On Friday, I found out that I would no longer be a member of the choir. Got a phone call which basically said that my services were surplus to requirements. I’m not happy about the protracted method which this entire thing was done, but I guess it’s for the best, with all the stuff I’ve got going on at the moment.

Also, today we say goodbye to an iconic TV show, Top of the Pops. BBC has decided to pull the plug on the show after 42 years, due to competition from 24 hour music channels. Coincidentally, I appeared on Top of the Pops with the choir for the 2004 Christmas party, with Steve Brookstein, the day after his Xfactor win. Here’s a pic from the BBC website.

Can you see me? Lol. I’m in the back row, 3rd from the right. Check out other pics here. I blogged about the Top of the Pops show here. We shared a dressing room with McFly, Lemar, Razor light, Girls Aloud (I actually chatted with them yay!), Lemar and Natasha Bedingfield. Kylie Minogue was also on that night, but being the superstar that she was, she had her own dressing room. Her dancers were with us though.
So goodbye Choir, goodbye Top of the Pops !!!

Hope everyone is having great weekend !!

Or actually, a new PC would do just fine.

When I bought my current PC, it was at a time when money was tight, and I had just come over to the UK. I spent less than £400 on it, and bought a machine with the very basics, just enough to get me online, and do simple stuff on it. With just 256MB of memory and a Celeron processor, it was no super machine, but it was all mine.

Since then, I’ve begun to do more and more with the PC. I’ve upgraded the memory to 1GB now, but with just 2 memory slots, that’s all I can do for now, to take the memory up to 2GB would cost £160 for 2 ’1 GB’ chips !! I’ve got an external hard drive as well, but with all the programs I run on the PC now, it’s running like a dog. It’s slow, takes forever to do anything, and it’s driving me mad everytime I touch it. For a technophile like myself, it’s simply not accpetable anymore. My work PC on the other hand, is everything I wish my PC at home was. 2 3.20 GHz processors, 2 GB of RAM, it’s got more juice than some servers I’ve worked on !!

However, with the baby coming, and all the financial commitments that come with that, my wife’s income all but non existent during her maternity leave for the next 6 months, I really can’t afford to splash out on a PC right now. Also, with Windows Vista around the corner, why buy a PC with Windows XP now, when I’ll be able to get one with Vista in 6 months or so? It’s all very, very frustrating and confusing.

I’m on the Dell website everyday, building the PC of my dreams for round about £1000. Plus, I get a 7% discount from Dell through a scheme in my company. I could take a loan from them, and pay about £25 a month for the next 2 years, which to be honest isn’t too much. I’m at a loss, but one thing is for sure, something has to be done and soon !!!!

I JUST HEARD THE BABY’S HEARTBEAT !!

My wife went for a midwife’s appointment, and they called me so I could listen to the little girl’s heart racing. It was such a surreal moment !! While I was finishing up my dessert, in the middle of all the noise the staff canteen can produce, I got to listen to my little girl. Brought a massive smile to my face.

Also, I just bought myself a cheap digital camcorder, to use for when the little one arrives. I was asked in the office if I wanted to record the birth. Now, I’d thought about this before, and my decision was a very strong NO. First of all, I think I’ll be too nervous/scared/out of my mind to be able to do anything remamarkably close to a good job. My mind will be all over the place, and I won’t be able to concentrate. Secondly, my wife will not be ‘at her best’ if you know what I mean. She’ll be in pain, and may not be looking as ‘presentable’ as she’d like to.

The baby channel on Sky did a show about this, and found that most men thought exactly as I did, but a lot of women actually liked the idea of filming the birth. So I asked my wife, and she agreed with me.

So, all you other mums, mums to be and everyone else out there, what do you think? Would you mind recording the birth of your little ones?

It took 25 days, but finally : My broadband is working !!!

I’m back !!!

So much to do, so little time….

So is the UK now a tropical country? Nigeria (where I come from) is right on the equator, and is as tropical as they come, especially in the north. However have a look at temperature forecasts for today:

Lagos, Southern Nigeria: 26 ^oC

Abuja, Northern Nigeria: 26 ^oC

London, UK: 31 ^oC

Although it’s raining in Lagos and Abuja, so that has brought the temperatures down somewhat. However, in Nigeria, everyone has airconditioning. My mum was at my place for a few days, and she was complaining about the heat, in Nigeria, if it was half as hot, the aircondotioning would have been on !!

It’s official, the UK is now tropical !!

Airconditioning in my office seems to be off for some unfathomable reason. As a result, we’re all sweaty, and I think this means I’m sneaking out of the office as early as possible !!

Had a good weekend. However, broadband is STILL not working, still waiting for BT to sort out the problems at the exchange. I’m becoming fed up with all of this……….

On the other hand, we went shopping for the baby on Saturday. I was starving, and I was recovering from an early morning dentist visit, where I’d gained 2 new fillings. My mouth was numb, my stomach was aching and my head was pounding. Needless to say, I annoyed my wife in ways I didn’t even realise were possible. I felt like I was in a haze, and the entire experience seems like s fuzzy memory. All I can remember in vivid detail was the final cost of everything £250 !! And we haven’t even bought the pushchair yet !! The pushchair is going to set us back another £250-300 !!

Advice to everyone, if you haven’t got massive savings, then having a baby might NOT be a good idea !!

or ‘Marriage makes you dumber’

BBC NEWS | Health | Bed sharing ‘drains men’s brains’

First of all, how can ANYBODY do research on this? Don’t they have anything more important to do, mmm, maybe something that will save lives?

Anyway, I’m going to speak to my wife about this. I need to conserve my brain power !!

Broadband from Sky. Ranging from free to about £17 a month. Unfortunately, it seems they don’t have their equipment in my area yet, but they plan to by the end of the year. Fortunately for me, I’m only on a 1 month contract, so I can switch once they cover my area.

This looks like it will save me about £11 a month on my broadband, which is pretty cool, plus you get a free wireless router !! I guess I’ll have to wait a few months, but it’s exciting all the same.

 I’m toying with the idea of buying a new PC for home, as the old one was only ever meant to be a stopgap till I could afford a ‘better’ machine. However, the wife has vetoed that, so it doesn’t look very likely for now.

It’s official, I no longer live in London. Last week was hectic, packing and transporting all our stuff across London, and then after several trips (my car did 1000 miles in the last 1 month!), unpacking it all again. Unpacking took forever, as we never realised how much stuff we had. Anyway, fortunately, I had the week off, and last night, we looked at each other and declared ‘Mission accomplished!’.

SO today was my first day back at work, and I have to say, reducing my commmute from 2 hours to 15 minutes is SUPERB. In fact, this morning, I forgot my security pass at home, and I had to go back and get it, and I was only 10 minutes late !! Yeah, I can definately get used to this.

 In other news, I’m getting really concerned about the situation in the Middle East. Whatever the hell is going on there, I just hope it gets sorted out real soon.