all kinds of time...

2011-03-18T11:19:00.001+03:00

2011-03-16T12:35:00.001+03:00

From the moment the invaders arrived, breathed our air, ate and drank, they were doomed. They were undone, destroyed, after all of man's weapons and devices had failed, by the tiniest creatures that God in his wisdom put upon this earth. By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all

2011-02-17T11:48:00.002+03:00

“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him — a balding, heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.“It was the truth they needed

2011-02-04T11:19:00.000+03:00

“When we recall the distance and dissimilarity between us and God, it is easy to wonder whether we have the ability to pray and whether coming into God’s presence is a good idea anyway.Not only does God know that prayer is daunting, but it is even a biblical doctrine that we are not in ourselves equipped for it: Romans 8:26 says, ‘We do not know what to pray for as we ought.’ That same passage

2010-12-03T20:23:00.000+03:00

Start with a cage containing five monkeys.In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water.After a while, another monkey will make an attempt with the same response - all of the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Keep this up

2010-11-08T09:52:00.017+03:00

In a desperate attempt to defib my erstwhile blog back to some semblance of an animate entity, I uploaded a bunch of my photos taken with the blackberry, and they go back a long way (almost 2 years now). I present them in reverse chronological order, starting with this past weekend.This is what trying to get a SIM card on a Saturday morning. In Addis Ababa.This is what I'm hoping will be my next

2010-04-26T14:34:00.000+03:00

Its now April and I am still finding less time than ever to blog. Right now, however, I am trapped in a car for the next 4 hours, and I have my blackberry. Not the most ideal way to type but it gets the job done.We - my Congolese driver and I - are shooting along a ridge-line road, half an hour outside of Kigali on our way north to Ruhengeri, then from there west to Goma, a large border town on

2010-03-30T17:12:00.004+03:00

Blogger tells me I haven't been on this thing since January 20th. Some start this year is off to.I suppose in my last post I wrote my update up to the point of something that's a bit difficult to write about, in that I don't really feel I could do it justice.My grandfather, Dr. J. Paul Schweinfurth, died January 7th, 2010. I'm posting the obit text here under the passing thought that perhaps my

2010-01-20T07:32:00.003+03:00

Been over a month since I last wrote on this thing. Since then, I've gone from Kigali to Nairobi to Dubai to London to Paris to Munich to Vienna to Geneva to Paris to London to Los Angeles to Sacramento to Los Angeles to Sacramento to Los Angeles to Sacramento to Los Angeles to London to Dubai and that is where I am right now. And if all goes well I will be home in Nairobi this afternoon for the

2009-12-15T20:26:00.002+03:00

Well. This year went fast.I think I've worked in something like 15 or more countries this year. I've definitely traveled to at least that many, most for work. Many of them multiple times - Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania - certainly in and out of Kenya a countless number of times. At some point you start to lose track. Its like that opening scene from Fight Club, except the airports are all the

2009-12-06T14:48:00.004+03:00

This past Saturday I went to see 2 of the genocide memorial sites about 25k outside of Kigali. I took Kaarli - one of my friends from Nairobi who's also here for work for a couple weeks, and Leonard - one of my colleagues from work here with me for this project. This post will not be easy to read.The guide books gave some warning before hand but nothing could have really prepared me for the

2009-11-26T20:00:00.003+03:00

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful

2009-11-11T08:51:00.002+03:00

John Allen Muhammad, the mastermind behind the sniper attacks that left 10 dead, was executed Tuesday.On CNN both last night - before his execution, and this morning - after, the reporter told us both that he would, and then did, pay for the lives he took, with his own. She used almost the exact same words both times, in the future tense and then in the past. It struck me both times: how is that

2009-11-02T18:11:00.000+03:00

I'm in Korogwe, which is here.I'm pretty sure I've found the only internet shack in this tiny no-stoplight town. We're about 4 hours east of Arusha, on our way to Dar Es Salaam in the morning. In Tanzania, for those keeping score. I drove my truck from Nairobi to Arusha for about 4 weeks of work with our National Office here, which is based in Arusha. After 2 weeks at the NO, we're now headed out

2009-10-04T15:07:00.004+03:00

My church has been working through a series on relationships lately, the past few weeks have been focused on things like attraction and dating, courtship and intimacy (missed that week when I was out at Naivasha), sex, and today they were due to move into marriage, but they threw a curveball.When it came time for the sermon, the same pastor and wife who last week talked on sex (a talk in which,

