Lagos flight with Arik using my open ticket from 8th May. The customer care agent I spoke to broke my heart by informing me that the only way I could activate my open ticket was to visit one of their offices. That, because I have to pay an administration fee of 2000, and a fare difference and it could not be done except in-person bet I booked this flight online mah!!?. (11th May)
Left with few alternatives and no time to browse, I bought another Abuja to Lagos ticket from Airpeace at the same price as the original ticket, less than 24 hours to the flight time. A ray of light in the overwhelming darkness of the moment (I expected prices to have skyrocketed as usual). (11th May)
I IMed the godsend Uber driver - that took me to the hotel on arrival - of my departure time. He's a godsend because he's the one who prompted me to select a seat early when he asked of my departure time 'tomorrow'. (11th May)

Why Airpeace shoulda coulda done better

I've spent at least 200,000 Naira flying with Airpeace within the past 9 months (8 flights)
This means something right? Wrong!
A human deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. This includes trying to compensate to a paying customer when your own shortcoming causes them real negative consequences. Even if they're not relevant.

How Arik with a soul would have done better

This one is very simple. We're in a country where fund transfers are so seamless, they can be done mindlessly. Even if this ticket re-open feature is not built into your online ticketing system (understandable), there could be a process where the balance is paid off, either via online transfer or even at the airport, right before departure. But no, this customer is not relevant, so let him come to our office to activate a ticket he paid for online. I'm tired.

How Airpeace with a soul would have done better

A four-week refund process. Seriously? In the age of Nigerian fintech? Poor people can't fly for sure. Right now, I have over 70k of my money in limbo, not to return to me until at least, 4 weeks' time. I can't see this as any other thing but a way to dissuade customers from asking for a refund. Big bad wolf Airpeace!

Even the customer service number is a pain in the ass - 15 digits!
Realizing that they made an error in over-executing my cancellation request, they would instantly rebook me on the same flight and put any fare differences on the house. Especially as the refund for the cancelled flight was sent via the Pigeon mobile banking app. Seeing as I've spent 200k patronizing them in less than a year, they would put a little faith in me to send them the balance as soon as the refunded amount reaches me.

But no, the current Airpeace is a business, not a charity. Also, I am not relevant to have this kind of risky consideration made for me. We Nigerians take all we can get and I'll surely run away with 23k and use it to finalize my grand ploy to fly abroad, slipping masterfully out of their grasp.
They would not have me involuntarily pay to hear an advert for a full minute except it's absolutely unavoidable e.g. no customer service agent to serve me at the moment

A good short-term investment that I made in 2018: PayVest by Paylater

2018-12-15T21:57:00.000+01:00

In 2018, I invested money in at least, 5 short-term instruments. And of all of them, by all matrices that matter to me, PayVest by Paylater which I only discovered a few weeks to the end of the year is the best of them all. Now, let me support my opinion with some details.

Return on investment

I made an investment with a tenor of 6 months at 14.5% per annum. When you remove the policy-mandated withholding tax of 10%, you end up with a net return of 13.05%. Which is still better than 90% of the discount rates I got on treasury bills all year long.

Before 2018, I'd gotten quite comfortable with keeping my money in treasury bills because the rates throughout 2017 were decent - between 16% and 18% for a really long period. However, in 2018, the rates took a dip to between 10 and 13%, which quickly got me looking out for alternative investment opportunities with better return rates and similarly low-risk.

The best return rate from a similar solution to PayVest that I'd found earlier in the year was 10% per annum so you can appreciate why I'm excited about finding PayVest. 4.5% can be a lot depending on how much we're talking about.

Liquidity of funds

My biggest surprise after securing my fixed deposit with PayVest via the Paylater mobile app was that I could actually undo the transaction anytime I wanted without talking to anyone. On top of that, withdrawing prematurely does not come with any of the penalties you would get with similar short-term investment vehicles. I think that was such an impressive design choice because that degree of freedom just makes me want to leave my money in PayVest for even longer.

PayVest withdrawal before maturity screen

You know, the fact that I don't have to overthink before I make an investment, knowing that if I found a better investment opportunity tomorrow, I could easily pull out my money is something that really works for me. It just means that I'll never leave any significant amount of money in my Nigerian savings account again knowing that I could earn 4 times as much returns on my capital if I moved it to PayVest for any of the available tenors.

Payvest investment periods: 3 months, 6 months, 9 months and 1 year

I have just one prayer for the PayVest product team though. Perhaps if I was more knowledgeable in finance, it would be obvious to me how my recommendation is outrightly bad for business. But in my state of ignorance, I would like to recommend that the tenors be modified to allow customers invest their money in increments of one month. One month, two months, three months... up to 12 months.

