Christmas coming up

End of this year is rapidly approaching and I am signing off from work in a few hours. Then of course there is still x number of items to shop and things to do before we can actually sit back and relax and say "finally Xmas lets enjoy and take it easy".

FINALLY all business with the borehole is finalised. Water was found, pump has been installed. It was, as so often happens, a loooong story but all ended well and we now have our expensie water. Now all we need is a generator for those powercuts ;-)

Today Eric turns 3 and we are nil prepared, good thing we celebrated him together with his brother earlier this year.

Merry Xmas to all of you and enjoy!

Corner Bar & Water

A typical weekend scene from Corner Bar in Dar es Salaam (copyright Maria Wall). This famous waterhole (also called Royal Chole Road Country Club, Losers Corner etc) has reportedly been cleared out together with all other container shops and bars along the same stretch. It won't be the same next time we come to Dar.

Other news; we finally managed to sell the Ford Taurus in which Eric was born and have used the money to drill a borehole. After a diviner pointed out 2 sites we contracted a driller and then - waited. And waited. And waited.

Endless stories of problems, repairs and promises keeping us waiting home weekend after weekend. But at last they did start last Friday and hit water eventually. Not as deep down or as much as the diviner promised but we are not willing to risk losing what we have found by going any deeper (they were hitting hard rock). It is predicted to produce around 500 litres / hour - should be enough for anything basically.

Now "all" that is left is to install pump (already bought) and other equipment needed to use the water.

Also had the first real rain and thunder today so happy we managed to get drilling done before that. A relief for the garden and newly planted veggies and maize.  

Kids Birthday party

Some friends want more photos so here is one from our recent party for the boys. As can be seen Bradley can hardly wait until Hellen has cut Spidermans face into pieces! Well he is also helping as best he can. Of Eric you see a piece of t-shirt... also in the photo is Sheilla and little Albert and leftmost is Wedlyn, Hellen's younger sister.

Otherwise working late trying to fix X number of downloads, updates etc etc.  

Jakaranda trees in bloom

By popular demand a photo of jakaranda trees in full bloom. Interestingly they have all the flowers first and after that the leaves come and they "turn green".

Harare has hundreds of these and really look fantastic in September-October.

What else in life? Well busy arranging birthday bash for our boys tomorrow (I decided to do it same time since Eric is not really worried/aware and Xmas comes more fun for him that way. Next year that will NOT work) and waiting for borehole drillers to arrive on Sunday. Plus all the usual. 

In the very very copyright protected world

According to this article on CNET Microsoft is going to make sure that Windows Vista will run with "reduced functionality" if its license can not be validated online. As I have already had problems with this attitude of overzealous (in my opinion) license system that hampers reinstallation and moving of licenses I think MS is taking another step in the wrong direction. My move to Kubuntu Linux now feels even more correct.

Otherwise I slipped on a rug yesterday and banged my laptop computer. So the screen is now very literally unusable! Arrgh!

Finally Linux

Well, after lots of talking and thinking and testing and planning I have finally switched to Linux on my main laptop Dell Inspiron 500M. Actually I have set it up to dualboot with Windows XP but have not been in XP for over a week. Not since I got dial-up working, that was a bit of a trick.

So I am now running Kubuntu (www.kubuntu.org) and using Kontact (a pim), Firefox and OpenOffice. All of it perfectly free software.  

A photo of Bradley and Eric at Blue Banana restaurant during the week. Went there for good food but also because they have a play-room with minder. Only that it is not staffed Mondays and Tuesdays. Of course this was a Tuesday...

We have otherwise hired the services of a water diviner to see if we can sink a borehole. This man comes recommended from others who says he was spot on about the depth and amount of water to be found.

He claims we have 2 possible sites, the better one should give well over 1000 liter / hour. It will be very interesting to see if he is right! So as soon as the drillers are starting I will keep you updated.  

We are alive...

Well, it has certainly been a very long time since anyone wrote anything on this blog. No, it is not that nothing is happening or that something really bad has happened or likewise.

It is just that combinations of lots of work, travels and other commitments and incidents have led to a situation where I have not felt like spending 1 minute extra in front of the computer after everything else has been taken care of.

So this is more or less just a lifesign. Harare is beatiful, the jakaranda trees are in full bloom and it is getting warmer by the day. We are all fine and I hope to post some photos soon.

Lilongwe experience

Have spent almost a week in Lilongwe, Malawi. One thing I have noticed is that Malawi is very different from other places in the region in some aspects.

For starters; driving. It is probably the most "non-aggressive" driving experience you can think of. Which actually makes me a bit stressed rather than opposite. Am not used to commuter bus drivers who behave, a general tempo in town of around 40-50 km (have they been instructed that use of gear 4 and 5 will damage the car I wonder?) and everyone being sooo nice to stop and let others pass etc.

