I’ll have that boy

No face in this race

From the moment I saw the byline in an email message, I had a feeling something was not quite right with the proposal. In fact, everything seemed wrong about it, but at the very least, I needed to humour them by sincerely reading the story before commenting.

The teen founder turning male fertility into a sport

The Hustle - Jay Fuchs

At the questionable border of sports entertainment and male fertility is Sperm Racing, a startup that recently closed a $10m seed round.

As the propinquity of perspicacity and perspective grants permission, the author of the piece in The Hustle, which is the sales blog of Hubspot, not to be confused with Hustler Magazine, could not have had a more unfortunate name, if pronounced in a certain way, in his role as the managing editor, Jay Fuchs.

Moving on, Eric Zhu is the 18-year-old entrepreneur and founder of Sperm Racing, an outfit set up to address the issue of seemingly declining male fertility in a rather novel way, while promoting a dialogue on the matter too, and everything you think it is, is probably all it is and more, from the name of the company.

The straight-faced debate

To determine the best swimmers on a microscopic racetrack with high-resolution cameras capturing the event, think of the desert camel races of the UAE with robot jockeys, but the sperm will run under their own steam.

Apparently, the viewership of these race events is in the high six-figure range, and the venture has closed a $10m seed round.

This almost Onanist leap from mobility to motility suggests many questions difficult to articulate, but I can see an end in sight, with a visit to a sperm bank or considering a competition between these depositories of human propagation for an open race to all comers.

Equipment set up for the race to save manhood and humanity, Guinness World Records adjudicators ensuring no underhand tactics, spectators jockeying for position, urging their colours forward, until one breasts the tape and she says, “I’ll have that boy.”

One artificial insemination later, if the winner has not been stripped of all dignity to learn of their secret of triumph, a stud farm, humans, horses, bulls, and chickens, and the business of reproduction becomes the survival of the fittest sperm, with happy endings following even more happy endings.

In the ideas market, let’s just agree, more is to come.

See Also

ABC 7 News: Bay Area student organises 1st-of-its-kind sperm race to raise men's health awareness

Between haughty Hillsong and bounty biltong

Giving thanks but no thanks

It was with great anticipation that we decided to choose Hillsong Church as the place to attend to give thanks and praise for triumphing over situations and circumstances that had befallen us for the last couple of years.

From a natural perspective, many things seemed insurmountable but providence and good fortune even with limited resources gave such an opportunity for celebration and we were excited about it.

We arrived at the church in Century City, just outside Cape Town and followed the crowd into the building. An usher was closing access to the first entrance to the hall we got to until I said we were first-time visitors. We were allowed into the darkish hall with bright lights on the stage as the praise and worship session was about to begin.

We found seats, squeezed between people who appeared to want to be elsewhere as we joined in congregational worship, and we just went with the flow. Once everything was done, we left as we came, unnoticed, unengaged, and quite unwelcome too. We were blessed but did not have the feeling that we would return.

Surely welcoming is standard church practice

Cape Town is an international tourist destination; we usually attend St George’s Cathedral when in Cape Town and we have always felt welcome. One would expect as with church traditions we have witnessed in many places that there is an acknowledgement of visitors to the fellowship with an opportunity provided to meet up with new faces, presenting the church as a welcoming and open community.

We found it quite strange that at no time during the 11:00 AM service we attended at Hillsong that visitors were welcomed or acknowledged. The church was just busy, too busy being church and probably feeling too full to notice anyone attending for the first time. My partner felt that the worship leading had become a self-absorbed performance to entertain us, it was lots of activity accomplishing little.

Maybe it was an oversight as it did bother me, I volunteer as a steward in my local church in Manchester, we welcome people as they come in, the clergy acknowledges visitors during the service, and everyone is invited for refreshments at the end of the service. We are a community regardless of when you come or where you come from.

Writing to the blind and deaf

I decided to write to the church about our visit and the atmosphere we encountered, apart from a boilerplate response, no one acknowledged or replied from the church. Seeing that the pastors of that church had gone on to lead the global fellowship. A few days later, I forwarded my original email to the main church in Australia, another boilerplate response without acknowledgement or reply.

Even for a business, basic standards of professionalism would suggest a basic response for emails sent on the 25^th of June and then on the 3^rd of July, the substantive elements of our experience and observations might be dealt with later.

It is not a scandal, we eventually concluded Hillsong had decided we did not matter, and we could not have been so uniquely affected, we were random worshippers who thought there was a prospect of adding a Pentecostal flair to our Anglican devotion in fellowshipping with the Hillsong community. We can however conclude there are more issues in that family than meets the eye.

Biltong engagement was much better

In comparison to the biltong shop that used to be in the Time Out Market that moved into a vending van at the other side of the Watershed at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, even after almost 2 years of last patronising them.

The different vendors that manned the van on the separate days that we bought biltong were enterprising, engaging, welcoming, friendly, and inspiring of the desire to return. It is quite bizarre that I am comparing Hillsong to biltong, much was desired of the former, but we found a better relationship with the latter.

Everything is about establishing connections for human relationships, if a church cannot effectively do that, it has by all terms lost its purpose. In my email, I did suggest that we were not trying to change any Hillsong traditions, just highlighting something that could be useful.

My experience with Hillsong London was different, but that was 11 years ago before the scandals happened. I have written a bit about those issues before, my feeling is things have not changed, a window dressing does not a shop make.

