Today is not a good day, I thought to myself as I stood in front of the vending machine to buy another drink. I had initially bought a can of Fanta, but my body craved for more Sugar. It’s hard to explain but sometimes, one really needs the sugar rush. I chose a bottle of Vimto and started drinking it even before I got to the lift. I mumbled a word of greetings to my colleagues in the elevator and kept gulping my drink. I really was not bothered about drinking in the lift as my body needed the sugar badly. Initially, with every gulp, I wanted the next gulp in quick succession but as I gulped more, I became somewhat satisfied. I always attributed the craving for sugar as a sign that I may have overworked myself and lost a lot of energy. I happen to work in the service industry and sometimes, you just have to stretch your brain for the answers. Read, assimilate, apply, summarise, convince a colleague, make a client happy - the list is endless.
As I returned to my desk, the activities of the week were replayed in my mind. I woke up on Monday with a funny tummy ache. It was a real life episode of Man proposes, God disposes! I couldn’t believe that I was unable to get out of bed. At the end, I concluded that I had food poisoning because it was hard to fathom what exactly the issue was. I stayed in bed, took a lot of fluids and I must confess it wasn’t easy being in pains and having to respond to DD’s endless chattering. That is still a skill that I am yet to master. I would say that the other days of the week were stressful because I was engaged in quite a number of meetings and conference calls all week long. To make matters worse, for every meeting, one is required to write a minute of the meeting. And half of the time, I wish the cup of writing the minutes will pass over me. My attention span during a meeting is quite ephemeral. I find myself drifting on and off as different topics are discussed. This particular meeting lasted for almost 3hours and I was supposed to be taking notes for a recap later…seriously????
Initially I was all enthusiastic and all, hoping that the worst we could do was spend an hour and a half. If only I knew!!! The meeting started at about 4pm and maybe thinking about it now, I can finally get down to writing the minutes. At about 5pm – official closing time, I checked my watch and thought, it isn’t bad, afterall I don’t get to close most times at 5pm. However, from 5:30pm, I started checking my watch intermittently. The reason been that DD’s school closes at 7pm, anything from 7:01pm, we pay a fine with 100% increment for every additional fifteen minutes. I tuned out completely at about 6pm, all I could do was calculate how many minutes it would take to get to DD’s school in VI from the meeting venue at Ikoyi and the total amount of the fine.. The meeting finally ended at about 6:40pm and if I had wings, I would have flown. Luckily, the journey from Ikoyi to VI was against traffic, so I was able to make it to DD’s school at about 7:13pm. It really does break my heart when she is the last kid to be picked up from school but given that it happens only once in a while, I won’t feel so guilty.
nice article
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