July, August, September
At Paystack, we are entitled to three months of paid leave after working for three years, so I took the entire Q3 off to rest and finalise my relocation plans.
It started with me being back to ‘the streets’ after I returned from Kigali, Rwanda, for our work offsite.
I had already booked my visa appointment before I travelled, so I went to the venue the following week to submit my passport so I could fly to the UK with a Global Talent Visa.
While my passport was still detained, I picked up the piano I got the previous year and tried to learn from scratch again, as I once played the piano for the church. Guess what? I was only able to learn a little bit 💀
I played tennis during the week, not just on weekends, which was quite interesting. Thanks to my buddy, Hector Johnson, who picked me up on his bike (don’t tell my mom, lol) from Maryland to the court in Ikeja.
I also started and completed two non-fictional books (Everything Is F*cked and Zero To One). I enjoyed bits and pieces of both books: one of the things I picked from the first book was the story of a monk, Thich Quang Duc, who set himself ablaze for the progress of the Vietnamese after suffering under a very terrible leader, Ngo Dinh Diem.
For more fun stuff, I initially thought that I was going to play console games a lot, but I didn’t get to play more than thrice. I watched a shit ton of movies (especially series) and animes. By the way, you can check out my TV list; not exhaustive, as I forget to add movies, but you’ll see a lot of series and animes. I also slept a lot — not like I was sleep deprived even before my leave anyways, but I was able to comfortably watch movies till midnight and then sleep during the day 🫣
Asides from the fun stuff, books and wakabout, I took a few programming courses, one of which is a Threejs course by Bruno Simon, which I will eventually finish. I also took two web3 classes simultaneously. I later dropped these to focus more on Threejs as it was more compelling. I also see myself exploring the creative development space shortly.
My passport finally came back after a month, and I went ahead to book my flight ticket. Flight costs were high as the base price was $2600, so I booked to fly in three weeks to save some cash. I spent those three weeks visiting a few of my friends. I hung out with a few friends as well in silos.
On the night of the 1st of September, I boarded my Uber from Lagos to Heathrow and arrived the following morning. That wasn’t my final destination as I wanted to stay in Manchester with my brother for a while, so I was going to take a connecting flight, but guess what? Only one immigration officer attended to everyone, and those of us that planned to go elsewhere missed our flights. The immigration officer told us to chill for the afternoon or night flight, and we were given another flight ticket and a £10 ticket for light snacks. We had no choice but to wait for the next flight, and I got to interact with two other Nigerians who happened to be in the same situation. The time finally came, and we boarded our plane to Manchester but guess what? They didn’t bring all our bags from Heathrow to Manchester. I still had two bags left, so we had to fill out a form to give contact information and a few descriptions of our bags to help identify and send them quickly.
I met my brother and his family outside the airport with the only bag they brought back, and we went to get some food before heading home. I made the mistake of checking in my hand luggage — which was one of my missing bags — as they said I could check it in for no cost, and I was open to it since it would be less stressful for me. The bag they brought back was the one filled with foodstuff, so we had to stop at a store to get a few things. We finally got to his place, and I was greeted by his pet, a Chihuahua named Angel.
I had to get a few things sorted out while at my brother’s place, like picking up my BRP, getting a SIM card and setting up a bank account. The airline finally delivered my bags to me after ten days, and I was a bit relieved because I had a few essential things in one of the bags. We went out a few times; I had the most fun bowling, mostly because I thrashed almost all of them 🫢
It was nice staying at my brother’s place as I ate some Nigerian meals. Other times, we had English meals with beef in them, and one of them was shepherd’s pie. We went to this restaurant where they first welcomed us with a Kurdish soup that tasted like Gbegiri, which I obviously liked. As usual, I’m open to trying out new food, except pasta, because most of them don’t add pepper (scotch bonnet) to it, and as a Yoruba man, I need me some spice.
Back to life in the UK: a former colleague had been looking for a house for us for a while, even before I left Nigeria. We saw shege from a bunch of them, as they prioritised couples (so it’s not just in Nigeria). We eventually found an unfurnished apartment after three weeks, and I moved to my place in London. Unfurnished houses here come with all the basic stuff except a bed, tv, couch and other personal items. We’ve placed orders for everything we need from Ikea, Argos and Amazon, and I should post pictures on my Instagram profile when it’s all set up.
We had another offsite last week, September 30, which reminded me that I was about to resume the 9–5 life. Where hath thou, you rich woman that would marry and retire me? 😭 Anyways, I went to Stripe’s office for the offsite, as some Stacks (employees of Paystack) in London planned to meet there.
As for food, I ate out a few times and used uber eats a few times. My fourth order on uber eats, Big Italian Meatball, made me realise that I needed to resume cooking, as I didn’t enjoy it but had to finish it as a Nigerian that wouldn’t want to waste food. I went to do some shopping and stopped ordering on uber eats — of course, I prepare good meals :)
Omo, so that’s it o. I’ve finally resumed work. Some people asked if I would continue working for Paystack when I moved, and the answer is yes for those who will still ask. I have a new contract now that I’m based here, and I’m not interested in leaving. Since I’ve missed playing tennis, I looked up a bunch of courts around here, ordered new tennis shoes, and I’ll pick a tennis court as soon as the shoes arrive. By the way, If you play tennis and are based in London, please hit me up on Twitter. As for the people who might want to ask about my Tech Nation application, I’ll share another article to drop my two cents.
It was nice not doing any work for the past three months as I haven’t had any extended period like this to rest since I started coding 12 years ago. I feel well-rested and happy to return to work.
This was inspired by one of Opemipo’s many articles.
