Tuesday, August 23, 2005

 

Amazing Feature on Nairobi

For an amazing National Geographic feature on Nairobi look at: http://plasma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0509/feature2/index.html

Sunday, August 21, 2005

 

When it becomes necessary to BUM....

July & August have been a "Living in limbo" duo for me.... changing departments at work, changing day patterns(explains the extra chin developing, thanks to 6 weeks of skyving the gym), adopting a nomad life (Im changing houses so that left me camping at a friends while i add myself on to the list of a million Amsterdam inhabitants/homeless incessantly struggling for space......and being ruthlessly torn apart by the so called housing agents who are out to SQUEEZE me dry.....yaikks!) Apartments are expensive and hard to find in this city and for some reason it seems as though the rest of the world decided to move here......its so CROWDED..... but the best thing so far has been living with my friends as i try to figure myself out......I have been so exhausted with the endless bombardments of workload, backpacking and being in a state of - going with the flow - Its barely been 10 days but i feel resurrected, thanks to Maria and company at the Lazy manor, they had just purchased a hammock by the time i moved in and its been days of watching movies, outdoing myself as the best Kenyan chef in town (i kid not) enjoying the sun when it stealthily slips in (The dutch have an early warning system for detecting the sun) and most importantly, i stopped and became a tourist this summer.......

So let me make you feel kiwaruu (jealous) .... The last 2 weeks i spent my time understanding the gay world by going to the gay pride parade that always leaves amsterdam breathless (Why dont straight men (Side A) try and polish themselves up like their Side B counterparts? Its like walking in a city full of movie stars......sad though that you wont get hit on......but i was wary of the female ones........their stares made me almost sh*t in my pants and want to flee (my mom intends to visit me one of these fine days but hapana......i think i will propose Rome so we can go to St. Pauls and while im at it do some confession......Amsterdam would be sodom and gomorrah in my mums eyes.....im sure of that.....she would have me deported back home if she saw the utterly impossible things you can see and do in this city.....


This past week also happens to be the SAIL festival, imagine 600 ancient sail ships (some are replica´s though) docked at one harbor in amsterdam, wild live music, fireworks and oh my God listening to Enya from the water.....its got to be the greatest thing to see........it happens once every five years and different countries from all over the world are partisan.....check out
www.sail.nl/english .... I tells thee.....beautiful...

Yesterday we risked going to a classical music concert that happens every year on one of the famous canals in Amsterdam (Prinsengracht).....thanks to the human skyscrapers (the dutch people are too tall) i was struggling between crowds to catch a glimpse of the artists performing sounds of famous geniuses like Bach.....there were also some exotic sounds from Spain and Arabia...what made the night for me was of course hanging out with Nomads like me Brenda, Zoe, Goncalo, Maria and the only dutch amongst
us...Mark.....Despite the great music, i was getting so tired of trying to size my neck to that of a giraffee....i gave up and went behind the crowd....Alas....people had brought ladders, wheelburrows and there was some teenage guy who thought he was spider man hanging from a window.....thats how good it was....worth risking your life for....i stumbled upon a space where i sat down and could peer into an Amsterdammers living room (here they dont funga curtains) so atleast i could watch the concert on live TV yay ! - Oh well, got tired again and couldnt wait to head back to Lazy Manor so by midnight i was in bed.....to nurse all the remaining hangovers that had not dissappeared from the champagne party that my former department threw to kick me out to a new department.........I had sworn never to take more than 2 glasses of alcohol a week but it seems like a struggle argh! i think i will just go with the flow.......for the rest of you not taking time to just kick back and do nothing but being a tourist.....try it......its the best medicine for todays mans soul.........

Friday, August 12, 2005

 

Its Kermits 50th Anniversary !!


Dedicated to all you grown up Muppet fans out there.....
I know, I know, im sounding all cheesy & unKenyan about this but if theres something that made my childhood it was the Muppet show......i could watch it over and over again even today.....Kermit is this week marking his 50th anniversary together with Miss Piggy la femme de haute coutoure.....although she IS the Muppets' fashion diva, Miss Piggy will allow Kermit the Frog to join her in two upcoming fashion pubs: Zink magazine and Pop magazine, where the fashionable frog and pig will be dressed in Louis Vuitton. This will mark Piggy's second time to grace the pages of Pop this year, having modeled for a Prada editorial shoot in their spring issue.....YES and Kermit has a TV Star on Hollywood walk of fame (has his name engraved on a star along the Hollywood Boulevard) alongside stars of the past like Martin Scorsese, Kevin Bacon, Susan Sarandon etc etc..........Is it really not easy to be green? :-) i have abit of trouble though with the whole fashionizing of a childhood star - he is just a stuffed toy for chrissake dont ruin him !

Thursday, August 11, 2005

 

Times ARE really changing.....

I had a lazy evening last night, didnt really feel like doing anything so i started watching TV and switching from channel to channel it was like flipping a coin each time I changed to a new station.......heads (H) would be "wierd stuff".....tails (T) would always be "something to do with the weather"

- (H) Viva La Bam on MTV (who invented this ????)
- (T) Hideous drought and wild fires in Spain and Portugal
- (H) Celebrating the Discoverys' crew safe landing
- (T) Starvation & Drought in Niger & Mali
- (H) Iran going well ahead with its Nuclear programme
- (T) Mega-Monsoons in India & Parts of China
- (H) Google buys shares at Ali-Baba (China, China, China.....)
- (T) Wild torrential rains causing dangerous floods in Lithuania (?????? who would have thought that ???)
- (H) Gold miners on strike in South Africa
- (T) Heavy snow (first time in decades) in southern Australia (East Australia hit by flooding too...)
- (H) An ex-Kenyan Qatarian wins a race in the Finland IAAF championship
- (T) Typhoons, Tornados, Hurricanes around the states & Japan
- (H) NASA launches a space device to investigate the red planet (Mars)
- (T) Thinning Ice in Alaska and Migrating wildlife.........

Despite the scorching heat all over Europe, its raining and quite cold in the Netherlands........!!!!
Im alittle worried at the moment because 3/4 of this little country is below sea level.....since the dutch have been smart about this....(canals, dykes & floating mansions) I wonder if theres an evacuation plan if the floods hit or if the sea decides to highten.......hmmm......would the country float? Random thought....... Most of my dutch friends have boats.....i should think of hooking up with some Expats and buy us a boat....maybe thats the plan.......?*&%#@!

In between all this Irony I figured that the hottest job right now is being a weather man......theres lots to say and guess what ! you can even travel to the disaster areas to report....while people are starting fires in Indonesia, the fires are starting themselves in Spain, while the US is completely agitated with Irans Nuclear plans, they themselves are working hard to enrich their Nuclear power plants ...While Niger & Mali are currently the most popular countries in Africa, they happen to be having quite an amount of Uranium.....cant eat it though.....all in all....isnt it just amazing just how weather news is like watching a thriller nowadays?

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