2009-09-27T15:04:00.002+03:00

Lazy Sunday afternoon for a change and I'm finally writing...also for a change. Only really 2 things...1. A while back I wrote about Don Dawson, the guy who left his life in the US to go search for his brother who had gone missing in action in Vietnam. I turned up a good deal more than I originally thought I would, including having a commenter offer to send me an original copy of the actual Life

2009-09-16T21:34:00.002+03:00

If the blog looks a bit different, that's because it is. Blogger made some overhauls to their user interface for blog formatting, which as far as I can tell adds significant levels of coding on the back end that make it less likely that I'm finally going to figure out all the HTML and CSS anytime in the near future. Which makes it less likely that I'm going to get around to getting my own site up

2009-09-11T15:12:00.002+03:00

As the fireman said:Don't book a room over the fifth floorin any hotel in New York.They have ladders that will reach furtherbut no one will climb them.As the New York Times said:The elevator always seeks outthe floor of the fireand automatically opensand won't shut.These are the warningsthat you must forgetif you're climbing out of yourself.If you're going to smash into the sky.Many times I've

2009-09-03T16:10:00.002+03:00

A friend writing about the Sabbath reminded me of this article today. I like the end of it in particular:Whenever I dream of living in a society with a greater respect for its Sabbatarian past -- a fantasy I entertain only with anxiety, since Sabbatarians have a long history of going too far -- I think of something two rabbis said. Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, best known for his tales of the golem

2009-08-27T15:55:00.001+03:00

Well, Haiti's going to be over before I finally get around to writing about it, so it's high time I get around to writing about it. I'm just going to go semi-chronological-probably-mostly-stream-of-consciousness on this one and see where we end up.Flew here on a Sunday morning from NYC. Lunch in the hotel, and I realized I was once again eating salad in the third world again. Can't trust the

2009-08-07T06:42:00.003+03:00

Vacation blogging.First off, there's a thing about my blogging. I fell behind in emails with more than a couple people recently, and as I've been trying to get around to telling them all - my blog has become something of a barometer of my free time / ability to have a personal life. Like, if I say, end up randomly working in 4 countries in as many weeks, and only have maybe 6 nights actually in

2009-08-02T21:33:00.003+03:00

Early on in the (rather excellent) movie Fight Club, Edward Norton's character meets Brad Pitt's character (well, so to speak), and they have a brief exchange whilst sitting next to each other on the airplane they're on. Ed tells Brad about his "single-serving friend" idea - how he meets people on airplanes and considers them "single-serving friends" just like the single-serving of butter they

2009-07-26T21:39:00.001+03:00

A year in review.365 days ago I turned 30, on my own, in Ghana.Then in August, I climbed Kilimanjaro, also on my own (kinda). And then I met up with my church's youth group for our missions trip to an AIDS orphanage in Jinja, Uganda. Then I was back in NYC finding an apartment with Dave.The fall was somewhat uneventful - I went back to Cali for Margy's wedding, and spent the rest of it mostly in

2009-07-09T19:16:00.001+03:00

Fourth party was off the hook, and despite our shenanigans I somehow didn't end up in jail. Fireworks are readily available in Nairobi because there's a large Indian population that has at least one holiday per year that they celebrate with fireworks (apparently there's another one where they throw paint at each other). So Saturday morning, after a quick brunch, Aaron and I hit up the fireworks

2009-07-03T12:29:00.003+03:00

I clearly derive far too much enjoyment out of writing party-invite emails:My fellow Frisbeetarians, Countrymen, et. al. -(please note you can read the important parts of this invitation in fast-forward by simply reading only the bold parts.)Please note that we far-flung Americans will be celebrating our liberation from our erstwhile tyrannical British overlords, this Saturday in my modest back

2009-07-02T18:20:00.000+03:00

I was driving with my children to my wife's funeral where I was to preach the sermon. As we came into one small town there strode down in front of us a truck that came to stop before a red light. It was the biggest truck I ever saw in my life, and the sun was shining on it at just the right angle that took its shadow and spread it across the snow on the field beside it. As the shadow covered that