I can't see why this wouldn't be a win-win for both parties. Repayments for Paylater loans which these investments are used to fund are on a monthly basis anyway. Also, it would be a first of its kind. I don't know of any short-term, low-risk investment vehicle in Nigeria apart from a bank account that gives you interest on a monthly basis. The minimum tenor is usually 90 days. To be able to earn withdrawable interest that is even as low as 8% per annum every month would surely attract more individual investors who can't tie down their money for as long as 90 days.

Ease of investment

I didn't have to add a card to the Paylater app to invest. As soon as I entered the deposit amount that I wanted to invest and confirmed the investment details, an account at One Finance bank was opened in my name - automatically. Next, the app showed me the account number and instructed me to make a transfer/deposit to that account. Once I did a transfer from my Access Bank internet banking, my fixed deposit was automatically booked on PayVest.

It wasn't even 30 seconds after I completed the transfer that I received an app notification + SMS from Paylater, congratulating me for taking one step closer to achieving my financial goals.

You can actually earn some interest before maturity

A few days after my first investment, I noticed that the app shows you the amount of interest you've earned so far. This value grows by a small amount each day. Naturally, I wanted to know whether or not I would get my accumulated interest if I withdrew my investment any day before maturity. Three days after creating the investment, I requested to withdraw it. Much to my disappointment, the money I got in my bank account was just my capital and nothing else.

Three months into the subsequent 6-month investment I booked, I repeated the experiment. This time, to my absolute surprise, I noticed that if I withdrew, I would be credited with the same amount I'd have gotten if I'd originally booked a 3-month investment with the same capital.

22050 is the pro-rated net return over 3 months on 700,000 invested at 14.0% per annum

For me, this was unexpected given the results of my initial experiment. It shows that a lot of thought went into designing the product in a way that favours both the customer and the company. PayVest could easily have implemented such as to pay you zero interest, as long as you didn't wait until your actual maturity date before terminating your investment. However, the design is such that as long as you keep your investment money up to one of the 4 milestones (3, 6, 9 or 12 months), you get the interest due to you, even if your original maturity date milestone has not been reached. 👍👍

A random experiment

Again, out of curiosity, I wanted to know what would happen if I disobeyed a clear rule on the app. The instruction when you are about to make a Payvest investment says to deposit the exact investment amount to the account opened for you in One Finance bank.

PayVest invest exact amount prompt

On this particular day, I was meant to invest 500,000 Naira. I felt like the system should be able to accept multiple transfers to make up the investment amount, as long as they were all done within the same day. Hence, I transferred 250,000 Naira to the stipulated account through my Access Bank internet banking profile.

The transfer failed! But my account was debited and the funds were not reversed instantly. On the PayVest app, there was also no indication that I'd sent any fraction of the money. I got slightly worried because it was someone else's money, but not so worried as to be panicked because I knew for sure that this money was far from being lost; just hung up in limbo for a day or two at worst. I was dealing with two renowned organizations who are also CBN regulated after all.

I placed a call to Paylater customer service to confirm if by any chance they had received the 50% of the investment amount that I sent. Within four minutes of being on the line, they had put any of the fears I had to rest. According to the customer service agent, there is a rule on the automatic One Finance bank investment account which ensures that any deposit to the account which is not exactly the investment amount you specified on PayVest will fail.

He was sure that although the money had left my account, the money had not left my bank and that the money ideally should already have been reversed. And true to his word, the full amount was refunded to my account a little over 24 hours after I tried to send it. The reason why the funds could not have been reversed instantly is a discussion for another day.

Hafiz's Man of the year 2018

2018-08-05T23:58:00.000+01:00

I've chosen the man of the year based on how much I've been inspired to become a better version of myself, mainly by observing and interacting with this person. His name is Lukman and he is my colleague at Access Bank. He's been on his annual vacation from work now for two weeks. And for someone that prides himself in not being one to miss people, there's been no working day that has passed in the past two weeks that I've not felt his absence.

I will now go ahead to talk in detail about some of the remarkable ways in which meeting Lukman has helped quicken my steps on the journey of self-growth, even though he's never really advised me.

Lukman gives so freely and says yes every time (well, almost every time)

I had a lot of horrible nicknames back when I was in secondary school. The one we'll be remembering today is "Stingo" (pronounced Stin-Joe). It's derived from the word: "Stingy". Yes, ending any word with the letter 'O' was a mainstream way of deriving nicknames back then.

Even as I type that name now, I can hear Dolapo Abdul bellowing that name at me. It brings back bitter-sweet memories of that fateful evening in Ijanikin when I was publicly humiliated for refusing to allow a classmate get in-front of me on the queue for dinner - moin-moin and garri.

