Year: 2009

Kenya, Miscellaneous

I was walking around in Tala’s market today with a buddy when some old mlevi (“drunkard”) with a guitar came up to me and started strumming and saying some crazy things. Then, all of the sudden, he mentioned something about La Bamba. The funny thing was, I recognized the beat, and it was right on. I waited a few seconds and then started singing, “Para bailar la bamba… para bailar la bamba… se necessita una poca de gracia.” To my amazement this guy instantly started singing along with me. He may have even known more of the lyrics than me!

The guy was even wearing a Sea World hat that said “Whale Trainer,” hhahahaah! That, and the fact that Despised Icon released some studio clips from the production of their new album, made my day today.

Miscellaneous

Nokia 5320 XpressMusicI’ve written a few times about using GPRS with Linux in Kenya. First I was using Safaricom’s “Bambanet” USB device, which was merely a re-branded Huawei e220. A few months after that I sold the Bambanet and was using a Nokia 2630 over Bluetooth wireless. Last month I upgraded to a Nokia 5130 XpressMusic, and then sold it and upgraded to a Nokia 5320 XpressMusic (the 5320 runs Symbian S60, which is way more advanced than the S40 on either of my previous Nokias). The procedure is the same for all Nokia phones when using Bluetooth, but when using the USB cable there are a few show stoppers.
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Kenya, Miscellaneous, Teaching

I’m just kidding, because there is nothing special about going back to school (haha?). We should have started classes over three weeks ago but the information never seems to get to all the right people at the right time. Our students always take a bit of extra time anyways. So we’re starting this week. I almost started today. Here’s the breakdown of classes I’ll be teaching:

  • Web development I (HTML)
  • Network essentials
  • Operating systems II (Unix/Linux)

So at least the course count is down from last semester, where I had five classes for awhile there. I’ve taught the networking class three times already (or is it four?), so there’s no problem there, but teaching anything new is always a bit stressful. The course content isn’t anything difficult (not like teaching Object-oriented programming with C++ last semester), but making my own notes every night gets a bit tedious. I could get notes from the other teachers but I never really like the notes. My colleagues use more of a dictation style of teaching, where as I like to write short points on the board and then talk about them.

In other news, it’s been two years since the first post on this website. Back then it was still called Sara in Kenya. In other, other news, sarainkenya.org expires (goes “bye bye”) on May 14th, so go check it out if you have never seen it. You can browse the May, 2007 archives by clicking here: https://alaninkenya.org/2007/05

Update, May 15, 2009: I have saved a copy of the old sarainkenya.org here: http://thefro.org/sarainkenya.org