My blog - November 2002
Formula Lawn
November 26th 2002, 9:06am
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Matatu Driving in Ten Easy Steps
November 22nd 2002, 5:16am
- Buy a matatu (a small minibus - usually a Toyota Hiace). Preferably an old one which produces copious amounts of black exhaust. Don't bother with insurance.
- Paint it garish colours and stick a random phrase in the back window (try one of these: 'No Fear', 'God is Invincible', 'Arsenal', 'Fast as fire', 'Waiting for the end'). Install a multi-tone horn.
- Have a drink.
- When you see a passenger, stop immediately. Don't check if anyone is behind you. If possible, try to stop across the end of another road, halfway round a roundabout or in the middle lane of three lanes of traffic (extra points if you can block two lanes at once).
- If you can see any other potential passengers, get your tout to try and persuade them to get in the matatu too. Keep filling the vehicle with more people until you can't fit any more in.
- Fit some more in. The tout can hang out the side.
- Pull out into moving traffic. Don't check if anyone is passing you.
- Try not to obey any of the rules of the road. Drive as fast as possible. Overtake traffic jams and cut in at the front. Approach a roundabout in the right hand lane and turn left. Stop halfway along a slip road.
- Crash the matatu. Try to crash it where it will cause the most obstruction to traffic. If completely destroyed, return to step 1.
- If engine still works, hammer out the dents and return to step 2.
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New Photos
November 22nd 2002, 5:12am
There are a few photos on the Kenya Photos page at last.
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Comment posted by Kalev Ots at 5:12am on November 22nd 2002
nice pics
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Someone Likes Me
November 11th 2002, 5:28pm
I received an email from someonelikesyou.com the other day, which claims someone likes me. I just have to enter a list of email addresses to see if they match up. So far I haven't found anyone that likes me. I've tried postmaster@microsoft.com, webmaster@yahoo.com, someone@hotmail.com, but to no avail.
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Comment posted by James Ots at 5:28pm on November 11th 2002
Since I first received that email, someonelikesyou.com has kept badgering me to return to their site to find out who likes me. So I did today and I got two clues about who the person is. The first clue was that her first and last names both have 5 letters in them. The second clue was that her first and last names both have 4 or less letters in them. Hmm...
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Good Hair Day
November 9th 2002, 2:20pm
This morning I finally got the plumber to come and fix my drains. Now the water disappears instead of coming up in my bath with a load of dirt. Hooray!
This afternoon I got my hair cut at the Yaya Centre. I hate having my hair cut, but they managed to do a really good job for just 450 shillings. Then I had Steak Diana at the restaurant there, for less than my haircut cost. Last time I had that meal was at an Italian restaurant in Coventry and it cost over 20 quid. This one tasted better, although perhaps it was because I knew it cost a lot less?
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Comment posted by Peter Hall at 2:20pm on November 9th 2002
Nice one James! You're half way around the world and you manage to remind me to get a haircut just when I need one. Well, you did better than any of the people who see me every day.
Comment posted by James Ots at 2:20pm on November 9th 2002
Glad to be of service! (It's nice to know someone's reading my website.)
Comment posted by Peter Hall at 2:20pm on November 9th 2002
I want more content - or it might end up with someNONE reading your website. ;-)
Comment posted by James Ots at 2:20pm on November 9th 2002
You could read the code blog as well.
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Naivasha
November 4th 2002, 4:48am
I got back from Naivasha yesterday, where I've been on Youth Leaders' Retreat. It was going to be a Youth Retreat, but the Youth couldn't make it, so we decided to go anyway and plan for a camp later this year instead.
Naivasha is north-west of Nairobi and is next to quite a large lake and the Hell's Gate National Park, which we went around a couple of times. On Saturday we saw quite a few animals and I think I got some good photos - I'll find out later in the week when I get the pictures developed.
We also had a look around the campsite and played some basketball and had a bit of a swim. The campsite was quite nice, although the woman in charge of the campsite liked her rules - eighty shillings to go down to the lake, pay twice if you have a swim, play basketball and then want to swim again...!
In the evening we cooked sausages and potatoes over a campfire our askari (guard) had lit for us. (We told him we'd feed him if he lit our fire for us!) Then we watched The Matrix on my laptop on the verandah overlooking to lake, and our askari seemed to enjoy watching it as well.
On Sunday we managed to get the fire lit ourselves eventually, using a few pages of a Graham Greene novel we'd found in the chalet to help start it. We cooked breakfast, hung around for a while and then went back to the game park. We went for a walk along the gorge which was fun but tiring as it was pretty hot.
Shortly after we'd got back to the car it started raining, and by the time we'd got back to the chalet it was raining so hard I got soaked in the two meter run from the car to the chalet! It was also thundering continuously, and it was quite a contrast to the hot sunny weather we'd had earlier.
Despite having been in Kenya for over three months now I haven't seen much of the country outside of Nairobi. Nairobi is pretty developed, western, dirty and crowded, but Naivasha was really beautiful and seemed like a totally different world. I finally felt like I was really in Africa!
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Comment posted by Peter Hall at 4:48am on November 4th 2002
Who's Graham Greene?
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Comment posted by Matt Ots at 9:06am on November 26th 2002
You didn't tell me you'd bought a new car!
Comment posted by Kalev Ots at 9:06am on November 26th 2002
So they have grass in Kenya!
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