Another thing; trust. Nowhere else has the owner of a bar (Diplomat's, nice place) who has seen me once in his life offered me run a tab if I did not have cash enough (he asked me if the ATM was helpful which it wasn't, not at all). "You can pay tomorrow or Monday or whenever". I did not have a heart rotten enough to utilise this generous offer as I am leaving tonight and could not have paid him back. Also others tell me of the same attitude in shops "no worry you can come in later or tomorrow". Very strange. But heartwarming, I hope it can stay that way.

Malawi names itself "the warm heart of Africa". It is refreshing to walk the city centre after dark without a worry of being robbed or something (I am sure it can happen but is apparently very rare). Only annoying thing is streetkids and beggars but in a very poor country that is of course to be expected.

Exploding notebook batteries...

Well, for those of you who follow IT news this is not really news. For others it might be very important news. Especially if you have a Dell notebook computer!

For some time now there have been reports that some Dell notebooks have very literally burst into flames, almost exploded actually. The problem was traced to a certain type of battery, manifactured by Sony for Dell.

Dell is now recalling/replacing these batteries and have set up a special website where you can check your battery: Dell Battery Return Program

Well I checked and what do you know, I have been carrying around a small bomb for some time now... I was advised to immediately remove the battery and run the PC on A/C power until they can send my replacement battery! Well, the battery was already out as serialnumber is on the side turned to the inside of the PC so no problems there. And I am sure not putting it back!

Now when I get back home I have to check my extra battery and hope that it is not one of the possible bombs too.

It never rains

..but pours is what they say. Power was restored Thursday evening and then disappeared again Friday morning around 9 am!! This time a tree had fallen over the wires a couple of houses from us.

The good thing was that plenty of houses were affected, the bad thing that this type of fault is dealt with by Mabvuko Depot that we know since before are sloooow in arriving.

It was Saturday afternoon when they finally showed up. Without a chainsaw. To a fallen tree!!! So back they went to get the chainsaw. By the time they got started it was getting dark so they left again. I was more than irritated when I called the fault center to hear what I suspected, they were leaving for another 12 hours or so.

It took them the better part of the Sunday to clear the wires and reconnect things etc. They then came to our house to ensure wires were not touching each other. After that we walked to the substation together only to find no power whatsoever! Another fault somewhere else was being fixed.

And how do they "replace" a blown fuse? They wire a copperwire round the blown one... I shudder to think what spikes could come from that system.

Finally power was restored around 3 pm only to disappear again after 30 minutes or so. I was ready to breathe fire over the phone when it did come back again after some 10 minutes.

And I hope that is enough for a while now, I think we have had more than our fair share of outages lately.

Powercuts here, powercuts there, powercuts everywhere...

It has been a while, have been busy with work and what-what. July has been freezing cold and that has meant that the much predicted power shortage has hit Zimbabwe. A nice schedule for load-shedding was set up and publicised. It has never been followed. As usual. As of now we are experiencing more or less daily powercuts from as early as 6 am to lunchtime and sometimes in the evening.

Just back from an unexpected trip to Dar es Salaam together with friend Andre Bongers. Apart from sitting waiting 5 hours at Harare International for fuel before we could take off it was a very nice visit to a much warmer place. BUT powershortage there too... every second day from 7 to 7 no power. At least you knew and could plan for it.

Back here it is now getting a bit warmer but powercuts are getting worse if anything. We now on top of loadshedding has a "normal" powercut and to even manage to report it is a 3 hours attempt to get thru on constantly busy lines. And then they could not come because we "reported it late". Talk about Catch 22. Now we have been without power for near 36 hours and that is not good for freezers.

Time to go and pick up kids and then home to see if power might have been restored. Keep your fingers crossed.

How to play soccer

Completely "on spot" comment by Bradley yesterday as I was watching Germany - Argentina;

"Today I was playing soccer with Matthew (his friend at Montessori preschool) and I was falling because that's what you do when you play soccer"

He has obviously observed how the professionals behave when they play soccer...

Above a photo of Bradley and Eric taken in April

Raising 2 boys

It is an interesting and sometimes rather tiring experience to have 2 boys aged 5 and 2.5... Eric is now in a very strong "it is mine"-phase and that is a headache for his older brother who also wants to play with toys sometimes. Or be in the same chair/sofa/bed or something. Well, the few toys that survive more than a day or 2 that is. It is completely pointless to buy something that is not extremely sturdy (wooden building blocks or such) or very cheap. A nice expensive car will break just as fast as a cheap piece of plastic.

Did I mention that it is also expensive? 2 days ago I intended to play a CD with Mozart, one of the very first CDs I ever bought in the early 80s (when there were not many CDs around yet). Opening the CD case reveals - nothing. Very likely theory; a certain 2.5 year old boy picks it out to "play" it, discovers he can't do that and then discards of it "somewhere". Am still looking but do not have very high hopes on finding it.

