"What Kind of F*ckery is This?"

"What Kind of F*ckery is This?"

As flawed and imperfect as I am, and as many mistakes as I make on a daily basis, I cannot help but to notice and be immediately attracted to the errors of others.

Monday was a day of big-time editing mistakes, and I'm loving it!

My favourite comes from Nation Media's The East African. This is an accompanying photo to the article entitled "Will Tenager South Sudan Rebel Against Daddy Museveni?" in it's print publication:

Take notice of the caption below the photo.

Now, I have a hard time accepting that this 'gaffe' was not intentional. I have a feeling that someone was willing to make the apology that will indubitably be forthcoming and just did it.

Then there's the Today Show. When reporting on the death of Amy Winehouse, someone, "...sleepless peon or tasteless commedian?...", made this bungle.

Dancing On My Own

Dancing On My Own

Not everyone can pull it off.

By 'it', I mean carry a music video while dancing solo.

Janet did it in 1987.

Britney did it in 2000.

Robyn is doing now.

Phenomenal women doing it phenomenally.

They remind me of the amazingly choreographed solo dance performances that take place almost daily in my living room.

Amazing.

The Republic of South Sudan

The Republic of South Sudan

9th July 2011

Michael Kiwanuka

Michael Kiwanuka

Michael Kiwanuka opened for Adele last night at the iTunes Festival London 2011. I wasn't able to watch the show because the speed of the internet provided by my Orange stick in Kampala was not fast enough to accomplish the stream. I did manage to download his EP, Tell Me a Tale (The Isle of Wright Sessions), from iTunes and watch a couple of his videos on youtube.

If you are interested in more of his music, his myspace page is pretty good, a bit of free music.

I Will Sing=California King Bed. Credit Given?

I Will Sing=California King Bed.

Credit Given?

In case you missed the interview/conversation with Maurice Kirya on Sanyu FM yesterday, I've got to share with you this interesting tidbit.

First listen to the acoustic guitar intro to Maruice's song, I Will Sing, from his album Misubbaawa, released 14th December 2009.

Now have a listen to the acoustic guitar intro to Rihanna's California King Bed, from her album Loud, released 12th November 2010, almost a year later.

Coincidence? Hmmm...

But where would The Runners, Priscilla Renae and Alex Delicata, the 'writers' of California King Bed, have had the opportunity to hear Maurice's music before penning the song for Rihanna? Have you heard of iTunes, where his album Misubbaawa is available for purchase? Or the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas, where Maurice performed in March of 2010?

Someone is getting paid for that music. California King Bed is not just the sixth single from Loud, but it is also being featured in Nivea's '100 Years of Skin Care' add campaign.

Like I said, someone is getting paid for that music; let's hope our friend, Maurice, is getting a cut.

The Power

The Power

Today's Monitor headline: Firms Cut Power Over Government Debts

Today's New Vision headline: Power Plants Switch Off in Protest

Text message from UMEME (the main electric company in Uganda): "Dear Customer, we regret to inform you that UETCL has informed us of a generation shortfall of 50MW day and 120MW peak resulting into both day and night emergency load-shedding."

Gee! That sounds like fun!

The source of the problem for all of us who work hard to pay our power bills on time? No, it's not being blamed on drought and a low water level of Lake Victoria this time. Oh... the government only owes around 300 billions shillings to the supplemental electricity suppliers.

It is predicted that the load-shedding will cost about $400 million in business and services. So it looks like the February elections just got a bit more expensive to the Ugandan people. Factoring this in, how much will the MPs allowance increases and those fancy new cars actually cost the Ugandan workers and tax payers?

These days in Uganda, if it's not one power crisis, it's another. This time the power happens to be electricity. And you remember what President Museveni had to say about electricity during an interview in April: "When a country has no electricity that's a sign of bad governance."

Ok then.

There, he said it.

I don't need to add any more.

No Hope

No Hope

Last Saturday was the Kampala Hash House Harriers' annual Kampala-Jinja Relay. I once again ran with the No Hope team. This was my fourth relay with the hashers and as a No Hoper. It was great fun to be reunited with my teammates and get to know some new faces during our cross-country trek.

The Jinja Relay is by far my favourite hash event of the year; it's been one of the highlights of the year since 2007. (Unfortunately, I missed last year's run because it was held later in July, and I'd already flown to the US.) One day, someone had the brilliant idea of finding a route through village, sugar cane plantation, forest and eventually over the Nile river from Kampala to Jinja and dividing the almost-90km distance into 17 segments. Then it was decided that teams of 9 would take turns and relay run the course, with the non-runners going by caravan to the next check point.

It was a beautiful day. It was a HOT day. The latter made the run quite a challenge, but like Elle Woods, I like a good challenge. And my masochistic tendencies drive to taking pleasure from the pain of going that extra mile and making it up that last hill.

Potential Toll of a Bell

Potential Toll of a Bell

I can only write this post in a light-hearted manner today because the potential disaster was fortunately averted.

One of today's headlines in the Monitor was:

Kasese School Uses Bomb as Bell

When I read that, I thought some over-zealous chemistry teacher of some mischievous science geeks decided to play a practical joke on some school goers. Well, that wasn't the case. Turns out, as the headline says, a school was using a bomb as a school bell.

If you've ever visited schools in Uganda, you may have noticed that many reuse old iron wheel rims as their school bells. They beat them with iron rods to indicate the beginning and end the school day, class sessions, lunch, etc... They are hung at the schools like the one in this photo.

Well, I guess someone found a piece of iron in the ground that looked like it could serve the same purpose, and hey, it was free. In a place where cash is a very limited resource, it would make sense to try and reuse what must have been viewed as a rather useless hunk of junk.

Little did they know it was an unexploded bomb. Imagine teachers and students, day in and day out during the school year, beating on this metal bomb hung in the school yard to call school to order?

I wonder how long they used it before it was recognised for it's actual purpose. Fortunately, no one dealt it a strong enough blow to detonate it, and a happy ending can be written: it's been removed from the school and will soon be disposed of.