A classmate, who in my best guess was Dolapo Abdul had arrived at the queue a few minutes later than me. He must have studied the queue for at least, a few seconds before he noticed a familiar face (mine) who could help him shunt the humongous dinner queue. It was a frequent occurrence at the dining hall for food items to get exhausted prematurely and for no alternative arrangements to be made for the people left on the queue. His instinct to shunt the queue was one I could very much relate to.

Dolapo approached me and asked for a spot in front of me on the queue. Without thinking twice - in the manner in which I had become fairly infamous for - I said "No" to Dolapo with a straight face. From experience, he must have known there was little chance of him persuading me to change my mind about letting him into the queue. And so the vengeful kid that he was decided to go for shaming instead. He chanted at the top of his voice: "Stingo, stingo, stingo". And before I could say my name which is not that much of a mouthful, more than a handful of our classmates had joined in this chant.

The chant grew louder and louder and at one point, one of the boys decided to take it a step further. He hit me from behind with his hand, on what part of my body I cannot recall. This was all the encouragement the other kids around needed to teach me a long-overdue lesson. I received slaps and knocks from more directions than I could keep track of. I was massed for saying no. I think I might have cried.

My stinginess was a badge I had worn with honour for quite a while before that massing event. Stinginess was my way of responding to the scarcity of necessities I had to live with at that tender age. I instinctually wanted to have control over the depletion rate of my limited resources and sharing them freely with other people just created a degree of randomness that I either wasn't equipped to or ready to fit into my resource management framework. So, I made a deliberate decision that seemed fair at the time.

I looked to my Danfodio house roommate, Kamji, who never camped (begged for things - mostly food items - from other people) for inspiration. He's one of the earliest personifications of self-sufficiency that I ever encountered in life, if not the first. I decided I was going to be like Kamji, and that from that point on, I would never beg for stuff from any of my classmates ever again.

But no, this was not just about being self-sufficient like Kamji. Not at all. It just happened to be the crutch I would need to have handy when anyone attacks me for always saying no to their camping. After all, if I've never asked you for anything, I don't owe you anything and you can go and hug a transformer if you feel offended when I say no to you. Because I still won't ever need you anyway. My genius resource management masterplan was born.

I've grown several folds in all dimensions since the 15 years ago when I made the decision to be stingy so I could manage my resources effectively. But this well-practised scarcity mindset still has a strong network of roots in my psyche. Till date, it takes little effort for me to come up with a self-satisfying reason for why it's okay for me to say no to someone's request of me. I'm a 15-year request-declining expert, remember? A wariness of being taken advantage of is an ever-present component of my decision-making to this day.

Encountering a man like Lukman has encouraged me to start on a path to recovery from these deep wounds I unwittingly inflicted on my psyche. Almost every Monday morning since I resumed work at Access Bank, Lukman would bring in enough snacks to go round everyone in the office. I've never heard him ask for anything in return. And even though I currently earn significantly more than he does at work, it was a reality I struggled for a while to accept that someone could willingly decide to give this much value away so consistently without ever explicitly asking for it to be returned.

When Lukman is in the office, I always make a small trip to his desk to take a few delightful sips from the bottle of smoothie he brings to work every day. He never as much as flinches when I do this, and I know that I can go for as many sips as I want and he would allow me. I exercise restraint knowing that if I were to be in his shoes, I probably wouldn't allow anyone else a single sip of something I enjoy so much. It's almost as if he doesn't have a sense of possession, something I find it hard to relate to but deeply admire and aspire to.

I've told Lukman quite a number of times that I wish I could be like him. I wonder if he knew I was this serious about it. If I do something especially kind for you that means me parting with some financial value directly or indirectly, there's a good chance that I thought: "If Lukman can, why can't I" before allowing myself go ahead with that action.

Lukman has diverse interests and explores them actively, despite his full-time job

A few weeks after resuming in Access Bank in November 2017, I walked up to Lukman after a high-level meeting that ended at 8pm on a Monday evening. Being the new guy in the office, I was still just getting to know everyone. On reaching him, we exchanged greetings, after which I went ahead to ask him what he does for the bank. His response was pretty vague but being genuinely curious, I probed further. Before the end of our descent down the 16 flights of stairs to the ground floor of the Danmole office building that night, I got to know that he's into graphics, photography, videography, animations and all that jazz and that he's the go-to person for creative design tasks at the division we both work out of.

Over the next couple of weeks, I would come to learn that he's also into farming, writing, script-writing, cuisine, investment, fitness and fine-dining. And those are just the ones I'm aware of. How can one person have all these interests and actively pursue them on a regular basis? Does this dude live in the same world where some people won't stop complaining of boredom and limitations?