Blog - Thought Picnic: Where Everybody Shares Your Pain (August 2013)

Blog - Hillsnog: How the scandals at Hillsong took root (September 2021)

Blog - The Hillsong controversy and resignation (April 2022)

Running the gauntlet of influencer clout blackmail

Be glad for the professionalism

I got involved in a thread conversation on Twitter this morning because I felt there was a seething sense of entitlement bordering on blackmail that could not be overlooked. The poster had used the services of a skin specialist whose professionalism had eradicated hyperpigmentation from his face, and one would assume out of customer satisfaction, the poster recommended other people to the skin specialist.

It transpired that the skin specialist told the poster that through his recommendation, some 500 other clients had used his professional services. The skin specialist thanked the poster for the recommendation and that should have been enough.

This is just barefaced entitlement

However, the poster did a mental calculation on the 500 clients, imagined the total income from that clientele and came to the conclusion that the skin specialist’s gratitude could have been better expressed in a probably a free year of skincare services and so by inference labelled the skin specialist an ingrate for getting all that custom and providing no tangible reward.

Now, I cannot say how large the skin specialist’s business is, but one thing is certain, if the skin specialist had not achieved the results of fixing the poster’s face, everything else that resulted in referrals, increased clientele and additional income from the clients would not have happened. What professionals do is provide a service for which they get paid and if the customer decides to recommend them, that is a bonus.

Please respect the professional

What I take issue with is people who having obtained a good professional service for which time and resources have been meticulously devoted expecting to get a free service in reward for their recommendations. It is one thing to have agreed beforehand that you will bring custom to a business for some reward, and it is another to expect a reward from having benefitted from a service. If it is exclusively your decision to recommend a business, do not return to blackmail the business owner into giving you a free service.

In fact, professionals should always be treated as professionals with skills on the market to be monetarised, please respect the professional, and pay up. For example, would anyone having had a successful surgical procedure and then recommended the surgeon to others now expect the surgeon to provide free services for subsequent surgeries as an expression of gratitude? What makes a surgeon different from a skin specialist or a computer expert except for the tendency to denigrate and contemn one in relation to the other?

Paying forward is better

I have recommended businesses and services just as I have written reviews about services that have not been to a professional standard either to get them to change or to alert other customers about issues with the business. Where my reviews have redounded to the bottom line, I do not stand at the gate seeking compensation or reward, I pay fully for the service provided respecting what they do.

My principle is to pay forward rather than seek reward, what I can afford, I pay for, if the business wants to be generous, that generosity is better directed to those in need. I would not let acquisitive greed deprive others of opportunity and access. Like if the skin specialist offered a free session, I would probably suggest it be given to someone who needs it but cannot afford it.

It is blackmail, no less

This brings me to the issue of influencers; these are people who have a large following due to activity in their situation who have consequently promoted a business or service to their followers. Whilst I cannot essentially class fame or infamy as a profession, some do use their influencer clout to then attempt to blackmail businesses, services, or professionals into providing free products and services for exposure to their following.

For some businesses, there can be a beneficial end to that, but to put upon a professional and predicate that by your influence their business has survived and without you, they will be nothing is quite an aggrandisement and close to delusions of grandeur. It is the professional’s prerogative to express gratitude as they deem fit without having to be excoriated or abused for just expressing thanks instead of doling out freebies.

Ultimately, if you can’t pay for the service, go elsewhere. If you feel entitled to a free service, find a gullible professional ready to sacrifice their professionalism for your influencer schtick. Enough of the backhanded recommendations seeking reward, if anything, it is utterly reprehensible, and I have no qualms about calling it out.

Do not mistake me for a Nigerian

I am not your Nigerian

Sometimes, I am left frustrated by assumptions others have of me, the way elements of my expressed heritage seem to suggest I am wholly one thing to the exclusion of other aspects of my mixed identity.

In July last year, I ordered some food that was to be delivered at a certain time from a Nigerian food caterer, we conversed in Yoruba most of the time and it must have given her the impression that I had the stereotypical predilection for poor timekeeping. Nothing could be further from that presumption.

Timekeeping is a virtue

In one of our exchanges, I had to tell her, our familiar repartee should not be mistaken for me being a core Nigeria, I am nothing of the sort, I am an Englishman who just happens to be able to code-switch into Nigerian parlance with ease, but I am completely unreconstructed for the Nigerian way of doing things. On that issue of time alone, much as her food was exceedingly good, we would not be doing business ever again. Please, do not waste my time.

Then again, I find myself quite irked by another situation. This is a person not particularly enamoured of familial ties to be blackmailed into doing anything. I do what I need to do according to my own convenience and abilities dictated by my own worldview. Some might consider that harsh, but I am not here to please or pleasure anyone about the things I do, I just work to make the best of my expression of humanity.

Warming to growers

I have an acquaintance who I met when I was a superstar-technical-guru parachuted in to create a solution and move on. That stint for just over 4 weeks worked because the technical bud I was working with was knowledgeable enough to pick up what I was doing and run with it.

Obviously, it was nice to see a Nigerian trying to find his feet in the technical team, and so we kept in touch. This young man has now landed a role he is totally incapable of handling, he is out of his depth and apparently winging it with keeping things going but without the wherewithal to do anything new to implement or improve the service that is desperately in need of both the expertise and audacity to introduce change.

Disappointing engagements sour interest

Months ago, I was invited to have a look at the environment and in the process, it became and has become more evident that not only does he not know what to do, he cannot even follow detailed instructions to achieve what he needs done.

How am I supposed to be able to help this situation without going back to the fundamentals even as the prospect shows no agility, ability, aptitude, or capability of the growth necessary to give him control of his brief?