2009-07-01T18:24:00.001+03:00

It is now time to talk about the bad day.The best worst day of my life (so far, I think) happened in college. I remember it pretty clearly. In fact, most of the stories I remember pretty clearly happened in college. I don't remember a lot before that very clearly, for various reasons, but that's a story for another time, or perhaps not.It was the second half of my junior year and I was rooming

2009-06-18T16:23:00.000+03:00

My alma mater runs an alumni update magazine type-thing that recently included a story on my work here in Africa, with a link to my blog, which may or may not have been a good idea. Let's call it a neutral one. I've just never felt very comfortable about promoting it in any fashion.Anyway, if that's how you came to be reading this, you may be interested in my fairly recent post on what I'm doing

2009-06-17T20:17:00.002+03:00

It is now time to talk about the bananas.When I was a kid, all the way up until I was 14 or maybe 15, I was pretty indifferent about bananas. Something happened, though, right around that age, that forever changed how bananas taste for me, and I have, since that day, hated bananas with a particular passion (only one other food shares that honor: eggs - but even those I eat occasionally in an

2009-06-15T18:20:00.001+03:00

(Copy/pasted and slightly edited from a chat I had on gmail today because yeah, that's all I've got in me at the moment. I'm sick again, feeling completely drained, hopefully Jonny doesn't catch it. Also, disclaimer for Mom - everyone is fine now, except for me being sick.)so jonny stayed up into the middle of the night last night doing whatever it is he does, and threw a last load of laundry

2009-05-28T23:43:00.001+03:00

Sundays are the best. I should really get more work done on Saturdays, but lately I've woken up so tired that I get little done, and if anything its pressing, immediate matters (a months overdue haircut, refilling the drinking water bottles when there's none left, etc.). So the only bad part of Sunday is that I'm behind on work and I always tell myself that I'll get it done in the afternoon since

2009-05-23T15:10:00.001+03:00

It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and

2009-05-21T19:57:00.000+03:00

Well. Today was interesting.I went to Kibera, the biggest slum in all of Africa.For a court date, where I was found guilty in a real live Kenyan court. Of driving with a break-light out, for which I was apprehended yesterday.Here's the thing: in Africa, when it comes to dealing with law enforcement, there is the easy way, and there is the hard way. The easy way is to give them money and leave,

2009-05-21T02:35:00.000+03:00

Something spurred me to look something up on my blog yesterday and that made me realize how long its been since I last wrote - it hasn't been often since I started this thing that I actually missed a whole month, but I managed to do it again.It has been straight crazy - non-stop - since I hit the ground here in January. I've worked in 5 countries so far (including here in Kenya), 2 of which -

2009-03-27T15:55:00.003+03:00

A bit about what I'm doing in Africa. Prepare yourself for some acronyms.I am now with World Vision International (WVI, or WV for short), the largest non-governmental organization (NGO) doing humanitarian work on this continent (based on spend. I think its World Food Program - WFP, World Health Organization - WHO, and UNICEF - all 3 of which are public orgs - who are bigger). WV is:...a Christian

2009-02-26T13:38:00.003+03:00

This is awesome, its ESPN's top 4 players from each team in the American League, and they pick Billy Beane, even though he hardly even played for them, citing his incredible contributions off the field as the General Manager. The explanation is priceless (literally, almost):Billy Beane? Over Rollie or Catfish or La Russa or Giambi or Eck? Yes. Since 2000, only two franchises have won more games

2009-02-25T16:31:00.002+03:00

There's this brief 15 or maybe 20 minute window in the weekday afternoons here in the Westlands area of Nairobi where everything just slows down for a minute. The children leaving school across the street have all disappeared, and people aren't yet "knocking off" (as they say) from work. It usually starts right around 4:30pm, and it is glorious.Pretty soon the street will be covered in the

2009-02-06T21:17:00.003+03:00

This is a small cone of paper wrapped around some nuts.I bought it tonight on my way home from a kid, standing in the middle of the road, in the dark, in traffic. He stands there every night, from the start of rush hour until late in the evening. He's wearing his school outfit - a dirty white collared shirt covered with the typical v-neck sweater. Slack shorts that are a little too short for his

2009-02-04T18:14:00.003+03:00

OK so I should probably write an update about last week and who I met in Kampala and what I went and did last weekend in Western Uganda, but instead I'm just going to blow some steam about the car situation here in Nairobi. Which can be summed up pretty succinctly:It sucks.The main problem is the duties. Duties to get a new vehicle here typically (TYPICALLY) run right around the same amount as

