A chance encounter with the Stutern twins at the Palms Lekki

A chance encounter with the Stutern twins at the Palms Lekki

By Hafiz Adewuyi   March 07, 2017   1 comment :

Good morning! It's Monday Tuesday, and if there's one thing I would like to tell you, it would be that last weekend was awesome for several reasons, one of which is the subject of this post.

On Saturday morning, I decided to stop by Shoprite at the Palms shopping mall, Lekki before heading to the office (no I don't work on weekends). Just as I made to leave the parking lot for the mall, I noticed the Stutern twins heading in my direction and towards the mall. I was trying to remove my debit card from my bag which I was going to leave behind in the car. I recognized them from the days when I used to visit CCHub regularly. But somehow, I managed to decide that I was not gonna say hello, just to avoid any social awkwardness. 

From L-R: Kehinde, Hafiz, a family of photobombing smileys and Taiwo

Alas! My evil anti-social plans would not survive the bigheartedness of the Stutern twins. As soon as they were within earshot of me, they stopped. Then one of them said something along the lines of, "it seems like I know you from somewhere". He was straining to remember where it was that he knew me from but I quickly came to the rescue. I told him of the days when I used to frequent ccHub, Yaba and how I have known them since their early days of starting Stutern. 

He was clearly surprised that I knew them in association with Stutern. So, I aptly went on to increase the surprise factor by mentioning how I knew about their partnership with Jobberman, as well as the recently launched JobPalava, a job review site for Nigerian employees. When I mentioned how cool I thought it was that they came up with JobPalava within a few weeks from when the idea was born on Twitter, I was told that one of them works on the back-end while the other does front-end development. The twins were beaming with smiles at this point. And I myself was grinning like a teenage groupie who ran into her number one pop-star crush.

We soon ran out out of small talk fodder and it was time to part ways. But just before we did, one twin gracefully asked for my name and what I do. I hope it didn't show in the way I said, "I work at ** check LinkedIn **; I'm a programmer there" that I'm not that excited about or proud of my work. Anyway, I think his response was: "wow, that's great", and he said it in a way that left me with no doubt about his sincerity.

Minutes later, as I walked into Shoprite, it occurred to me that writing about this encounter was a good blogging idea for the weekend. And in that instant, I regretted having not asked for a photo with the Stutern twins. I prayed in my heart that by a stroke of luck, I would run into them again before leaving the mall. Apparently, God was listening because as I walked towards the checkout aisle after buying mostly things that were not on my imaginary shopping list, I saw the Stutern twins standing side-by-side just ahead, with their backs at me. Yippee!

I walked quietly towards them and being the weirdo that I am, I stopped just behind them without as much as a sound to announce my presence. The twins were discussing with a friend whose birthday I later discovered was on that day. After like 7 seconds of being in stealth mode, perhaps due to some gesture from their friend who could see me all along, one twin finally turned around and blew my cover.

Without much ado, I told them of how seeing them again that day was a dream come true. The birthday girl was quickly recruited to be our photographer, even though she was meant to be the celeb of the day. I gave her my phone to take the pics but after a few seconds of trying to adjust for quality, she quickly found out how shitty the phone camera is. Thankfully, she announced this in the most polite way possible to the three men standing behind the camera with picture-perfect smiles. I agreed.

Fortunately, Kehinde quickly came to the rescue and offered to have the photos taken with his phone instead. Click, click, click and that was it. I was glad that I now had the most essential ingredient for a blog post about a random encounter with these admirable creators of Stutern. Now, there was no excuse for not writing it. Bitter-sweet stuff. 

Just before we finally parted ways, Kehinde collected my number so he could send me the pictures on Whatsapp. About thirty minutes later, when I had settled in the office, I picked up my phone and was happy to see that the pictures (3 or 4 of them) had been delivered to my phone. I thanked him for the pictures and used the opportunity to ask:  "is this Taiwo or Kehinde"? And the fact that Kehinde answered that question, dear reader, is the only reason why instead of 'Kehinde' in all the places where it occurs in this article, we don't have: "the twin in the grey polo".

Thanks for reading!

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Queuing into the new year at Genesis Deluxe Cinemas popcorn shop

Queuing into the new year at Genesis Deluxe Cinemas popcorn shop

By Hafiz Adewuyi   January 19, 2017   1 comment :

On the Friday before last New year's eve, I decided to drive all the way from Yaba to GDC at the Palms, Lekki, just to go see a movie. My hope was that by going that far away and for a slightly more expensive cinema than nearby Ozone, I would be able to boycott the razz crowd that often characterises the former. How wrong I was!

The Palms Shopping Mall, Lekki

Right from the parking lot, it was obvious that I had made a silly decision. It had been ages since I last went to the cinemas on a Friday night, so I didn't really know what to expect. My thoughts were that since it was a working day, the cinemas would not be highly populated. I failed to factor in the realities that apart from the fact that it was a Friday night when people like to let their hair down, it was also the holiday season and a lot of companies were on break.