I do not work weekends, not if I can help it, in all my contracting life of over 25 years, I doubt I have done 20 weekend days of any work, and this is considering the rates are double or triple my usual rates. You need to set aside your weekend from work except where no other time can be found to do what needs doing. I have a life. Please, you have no hold on my time.

It’s my time, not yours, man

Altogether, I have probably spent 14 hours of my weekends doing stuff with this chap, the last time, I planned on just 90 minutes but on recognising what we had to do, we were still at it 6 hours on, until he had to break off to attend to some volunteer activity, priorities, I thought.

Since then, he has sought my time first to continue from where we left off and then suggesting he has progressed, which is fine, but I have had other plans and it has not been convenient for me to engage. I guess what is more annoying is the premise that he can choose the time I am to be available to help him, it is a kind of unwitting sense of unconscious entitlement that demands without consideration for the other. Please, do not abuse my time.

Things that move me

Now, I like to help, but I want to recognise that I am helpful in that the person being helped is growing and developing in the area where the help is being sought. I appreciate I have a wealth of knowledge that I also like to share with people that show the aptitude to learn, I guess that is the first part of my discomfiture.

Then, if you are asking for help, you have to tailor your request around how convenient it is for the ones you need help from, do not assume you have a call on their time as if they are waiting on your beck and call. We all have things to do and have to eke out our time for these things, even if I decide to spend the whole weekend sleeping, that is my prerogative fully dictated by me.

It is still my time

In this case, he does not ask when I can do stuff, he immediately thinks my Sunday is available, I have just decided to ignore him, and I am close to getting pissed off enough send him to Block-land. How do you teach that my apparent affinity to things Nigerian does not mean I acquiesce to the varied forms of passive-aggressive entitlement that allows the sense of kindred to expect anyone to just give in. Please, you cannot usurp my time.

I am hamstrung by my Englishness, for even finding a polite way to suggest I am unimpressed almost seems rude whichever way I might want to deliver it. He is best sent to Coventry, maybe some moderating effect can play out in the end.

Coronavirus streets in Manchester - XXXII

Doors flung open

Manchester is apparently open for business in a way, walking past restaurants that had closed since last year they had chairs and tables out for alfresco dining, but few of them were occupied as people chose to sit inside the restaurants instead.

By observation, probably those who need to smoke were sitting outside even though one could begin to feel the chill of the evening. The sun was out and out in the parks were children at play and adults in exercise groups with others jogging, there was a jolly feel to things.

Guests in town

The hotels also seemed to have come to life, like people could not wait to arrive in Manchester, the car parks were full, I would think hotels are up to brisk business, but they would need more custom to begin to recoup their losses due to the pandemic.

As for the larger supermarkets, I checked in on one at almost 9:00 PM as it now closes at 10:00 PM when during the stricter lockdown it had shorter opening hours. I do sense a bit of reticence still, the streets and shopping precincts are not that crowded, we are trying to be responsible by keeping safe still and that is a good thing.

Coronavirus streets in Manchester - XXVIII

Life in the city

The city is still in slumber or just being aroused for the day when I go out for my walks in the morning. Apart from delivery lorries parked in loading bays to stock the shops I pass by, there isn’t much activity to see. That suits me as the absence of people and crowds means I do not have to don a face mask for the most part of my walk.

Brian recognises that soon after work, I do need a nap before I decide what else to do in the late evening. He has somehow urged me to go out probably for another long evening walk, which might be helpful to tire me out of the throes of insomnia, but there was much else to see especially after the easing of the lockdown measures in England.

Lights, chairs and tables

Out of my door and up the street, there was Canal Street, the gay village, all lit up and busy, chairs and tables on the pedestrianised street, I cannot account for whether there was adequate social distancing, the city was indeed abuzz. The back streets for which new licenses were granted were no more thoroughfare to vehicular traffic but now bustling aisles and pavements of alfresco dining.

Further on, some premises and businesses had died Covid-19 deaths, they were not open, the doors shuttered in the finality of regret that they could not endure the economic strains of the pandemic, a club that caters for patrons absent of class, style, or manner had followed that tale of woe for which with difficulty I mustered a bit of sympathy.

Gems make affordable

Then Primark, much as I do shop at Fortnum & Mason that is in the same Wittington Investments Limited conglomerate was having a late closing time. I will not buy a shirt or a suit there, but there are gems in the store at affordable prices.

A good woollen jumper and sexy track bottoms along with a few handy accessories, it was busy enough with people who wore their masks on their chins probably due to the protuberances on their faces being too big to be concealed by the healthy requirement of a mask. Did I hear they are called noses too?

Thinking of Brian, we can share trousers, his waist slightly thinner than mine, but we have the same leg length, or just about. He is taller than I am. Jackets, however, we can’t as my chest is bigger, we have to give or take 3 to 4 inches, he risks looking like a scarecrow in my jacket, though what a laugh that would excite. I hope the life that has returned to Manchester is not the precursor for another lengthy shutdown.

Don't dare believe you have a say

My business and butt out

There is nothing I find as irksome as people who think they have the purchase to decide what you do, how you act or what you think. People who have no particular interest in you apart from being part of a contrived mob of opinion that would seek to sway you as you respond to the pressure of some sort of scrutiny or sanction.

No one has been exposed this intrusiveness today as much as the Duchess of Sussex, people who have arrogated to themselves the right to decide what she should or not be doing. Speaking up for the Queen forgetting that the Duchess is in fact a granddaughter-in-law, the familial ties sometimes complicated by the monarchical institution, this is still a family issue regardless of the public spectacle.

