Providence

Providence. I have heard this word used over and over again since my early childhood. I have never bothered to look up what it means. I have inferred it of course from the context in which it is often used, phrases like 'divine providence' or 'Gods providence'. It also helps that it kind of sounds like the word provide so I guess it easy to make the connection and assume that if means something along the lines of being given/provided something by someone.

Well I looked it up today and it turns out that the words 'divine' and 'God's' are kind of redundant in those phrases I mentioned earlier. According to google's new dictionary (which will inevitable become the standard for all word definitions), providence is defined thus:

Synonyms:
noun: foresight, forethought, prudence
Providence is God, or a force which is believed by some people to arrange the things that happen to us

Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to this, providence IS God (or a force), and He is not giving/providing you with anything, he is 'arranging the things that happen to us'. Well I'm sad that I have, for most of my life, had the wrong understanding of a word that has been such a staple in the conversations around me. I'm glad however to see that it represents exactly what I am excited about right now: Gods ability to plan out our live so perfectly that we marvel at the outcomes even with the benefit of hindsight.

I have been through a roller-coaster ride of a recruiting process to say the least. Up until march of 2009 I was comfortable in the knowledge that I had a full time job offer from a major Wall street firm. I could see the plan coming together, go to New York, earn your strips in a hellish environment for two years, pay your student loans and parley the name of the company and the experience into a great career in Africa focused private equity. Then the sky came crashing down with one phone call. Suddenly I had no Job, no way to pay my student loans, no way to guarantee my stay in the US, and an impending graduation that would surely user in a period of doom and distraction. My grand scheme was in a tailspin and it took everything calm down and not throw in towel.

Almost a year later, I can confidently say that that call was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. It enabled me to free myself from a job that I would be miserable doing for 2 years while keeping my large signing bonus and corporate scholarship which were integral to my being able to finish school and contingent on my accepting a full time offer with the company. It gave me the chance to spend an extra semester in the university I love the most (UT Austin), it gave me a chance to keep working with the RSC foundation and help another African student attend my Alma mater and it gave me the opportunity in the American city I love the most (Austin, TX!). I couldn't see it then but God was arranging things in a way that I could never have understood at the time. Thank God for Providence. Thank God for God ;)

Addiction

Addiction is a strange phenomenon. It can happen in so many different ways to so many different things. It easier to understand the addictions that have been found to be the result of actual physiological changes in the brain such as smoking and the increase of nicotine receptors. I find the purely psychological addictions a lot more disturbing and frightening. The fact that a human being could be caused or forced, to do something that he really rationally does not want to do and that he know he will regret after he has done is understandable. It only becomes bizarre when the person doing the forcing is the same one being forced. This internal battle that is every bit as real as battle between two human beings but more deadly because at least in a fist fight one of you can run away thus avoiding the consequences of a confrontation. One can't very well run away from one self. Thats the scariest thing about addiction. The inescapably of it all. When struggling with addiction, there is always a fight, there is always a winner, and there is always a looser. Worst of all, there is always another fight to come. If Milan Kundera is to believed, this endless cycle of battles with addiction is exactly what gives addiction so much weight in our lives. The fact that we know that we will meet this adversary again and again and that the outcome of this battle affects the outcome of the next makes it more difficult to carry the burden of addiction.

I wonder what is to be done about it. We can't give in, one of the things that makes us humans is our ability to choose what we want to do. Free will is a cornerstone of what it means to be human. Man was not meant to be a slave, not to another man and certainly not to oneself. In the slavery that is addiction there is no escape, there is no underground railroad. There is only insurrection, the slave must rise up, take up arms and overthrow the master, that is his/her only hope of redemption. But in his weekend state, battered and bruised by past battles he can not do it alone. He must look up, reach up find the helping had that awaits there, join forces with his helper, then and only then will there be hope for a new beginning.

After a three year hiatus, I wonder what has changed

My life is a series of close calls, constantly punctuated by 'almost disaster' after 'almost disaster': a last minute trip to the embassy followed by a hurried take off to an unknown land, a summer internship without which an entire year of college would have been rendered useless, a last minute deferment of fees, a hurried one hour registration for classes. Close calls at the bus stop, close calls at the airport, close calls all around. I wonder whether these close calls stress me out of invigorate me, I know that I have often felt that my life would be intolerably boring where it not for the continuous current of perils that have beset me. I look back on the last 5 years of my life and can clearly see that the most uncertain of times are also the times when I felt most alive. It almost as if there is an adrenaline surge in my system as my survival instincts kick in and suddenly I can put a lot of things that seemed so important into perspective.