Can't wait for the day when he is old enough to understand exactly how angry and disappointed I get when CDs, books, DVDs etc is scraped, torn or go missing.

Last post on World Cup

For me a lot of the fun went out of the cup when Sweden were massacred by Germany and then Holland left after a scandalous game. Am still watching but not with the same interest. I guess we Swedes will now pin our hopes on Sven-Goran and England.

The refereeing has been completely sub-standard though of if it is their instructions. Best example was of course the Holland - Portugal game but also in several others one wonders why on Earth cards are waved for just about every little event.

Nice to see France - Spain last night was a very clear exemption and so that also became one of the most exciting games so far. Poor Ghana though - fought bravely but could not score...

Winter and World Cup part III

Still freezing here and all my Swedish friends are on about midsummer celebrations and how warm it is in Sweden and the rest of Europe. Good thing is that midsummer there means midwinter here so it should not be much worse...

Watched Sweden - England with friend Mikael J at his house last night. Sore throats from shouting "no" and "yes" the whole game. Scary first half for Sweden, scary second half for England. Probably 2 - 2 was fair though it means Sweden will face Germany on Saturday. And that is what we will be doing for "midsummer" celebrations 2006...

Winter and World Cup continues

Well Sweden's first game did not make any of us gathered to watch happy. Long periods of rather sloppy play that Trinidad/Tobago actually had little problem to cope with.

It was more fun to watch the game against Paraguay where they played much better even though it took almost 90 minutes before they finally scored. I was at home watching and likely woke up the whole neighbourhood with my scream of joy.

Tomorrow it is time for the final group stage match against England and I of course hope for the best. A draw is the minimum needed to continue to the next stage.

Otherwise winter continues and powercuts are now a very regular occurence. Still have not managed to buy a generator so we survive on candlelight and a small camping gas kitchen. Last night was again freezing and that likely will mean cuts tonight. Which reminds me I had better leave so I can buy fresh milk on the way home.

Winter & Soccer Fever

Zimbabwe has been freezing cold for a while now, it is a bad winter really. Today is like the first day this week that I don't wear a jacket or sweater while I am working. Indoors. One thing that makes winter so cold here is the absolut nonsense standard of house-building.

Otherwise (apart from >1000 % inflation) it is all about soccer here too now that the World Cup starts today. In spite of the fact that no team from Southern Africa qualified there is a massive interest. I have a feeling many here favor England but would love to see a team like Ivory Coast make a good go for it.

Being who I am I of course hope that Sweden will make it to semi-finals or better so it was disappointing news that the keeper was hit so hard by a ball that he got concussion and can't play for 5-6 days! So new a rather "newbie" guy will have to take over in our opening game, not the best situation. Though of course Sweden are massive favorites to win over Trinidad.

Tomorrow we gather at the house of a Swedish friend (who has a generator just in case) to watch the game. Keep all fingers crossed!

Dogs and the earth shakes again

Following a rather long discussion on the mailinglist Grrringo I have posted a photo of our 2 dogs Mishi (the lighter female) and Scooby. I discovered that taking photos of dogs is not easy - either they are right up your face or running away. It took like 5 attempts before I managed to get this not very good shot.

Last night the ground shook again, a light tremor or earthquake. This time we woke up! A strange experience, first it sounds like some really heavy trucks are driving somewhere but when things start vibrating you understand what is happening. Did not last very long. Must have been very small because it has not been mentioned on any news site to my knowledge.

Then woke up later by the sound of 2 gunshots somewhere in the area. Now that is a lot more scary. All in all not really a good night's sleep.

Never a dull day

You have to admit one thing with Air Zimbabwe, life is not boring when you use their services.

Flying home on Saturday I was of course extra early to check-in at the airport. Actually I was the first one to do so. I was met by the same lady who the day before was trying her best to sort out the mess and she said "if there is business class on the plane I will upgrade you" and "we are using the bigger plane so the flight home will be shorter".

At least the short flight was of course good news, it was only that I don't have phone coverage in Zambia and even if I had my battery was flat. Asked a fellow passenger if he had coverage and yes he had but no money left in airtime.

On top of that we leave early! And I had no way of telling Mia until I get to Harare.

Well, there was no business class on this flight but instead they reserved the first 2 rows for me alone and gave me "business class treatment". So I had the little hot towel, choice of newspapers, served before anyone else etc. Nice of them to at least try and I am sure the rest of the passengers were asking themselves what VIP I might be, specially given that I was now in all but fresh clothes.

Arrive home some 45 minutes early and after finding a way to call Mia I find that she is on the other side of Harare at a birthday celebration. So I was stuck at Harare Airport instead but OK, I had an interesting newspaper to read and at least I was now HOME.