User:The Troubadour

Welcome! 🇺🇸

This is the Wikipedia user page of Aham E. Nwede, aka The Troubadour. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines the word as "a writer and performer of songs or poetry in the Middle Ages." The Middle Ages as a period of time has long gone by, but words and their meanings survive time periods and ages. In this century, the word 'Troubadour' means the same as it did back in the Middle Ages. I enjoy writing poetry in my spare time. I also enjoy writing about people, places and things that make or are making a difference in the human experience. Working as a Wikipedia Editor enables me to make this contribution to preserving the legacies of our generation.

=My Background= Where should we start with this story. . . hmmm! Okay, I was born in the 1960's (1963 to be precise). I grew up in an agrarian society where eating organic was the norm, not the exception. Everything we ate when I was growing up, my mom grew in our own very back yard. No pesticides, no growth hormones. The chicken were free range and thus the eggs were too. The other animals we often feasted on (now, that sounds so primitive, lol), were all grown on natural food. The goats and cattle ate grass from the fields, etc. We often ran out to the back yard early in the morning to throw stones at the mangos in the Mango trees and make them fall of the trees. We ate Guavas, bananas, plantains, etc. My mom grew the garden our vegetables came from. We helped of course.

In the beginning...
I was born on December 20, 1963, in a town called Odiabidi. At the time, Odiabidi was in the Ahoada Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria. I was four (4) years old when the civil war started during the regime of General Yakubu Gowon. Although I was born in Odiabidi, my heritage is from Obagi, in Egi Land, a part of Ogba Land in the Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area (ONELGA).

Early Life
I started school when I was barely six (6). Well, you see, our late father - Gibson Nnah Nwede (1927 - 2013) was an educator. We had to go to school. Getting an education was not optional! For me and my siblings, going to school was fun and games. We often woke up super early to run to school. I immediately got into the comics. I loved Captain America, Spiderman, The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, Lance Spearman   and Fearless Fang. The last two are African Comics comics.

Sometime in the early 70's (I think it was in 1971, our father took us all to Port Harcourt. It was in Port Harcourt I went through Primary School, Secondary School and graduated with a Masters degree in Architecture from the Rivers State University of Science and Technology in 1987. In 1987, I moved to Los Angeles, California, where I joined my oldest brother - Dr. Ike Iheukumere Nwede.

=Life In America= From my earliest recollections, I always dreamed of migrating to the United States of America. It all started with the comic books - Captain America, Spiderman, The Avengers, to name a few. And then, came the Architects - Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. They all had one thing in common - America! So, of course, I wanted to be in America too. It was no surprise that when I completed my Masters program in Architecture, my very first act was to ask my oldest brother - Dr. Ike Iheukumere Nwede to help me migrate to the US.

Arrival, the first few weeks
So, I found myself in Los Angeles, California on December 19, 1987, armed with a briefcase, my portfolio of thesis drawings and transcripts to prove that I did indeed go to school. I had on the only suit I owned in life, a pair of jeans and a shirt in my briefcase. My trip across the Atlantic was light. I immediately found my way to UCLA and USC. You see I was a product of the University system and I could only relate to campus life. At UCLA, I made some friends at the School of Architecture. They introduced me to life in Southern California. In the first couple of weeks of January 1988, I started pounding the pavement in Downtown LA, selling merchandise from SMC and other catalogue retailers. It was a challenge, but I was determined to rise to the challenge. After doing that for about three weeks, I decided that it would be best for me to seek work as an architect. So, I began the search for employment as an architect.

So, you want to be an Architect!
Yep, that was the response I received from the over three dozen architectural firms I knocked on their doors in my first two weeks. It was rejection galore. Everyone viewed my drawings with skepticism. They were too good and could not possibly have been produced by me. After over three dozen attempts, I decided that it was time to get creative. So, I started offering my services for free. The second firm I went to after making the decision to offer my services for free was owned by the late Architect James Moore. Mr. Moore took me up on my offer and gave me a desk in his office to try me out for two weeks. Exhilarated, I went to work with much gusto. I would show up as early before he got to the office, ready to work. I learned how to make coffee for him, clean the office as my first chore and take on whatever drafting work he gave me. I proved to him within the first week that, yes, I was a student of architecture, my drawings were mine and I was a motivated employee. It was hardly a surprise when at the end of the first week, he told me he would pay me $6.00/hr starting the following week and would actually pay me for forty hours for my first week of work, since we had not kept track of time that first week. I was thankful and excited.

Draftsman Extraordinaire
Now, I had a job as an architect (not really. I was a glorified draftsperson). All I did in those first few months was to draft and draft and draft. I got really good at drafting documents and copying Mr. Moore's sketches to drafting paper. Mr. Moore did all the design work. About eight months later Mr. Moore gave me my first design task. It was really not much of a design. The speculator client had a sketch of what he wanted. He wanted a small bungalow in Beverly Hills demolished and replaced with a huge residence. That was pretty common back them, I learned. Speculative investors would buy up smaller homes, demolish them and replace them with huge edifices. Mr. Moore did not like this kind of work, but the spec clients paid well. Since he did not want this sort of work, he delegated them to me. I was happy to finally get to draw something from scratch and even though I was taking design direction from the client, it was still design and I attacked it with enthusiasm.

Transitioning to other firms
In 1989, Mr. Moore told me to start looking for employment elsewhere. Work was light and I was making the going rate for draftspersons at that time - $12/hour. He said he was having a hard time paying for my time. So, I started looking again. This time, I ended up working with a firm in Oxnard, California. The firm specialized in military work - designing offices and buildings for the Navy. The drive from Downey, Ca to Oxnard took its toll on me. After six months of doing the this, I decided to look for work closer home. I quickly found a job in Culver City, working with a firm that did work for McDonald's and Sizzlers. Here I was introduced to cookie-cutter architecture. All we did was take the old plans and place the building on a new site. changed the title block info and submitted for permits. The firm made a pretty good living doing this kind of work. I found it pretty boring. After three months, I decided to look for employment elsewhere. It was during this time that I stumbled upon Construction Management.

Construction Management
I met Robert Krumpe in 1991, and started working with his firm - Pacific Southwest Development, Inc. It was while working with PSD, that I met and worked with the firm Peter Ederlyi & Associates. Peter and I became good friends and our collaboration continues till date.

I started my consulting firm AEN,LLc - http://www.aen-llc.com, in 2005, after leaving Turner Construction Company.

=References=

=External links=

Let's get social:

 * Check me out on LinkedIn
 * For those who love to tweet...
 * Are you on Facebook? Look me up!