Listening to: Sky Sailing — A Little Opera Goes A Long Way
(title courtesy of Blé)
Hello, my lovely readers! I’m baaaaaack from Atlanta now. And I am tired. We drove both there and back, and I woke up at 7:30 this morning to go running because I hadn’t run all week. Now I’m kind of regretting that decision.
My camera is tired, too — the battery is crying in its charger right now. I took my DSLR with me on the road, of course (I have a 30+ good images per week quota for class), and though I didn’t take any during the total twenty-four hours we spent driving, I got a bunch from the actual convention. I have blurry photos of the dimly-lit ballroom and its tables with countless glasses of wine iced tea. I have dramatically-cropped shots of parts of my brother’s face, and little pieces of myself in mirrors (cliché, yes, but I get bored easily). Also, because my baby cousins love the sound of a shutter clicking and find pictures of themselves intensely amusing, I have photos of them as well. However, I’m still busy sorting out my folders, so no new photos for you at the moment.
Understandably, since this was an Nigerian convention, there were an ungodly number of us in Atlanta. Because we pretend to care about punctuality and transportation, we all stayed at the hotel, even those of us who live in the area. If the hotel hadn’t made so much money, they probably would never let us through their doors again. Something you should know about Nigerians, or at least the Annang (lest I anger any of the other 299 ethnic groups): To us, time is relative to space, and space is about as large and varying as the universe. I’m pretty sure that the itinerary was just to appease the hotel manager, because we didn’t follow it in any way, shape or form. For example — most of the night events were “scheduled” to run from seven p.m. to eleven. In reality, they ran from whenever enough people got there — which was about eight-thirty — until three or when the staff kicked us out, whichever came first. This might not have been such a big deal, except that we blasted the Nigerian Party Playlist (the same ten songs you hear at EVERY Nigerian party, I kid you not) so loud you could hear it upstairs. We also threw food-parties at odd hours in their executive suite.
However, I wasn’t very involved in all this fun. I only got dressed up for one event, which was the main dinner thing on the last night. It was a night of endless toasts, acknowledgments, and headdresses that could poke your eye out. Here’s what I wore:
I would gladly tell you where I got it, but all of my ethnic clothes are custom-made and I don’t remember the name of the lady who sew this for me. My headscarf, if you couldn’t tell, wasn’t one of the epic variety. And I’d tied the wrapper so tight that I had to waddle like an under-trained geisha the entire night.
When I wasn’t waddling, I was drinking coffee and breaking into the business center to check the interwebs. You know you need your Starbucks when a fly dies in your latte and you still drink it (after flicking the fly out, of course). Some coffee I wish I’d never tried, however, is the stuff they had for the coffee maker in my room’s bathroom. The first time I drank it, I made the mistake of combining bad coffee, Splenda, and powdered creamer, and I spent the rest of the night trying to wash my mouth out. Eck. Even worse, I made that mistake twice.
On the bright side, the shops in Atlanta far surpass the ones in the Midwest in several ways. They had the muchly-coveted Numéro Magazine! On the newstand! At Borders, for chrissake! I didn’t buy it, though, because it was Numéro Homme and I have never understood men’s fashion magazines. However, I did buy this amazing pair of Converse boots that were miraculously offered in size 12 and on sale for $20 (down from almost $80)at Underground Station.
Barring how awkward my legs look in this photo and the time it took me to re-lace them (they originally had white laces), I am very happy with them. But you know that you have big feet when a small child fits comfortably in your shoebox.
Finally, I have a few random things to mention. I will mention them list-style, since there isn’t really much that ties them together:
1. Nylon magazine, which I found during my hunt for Numéro and Vogue Paris. I don’t like the photography as much as Vogue (no Annie Leibovitz, sigh), but the articles are actually readable and relevant.
2. The band Of Montreal. I’ve had the song “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider” stuck in my head for about a week now, and I still can’t stop singing the chorus (and you ain’t got no soul power….).
3. Jezebel.com. It’s officially made my check-daily list. I especially like the “today in catalogs” feature, ’cause it’s freaking hilarious. It’s because of it that I subscribed to –>
4. Anthropologie‘s catalog, even though I have no intention of buying their clothes. As well as making me laugh too much, Jezebel’s monthly feature on it made me realize how much I like the catalog’s photography. I need to get a life.
Well, that’s all I have to say for now. I think that this might be the longest post to date.
