Busy Week on Camp

My last week back on camp has been quite busy and exciting. Tuesday was my usual basketball night, but we had a big group this week and ended up playing for over three hours, which was awesome. Thursday night I went over to another guy’s house on camp to help him pass out Halloween candy to trick-or-treating kids while drinking beer on his driveway with a few guys and rating the kids costumes by holding up signs as they all came by (they all got 10’s, we didn’t discriminate). This was followed by heading over to another coworker’s house for a rather small adult Halloween party. Friday started the weekend festivities by going on the Fat Boy Run (for more info on this, see my previous post: http://nigerianick.blogspot.com/2013/10/fat-boy-run.html) and then coming back to a disco party at a house on camp. They went all out for this with the decorations, music, food, and drinks. I guess you can say this was my first big camp party to attend and it did not disappoint. Those present were fellow coworkers all the way up to senior managers getting down on the dance floor and letting loose. It was quite the scene and went pretty late into the night. People here really know how to have a good time. Today I started by getting up in the morning to take my first tennis lesson. I think I mentioned in a previous post that everyone here plays tennis. There are three courts right across the street from me and several instructors that are here pretty much every day of the week for lessons. I had my first one set up for this morning and had a great time. Although, I forgot how exhausting tennis can be, especially in the heat of the day during dry season here. I had to run home and change shirts midway through because I was sweating so much and grab a towel. The instructor recommended I start playing doubles with the guys here on Wednesday evenings too, so I think I might begin that next week. I went to the gym and got in a quick workout after that, before heading out with some friends for lunch. We hit up this great Italian restaurant in Lagos that was by far the best food I’ve had here yet. It was absolutely phenomenal and was a much needed break from the guest house food I’ve been living off of. The restaurant was actually part of a hotel and looked out over the pool, and after sitting there for an hour watching everyone outside we decided to join in the fun. We went and grabbed a cabana after lunch and spent the next couple hours smoking hookah and just chilling by the pool. Not a bad Saturday afternoon in Africa… We followed this up with a quick trip to the grocery store and arrived back on camp just in time for the monthly Curry Club festivities of the evening. Tomorrow is the celebration of Diwali in the Indian culture, so in honor of that the Curry Club hosted a dinner event tonight. They catered fantastic Indian food and everyone brought a bottle of wine to contribute, which was flowing throughout the evening. Now, I’m back home for a quick nap before I get up at 2AM to watch the Aggies play. I honestly wasn’t going to watch the game this weekend because it’s only UTEP and, let’s be real, it’s going to be ugly… BUT the director of deepwater drilling here is an Aggie also and invited me over to his house to watch it with him. And if the director of deepwater drilling invited you over to his house at 2AM to drink beer and watch football, you DO NOT say no.

Here are some pics of this week's Fat Boy Run to break up my writing:

Cooking the food over the trash can grill you see on the right:

Beef suya and Star beer. My favorite Nigerian cuisine, but very spicy!

As you can tell I’ve had a pretty busy week here. This isn’t how they’ve all been for me, but they’re starting to shape up more and more like this from now on. I just looked at my calendar this week and realized I have activities booked almost every weekend during the month of November, plus all the sports and activities I’ve picked up now during the week. It’s sure helping time fly by though as I just realized I’m already a quarter of the way done with my time here – I’ve already been here almost a month and a half of my six month stint. It sure is going by quickly, but I have a lot to look forward to in the months ahead. I recently confirmed my Christmas plans to visit Munich, Germany and Vienna, Austria. I’ll be doing four days in Munich before heading to Vienna on the 23^rd to spend Christmas there. I cannot wait. Also, one thing that’s come up that I think I’m most excited about is the Nigeria Oil and Gas Industry Games, or NOGIG. This event takes place once every two years in February and 2014 happens to be the on year. All the oil companies that operate in Nigeria get together for two consecutive weekends and basically have an Olympic-style competition with all sorts of events. The one I've been recruited to take part in is basketball. Some of the guys I play with on Tuesdays are influential in putting the team together and have asked me to join. They’re taking it pretty serious with twice a week practices –Tuesday evenings on camp and Saturday mornings off camp (which I’m not sure if I’ll be able to attend yet because it’s far into mainland Lagos). They have coaches and tryouts and everything. I’m told I have no need to worry about being on the team though because the guys who matter have already seen me play or played with me and, let’s just say, they’re content.  However, I did hear a rumor this week that there might be a criteria that you will have had to be working in Nigeria at least six months to be eligible to play in the games. If this is the case I’ll be very disappointed as I’m looking forward to this more than just about anything right now. I’m just going to keep this information on the hush unless I start hearing otherwise, but we’ll see how it plays out. It’d be nice to help Chevron bring back the gold this year haha. So far I've been the only white guy out there playing on Tuesdays and – that I’m aware of – is playing on the Chevron team. But, being around basketball my whole life, this is nothing I’m not used to; this time I’m just in Africa.

So I've noticed that I talk a lot about my social life over here, but I promise I do work here as well. I’ll devote much of another blog post to my work life soon, but for now I’ll just say this... I do find it much easier to work long hours over here than in the states. I've found myself most weeks working much more than 40 hours, but not really noticing. It’s not like it was in Southern California where I was going home to the beach every night and ready to leave right at 5. If I stay at work an extra hour or two here I’m just putting off working out, reading, or sitting around my house – nothing too special. But, it’s convenient that I haven’t minded because I've actually been very busy my first six weeks just getting up to speed on everything and taking the lead on certain projects that require a good deal of time and effort. I’ll go into detail on that next time, though.