2009-01-14T12:20:00.003+03:00

And now I live in Nairobi.Actually I'm still at a hotel, where every night I get to play my favorite new game, "Let's Not Get Malaria." You get points for however many mosquitoes you can kill, bonus points for finding the holes they're getting through and blocking them, and negative points for every bump you wake up with - one on my forearm and one on an ear this morning. I can't wait to get an

2008-12-27T03:06:00.004+03:00

So. Yeah.Not much blogging lately just because life has been nuts. That's always the excuse but this time its somewhat legitimate...I resigned last week from Accenture and accepted a position with World Vision. I'll be returning to Africa as the Program Manager for Global Supply Chain Management Implementation there (a mouthful, right?). I'm flying to Nairobi on January 10th and will be looking

2008-11-26T16:29:00.003+03:00

In the last decade, urbanism has con- verged, to some extent, with another field of study: Internet use. It's probably not an accident. Both cities and the Internet are at once highly atomized and elaborately connected milieus that encourage both solitude and interaction with the diverse, bountiful unwashed. And like city solitaires, Internet users were also once identified as antisocial loners,

2008-11-23T03:12:00.004+03:00

7 days, 1 hour, and 14 minutes ago was the last time I heard from my friend Lu. We were chatting over gmail, like we always did.We had been chatting off and on all day, ever since I pinged her at 8:25am right after I woke up that Saturday morning.It seems really long ago now.She told me about the bad dream she had and I told her about how I never really dream anymore. She told me about how foggy

2008-11-10T22:42:00.003+03:00

I'm spending today and tomorrow in our West Village office for meetings with the partners that are doing the account planning session for the client I'm helping out with. I love this office because this is the view from my desk.Also, the main office area is a big wide-open work space about half the size of a city block. Its got high ceilings with those suspended HVAC ducts, and for some reason

2008-11-05T05:19:00.004+03:00

They're projecting Pennsylvania for Obama, which essentially means that McCain has to find a way to carry 5 out of 5 of the remaining must-win states to have a chance at the white house.Whatever.That's what I have to say to this whole race. These many months of insanity. This night of anticipation and mass celebration and grieving. What the freak ever.You know what McCain would screw up? The

2008-11-04T04:59:00.004+03:00

I've been researching the story of Lt. Daniel Dawson, a pilot shot down over Vietnam in November of 1964, and his older brother Donald. I first heard of the Dawson brothers' story in a sermon that quoted Edmund Clowney's own sermon, Sharing the Father's Welcome. You can read the following excerpt in its entirety, here.During the war in Vietnam, Army Lieutenant Daniel Dawson’s reconnaissance plane

2008-10-31T01:32:00.004+03:00

Today I went to meet a friend for free lunch at her work (yes, she works at Google, the company I so very-much-want-to-but-probably-will-never-work-for). After catching up on all the deets of late, I started home. Which is when I found out I had taken the wrong keys in my frantic run out of the house (to be fair, I was on the phone getting my annual review from my career counselor at the time).I

2008-10-30T04:24:00.004+03:00

Well there's been a lot going on but nothing I've felt particularly inspired to write about. Or I guess I should say some of them are things I can't really write about yet. Most of you who communicate with me through other mediums are pretty much up to date.Let's just say a lot about my life is kind of up in the air right now. It will be interesting to see where I am (life-wise) by the start of

2008-10-10T07:07:00.002+03:00

Week in CA:- flew there uneventfully.- went to Margy's wedding (still need to put pictures online).- spent the rest of the weekend with Peter then took the train back to Sacto.- worked a bit.- spent some time with Aunt Betty and Uncle Joe and then with the grandparents.- worked more.- drove down to Santa Cruz with dad and got an afternoon of surfing in.- flew back. had an upgrade on my LAX-JFK

2008-09-25T23:09:00.000+03:00

I really wanted to start this sentence with the word "so," but I refrained. Have you ever notice how people tend to use that word a lot lately in beginning a sentence? Someone raised that question recently. Its almost taken the place of "like" although I doubt "like" will ever really go away in my lifetime. "So" goes at the start of the sentence, usually, though. Seems like maybe its half verbal