When I consider Lukman, I feel quite ashamed of my tendency to let my interests and ideas lie fallow. I see clearly than I ever have that there is still a lot more room to be deliberate about seeing what I can make out of my inclinations and ideas. To give my interests and ideas a better chance at life than I currently do.

Lukman is my non-relenting gym buddy

There's really not much to be said here. Plus I'm also tired of writing. Lukman has been my one and only consistent gym buddy since I returned to Lagos last October. If not for him, I don't think I would be as consistent as I am with my deliberate fitness activities today. Most of the exercises I do in the gym today, I learned them from him. He's like an infinite reservoir of knowledge who helps make working out a little easier for me by researching the exercises beforehand.

When I ask him what his goal is, he tells me he's training to run in the Olympics. Noble, innit? When he says this, I always go ahead to offer him without his asking that I'm only working to earn my invite into the exclusive pepper-dem club of muscle-wielding men. I am, after all, just a simple man.

And the man fell splat into the ground

2018-07-12T23:00:00.000+01:00

Less than ten minutes into my run this night, close to the roundabout at the Ikoyi end of the Lekki-Ikoyi link bridge, I felt into a square-shaped manhole in the footpath. It's funny to think that as soon as I realized what had happened, my first feeling was embarrassment. A feeling which drove an instinctual reaction to try and pick me out of the hole as quickly as I could. Nobody should see me in this vulnerable state, I don't want any sorries. And indeed, no one stopped, leaving me feeling a few minutes later as I walked back to the car park like I could have used at least one 'sorry' from an empathetic stranger

Just a few seconds after the fall and I was out of the hole; back on my feet and on solid ground. I felt a dull ache in several parts of my body. I was hurt but not very badly hurt, that's the message my body sent to my brain. I couldn't help but think - as I walked away from the hole which had just half-swallowed me - that I was lucky, and that this fall could have been much worse, given the fact that I had no warning for what was coming until my left elbow and right knee hit the ground.

Bruised left lap

Wounded elbow

Falling is a truly humbling experience, sublime almost. For a fleeting moment, it takes away the illusion of control, and of importance that we humans love to cling so tightly to. "Your fate and existence are to a large extent, subject to time and chance", the universe seems to be trying to remind us when an accident like falling befalls us.

I've had three big falls this year and several other non-notable ones. Yes, I remember, because the injuries that came with each big fall all took time to heal. And beyond that, they left their scars.

The first one was totally pointless, to be honest. I was at a house party somewhere in VI. I decided I needed to get something from my car - can't recall what it was. So, I stepped out of the party for a few minutes to get it. And at that moment, I remembered what an honourable member of the Lagos fit-fam I am. Hence, I decided instead of walking to my car which wasn't even that far away from the party house, to jog instead. One two three four, I'm sure I had not taken the tenth forward leap before one of my feet hit a speed-bump, which sent all 6-feet of me crashing down and hard into the tarmac.

Two young men were just a few yards ahead of me, walking towards me. And just like tonight, all I wanted to do was to appear to them like what they just saw was nothing at all. That it was just a casual fall, and that I was not hurt. But the pain in both my knees sent me limping to one side of the road. I took a sit on the sidewalk, nursing the pains with a grimace until my brain got the memo that I was now aware of which parts of my body would need special attention for the next few weeks. On the bright side, this fall gave me my one and only ripped blue jeans.

The second time I fell this year was when I was in Sierra Leone, at the Aberdeen beach, in April. My host, John, had taken me to the beach on a sunny Sunday afternoon - my third day in the coastal Freetown city. I was enjoying the waves wash over my feet and striking different sexy poses for the photo-shoot which John was kind enough to grant me. And then it happened.

The algae covering the rocks on which I stood in the water gave way. And you know how it goes from here. Fresh red blood flowed freely out of several areas in my hindlimbs. John expressed how he felt bad about having taken this here JJC boy out of his drab hotel room in the first place. But I told him, that I couldn't be more grateful that he had gone out of his way to help make my experience in the city better than it would have been without him. And that this was all part of the experience and falling at Aberdeen beach would always be a dear memory for me. Indeed, I meant every word of what I told John from the bottom of my heart.

The face of a fallen man

Now I want to do something about the open manholes on that path. Just a few weeks ago, there used to be a car tyre in the hole I fell into this night. This was a hole I knew very well and this fact makes me feel rather silly that I still fell into it. My spidey senses should have at least tingled knowing that I was nearing this treacherous spot which has been on my path dozens of time before tonight.

Perhaps, if the tyre was still in the hole, the fall would not have been as serious as it was. I'll explore my options for trying to see to it that my fate does not befall anyone else using that same footpath anytime soon.

See you at the next fall.

