Surviving Njaanuary
The festive season has come and gone, wallets once filled with holiday bonuses are now empty and the boss keeps calling asking when he can get the spreadsheet that was on the flash disk you left in Diani. How could you possible get over the melancholic mood that sets in this first month of the year? Well here’s a quick guide on how to keep yourself from getting down.
1. Become the Happy Hour Master (HHM)
Yes that is an actual existing title. The person who knows which bar has an offer on beers or shooters on any day of the week. Your wallet is struggling through a period of anorexia so you need to treat it well. Overindulgence over the holidays does not necessarily mean you have to completely lay off beer or the hard stuff. Bars all over our great city have offers on beers that shave off at the least 25% off beer prices. Are you a teetotaler? Check out our next tip.
2. Cheap food
Getting a decent meal at a good price doesnt have to involve making friends with the lunch lady and getting her to laugh so she can for once give you your lunch at half price. Neither does it mean you’ve to get used to roadside banda fare. Restaurants all over have food offers that will literally blow your mind, or your stomach. All you can eat offers guarantee a great time for you and your friends without doing massive damage to your wallet. 1500 KES for all the ribs you can wolf down at Spurs or all you can eat chicken on Kuku Tuesdays at Carnivore for 990 kES are definitely office favourites. Dont want to pig out? Get a Yummy card that entitles you to 10% discounts at a bunch of restaurants or 50% off on Yummy Tuesdays. 50% OFF!
3. Edit your friends list/who you follow
When you log in to social media do you find a bunch of posts by depressing or unfunny people? Is half your feed filled with tribal hate or people who endlessly discuss how Njoki Chege has angered middle class men this week. Ditch them and fill it up with new people. Funny people who’ll lift your spirits or people who the gods put on this earth to basically inspire you. Two profiles we recommend are Shoba Gatimu Harrison and Ciru Muriuki. On Twitter we’re pretty sure you have your own list of bigwigs but @xtiandela, @crazynairobian and @rammZy are part of our list of favourites. For your instagram fix click here to go to our Instamondays feed to find UP’s selection of instagrammers from Nairobi who’s streams we constantly indulge in.
4. Do something crazy
Going through your normal daily routine (wake up->shower->breakfast->commute to work->work->lunch->work->commute home->dinner->watch the news->sleep->repeat) will wear you down, especially in January. We suggest doing something terrifically spontaneous to liven up each day and make it different. Looking for an example , here’s an office favourite from singer, song writer, photographer and artist Melissa De Blok
5. Clean up your playlist
Get rid of all the 2014 in your playlist especially anything you listened to over New Years or generally the entire festive season. It’ll bring back bad memories of lost wallets, opportunities lost and black outs you thankfully can’t remember. While you were jamming and going crazy music producers and musicians were busy at work creating new content for this year. Here’s just a sampling of what we’re talking about the first off the Island Tape EP by Mr. Jake and the second a club mix of Vellice’s Kila Siku by Celsius Degree’s Euquitorial House engineer St Evo The Myth.