I often joke that if I had been given the opportunity to plan my life I would have learned absolutely nothing. Thats because I would never have purposeful planed peril into my life, and without peril and the attending opportunity to over come it, it is difficult to see which important life lessons I would currently have in my arsenal. I hope you don't misunderstand me though, I am in no way bemoaning my life as some singularly troubled experience. I am very well aware of the fact that I am probably in the most fortunate 5% of the worlds population as far as opportunities for self direction and self development goes. As a good friend of mine once said, 'If God were to put all the worlds troubles into one pot then redistribute them equally, I would be begging Him to give me back my own troubles'. I am simply saying that I have had man a time when I felt like my life was quickly spinning out of control, and those have turned out to be some of the richest times in my life.

Does it therefor make sense that if still get that jolt of anxiety whenever I am faced with a new challenge? Even when the challenge at hand is minuscule in comparison to what I have over come so far, I still get flustered at the possibility of failure. I wonder if it is because with each of my past successes I have gain something new to worry about loosing. Let me explain: when I was worried about getting into a good high school, I was primarily concerned about doing dad proud by attending his High School Alma Marta. Where I to fail, I could always go to another high school and do just fine. Contrast that with failing to get a job post college graduation, now failure means wasting a very expensive college education, creating financial burdens for people who have already given so much for me, inability to give back to those who supported me or give forward to other who may need me. Loss of a pear group that I have grown accustomed to and even possible deportation. Maybe all this things, all these responsibilities keep raising the stakes just enough to ensure that when the next close call comes around I will be just as anxious about it as the last one

Kudos to Afrigator

I'm glad to see that, after a break down some time back, Afrigator is up and running. I was a big fan of the blog agrigator from inception but got a bit disillusioned when I notices that the RSS feed (at least for the Kenya section of the site) stopped updating for a long time.

I have just returned to the site after my friend John Wesonga let me know that It had been mentioned in a CNN article along side giants like joost and esnips as one of the the top web 2.0 start-ups outside the US. It was the only one from Africa to be mentioned so kudos to the Afrigator team.

One of the most interesting things that I came across in the CNN article was the amount of funding that it took to setup Afrigator. The article quoted $32000, a figure that i feel really shows the benefit of doing work especially technology oriented work in Africa. When put up against the other start ups mentioned (many of which refused to declare what funding if any they had received) it is clear that Afrigator was the least funded and if I am not mistaken the start up with the second lowest amount of declared funding had something like $1 million. Despite the disparity in funding, the quality of work that has been put out by the Afrigator team is definitely at per with that of their, much better funded, compatriots. It just goes to show that the dream Africa as a center of technological innovation is becoming a reality faster than most think and the cost saving advantage will only accelerate the process further.

I am looking to leverage African technologists in the near future, hopefully I will be able to put yet another tech start up from Africa on the map.

BDAfrica: The good the bad and the ugly

I have been reading the Business Daily Africa website for some time now as my source for Kenyan business news and I must say that I love the articles that they feature. I they stick to the business facts and for the most part steer clear of the political noise that often clouds the news from others such as its parent company's (nation media) nationmedia.com and the East African Standards eastandard.net.

One major qualm i have with the site though is the number of typos that i keep running into in their articles. I don't believe i have ever gone through an entire issue without finding a significant number of typos. Some of these typos are Rather innocuous such as a missing letter here or there but some are more serious such as miss quoted figure or differences in figures quoted more than once within a single article.

The mistakes take away significantly from the air of professionalism that is created by the clean layout and clear writing style that is employed by BDAfrica.

I would advise that they impose stricter editorial over-site to ensure that the facts are not only properly researched but properly presented in order to prevent loss of credibility. It they feel that hiring a full time staff member to do proof reading would be too costly then they should at least give readers an easy way of sending in typo notification. I'm sure that a number of readers wouldn't mind assisting in this manner given the value of the articles they put up.

While they are at it they might also consider implementing a discussion feature that would enable viewers to discuss the most popular articles. I see this taking a longer term to implement as it might necessitate them moving from the ijoomla platform to a more feature filled platform.

Overall though I think that bdAfrica.com is at the front of the pack as far as Kenyan business news is concerned and would recommend it to anyone wishing to stay on top of Kenyan business news.