One week without a car in Lagos

2018-06-25T00:50:00.000+01:00

Is like a year without rain - channelling "A year without rain - Selena Gomez"

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My car has been at the panel beater's workshop for the past 6 days. It's due to be back with me on Tuesday (two days to go). That said, I thought I'd talk about my experience in the past week where I've been forced to go through life in a state that's comparable to missing a limb.

Uber splurge

As soon as I got home from the panel beater's workshop on Monday evening, I transferred 15000 Naira from my annual car maintenance budget to my current account. Narration: "Uber allowance". Without that, my lean-cut monthly budget could not have survived the blow from me taking an Uber to-and-fro work every day for a week.

Fortunately, Uber has been giving me 50% discount on up to 5-rides per week for the past two months (or longer). And this week was no exception. I had already used one of the 5 discounts on the journey back home from the workshop on Monday. The remain 4-trip discount definitely was not going to get me very far, what with two rides a day for a 5-day week (if you don't know maths like my friend, Ifeanyi, that's 2 *5 = 10). So I decided to address this limitation.

Before midweek, I had gotten my sister and a colleague (Lanre) to apply the same LAG-GOAL 50% discount to their own Uber accounts. It turns out I got to benefit from their each of their discounts only once though. The logistics of synchronizing information when someone else requests an Uber on your behalf can be quite tedious. Yes, I can be quite a pain in the ass but I also have my limits.

On the Uber experience itself, I'd rate it positively. Both my house and workplace areas are Uber hot-zones, so in most cases, my Uber arrived within 5 and 10 short minutes of me requesting the trip, despite my take-off times being really early and late respectively. Also, most of my drivers got a 5-star rating from me. The only annoyance was that for a few rides, the route I was charged for was literally impossible (except cars now swim through water); some bug with the GPS-tracking system on the app I guess. And I think this bug made my fare higher than it would have been otherwise, even though not inordinately so.

Ubering through the five-cowries creek

RIP fitness

For at least four weeks preceding this just past one, I've been going to the gym at least twice a week. Also, I'm trying to improve on my running endurance, so I've upped the frequency of my runs by at least, 100% in the past three weeks. But last week, my streak on all of that good stride was lost as it is simply harder to do all of this stuff without the mobile wardrobe and changing room that a car is.

My car will be back in two days and I trust that I can pick things up from right where I left them two weeks ago without much fuss; so help me God.

Ridesharing idea remembered

And because of the pain of having to spend more on transportation than I usually do, one ridesharing software idea that first popped into my mind in 2016 made its way back. I think I just might make good on it this time; come up with an MVP or something. If I don't end up getting crippled by overthinking, that is.

When you're not allowed to spend your e-money

2018-06-24T23:16:00.002+01:00

This morning, after my 5km+ run, I decided to stop by the Tastee Fried Chicken (TFC) outlet within a walking distance of my house to get some nice chops. After all that hard work, I felt well-deserving of some self-pampering. All sweaty and pumped up, I stepped into the restaurant and within five minutes of being there, I had made my order and it was time to pay (2000 Naira; I thought it noteworthy that my order added up to a round figure).

I brought out my Access Bank Verve card and handed it to the lady who had treated my order. She inserted it into the POS, normal savings/current drama ensued, and then she asked me to enter my PIN. Cut to the chase, the transaction failed. And then it failed again. And then again. From the error on the POS screen, I knew it was likely to be a problem from the bank's system.

The sales attendant and her supervisor were quick to ask me to go get cash from the closest ATM. The TFC branch is in an Oando filling station which also has an Ecobank ATM lobby within its premises. I tried to explain to them that the problem was with the bank, so it was unlikely that I'd be able to get cash from the ATM with that same card. Maybe I didn't try hard enough to explain (I tried though), but they didn't understand why I thought it was going to be futile to try to withdraw cash with a card which wasn't working on the POS.

Because I didn't have much to lose and didn't really have a lot in alternatives, I decided to try the card at the ATM anyways. An "Issuer or Switch Inoperative" error message confirmed my intuition on the problem's root cause. I use my card to pay for over 80% of things I buy and I can't remember the last time it failed me. As a result, I've grown so confident in e-transactions that you'd be lucky to find me with cash of more than 1000 Naira at a time.

I felt hopeless, considering that the fastest way for me to get cash now was from my bag which was all the way at home. But because I believe in finding hidden options through enquiry, I decided to get back into TFC and ask if I could transfer the payment to an account. "We don't do transfer here", the bored-looking lady attendant responded, shattering my fragile heart into 1000 pieces.

I decided this wasn't worth the fight any longer. Perhaps, the powers that be wanted me to fast this morning or just eat Golden-Morn. However, as I stepped out of the TFC, I remembered there was another thing called "Cardless withdrawal". Yay!