Live without excuses

Be that as it may, I am not here to support anyone, my only hope is that the Sussexes are happy, happier than what represented the marriages of their parents. 'The Firm' which is essentially the court, gets confused with the throne to the exclusion of a grandmother who just happens to wear a crown. For her grandson, office and duty are secondary, the safety of his family and their happiness above all is all that matters.

For everyone else, this is something they may need to read and hear, that they do not owe anyone anything about what they choose to do. Yes, we could all do with some advice even if unsolicited, we need to have the courage of our convictions and go out to live our full lives not having to make excuses for who or what we are.

'Cause you're free,
To do what you want to do,
You've got to live your life,
Do what you want to do.
Ultra Naté - Free [Wikipedia]

Thought Picnic: The business of not becoming arboreal fish

When fins are not limbs

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” This saying is usually attributed to Albert Einstein, but there is much controversy as to whether he ever said these words. Whilst it is important to responsibly source the provenance of a quote, we should not be distracted from the import of the uncredited aphorism.

There are times I have wasted my energy as a fish trying to climb a tree. I moderate and caution myself in how I represent myself, hoping not to use the negative to incapacitate my ability, just in case, I find the insight eventually to excel in an area where heretofore I could not begin to believe I had the means or wherewithal to have a voice.

Collapsing the plinths of adulation

Just over 6 months ago, I was contacted enthusiastically about a business proposition, that appeared to have scope and prospect even if the basic idea was in need of refinement. With me being looked upon as a leader, I immediately put aside my doubts, more personally about what I could do that I did not pose the essential questions to help refine the focus.

Strangely, I felt quite uncomfortable that demands would be made of me that would leave me exposed even as I did not want to disappoint my beloved interlocutor nor dampen their passion. As I was in the midst of planning some personal activities, I put the thoughts aside.

About a week ago, I saw that the sketchy ideas that were discussed had taken root and gained a vehicle of expression. This dream had become a reality and the next stage of marketing had begun, this is place where this person had all the expertise to carry a product to a market and begin to make a business that met a need.

Encourage creative expression

In trying to escape from the trite, I opined to another, “I'm glad you're getting to do what you love, nothing as fulfilling as doing things that are impactful; food leaves a memory and creates an enduring desire to relive the moment. It comes from the artistry and expertise that produces it in the first place.”

Someone who had taken the joy of cooking to the point of creating an online kitchen and fulfilling orders was having a time of their life, I could only be pleased for them. Yet, in me, there was that fish again attempting to climb a tree. I needed to provide encouragement without the use of clichés, recognise that what was being done was more than commendable and avoid allowing my sense of inadequacy get in the way of earned and deserved acknowledgement.

There are people who see us as sources of inspiration, living up to that kind reverence that we decline in self-deprecation and apparent lack of achievement in our own eyes presents a chasm between where we are placed and where we place ourselves. Our modesty becomes a refuge from the responsibility demanded of our counsel, guidance, and advice.

Not everyone can do business

Entrenching the accolades, I was offering, I averred, “It’s a journey you’ve started, and it will get better and more rewarding.” The process of setting up is hard, it takes a lot of perseverance to keep at it and make a success of it.

In the end, combining the separate events of two people taking their dreams to the market and working on growing their custom, I found I could still remain a fish, though not one trying to climb trees; just one that is naturally suited to its environment and thriving therein, a fish in freshwater, swimming in the abundance of life and resources.

“The spirit of business is an awesome thing, it's not something I have had much insight or acumen in, I am just a knowledge person. I think it takes amazing ability and talent to build a business around ideas meeting a need and I wish you the very best.”

Being an entrepreneur demands the skill, the drive and the expertise I have not realised currently I possess, my kind of fish is not striving to climb trees, yet, for everyone who had been able to take an idea to the place of selling a product growing in demand, you have found waters in which you can be the best fish you can ever be. Swim, live long and prosper.

Something has been postponed

Escape town now

When we arrived in Cape Town, we noticed a number of businesses had already closed for the year from the 13^th of December and would not be returning until the 6^th of January.

Some somehow endured another week of work before closing, but it seemed everyone was ready to down tools and put their feet up for 2019. I guess we got a deeper sense of disappointment when our friendly place for breakfast was closing from noon on the 21^st until the 7^th of January.

This became concerning because we wondered if there’ll be places to go out to, if everyone was abandoning the rest of 2019. Then a food market that I expected to be open had closed from Christmas Day. We get it now, just we are done with 2019, others were too, and that desire will not be postponed.

Playtime Cape Town

Walking around the V&A Waterfront in that first week too, we could not help but notice sparse promenades and restaurants bereft of patrons. I had to ask and was told by a waitress that custom was considerably down compared to the year before. We also thought there was a difference between our September/October visit and just before Christmas.

It would appear the Christmas week did pick up, the church was full that we ended up on the last row, the communion organised for us to take it at narthex in the back rather than at the bema near the altar. This probably confirms why Hotels.com showed there was a 95% occupancy for this period.

Out and happy

Our visits to the V&A Waterfront now seem to be more vibrant and livelier, the views of the Table Mountain awesome as ever, with or without the tablecloth of billowing clouds. Camps Bay is traffic chaos, though for a walk in the chilling waters of the beach and that trek to Mouille Point, we would have done enough to want a Uber rescue.

In all, work and busy has been postponed and the holiday feeling will be held back no longer. It speaks to why we could find no tables for Christmas lunch that I had to cook. We can’t persuade ourselves enough about going out for New Year’s Eve, not that we haven’t tried.

We are having a wonderful time here, it’s so good to spend this time with Brian in this city we love.

Courtesy of the William Kentridge exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.