Lucky enough, I did not have to drive a full-circle around the park before I located a parking spot which was barely enough to fit my car. I entered the mall to find that the number of people on the cinema floor was representative of the congestion in the car park. Everyone had come to see "The Wedding Party", Nigeria's highest grossing movie of 2016. Fortunately, that was not the movie I had in mind.

I proceeded to join the ticket queue which was about 15 persons long. On the bright side, it was moving pretty fast, all thanks to no one but the curt male attendant. From the look of things, he did not have a moment to spare empathising with anyone for anything. The items below nicely sum up his behavioural scripts for his duties that night:

• collect money and give tickets to those people who have cash and the movie they want to see is available

• redirect the ones who don't have cash matter-of-factly to the ATM's downstairs since as they can see, the POS is not working

• tell those who want to see exhausted movies matter-of-factly that they have to wait another hour or so for the next showing

I can honestly empathise with the guy, though. He was the only one serving the massive "Wedding Party" crowd, so he literally had no time to spare on niceties.

I happened to fall into the POS group as a cashless guy now. My former employer CEO did well to inspire in me, a conviction that a cashless society is a good thing for the economy; that all the monies hidden in soak-away holes and overhead Geepee tanks are partly responsible for the poverty in the country. That if only everyone was kind enough to put the money in a bank instead of a ghana-must-go bag under their beds, then the world would have enough money going around for the most important things.

So, I had to walk all the way down to get my last 2000 Naira from the ATM. So sad was my situation, I did not even have any money left to get a soft drink after paying for the movie which happened to be exactly 2000 Naira. At least, I was going to get free popcorn, and that would be good compensation for the trouble, or so I thought. 

I was way ahead of the time for my movie, so after buying my movie ticket, I went to kill time by roaming idly through the aisles of Shoprite. About ten minutes to movie time, I returned to the cinema floor.

I walked from one end of the humongous movie snack queue  - which I met on arrival - to the other, just to be sure it was actually one contiguous queue. The queue was about 40-person long and I'm not even exaggerating. I had my aha moment when a look at the popcorn stand revealed that only one of the 3 popcorn machines at the snack shop was working. Grrrr!!! That's exactly how my internals felt at this point.

To cope with frustrating situations like this one, the usual go-to for my brain is to go into problem-solving mode. You can imagine the kind of ridiculous business ideas my brain processes every day; there's a business idea in every corner you look when your country sucks this much. So I more or less just ask myself, "ok, what do we do about this now"? In a few seconds, I got the perfect idea for the management of the cinemas. 

"All they had to do to win in the battle of the cinemas was to up their customer care game by dedicating a couple of their staff to help movie-goers get stuff from the shop into the cinema halls. This way, no one has to lose part of their hard-earned fun time in the name of free popcorn which I never stop wishing would be without that inedible shaft at the bottom. Simple enough, innit"?

Please, snap me back and out of my daydream. In real life, I ended up going into the movie about 15 minutes late, and that was only because the cinema projector was turned on over 10 minutes after the scheduled movie time and they did not skip the ads o. At the end of the day, all I can tell myself is, "life is not a daydream brother. If you can't open your own cinema, then you can as well go and hug transformer".

Revisiting that day now, I find it poignant that despite the fact that the management of the cinemas extended no gestures of empathy for the plight of the movie-goers who had to queue for over half an hour for a free box of popcorn plus the ones who were paying for their stuff o, nobody threw a tantrum the entire time I was in the queue. Everyone was civil and polite. It's like we Nigerians "ti gba kamu", as my (Yoruba) people would say. We're resigned to our ill fate and we just can't be bothered to ask for more. 

"After all, everyone is just 'managing' in this recession, so where do you want the more to come from"?

P.S. 

So, the man who triggered me and thousands of other people to go on this 500-words-a-day-challenge (or a bot that acts on his behalf) sends me daily emails which contain prompts of what I should write about each today. Today is the first time that I will be following it simply because I think I have good enough content that matches the prompt.

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A short conversation between wantrepreneur and entrepreneur me

A short conversation between wantrepreneur and entrepreneur me

By Hafiz Adewuyi   January 10, 2017   No comments :

For the past three weeks, I've been enjoying my first official annual vacation since I started working in 2014 (2013 if you include pre-NYSC and NYSC work). In two days time, my leave would have come to its end. I honestly wish I could say I am looking forward to it. All I can imagine is how I would have to abruptly end my essential sleep at 4:30 every morning. How I would struggle to stay awake for the first four working hours of the day. How I would get into squabbles with many colleagues and how I will have to work hard at maintaining a positive attitude to work all day long. How I would have to wear clothes I don't feel comfortable in for five out of the seven days in a week. How I would have to leave home before dawn and return at dusk when all the will to live life has left me and I have to force myself to smile so I can trick myself into a good mood. How I would wonder on the journey home at 9 pm if my guaranteed monthly pay is enough reason to spend my life doing something that brings me next no to joy and leaves me feeling physically spent, yet mentally unfulfilled almost every day. How I would have to acquiesce to requests that go against my personal values and are sometimes purely exploitative, because "you can't afford to stick out like a sore thumb".