But just as I was starting to celebrate my newly-found solution, my last experience trying to use Quickteller cardless withdrawal on an EcoBank ATM started to restore into my conscious mind. The machine did not support Quickteller! I forged ahead, praying that things would be different for these here Ecobank machines. Alas, they weren't. What a shame!

I started on my way home and just as I stepped into my estate gate, I decided I was going to do the trouble of walking back to TFC; this time, cash-in-hand. I had fantasized so much about munching on that crunchy chicken that it was like torture to not actually get to do it. I brisk-walked the rest of the street between the gate and my house, then rushed in and out after picking an exact 2000 Naira out of the mint 5000 Naira I had collected from the Suntrust ATM (always dispenses mint) around my office on Saturday (yesterday).

Not caring to lock the door to my apartment, I rushed back out and jogged through the distance between my house and TFC. The jogging was to pacify my ego for my absolute lack of respect for myself; crawling back on my knees to TFC after all the trouble that their lack of flexibility/innovation had put me through on this random Sunday morning. After all, if I could cut the time I spent sucking up to TFC in two, that meant we could get over it more quickly and forget all about it while orally dissecting the crunchy chicken that started it all.

As I walked back to my apartment one more time (with food in hand of course), I pondered on how much money TFC might be throwing away on a daily basis due to their extremely limited payment options (cash or POS). Just yesterday, for the first time ever, I had used mVisa QR app to pay for my brunch at The Place restaurant, VI (there was a 500 Naira discount on my meal). It was so freaking seamless and I was so impressed that I see myself actively using it henceforth.

For the rest of the journey back home, some thoughts that I found coursing through my mind are:

Why hasn't mVisa even gotten to these razz TFC guys?

Couldn't that bored-looking lady attendant have been more inventive at her job just to please a customer? Perhaps, have me transfer the payment to her personal account (I was ready to give a small tip, in addition to bearing a 72.5 Naira transfer cost).

Then I remembered Seth Godin (in his book, Linchpin) talking about how organizations increasingly need people who can do more than just do their job

Then I started to think about how I myself could be that kind of employee to my own employer, Access Bank whose failing system put me in all of this mess in the first place

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GIVE ME SOME ACCOLADES by commenting. It would mean a lot to me to read your thoughts and feelings from reading this.

Fidelity *770# Cardless withdrawal powered by Quickteller Paycode to my rescue at MM Intl. Airport Lagos

2018-04-22T21:43:00.000+01:00

Two Fridays ago, I got to truly appreciate the fact that Nigeria (Lagos to be specific) is at a stage where there's is a proliferation of fintech solutions. In the past, I've been of the bias that why does one need so many methods/alternatives to perform the same basic banking transactions like funds transfers, bill payments, buying airtime, cash withdrawals and depositing cash. And more so why every other day, a new service or start-up pops up on my radar, claiming to offer these same services in a better way. At this point, I humbly dump all of that bias in the trash, thanks to my experience that fateful morning.

I was in the MM Lagos international airport departures lobby. My flight to Freetown Sierra Leone was going to take off in a little over two hours. After I had checked in and received my boarding pass, I needed to pay for my instant yellow fever vaccination card. Apart from that, I also needed to buy some dollars to be recovered as Leones at my final destination, since I didn't have any internationally viable (MasterCard/Visa) ATM card on me.

At this point, I remembered that all the cash I had on me was exactly 250 Naira only. No worries, I thought, before proceeding to the only ATM on the departures floor of the airport (First Bank). I swear, this thing was slow as fuck. It took like 5 minutes for one to get a single bundle of cash out of the machine. "I still have time anyway", I thought to myself, not in the least bit flustered by the situation at hand.

After what might have been 30 minutes, it was finally my turn to use the machine. At long last, I thought to myself, ignorant of what goodies mama fate had in stock for me. I put my card into the machine and after 30 seconds of absolute stillness, I thought I heard that very familiar sound that the machine is having issues reading your card. I quickly shrugged off the thought. After all, I had used the Verve card at a supermarket POS terminal successfully just last night.

Alas, it so turned out that two minutes after card insertion, my fears were proved valid. The ATM spat out my cardless with a very user-friendly message of "No Card App found" (if my memory serves me correctly). Ugh! Much to the chagrin of the queue of 6 persons which had now formed behind me, I remained in front of the laggardly machine for another consecutive turn. "No, machine. I'm not gonna give up on you that easily, not today", I thought to myself to justify my borderline selfish decision to take two turns at once. One more time, the machine rejected my card, probably with the same message (of which I can't be sure now since, at this point, I had started to worry).

Free stock photo from https://www.pexels.com/photo/adventure-beach-lost-man-6804/

To avoid getting mobbed, I decided to step aside for the guy behind me to use the machine, deciding to have another go when he was done. As soon I was aside from the ATM, I remembered the Cardless Withdrawal feature on Fidelity Bank *770# which has rescued me several times (click through to see the meaning of this oft misappropriated word. You might be shocked like I was a few months ago).