Thought Picnic: I was sodden too sudden

To prophesy, I did not

Suddenly, is not a word I use that often, though I do sometimes pretend I rarely act on impulse but on slow determined and considered thought and reflection before I do anything.

However, what I cannot account for is how casual commentary becomes prescient as if one has been gifted a power of benign prognostication that has hardly developed beyond reviewing issues in hindsight.

The decision to go to Cape Town at Easter was made in early January and in deciding that, there was a throwaway comment that South Africa might again see a visitor sooner than planned. We were already counting down the days towards the meeting in Johannesburg for our onward flight together to Cape Town.

To manifest, I sure did

Then suddenly, a furlough and an uncertainty intervened in a situation where time became available to consider possibilities and opportunities. This all got clarity yesterday evening and with it comes a trip to the southern hemisphere. Now, who would not jump at a business trip to South Africa?

The execution was sudden, but the thought process had been sown, watered and tended over weeks of flux, wherein, the indeterminate follows on to the definite. With ticket in hand, board on high, affections in overdrive and meetings planned for the eruptions of ideas, goals, aims and hopefully more than one ever desired. We face life as a journey of people, hearts, and minds.

Providence shines on me and I am grateful for all that gives me a story to tell, eventually.

My last 4 weeks in Nigeria, 28 years ago (The business angle)

My departure boarding pass issued on the 30^th of December 1990.

Taking the next step

Twenty-eight years ago today, I left Nigeria to return to the UK, I had only returned from the UK 4 weeks earlier, having been on a business trip for a firm in which I was part owner with a 30% stake, we called it NextStep Limited and it specialised in desktop publishing, offloading the burden of typesetting and printing from traditional methods to technologies provided by personal computers running Xerox Ventura Publisher.

NextStep Limited probably would have gone far if the majority partner was not too full of himself expecting subservience and obeisance, but two events in the 4 weeks of my return put paid to that relationship. The first was during a conversation when he dipped his hand in his pocket and threw money at me across the table. I picked up the wad and put it back in front of him saying, my parents have never thrown money at me, neither can you.

Maybe not a good step

The second event resulted in me saying to him, “You don’t give a 24-year old 30% of a company and think that is the end of his life, I will throw it away and start over again somewhere else.” It wasn’t that I was not full of gratitude, I just could not stand being treated with disrespect just because I was younger.

Whilst I was beginning to give more of my time to NextStep Limited, I had 4 other contractual engagements going. The most important was with Deji Sasegbon Limited, a legal publishing outfit that had just finished publishing the Nigerian Supreme Court Cases in 40 volumes and it was this that brought me into the purview of my patron and majority partner at NextStep Limited who was also a lawyer and a director at the United Bank of Africa.

On an earlier step

He was a Nigerian bigwig and I was an atypical young ‘Nigerian’, well, Deji Sasegbon who gave me my big break saw me differently, he had the wealth, influence and authority to employ me outright to work for him. Instead, he offered me a deal, he said, “Akin, I want you to consult for me, teach my staff to know the workings of desktop publishing, take on the complex stuff and for that, I will give you a monthly stipend and your flight ticket whenever you are ready to leave for the UK is paid for.”

Deji Sasegbon, unfortunately, passed away two years ago, to him I owe a great debt of gratitude, more importantly, he treated me with dignity and respect, it was always a pleasure to work for him. When I told him I was leaving for the UK, whilst he was saddened, he understood and bid me Godspeed.

Blog - Adieu D-Shash! (Deji Sasegbon)

Definite the worst step

At NextStep Limited, one of the jack-of-all-trades businesses my partner was involved in was selling Christmas cards. Some staff in that other business had stolen some of those cards and my partner corralled every employee including my own staff at NextStep Limited and had them banged up in a police cell without the courtesy of informing me. I spent a whole day negotiating bail conditions for my staff, or at least my staff did the negotiating because I did not speak with the language or accent the police understood. I got them out, but that was the very last straw for me.

Whilst, there was a kind of youthful exuberance in the way I decided to break that NextStep Limited relationship. In the circumstances, that was my only option. There was no other engagement where I had been treated as disdainfully as I was with that man. I divested myself of my other engagements and handed over to my able assistant and threw away NextStep Limited.

After my departure, my ex-business partner attempted to besmirch my name to my family and other contacts I made on my business visit to the UK, suggesting I had made off with material and some other stuff. The only thing I took from NextStep Limited was my participation. It was his desperate attempt to assuage his ego when he had been dealt the same hand of discourtesy he had dealt me.

My good friend later wrote to me saying, when you left NextStep, there were no other steps to take.

On an airline step

This was a man who got his sister a job for in the foreign exchange department of the Central Bank of Nigeria, on arranging the foreign exchange for our business travel, she pilfered a full 20% of that transaction. He had more leeches and hangers-on around him filching, dissembling, needing and stealing, everyone was coming to him with business deals and scams, he probably invested in more scams than viable businesses.

He came to me with a proposition that I accepted because I thought it was a good idea, with hindsight, I should have taken some advice and I would have gotten the best legal advice money could buy for free from Deji Sasegbon or any of his partners and lawyers, all of whom I had a good relationship with.

On the 30^th of December 1990, I left Nigeria, on Nigeria Airways flight WT808 running almost 3 hours behind schedule. I had £15 in my pocket and a future ahead of me. That is another story.

Edinburgh: Then I found a hotel that shouldn't be in this business

I’m a sleeping dog, let me lie

As a tourist to a city, a guest in a hotel or a customer in a restaurant or any establishment that provides a service, I am a quiet unassuming, disinterested and unperturbed person, quite so if everything is just as it should be. I am rarely effusive with praise and loath to excoriate.