Interesting things happening in kenya

There are a number of interesting development in kenya of late. One of the most interesting thus far is the launching of KenTv, an IPTV service based in the UK and focusing on the delivery of kenyan content to kenyans int eh diaspora. It is an area that is definately lucrative and I can see a number of individuals really latching on to the service. According to John Wesonga, the service is currently getting over 35000 view per day. Thats a huge number for a site that has just been launched that the is focusing on Kenyan content. The naviagation could use some work though and the 5 minute Nakumatt advertisement is a bit too much if you ask me.

Also, in news just released on bdAfrica, kenTv has just entered into a partnership with the steadman group to provide on demand research sevices to Kenyans in the diaspora. I think this service will be a hit both with kenyan students seeking to do research on Kenyan topics as well as with people seeking to guage the viablilitly of business ventures before plunging in. The turn-around time is good (92 hours) and the price is quite appealling ($3.99 per question with bulk discounts) considering what it would cost to do similar research on your own. Another advantage is steadmans ability to return research result of the entire East African region.

Also the Safaricom IPO is causing quite a stire as is to be expected with $500 million worth of equity in the pot. A number of major financial institutions (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Credit Swiss, PNB Paribus to name a few), are gunning for advisory roles on the IPO along with a number of major internation law firms. I must say that i was a bit disapointed not to see Merrill Lynch as one of the firms in the running, I feel that they are letting a major entry point into the African market pass them by. This is quite sad considering the growth potential in this market. Setting up relationships early is definately going to be a key determinant going forward of who cashes in on the Afican Renaissance.

tugo

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the new keyboard has arrived!!

This is the first post that i am making using my new mobile iGo key board pictured below. this was definately a fantastic buy! The way that they have structured the keys makes it very easy to type and it holds up the mobile device (a htc excaliber aka t-mobile dash in my case)so that its very easy to see what it is that i am writing. the set up process wasn't too convoluted and once its set up hooking it up when you want is a breaze! literaly a two step process.

I woould definately recommend it for anyone with a phone running windows mobile that is looking to sqeeze more productivity out of their device. with windows mobile 6 you get word and excel built in so it basically turns your smartphone into a mini computer.

The keys of the keyboard are customizable (though i havent gotten to doing that yet) but it works well witht the default configuration and has a bunch of cool functionality that you can access using the two funtion keys that are present on the device.

Once abain i highly recommend the device for the ultra mobile user. I got it on amazon for a total cost of $75 inclusive of shipping and handling costs.

Book Review: Fooled By Randomness by Taled Nasim

I read this one at the begining of the summer. I would summerize it as an analysis of the natural biases that we as humans have and how the affect out ability to make logical decision.

The author is a former trader who has made his fortune by basically betting ont he impossible, or what others consider impossible but he through a thorough mastery of probability considers quite probable. He does this by buying options on things that other thing will never happen. Since the probability of the even the option is based on it highly improbable to the seller he sells it for cheap. Sure enough many of the options that he buys end up expiring and so he is constantly loosing small amounts of money. But... when he does win, its a REALLY big win and that how he comes out on top.

He is a very well read individual and does a pretty good job of explaining some pretty heft statistics and probability stuff. Its definitely a book that will get you to rethink some of your basic assumptions about the nature of things. But be ware of the authors tendency to rumble on about how brilliant he is and how everyone he meets turns turns out to be an idiot and a disappointment.

a couple of wonderful new discoveries

Fantastic Brazilian music: CeU

An sheng entry in wikipedia: Sheng

eat fairly well for under $8 on the upper west side

For those of you who like me are always looking for a good place to eat for cheap in this wonderful but slightly pricey neighbourhood I found a place called club 71 that a pretty good deal for the price. I got the food you see in the picture for $6.95 plus tax. (side bar: this is the first picture im posting taken with my new Dash. It was at night so the lights not very good).

Here is a picture of the place:


Its at 2061 Broadway, New York, NY in case your ever in the area and hungry

never buy anything from those time square computer shops

You know the ones that have all the fancy electronics on the window display with tantalizing prices plastered all over them. Yeah you know the ones... well they are a scam! Avery well tuned one too if i may say so myself. The price they have for the sexy canon camera in the window is actually the one for a crappy useless on that they have on the inside.

On the rare occasion that they do have the actual price written in the window, don't be surprised to be told that they only have the window unit in stock and that that it is for display only. Whatever you buy there is marked up at least 200% and no matter how good a deal you think your getting, rest assured that you are being scammed.

