7 years after tweeting about it (yes, it is still twitter) finally getting round to writing one of these "year in review" posts.

on becoming nigerian-british

this year really started in december 2024 by swearing an oath to the king. my british passport was finally delivered on the 3rd of january by a friendly royalmail postman who unintentionally completed a multi-year journey (6 years, 5 months and 12 days to be exact) that started with a one way flight into london heathrow with 2 massive boxes containing all I could call mine at the time.

half a dozen years later, i still do not have a sense of belonging to either london or lagos - travelling either of those places i still find myself remarking about "going home". not 100% british but not fully nigerian either, existing somewhere in the middle - although being able to waltz into portugal without waiting months for a visa appointment, giving boxes of documents and half a kidney to the eu was nice.

fell off the fitness-train

my biggest regret of the year was falling off at the gym after ~5 months of consistency. 4x a week every week. fell off in June and could never really recover. i put it down to summer + breaking routine a couple times in quick succession due to some travelling.

my target weight at the beginning of the year was 85kg, made it all the way up to 79 before falling off and i'm back down to 76kg in december. we go again next year, hopefully i can sustain a longer period of consistency.

safari in kenya

spent 3 days in the masai mara national reserve with some friends - 9-hour flight and then a 6-hour drive from nairobi. 100% worth it and an amazing experience that i will never forget.

i seriously urge you to consider doing a safari if you have never been on one. the bumpy roads and long drives are very stressful but i genuinely cannot put into words the feeling of seeing animals in their natural habitat for the first time.

a very small subset of photos i have gotten round to edit here - Kenya Safari '25 Album

travelled a little bit

• lagos, nigeria - still my top 3 favourite cities in the world. but i had the incredible honour of being the best-man at my friend's beautiful wedding ceremony.
• kampala, uganda - main reason for going all the way to east africa was to attend a friend's wedding - safari was just a detour. the food in kampala was excellent and cheap, an unbeatable combination
• edinburgh, scotland - second time here, watched a dear friend get married. city was just as beautiful as the first time, thankfully i did not forget my camera this time round
• porto, portugal - nothing radicalises you against american capitalism more than having a chill weekend in an european seaside town. lovely city, great atmosphere and excellent food!
• u.s.a - ny, dc & miami - on the contrary, nothing like spending time in the usa to develop a rose-tinted view of said capitalism. i was genuinely surprised at how nice and friendly most americans we interacted with were, i'm not sure why i always expected the opposite.

side projects (started, paused, and still thinking about)

like most years, 2025 had a few side projects. some went further than others, and a couple exist mostly as ideas i still think about more than i actually work on.

aide came from a simple frustration: the endless back-and-forth with customer support when you just want a straight answer. the idea was to build something that could understand context and reduce long email chains or better still handle the back and forth on my behalf like a personal assistant. i still like the problem, even if progress was slower than i expected.

huddle was inspired by group travel and how messy organising it can be. dates, budgets, preferences, last-minute changes - everyone's involved, but no one's really in charge. i enjoyed thinking through the problem more than building the solution, which probably says enough. my conclusion here is having the whatsapp group is almost half the fun of group trips.

prism is the most technically interesting of the three. it's a tool for querying prometheus using natural language and tying those queries into alerts and workflows. this one felt closest to something i'd actually use day to day.

joined the ev revolution

for the past year i had been mulling the switch over from petrol to an ev - given the type of driving i do and the ability to charge at home, it was a bit of a no brainer to make the switch. eventually pulled the trigger now getting used to all the nuances of driving electric - a new obsession with miles per kwh and the price of electricity.

i wasn't prepared for how purely transactional the entire switch was - drop off the keys and pick up another, i didn't expect to get emotional at the thought of not driving my trusty a4 anymore after 3 years. i think i now understand how deeply personal a car can be, out with the old in with the new can be very difficult especially when it's your first purchase.

looking forward

i recently stumbled on an email i sent to a group of friends on the 1st of January 2018 rallying them to take our projects at the time more seriously and i couldn't really connect with the person that wrote that email. it's not something i can imagine myself writing now, "growth", maybe? or just "complacency"?

what a year it has been, the official last year of my twenties, really excited for what's next. my theme for the year is "rediscovery", is the youthful energy now more focused? or have i lost the passion completely and need to find it again?

also hoping to write a bit more especially now that i have social media addiction sort of under control, extra time for the more meaningful things in life!

i do hope you have a wonderful 2026, happy new year 🎉!