However, shift out of the standard deviation of expected service and I have a broad tolerance of excellence to incompetence and you will for posterity become a search result on the Internet, my perspective of my experience.

Having worked in Edinburgh for 5 weeks, I have found myself in a variation of the theme of The Frog Prince, I have already stayed in 5 hotels and have proverbially kissed just as many frogs seeking a prince. Now in my sixth hotel, I seem to have kissed a toad, maybe even something as dreadful as a lamprey.

Why were they advertised?

This Centre Townhouse is anything but what it purports to be. From the next day after I booked the place on Hotels.com, it has been an ever-increasing debilitating nightmare. The warning signs were there, I gamely ignored them and considering the booking was made late at night, I probably was not alert enough to the little troublesome elements this establishment and that word I use under advisement.

I had booked a room with an en-suite bathroom and it was one of those instances where I decided not to pay up-front but pay at the hotel, the first clue being there were no reviews of the place yet. Hotels.com as the broker of the transaction guarantees my booking and acts as an escrow service, my booking was confirmed through my credit card.

The next morning, I received an email from the hotel, suggesting my card had been declined and that I should offer another means of payment. That should never have happened and so I contacted Hotels.com to inquire as to how my card that was accepted through my booking on the website could now be declined by an establishment that was only to get paid on my arrival.

Hotels dot incomprehensible

Hotels.com informed me that my booking had been cancelled by the establishment and that the issue of my declined card was being investigated by their internal transactions team, they had no other information for me, however, someone from the team would call me in under three hours.

The status of my confirmed booking did not change on the Hotels.com website through to the next morning when I called to remonstrate about the unsatisfactory customer service and unnecessary distress about having a declined credit card, a long way from home.

The staff then called the hotel directly, gave them assurances that the booking will be paid for on arrival and reconfirmed to me that everything was fine. Not an hour after that call, I received another email from the hotel still asking for a guaranteed and alternative means of payment.

A dishonest ruse

I then called Centre Townhouse directly to determine what the problem really was and as it transpired, they did not have a means to take credit/debit card payments. So, rather than come clean that they were unready for modern hotelier business they set up the ruse that my card had been declined to prompt me to contact them to agree to pay cash on arrival. Dishonest does not begin to describe my view of that behaviour that I called Hotels.com the next morning to complain about this underhand business practice.

Hotels.com did not help ameliorate the situation and had I not accrued a loyalty reward scheme over 4 years of being a customer, I would have immediately transferred my loyalties to a rival hotel booking site. The agent at the other end of the phone, probably in an outsourced location completely oblivious of typically first-world problems and angst could not for the want of trying comprehend the distress of having a card declined and the risk of carrying around hundreds of pounds in a society that is progressively a cashless society.

My feedback to Hotels.com on this situation has not garnered a response yet. The Hotels.com agent seemed to have taken the side of the hotelier and their cock and bull story. I was none too pleased when I learnt that the hotel would hopefully by the weekend have a card machine, it was not going to happen, these people were chancers, they got by, by bending the truth without scruples.

Is this the hotel?

I arrived at the ‘hotel’ by taxi and there was no signpost outside, the main door which was ajar and the cab driver was a tad suspicious and concerned that I might have arrived at the wrong place, but that was the address I had. I walked in and I was welcomed into what seemed to have been a big townhouse converted into a number of apartments. The self-contained living quarters on the ground floor had been rejigged into a configuration with a big bedroom accessed by a keycode lock which became my room.

The living room had a split function as my sitting room and the hotel reception, with access to a kitchen where I could use the microwave oven but not the gas stove or the oven. The combined toilet and bathroom was not en-suite, the lock insecure, the toilet brush broken, and the toilet was exclusively mine to use except when others came to use the living room to entertain guests and their cacophony became my disturbance.

On my first morning there, I had a face full of shaving foam only to find that the shower was not working. I sent an SMS text message to the hotelier to have it fixed which was sorted whilst I was at work.

There were no towels in my room and when I asked for towels, I was told I had to pay £2 for the use of a towel. My room does not even qualify as a bed and breakfast arrangement, but for the perfunctory wireless internet complimentary service, I am at loss as to how to class this rip-off.

These are bounders on the make

The £400 for my 5-night stay I had already withdrawn from the bank and put in an envelope that I gave the albeit pleasant hotelier with whom I had a long friendly conversation, but the truth of the matter cannot be lost to pleasantries.

At the very minimum, an establishment masquerading as a hotel or at the very least aspiring to the standard of a bed and breakfast would have a signpost outside, a reception, the room and bed as advertised, a chair and table, a television, tea making facilities, a hair dryer (not that I need one), toiletries including a towel, probably ironing facilities and everyday housekeeping. I was not aware my bed would not be made every day.

Close this travesty

The setup as it stands at the Centre Townhouse is probably best suited for a motel for a night or a brothel by the hour, going by the charge for towels. This is no hotel, these people though pleasant, have no business being in the hospitality business, it is disastrously amateurish with a money-grabbing hand absent of understanding what it takes to run any semblance of a hotel facility. To suggest I am appalled is to be effusive with praise.

I should have at the first opportunity cancelled this booking, I will endure the 5 nights, it is not the end of the world, but the end of this charade running in the hospitality industry and having a berth on a hotel booking website cannot come soon enough. One is not by terms impressed.

This is a review of my own personal experience of staying at Centre Townhouse for five nights at the end of May into the beginning of June. It is written honestly, without prejudice and truthfully, each individual experience in a hotel establishment varies, I cannot speak for others, I speak for myself.