If you remain obstinate and decide to go in anyway please please ask them to tell you the price you will be paying for the gadget verbally. Yes, even if you have already read the little red sticker on the packaging. And do this before the quickly pull out a razor blade and cut open the packaging making the item unreturnable.

My advice though, stick to companies that you can actually sue if the scam you. And if your a staunch bargain hunter, you'd rather even go get your gadget on ebay or something, just don't subject yourself these con-artists.

Eating raw meat (Bibim bap)!

I went with a couple of friends to a Korean bbq place yesterday in K-town (32 and broadway) and ordered this meal called bibim bap that consists of beaf and vegies that have been mixed together with a scrambled egg on top.
Unbeknownst to me, the version that of bibim bap that i pointed to on the menu was different from the one that my friend had recomened to me. This perticular version is not only served raw ( as is almost every thing else at the place), but is supposed to be EATEN RAW!



Now there is a bbq place in the center of each table at the place so that you can cook the food that they bring to you to your hearts content adn at first i was convinced that was probably the way to go but after some hesitation and having my food carefully stired by the very nice lady who served us, i decided to embrace the spirit of adventure and give the raw beef a shot!

surprise surprise! it was actually reeally good! it tasted nothing like what i expected and didn't have the weird consistency of raw meet that i had expected would make me gag. I finished the entire bowl which was not small as you can tell from the picture. I definately recomend the meal to anyone looking for something new and exciting to eat. After eating it, eating my first jelly fish seemed like a relatively small step. All in all it was a revolutionary evening for my pallet :)

july 4th, and the unheralded kenyan chicken

so this was the week of july the 4th. we got wednesday off at work and spent most of monday doing community service at this school in harlem. the story there is pretty interesting, the long and short of it is that a friend and i ended up painting desks in the wrong school and get blasted by yet another overly krunk new yorker, allot of these people here need to take a chill pill. its not like i would go and just start doing home improvements (or is it school improvemnts) in some random school. she was acting like repainting defaced desks was the crime of the century.

anyway seeing as two of my work days were unceremoniously taken away, i now have 3 day to finish 5 days work, I aint compaliniing though. went to coney island jana... it sucks... but the company was good so i had a good time. there was a hot dog eatting compe there (which i missed do to oversleeping... i had gone to bed at 4 on tuesday, another night on the town :). The winner though ate 66 hotdogs!!! in 12 minutes!!!! (correction, he didn't eat them, he swallowed them bila chewing i tell you). that stuff is dangerous! apparently is actually a recognized sport and they have a league and everything! its called M.L.E. Yeah you guessed it... Major League Eating :) only in america i tell you.

Oh, i was talking to an iteresting friend the other day and the converstation the otherday and somehow the converstion drifted into fast food and how much we miss kenyan fast food, stears (swoon), Nandos (double swoon), and the ultimate KENCHIC!! That kuku mfalme just has no compe on this planet! anyway it came to me that i haven't read any praise for kenchic and them and i figured i should just give a shout out to all those who know that there is only one kuku mfalme and its the king of all kukus on this planet.

yet another wonderful evening in the city

New York has once agin lived up to its reputation and treated me to yet another memorable weekend, I had a blast having dinner and going out with a couple of new and old friends, i had people come in from out of state and we all had a merry time. I forgot my debit card at a lounge in meat-packing jana, but i am sure it will be safe and sound when I go to pick it up in about 30 minutes. i doubt any of the people in that part of town would bother with my little moneys :)

I have decided that, rather than keep trying to figure out an easy way of calling a perl script (running on cygwin) from a c sharp application, i will just re-write the entire file parser in c sharp. I think it will be easier and will make for a more solid solution because everything will be bundled together nicesly into ac sharp solution that can be installed anywhere. I have already started re-writing it and am currently going through the steep learning curve phase. Hopefully it passes soon.

apparently according to a blog post by assidous chris khaemba, (aka sodi :) my former principle will be moving to south Africa to lead the African leadership institute! its a big loss for bush, but i am sure he will be a valuable asset to both institutions int he future.

Aaaah! slightly frustrated

Today was the 'day of silence' protest against the high royalty fees that are about to be imposed on internet radio sites. I really didn't realise how much i rely on these online radio stations for my work time entertainment until today. I was truly frustrated! Last.fm didn't join the protest and i could have gone over to their site to listen to music but I was constrained to support the industry that has brought me so much good music. And so I stuck by my guns and went music less all day!