On the same spot, I swiftly logged on to my Fidelity Bank mobile app to do a self-transfer from my savings to my current account which is my default USSD account with the bank. Once done, I proceed to generate a cash withdrawal code of 20000 Naira by dialling the Fidelity USSD short-code for that feature: *770*8*20000#.

Within a minute, and of course, before the guy behind me had even completed his transaction, I had received my Paycode, both on the Fidelity USSD display and also as an SMS message. Man, was I excited? For some reason, knowing intimately how these systems can be sometimes, I was afraid that I might not be able to generate a code due to a temporary glitch. Of which that one would probably have been what we colloquially call "ONE CHANCE" or "O-Y-O" around here.

Once the guy was done with the ATM, I proceeded to try and redeem my Paycode from the same First Bank ATM. Alas, this time, the problem was that the Quickteller Paycode button on the machine was not working. mschew. Thankfully, I'd overheard someone saying there were a lot more ATMs in the arrivals lobby, just one floor below the departures hall. Before going there, I confirmed this from one of the cleaners working in the hall.

Arriving at the arrivals terminal, I was borderline angry with myself for having wasted over half an hour on the sluggish First Bank ATM queue. At the very least, there were ATMs from UBA, EcoBank, Zenith Bank, GTBank in this hall. And none of them seemed to be particularly busy. Hurray!

I walked straight to the GTBank machine (because GTBank; actually no because it was totally vacant; actually yes, as it was neither the only free machine nor even the closest to my entry point. But honestly, you have to give it to GTBank's ATM application design and features).

And yes friend, in a fleeting minute, this here young man's hour-long challenge with withdrawing cash at the airport lobby was completely out of the way. I spent about 10 seconds after my card-free ATM cash hit my hand, waiting for the machine to produce my card. Until I realized my silliness, much to the acknowledgement of a bystander who told me politely when our eyes met that he had wondered, "is this one mad"?

So yes fintech and banks, let the proliferation of systems doing more or less the same thing continue in earnest. Everyone else might mess up and just right then, your system might save a life. Thank you!

An accidental lesson from the center of the ocean

2018-02-26T09:36:00.000+01:00

"When things get rough, it means you're closer to the finish line than ever before"

Last Sunday afternoon, a moment after wrestling with the awe-inspiring waves of the ocean, about 10 metres off-coast at the Eleko beach in Lagos, I got an insight.

This is how a foray into the waves of the Eleko beach typically goes. A few steps past the chicken-hearted majority who flee back in fear, the moment the water seems like it might cover their feet, you're met with quite a bit of turbulence. At this point, the waves are not that high, but they have a force that threatens to uproot and slam you into the loose sands beneath. "Begone, for you, do not belong in here, mortal", the sea god seems to intend to say to the lowly intruding mortal that you are.

The deeper in you go, the stronger and higher these waves become. I tell you, without strategy and intent, you cannot venture beyond a couple of metres into the raging waters of Eleko beach. My strategy to go deeper, as I can't swim and even if I could, probably couldn't swim against such force, usually consists of a couple of actions:

Monitor the waves keenly, making sure to spot the next wave at least, a few seconds before it hits

When you see a strong wave coming, fall back into it or assume the position of a sideways forward lunge to reduce the degree to which the water pushes you back onto the coast

If the waves are high or almost high enough to submerge you, crouch into the waves, ensuring that you're completely submerged (you'd probably want to hold your nose to prevent water from rushing into them). The impact on you is less strong under the waves versus when you allow the head of the wave hit you directly

You essentially repeat the steps above, wave after wave until you reach your destination. What is the destination of a journey into the ocean, you might want to ask? Well, the interesting fact that I discovered purely by experimentation is that after about 6 metres into the beach, the waves become very gentle. Instead of pushing you back towards the shoreline, they give you the chance to play with them.

The waves don't entirely lose their momentum, no. But at this point, its force is low enough to allow you rise and sink with the waves. You're now at the very point where the waves just start to build the momentum with which they'll banish the struggling mortals behind you. And this my dear friend, is where you want to be. For before this point, there is no chance of basking in the ocean for you. Before this point, it's an endless struggle to remain on your feet as you fight wave after wave.

Distract yourself from the waves for a second, and look back at the coast. And you would wonder where the gentle wave which just passed you by got such power from. You're now behind the waves. You made it.

If it floats your boat, now is the time for you to pretend to be Poseidon in human form. Lift your hands as you command the waves to keep the lowly mortals out of your divine and pure sanctuary. Come get me if you can, you bellow out without moving your lips, knowing how little a chance any of them stands to make good on that challenge.