Centre Townhouse
70 Gilmore Place
Edinburgh
EH3 9NX

A Restaurant Review: How you sink your business

Just the little things

There are some very fundamental things anyone who runs a business should be doing to be on the pathway to success. Whilst, I will not necessarily dish out business thots, what you put into a business is almost always a reflection of who you are.

If you run a restaurant business, it goes without saying that impressions matter, service is paramount and the setup is more than a revelation. Up in Edinburgh this afternoon, I had checked on the Trip Advisor website searching out African restaurants. I think 9 came up from all parts of Africa and two were particularly of West African cuisine.

Trust but verify

Now, anytime I visit a new place, I do try to search out a restaurant that serves some Nigerian cuisine and I hope it is good.

On Trip Advisor, there were 16 reviews of the African Flavour Restaurant of which 4 rated it terribly, 9 were excellent and 4 with a very good rating. It does concern me when I look at restaurant reviews and 25% of the respondents had a rotten experience, yet, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt.

On reflection, I was too trusting, the website link for the restaurant from Trip Advisor was defunct but I pushed my luck and called a cab to the place. From the outside, you could see the place was not particularly cared for. On stepping in, two tables were occupied and the other two had not been cleared with leftovers and mess left on the tables.

Invisible for a while

The waiter was attending to two mothers with their kids who had come in to pick up their takeaways, nothing seemed to be done with despatch. I was there for probably 5 minutes before I was noticed and I told the waiter I had come for a meal. There was, however, an instinct to just walk out, but I stayed as he made to clear the tables without any panache and motioned to me to sit down.

Meanwhile, a monotonous cacophony called Nigerian music today was blaring from the television which was linked to YouTube videos. One of the customers who probably was a friend of the waiter was playing jukebox with a mobile phone calling up tracks that suited her listening, though later the volume was turned down. After the mothers had left, it probably would have been better to close the restaurant and having the waiter spend time with the other two customers who seemed to know their way around the place but were no helping hands.

Staff the place properly

I could not say if the man waiting the tables was also doing the cooking, but I suspect that was the case which would mean that adding one more member of staff to the coterie can improve things to ensure the tables are cleared before new customers come in and preferably whilst the customers who had those meals were still at the tables. Separating waiting tables from kitchen duties can make the greatest first impression of a place.

I was hungry and not too keen on going elsewhere, so I hope that the food served would be the redemption of the place. They did not have my choice of peppersoup and the gizzard and plantain combo would have been served without the plantain. Without making too much of a fuss I forgot the entrees and ordered the main course of pounded yam and ogbono soup.

A salvation of sorts

It arrived piping hot as I was informed to wash my hands at the wash basin with wonky taps, I would suspect the soup came out of a microwave oven because it was scalding hot, it could not have been served from a pot on a stove and be that hot.

In any case, I settled into the meal without suffering any life-changing burns and when I finished, I returned to the wash basin to wash my hands only to find the tissue roll dispenser was empty. I returned to my table and wiped my hands with one of the napkins before using sheets of I tissue handkerchiefs I had in my pocket to dry them properly and immediately asked for the bill. I had called my Uber and walked out to it soon after.

Doing the right thing matters

By comparison, the Uber cab was clean, the driver pleasant and the conversation enlightening, but contrast, the restaurant I had just left was dire, lacking in character and ambiance, with a redolent staff incapable of purpose with a slapdash business sense, that restaurant was a business in decline.

A business in decline not by reason of anything but the proprietor of the said business and the person should have no one to blame if that business fails. The Uber driver opined that the neighbourhood was not one of the more salubrious of Edinburgh, however, in my view that is no excuse for bad service of unkempt tables. Nothing stopping the proprietor converting that restaurant into a surprise location like a jewel in the dirt.

Work with what you’ve got

It takes a particular mindset to make the best of what you’ve got and where you are to attract custom. I posted a review on Trip Advisor that rated it average and by terms, it was a generous review. You rarely get a second chance to make a good first impression and in the case of the African Flavour Restaurant, the flavour was not fragrant or tasteless, it was the harbinger of retching nausea if the constitution of the stomach were of lesser resilience.

I endured it, but I would be ashamed and embarrassed to recommend it and if not for my craving and hunger, I should have given that place a miss, the moment I stepped in. It is shame when someone has an opportunity and out of being inconsiderate and incompetent, compounded by rank ineptitude, what could be a showcase restaurant is a rundown dive.

African Flavour Restaurant,
187 Great Junction Street,
Edinburgh
EH6 5LQ
+44 131 554 5537

Open daily from 16:00 to 22:00

The UK: Scoring low on the good skirt test

Help!

Anyone who reads my blog will more or less conclude that I am a liberal. I am probably a liberal, I do have certain conservative views, but I would hope that I practice a sort of pragmatism tempered with a broad accepting reasonableness.

My last blog addressed the issue of the regulation of women’s as a fascination and a mode of gauging the level of morality in certain societies. One can easily sententiously subscribe to the view that a certain mode of dress as accepted in certain places is the level of tolerance of permissiveness and an exacerbation of the lascivious, but I refuse to entertain that as embracing of the freedom of responsible expression by adults.

However, I was met with a serious challenge to my generally liberal views of dress as I arrived at work and in the process of disembarking from my taxicab, the passenger in the taxicab in front stepped out, blazing red Christian Louboutin shoes, black blouse, and jacket, over a black skirt. In tow, a trolley bag and a catwalk gait to the office block.