C# is frustrating me, it has this way of making really difficult thing really easy, but also making really simple things seem supper difficult! I'm trying to pull data from an xml file and use it to dynamically create tables in an sql database, then display them in a grid view on a GUI. If anyone has any ideas on how to do this, please let me know. also, if anyone knows how to run a perl script from a C# GUI app. let me know.

I am learning that there are a lot of things that are learn't over time. I too often look at people doing something that i would like to do or being some way that id like to be and conclude that they have always been that way. but im slowly learning that i can learn to do almost anything... which is a reasurign thought.

Gods been good to me.

Does anyone have any thought on whether to give people on the street money?

Project progress

Im in the middle of building what I consider to be my first major application that actually does something of substance. It reconciling output from an application run on two different environments and presenting the output on a GUI. The project necessitated that I learn perl, a language that i have since come to love coz it's file parsing capabilities. It also seems really light and so I think it would be very usefull when programing in areas where resources are limitied like on mobile phones.

I am currently building the GUI in C# using visual studio 2005 express. It makes GUI building really easy but I don't know if I really like the way it just feels big and heavy. Also its now suitable for linux environments and I'm getting more and more interested in the platform (I just installed ubuntu on my laptop... yet again).

The weekend was a lot of fun. I got to see a bit more of brooklyn and also went to china town with a good friend. I watch people dancing to some type of eastern european sounding music at the south steet see port, it was another fun weekend in the city.

I finished reading this nice book called "fooled by randomness" (expect a review soon), and now I'm reading an even more interesting book called "the search". I hear the subsaharan coder has read it and loves it. I can see why, its a must read for any technology inclide person.

So I'm back in new york for the summer

I'm already into the 4th week of my internship and convinced more and more that the financial industry is where its at for me. New York is definitely one of the few if not the only city in the states that I feel i can live in for any extended period of time. I think i mentioned before how much it reminds me of Nairobi with all the hustling and the dirt and the assortment of strange odors. Its alive! I need a city that's alive (as well as one in which public transport is the defacto mode transportation, another similarity with Nairobi.).

I have been toying with a couple of interesting business and philanthropy ideas. Keep watching this space for updates on how thats coming along. One particular idea i have had for a minute and just haven't been in the state of mind to think of it as presently achievable. I'm hoping to meet with a friend who has already taken the plunge into setting up a non-profit so that she can demystify the process for me (I love this city! making connections is so easy).

My illustrious cousin just returned to from attending TED Global in Arusha where she met the creme de la creme of African innovators and visionaries, I hope the start an Africa specific chapter of TED. I would love to attend next year (finders crossed).

"white African" (who was also at TED Global by the way), just wrote a post on an innovative corporate blogging project by my good friend and former co-worker John Nyukuri. check it out here.
The team behind the project is really visionary and bent on building disruptive technology.

Saw this random guy with an entire office, desk and all parked on the corner of 51st and Broadway, getting internet from starbucks and working on his stuff. He even had a desk lamp and flowers (albeit artificial)in there. I love this city!



The pictures grainy coz i took it with my trusty old school cell phone

Songs I grew up to

These songs take me back to good days, and bad days alike. Enjoy!

What makes Mr. Imus different

I know that what Mr. Imus is being accused of is not something that he is the first to be guilty of in the mainstream media. Racially disparaging remarks and made and condoned everyday especially by members’ minority groups in the name of light heartedness and humor. The practice is deplorable; there is no doubt about that in my mind.

However one would be naive to push to the side the fact that the context in which this particular racist attack takes place is quite singular. Mr. Imus is not a comedian at some laugh-factory in Atlanta. He is not some rap artist pushing records on the street corner. Mr. Imus wields a kind of power only a very select few in this society have. His level of influence with the pool of people from which this country chooses its leadership is way beyond that of any of the 'usual suspects' that I have mentioned. When you call a group of girls attending Rutgers university "nappy-headed hos" and then have a prospective US presidential candidate come to your defense in the name of “believing in forgiveness”, you know you are at a level of influence that few ever reach.

With great power comes great responsibility. Mr. Imus must be held to a higher standard. Not because he is white, but because of the amount of influence that we have accorded to him. When he uses the term ‘nappy-headed’ and gets away with a slap on the wrist, it sends a message not only to the boy on the street corner, but to the men on capital hill that you can make disgusting, crass and racially offensive statements and escape the consequences as long as your sorry about it in the aftermath.

What is being advocated for is not the creation of policy; it is the enforcement of policy, Policies that were put in place to counter precisely this sort of incident.