Thursday, March 30, 2006

eRiding

It has been a busy but interesting time lately. Have been working a lot with an upgrade of an accounting system and that was a challenge, mainly because of the size of the files we had to send between Sweden and Zimbabwe. And of course a key CD delivered via UPS had faults and we had to get the files via internet instead. Well, that is now behind me unless disaster strikes!

Spent 2 days at workshop around the concept of eRiders, a very interesting idea on how to deal with the fact that IT and ICT is seen as either "something on the side" or sometimes "a necessary evil" within NGOs and other small idealistic organisations. Also getting more and more involved in FOSS (free and open source software) and find it refreshing to enter a world of enthusiastic IT users and creators once more. Am planning to swap to Linux as main OS and Windows XP more for professional support reasons.

Otherwise way too cold for this time of the year and still raining. Looks like winter will be tough.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

A tough time

Eric has had a hard time lately. First he got tonsilitis once more, second time lately. So off to the clinic where he got antibiotics and then came home to a house yet again without power.

Not that I think that particular issue bothered him too much. But when I got home he once again had fever and high at it, over 39C. When it did not come down Mia took him back to the clinic and when they could not get it down he was admitted to hospital. So I packed a "nightbag" for the 2 of them and found him very much asleep on arrival.

Of course no power at home or water so a very dark and rather sleepless night (the alarm freaks out after a while) followed by a "no shower no coffee"-morning.

Next day the doctor judged it better to keep him for another night and now it was Mum who needed fresh clothes and more items plus sleeping blanket and sheets etc. I looked like some freak variety of Father Christmas when I got there.

Found a now very active and bored little boy (the boredom shared with Mum of course... we are not talking single rooms with TV here) who screamed of frustation when he could not leave with Pappa.

Next day I went there to be there when the Doctor made the round. Found a totally hyper boy and very frustraded mother. He was now all over the place and utterly tired of it. Thank God he was deemed OK to go home now.

BUT with a load of medications I have rarely seen the like of. We are now trying to make him take 3 different medications 3 times a day in rather large quantities and at least one seems to taste very foul. On first attempts all of it came up instead so we now try to dish it out in intervals which basically means he is being fed one medicine or the other almost all the time.

I really feel sorry for him and hope these 6 more days of medication will pass quickly and that it is the end of it for some time now.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Drats!

Drats - as a friend of mine often says when something is not going her way. We do have power back and all that but the chaos, frequent cuts and surges I suppose created by these over the last weeks has led to a very unpleasant surprise.

Our electric gate stopped working and when the guys had a look at it they told me that both the control-board, the intercom and the intercom cable were beyond repair.... to fix this is almost as expensive as putting a brand new gate (actually the guy is suggesting we replace the swing-open "Jurassic Park"-gate with a sliding gate) and there went all plans for various nice items or mini-holidays or whatever. Thank you ZESA!

They have by the way officially sent us notice that Zimbabwe can look forward to a cold winter. Not weather-wise but they foresee that they will not be able to supply enough power and will so introduce load-shedding during morning and evening hours. Great... we can look forward to like 3 evenings and 2 mornings a week without electricity.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Powerless and waterless

Aaargh! We are now entering the 3rd day without electricity OR water at home. Calling Zesa (power company) does not help much "we have so much to do but will send a team today/tonight/this morning" - the reply varying with the time of the day we are calling them.

Thanks to a friend nearby our meat is at least in a working freezer but we are sick of cooking on fire, reading by candlelight and "bathing" in a bucket.

There are times when living in this country can be quite stressful.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Never give Gary Glitter money

I see in the news that Gary Glitter, or Paul Gadd as his real name is, for the second time has been convicted of offence in connection with underaged children. In UK he was booked for child pornography, in Cambodia he has been declared a non-wanted person and thrown out after being accused of similar offenses (rather more serious actually) and now in Vietnam sentenced to 3 years in prison for "offensive acts" involving underage girls.

In my humble opinion there is no possible excuse for these crimes or this sort of behaviour. If you own music by Glitter, go on playing it at home if you like. BUT if you in any way have influence over any sort of public playing (radio, arena, TV or whatever) or sales of DVD/CDs by this man - just don't! Don't give him more income from royalties! Remove him from playlists and remove his works from your shop. Don't support him with more money to travel round the world looking for other poor countries where he can lure children to be involved in his sick behaviour!

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Identified

Picked up my Zimbabwe ID "card" this morning. That is, I picked up a very flimsy piece of paper that serves as a "temporary" ID "card" until the proper one is produced.

Only problem is that I know people who have waited for many years for their real ID-card. These are made in metal and near indestructible but, in other words, difficult to produce.

Nevertheless, I am now 631687943R00 where the last two digits tell that I am an alien. Will be difficult to learn this number instead of the lifelong habit of the Swedish ID-number based on birthdate + 4 numbers at the end.