My major goal for 2019 was to reunite with my extended family. I only knew the existed, we never met in person. On Saturday 28th Dec, I met with my first cousins. It felt fulfiling meeting them. We reconnected on Facebook and met in person on Monday.
Achievements
- Reuniting with my first cousins after 20 years.
- I got a nose piercing - the bravest thing I did. A needle on my body is usually a No No No.
Travel
- Accra - As a Developer Student Club Heritage Polytechnic Lead for SSA Summit.
- Ibeno beach - An hangout with Bright (Clara) and Peace Michael
- Warri - for DevFest Warri
- Lagos - I stayed for a week and had a taste of Amala and Ewedu. I almost threw up after 2 moulds of amala.
Volunteer
- Africa Code Week by StartHub women
- StartNg by HNG - A 3-month internship to train people on how to make it through HNG Internship.
- Laptop for him, laptop for her - An initiative I did to provide laptops to teenagers interested in tech. I was able to provide one boy and one girl a laptop.
Sport
- Joined a dance group.
- I danced for a video - Tropicana Tradefest video
Books
I only completed 3 books as against the 12 I planned to read.
- The chance
- So good that you can't be ignored
Learning a foreign language
Inspired by Cynthia Peter, I started learning Portuguese, a language I abandoned cos I seemed not to make it past the first stage for over a month. I'll carry over this exercise but will be learning Spanish with Elisha Ukpong being my accountability partner.
Speaker
I had few speaking engagements, some were technical and some were non-technical.
- WTM Uyo - I didn't go, I was scheduled to speak and was informed a night before the event day so I couldn't travel to Uyo for that talk.
- IO Extended Uyo - Technical
- DSC Uniuyo - Non-technical
- GBG Uyo - Non-technical
- NodeJS Akwa Ibom - KepNote
- DevFest Warri - Technical
- Devfest SS Calabar - I didn't attend. I was notified 3 days to the event date that my talk was accepted. My pride didn't let me go due to the late notification.
- ALC GAND/HNG 6.0 Closing party - Non-technical
- OroTechSummit - Technical. This talk was dear to my heart cos Oro is my hometown.
I'm a firm believer that Tech has no gender. Anybody can learn anything and be good at it.
Most stretching experience
Being a DSC Lead, this made me think of the community first before myself. I work full-time, school full-time and still had to lead the community. My joy at the end of the day would be that lives were impacted. At some point, it felt like the DSC Members in my school didn't see what tech beholds and the miracles they can create with tech. It felt like I was begging people to come out and learn things that'll befit their lives. Monthly, I share my mistakes and successes as a DSC Lead in a series. check here
I learnt how to work with people to get things done. That's why I got a core team. The core team was effective for a while then everywhere went silent. Like I was the only one in the boat. No one was responding to chats on the group chat nor asking questions, I had to call them differently and ask what's the challenge, from the calls, I re-strategize and made plans for 2020
Shitty Decision
January 2019 my laptop battery got bad, it went from staying for less than an hour after light out to shutting immediate power is out. The incessant shutting down of my PC while am working affected my mood and productivity.
So I took 200,000 loan from work and purchase a Macbook pro. I got the laptop Feb 14 and instructed the office to debit 20k monthly from my 28,500 stipends. I paid off the loan in 10 months. While this would be regarded as a bad financial decision, the laptop served me well.
Taking such financial risk, I relied on getting side gigs that'll take care of my bills. Unfortunately, the side gigs didn't come frequently, this got me living on a low budget, luxury wasn't an option at all (Na survival level I been dey).
I charged 20,000 to build a Journal for Philosophy Department, University of Uyo because it was an easy project and the person I worked for, is a professor, maybe it's the professor that overwhelmed me so I charged that low. Never again!
Relationship
I found love(Ola) in 2018 and the love still has me, till eternity! I thought distance relationship was the best for me until I started yearning for a partner to share a pillow with at night, lols.
2020
- Write quality codes
- Give quality talks I work hard so my reality won't be an average Nigerian Developer that makes noise but isn't reliable bearing in mind that my audience is not Africa, My audience is the World.