The good skirt test

I dare say, from basic observation, the good seamstress test was suffering in extremis, the skirt appeared to be not long enough to cover the detail, and it was short enough to maintain too much of a lingering interest as to forget that there was someone wearing the clothes. The good seamstress or tailoress as I found was the archaic term for dressmaker at the Leeds Industrial Museum over a week ago suggests, ‘a skirt must be long enough to cover the detail, whilst short enough for keep the interest.’ Not a lingering and lewd interest, though.

The skirt struggled to pass the basic test on both accounts for the occasion when it probably would have wowed the fashion watchers on a celebrity red carpet. Then I cannot comment on the appropriateness of the attire if the wearer is comfortable in what they choose to wear, but I would be surprised if it did not draw some commentary anywhere she went around the campus on Monday.

My companion did quip as we got out of the taxicab, inquiring if I did see what she thought she had seen. I guess a lot more people had their heads turning for the want of some understanding.

It’s summer, but at the office

Then I was intimated of an event some summers ago, when the mercury put the UK in Mediterranean bliss and with that, the business sense in dress was discarded for a laissez-faire beach casual look. This compelled the management to remonstrate about presentation and manner of dress with regards to the appropriateness for the office, however, without listing the prescriptive items of clothing that appeared to suggest contempt for comportment and decency.

I still feel adults should behave responsibly on matters of presentation and appearance at work without having to be told how. Then again, some sometimes forget and need to be reminded of where they are, so that they can make adjustments where necessary.

However, what could happen is if management is too timid to be particular with individuals, the scattergun approach of a circular might also come with certain put-upon staff constituting a vigilante fashion police mob acting beyond their areas of core expertise.

Nobody should have to be told how to dress, but somebody needs to intervene when the manner of dress draws attention away from the wearer, especially when the wearer is not on a catwalk.

Agege Bread by desire and amazing consequence

Whistle-stop London

At the behest of Funmi Iyanda, I found myself on a train to London on Saturday soon after a conversation where we decided we need to have a chat.

I left home in shorts and a shirt, wearing boat shoes, a straw hat and nothing else, not even a jacket because we were having one of those unusually glorious summer days in England. Sunday morning was hardly the precursor to a summer's day, it rained and I was not dressed for it.

Arriving at hers, I settled down to a cassava meal with a mix of three different stews that I insisted on having despite her protestations to the contrary, I insisted and enjoyed it.

The evening passed with visitors literally exhausting us, so we never really went out to the US Independence Day picnic because as usual, our good friends are not the best or most reliable timekeepers for engagements.

Good view but the food

On Sundays when I am with Funmi, we have breakfast / brunch at Ginger & White where we meet an eclectic crowd of Bohemian types over scrambled eggs, assorted organic breads and spreads. Their baked beans and peanut butter are just completely something else.

Anyway, as it transpired, we did not make G&W round the corner, but were persuaded to make a beeline to Monument Station to Sky Garden on the 32^nd Floor at 20 Fenchurch Street where the building widens at the top, earning it the name, The Walkie-Talkie. The curve on the building can exhibit the qualities of a concave mirror reflecting and concentrating incidental sunlight to the point of melting parts of cars parked in its vicinity.

Getting in the Sky Garden building almost exceeded the security requirements for international travel at airports; names, phone numbers, metal detectors and baggage scanning equipment, all for the sake of breakfast. We got up there and whilst we might have been bowled over by the views, that was the only thing going for the Sky Garden, the location, cold and unfriendly, the menu was at best perfunctory. A bloody waste of time, to put it mildly.

A place to forget

We left wondering whether to return to the tried and tested or explore the possibilities at Borough Market just one station’s stop down at London Bridge.

We decided on the latter and after perambulating for about 15 minutes, we settled for Le Pain Quotidien where the fare was passable for survivalist mastication rather than for taste or culinary skill.

Femi who had joined us at Le Pain Quotidien was very helpful as I had purposed that on my visit to London, I will get some Agege Bread. She called Anino who suggested we try the Agege Bread shop on Deptford High Street and along the way we would have been able to get some moin-moin for Funmi too.

The Agege Bread adventure

We caught a black cab and made for Deptford, stopping in front of the Agege Bread shop where on entry we were met with a feast of Nigerian delicacies that excited us beyond Pavlovian abandon.

Moin-moin, asaro, ewa aganyin, puff-puff, fresh fish stew, chin-chin, buns, jollof rice, fried rice, fried plantain (dodo), suya and much else, I was whooping with extreme glee that my order probably took the best part of 30 minutes. Visit the All Nigerian Recipes website for an introduction to the vast palate of Nigerian cuisine.

As we were making up our minds about what to get, the proprietor and owner of the Agege Bread business came in and a conversation started, first with Femi and then with Funmi and the next 3 or so hours we were entertained and regaled with his perceptions of living and thriving in the UK having arrived from Nigeria some 30 years ago.

An inspiration and new friend

Whilst Agege Bread might mean many things to many people, the trademark and brand belongs to the Agege Bread business in the UK and it is the standard by which imitation sweet breads are measured.

In all this, we got to visit the East Street outlet of Agege Bread walking through the workrooms and if there was enough time, we might have even visited the main factory in Greenwich.

We were inspired very much by this very confident, self-assured entrepreneur whose perspectives of integration and work ethic left us almost ashamed of what some other Nigerians come to do in the UK. Agege Bread is soon to have a shop at London Heathrow's Terminal 5 too.

Many of the points he addressed are probably best covered in another blog, but the great revelation and achievement of the weekend was how the simple desire for Agege Bread led us to an unforgettable encounter with an ambassador of values those of Nigerian heritage can espouse and exhibit if we decide to be the best we can be.

A friendship was blossoming and part of that was he gave us a lift, not to the nearest station but all the way back home in North West London before returning to his home in Kent.