Did I hear you say: "Brother if you're tired, go and start your business now or find another job"? Well, for the latter, it's not like I have not tried. But then again I don't really try that hard at it, for one reason. I believe that if I get good enough at what I do, then I would not really have to try very hard to get a job that meets my needs (esp. non-financial) to a large extent. So I try to focus on getting better versus actively distributing CVs and stalking people on LinkedIn. Plus, working on getting better is more fulfilling and rewarding than submitting CVs that get opened only one in 50 times.

As for starting a business, the conversation that follows hopefully will clarify why I am yet to pivot my life in that direction, even though everyone says your 20s are when you should be dabbling in everything your heart tells you to.

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My most successful business yet - Internet modem rental

My most successful business yet - Internet modem rental

By Hafiz Adewuyi   January 03, 2017   No comments :

In my penultimate year at the University of Lagos (2011), I had a Starcomms modem which I used for browsing the internet through my laptop. It had decent upload and download speeds but the ultimate sell was that there was no data cap. You could download as much as you wanted to.

However, I had a little challenge. I had to pay a subscription of N6000 naira every month. This was quite a huge chunk of money for me back then and not something I could easily take out of my N20000 naira monthly allowance. To finance the modem, I had to dip my hands into my savings account, which actually contained money that should not be accessed for trivial purposes. I wasn't happy with this fact and I sought to find a way to solve my dilemma. I did not want to forfeit the internet access which the modem provided. Neither did I want to part which that chunk of money when I was only going to be using the modem for a fraction of the twelve-hour period during which it was active daily.

Enter sharing economy. To solve my problem, I simply had to ensure that the modem was getting maximum utility. And since I only needed at most, 3 out of the 12 hours of internet access it provided every day, I had to find someone else who needed it and was willing to pay to use it for the other 9 hours.

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An ode to the creator

An ode to the creator

By Hafiz Adewuyi   December 13, 2016   No comments :

I feel it

Sometimes, it's when I take a short break from the cool air-conditioned comfort of the office to run an errand that puts me under the glare of a raging tropical afternoon sun

This evening, I felt it when music from my headphones transported me from the drudgery of Lagos rush-hour traffic into a concert by the Legendary Yanni

Sometimes, it's when Google automatically lets me know that there's traffic on my way home, or when it creates a meaningful media from my random pictures that make me find more meaning in an otherwise, random day

Yesterday, I felt it at the point when, while I was running and thought that I had nothing left in me to keep me going, a change in tempo from the music in my headphones infused me with sudden energy that helped me pick up speed from a low point

Sometimes, it's when I'm done with Number 2 on a comfortable WC and I flush and then, I compare the experience to doing this same thing in the bush or in a smelly pit latrine

Yesterday, I felt it when I commandeered a genocide of tailor ants that had overnight invaded the interior of my car, using a few sprays of an insecticide we take for granted now

What do I feel you ask?

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The Car/Cab sharing idea

The Car/Cab sharing idea

By Hafiz Adewuyi   February 08, 2015   3 comments :

I'm sitting in a traditional yellow taxi, quite comfortably, as a matter of fact, in the owner's corner. Never mind that I once used to hold people who I saw doing this in disdain. The cab has the mouldy smell that is characteristic of a rickety Lagos taxi. So, in a bid to get the freshest air I can afford in this situation, into my system, I'm postured towards the right-back window of the saloon car, facing the window directly. This means that a good amount of my attention is on the happenings on the surrounding roads.

I had left my source at closing hour, typical rush hour when virtually everyone hits the road. As usual, the bystanders at Bonny camp bus-stop of Victoria Island are in their hordes. They are waiting for the next bus, which when it eventually arrives, will take only the strongest to make it in, after a nasty episode of push and shove. I take a look at the array of generally young and attractive people at the bus-stop, ranging from the bank worker in his suit and tie, to the food vendor who is much less glamorously dressed. I feel a deep sense of empathy at the inconvenient but self-accepted plight of each of these people.

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Business Series (Introduction)

Business Series (Introduction)

By Hafiz Adewuyi   March 01, 2014   No comments :

The first intentional profit I ever made in my life was while I was at Ijanikin (FGCL, High school, Boarding house); final year. Like most other petty businesses that I have run in my lifetime, it was started accidentally. I wonder if that is a good thing or a bad thing (I lean towards the latter).

Well, the goods in this business were sachets of raw Indomie noodles. I had smuggled about a carton of them into the boarding house. It's a wonder how I managed to convince my mum to allow that since she was convinced that eating uncooked noodles causes cancer (duh! We were not allowed to cook at all in the hostel). Besides, she was the disciplinarian mama who would not aid and abet her kid in defying authority. 

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