Marrakech, Morocco

Preparing for a trip to Marrakech, Morocco over the next week. My purpose of this visit is to present a computerized interviewing workshop at the IUSSP. I hope to catch some snaps and share them on this blog. Best!

Zimbabwe and Uganda

Just returned from a trip to Harare, Zimbabwe and Kampala, Uganda. Once again I find it amazingly interesting to visit new parts of the world, regardless of the length of time and distance it takes to reach such destinations. In this trip, I visited both countries in eight days - phew!

Blues Brothers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85V8Q6o0c-k

Although not travel related, wanted to share a video done of a recent Karaoke contest that I participated in. What fun! But....tough to watch oneself sing, and try to dance!

Leaving Lusaka

I am leaving Lusaka and am sure going to miss the nice warm weather. It is supposed to be rainy season, but we missed it this past week. The local residents want the rain though!

Today when I awoke I spent time looking out the window and oddly did not see many birds, nor cats, nor dogs, forget about squirrels. In fact, as I drove from the hotel to the various locations I visited, there weren't many animals to be seen. With a populaiton of just about 10 million, I can now understand why there aren't many tall buildings in the downtown area - with the amount of land Zambia has, they can spread it out. Traffic is non-existent. Again, less people, at least in the parts I visited, lots of space, minimizes the contribution to traffic.

Another interesting observation I made is that you only receive paper monetory notes - not a coin to be found! At least I didn't get any coins as change when making purchases.

Lusaka

Arrived in Lusaka on Tuesday morning, had a really good flight from London. I had a long layover(11 hours) in London, and because of that decided to utilize a "day-room" at the Heathrow airport. The day-room was provided by Yotel, what a cool place. The rooms are in the actual airport and were designed after the newer first-class airplane cabins, only not on a plane! Very small rooms, but enough to get you a hot shower and a few hours of comfortable sleep. Prices are good, and a great alternative to flying business class, but not at the rate of business class!
Lusaka surprised me, for some reason I expected to see a bustling city, instead to my pleasant surprise I found a peaceful, rural landscape. To me, the people are what make the southern part of Africa so great - very friendly citizens. In my visits to Africa, what I have learned to be typical African are people who enjoy to chat, are very helpful (want to help you!), and above all, keep a cool demeanor. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the residents here.
You can tell I had a great "people" day, can't you?

Back to Africa

After a nice Thanksgiving holiday - although I ended up catching a stomach virus over the long weekend, I'm back on the road heading to Lusaka, Zambia. My work there will include providing technical training and a pilot test of a new version of our Council ACASI software. We have re-engineered the software to operate on a touch-screen laptop, otherwise known as "tablet" computers. Currently in London, England with a layover before my long flight to Lusaka. Will keep this Blog posted on my travels. Stay well.

Final days in India on this trip

The final 3 days of our IT retreat were full of events, including many excellent discussions and work towards our 2/3 year plan goal. However, one major highlight was a visit to the Taj Mahal in Agra. The ride from New Delhi to Agra was quite long, about 4.5 hours. As we traveled south to the Taj Mahal the temperature began to increase. The ride included a stop at a checkpoint at which time we exited the bus for a short time to be greeted by local residents who were happy to entertain us with their monkees. We were able to take several photos of the monkees, even some with them on our heads! It was a lot of fun.
Driving south to Agra allowed us to see camels carrying products, nothing like using good old animal power to get things done. In additon, we witnessed many, many cows. It was interesting to see cows living in harmony with the local citizens. The cows roam the streets and one member of our IT tream, who is from India, commented on how the cows in India run the country. In fact, we had to stop several times along the long road to Agra to allow a herd of cows to cross the street!
As we arrived at the Taj Mahal, we were met with a long line to enter - this on a Thursday. As we looked like a bunch of tourists, we were approached by a local guide who was able to help us past the long line for a fee of course.
The Taj was remarkable, very white and bright. As you get closer to the marble structures, you get blinded by the bright reflection - this on a sunny day for us. The Taj took 22 years to build by over 20,000 workers. I kept thinking about how many workers must have lost their eye-sight while working on the enormous pieces of marble. One interesting item I noted is that the family of our tour guide has lived near the Taj since it was built. In fact, his ancestors helped build the Taj Mahal and now his family is helping to preserve it, live in the area, and continue to work for it. Interesting, all this since the 1630's.
Our ride back to New Delhi was a bunch of fun, having retreat participants from many different parts of the world, is a big plus - very entertaining. Several IT staff members entertained the group on the long ride back by singing and even performing dances native to their countries. We enjoyed Moraccan clap music, a love song and dance from India, before we collapsed back at our hotels very late in the night on Thursday.