How I found my first new job in Lagos

2018-01-12T18:48:00.000+01:00

Or how I moved from my first job to another company in Lagos.

I write this article in the hope of inspiring someone to start seeing themselves, not as a victim but as the orchestrator of their career. I've spoken to too many people who feel frustrated with their job and like they're at the mercy of their current employer. While I acknowledge that my current job situation is far from being the standard for success, I must mention that I can't remember the last time I felt that way.

I've benefitted immensely from knowing that irrespective of my current situation, the power to steer my career in a positive direction lies mostly with me. It's my sole responsibility to keep my head high enough above water to make the best out of the situation.

That said, I encourage you to share it with your friends who you think might be able to benefit from the shift in perspective that I hope this piece will help bring about.

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If I were to summarize this article into a 140-character tweet, it would be to

"Pick one important pain your current employer's business faces and own it!"

For me, the important business pain at my first job was a particularly unstable software product. So grave was the instability of this software product that many of the clients using it were sending unpleasant emails daily and threating to dump it every chance they got.

I would say I got lucky with the part of seeking out an important business pain. In my case, the important business pain sought me out. Not because I was the best for the job but because I was the most available. This immensely buggy and dirty codebase was literally dumped in my laps. So, for me, it was either own it or go home. You love your family and you've decided you want to spend more time with them, my CEO would sometimes joke when talking about something that could get one fired at the company.

For the first few months of my inheriting this software solution, my life was hell. I barely had a grasp of what the solution was meant to do and knew absolutely nothing about how it works. Yet, I was the first and last port of call for clients when they had any issues. The clients being the 8 different huge organizations who had licensed the software.

Yes, during that period, I achieved some progress, however marginal it might have been. For most issues that were brought to my desk, I had to defer to a more experienced colleague, having them do most of the heavy lifting to fix it. Then I would finish up by merely delivering the work to the client.

At this point, I had yet to take ownership of this problem and it was clear for everyone to see. Service delivery was poor because I often had to wait for someone else to leave their main responsibility for significant amounts of time before I could complete any task.

TURNING POINT

I remember vividly like it was yesterday, the particular issue that marked the turning point in my experience at that first job. The software solution in question is a payment gateway system. Nigerian banks were my company's clients and the end users of the solution were the bank's business-owning customers who wanted to accept payments on their website (and the customers using their website).

This particular Friday, one of the last emails that came in from a bank was about one of their valuable clients whose developer was finding it hard to connect his website with the payment gateway. Prior to this time, my default response when posed with this problem was to refer the customer to the payment gateway integration document. At best, I'd send them some supporting sample code which I had inherited from a predecessor.

But this time, something was different. I can't remember what it was but there must have been some peculiarities which prompted me to approach the case with some novelty. For the first time ever, I zeroed my mind on seeing this bank's customer through their integration; till their website was accepting real payments from customers.

The following weekend, with no one putting pressure on me as usual, I digested the payment gateway integration guide for the first time since I'd inherited it months back. I read it from start to end, making sure to truly understand the purpose of every instruction in the document. Once I was done with that, I decided to practicalize what I'd just learned. This I did by creating a barebones HTML payment form and integrating it with the payment gateway.

Once I was done that same weekend, I sent the code for the HTML integration I had done to the troubled merchant's developer. This, my friend, turned out to be all the help which he needed to complete his own integration. Furthermore, the end product of that weekend's grinding (the HTML code) became a silver bullet for much of the rest of my career at the company. I would go on to share it countless times after with other people who were seeking to work with the payment gateway.

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A couple of months after resolving that revolutionary issue, I had gone from being scared of what turmoil the next email might throw my life into to having dull days when there were too few emails from my clients. The software solution was now for the most part, stable and delivering its promised value to my company's clients with only occasional hitches.

My role evolved from me weathering storms day-in, day-out to being confident enough to reach out to clients, inquiring about how I could make the software more useful for them. From that to me having enough time and will to pay back some technical debt which the solution had incurred in its worse days. In essence, the fulfilment and gratitude I received from investing myself in that first customer's success got me addicted to focusing on my employer's customers' delight.

After a little over two years at my first employer, I got an offer from two different companies at the same time. Each of these offers came by way of my company's partners whom I had encountered through my work. Without a doubt, these people were convinced they needed some of my problem-solving aptitudes in their organization. Right now, I think back to one particular person I worked with who proudly describes me to people as resourceful.

Prior to my receiving these offers, I had interviewed with about 10 other companies at different times, all with a unanimous response of NO. In light of that, I had all but given up on my potential for success as a career programmer when they came in. So much so that I had resigned from my first job and was preparing to pivot when I got these offers. Offers which I effectively already had even before the first interview.