2008-09-05T18:26:00.002+03:00

People we're still getting mail for who don't actually live here:Ms. Jessica Delisser (apparently she was into the arts - some museum down on Bowery)Ms. Corey Geremia (dance theater workshop, maybe she was roommates with Jessica?)Pilar Menendez (Loehmann's - they're having a shoe sale)Eric Andrus (Fashion Institute of Technology)There's been a number of others but those are the only ones we got

2008-09-04T23:18:00.000+03:00

Kilimanjaro. (doing this before Ghana because I don't have the Ghana pictures online yet)After wrapping up the project in Nairobi with Jane on Friday night, I headed out for dinner with Melissa and some other ex-pats, and then got back to the hotel to pack things up. The next morning I met Louise in the lobby of the Jacaranda, she was waiting for the same bus to Kili as me, an older gal on her

2008-09-03T19:31:00.002+03:00

Chelsea Market's Free Public WiFi User Agreement:I promise to refrain from any hanky pankyOr anything that would make anyone get cranky.Anything I do with this connection that is lame,I absolve Chelsea Market et al of any blame.

2008-09-03T03:45:00.002+03:00

I'm back in the US. Need to catch up on blogging. In store - hopefully in the near future:A) A wrap-up on my project and Ghana - plus pictures from the slave castles on the coast there.B) A recap of my Kilimanjaro climb.C) A recap of the week at the TAOST school in Jinja with the youth group.D) Other stuff...like what might be up next. And stuff.I have a few topics I'd like to hammer out some

2008-08-20T17:03:00.002+03:00

No time for blogging really since Kili (which I promise to blog about when I get back home next week - long story short I summitted solo after a very sketchy night).I have however kind of been managing the blog that the team here in Uganda is using to cover our trip, which you can find here, complete with pictures.More soon.

2008-08-09T21:11:00.003+03:00

I'm in Moshi, the town at the base of Kilimanjaro.I'm gonna go up to my room, pack my backpack, pack my 2nd bag (the one the porters take), crash like a zombie til tomorrow morning, and then I'm climbing for 6 days. I'm on one of the much-lesser traveled of the 5 routes up, so that should make for an even more remote experience than the typical trip to the roof of Africa.Those of you who know me

2008-08-03T20:50:00.002+03:00

Last week was all work, wrapping up interviews with WV's Area Development Programs, for the most part. Tuesday Lewis and I flew up to Tamale, the northernmost city one can fly to within Ghana, and had some meetings there at the Ghana Rural Water Programs office. That afternoon we drove up even further north to Bongo, a rural area that was seriously affected by the floods last year. We met with

2008-07-26T22:56:00.001+03:00

Turned 30 today. That's about it.

2008-07-24T23:36:00.002+03:00

I'm not a fan of Ghana. I'm going to try to get to Togo (to the east) and maybe Burkina Faso (to the north) but from what I've read, neither are any nicer than here.The country used to be called the Gold Coast. There's lots of gold here, so mining is a big industry, just like in lots of southern Africa. They've also recently discovered that they have a lot of black gold as well, so of course the

2008-07-22T16:43:00.002+03:00

Read this question first. What follows is a story I wrote in response (which kinda technically broke the site guidelines so it got deleted).June 12th, 2067.We're hovering down the windy, decrepit old road that used to be CA Highway 50, en route to South Lake Tahoe. Its so freaking hot, even at this elevation. There wasn't much snow this winter, and unlike when I was a kid, the snow doesn't last

2008-07-19T21:19:00.003+03:00

I got mugged today.That's the bad news - most of it, at any rate. Good news is that it looks as though I'm still going to see 30 next week.I woke up early - 6am, and the first thing I did was look at my camera. I had been trying to decide whether or not to take it with me to Kokorbite today. I know it wants to leave me, all of my cameras apparently want to leave me, but I decided I'd be extra

2008-07-18T22:21:00.002+03:00

Tomorrow I'm going to Kokrobite - a town about 30kms from Accra, where there is report of surfboards for rent. I will leave it to your creative imagination what I will spend the day doing. Lonely Planet also tells of a pizza place there where the chef rides his bike to Accra every day for fresh ingredients. So hopefully the day will end almost as well as it begins.And now I have blogged, which

2008-07-17T22:17:00.003+03:00

In Ghana now.Decided this morning that I'm not going to let myself have dinner unless I've blogged already. Every day in Ghana, or at least every day I have internet access, that's the goal.I got in yesterady (and didn't blog, yeah, I noticed). Toffa met me at the airport. I left a bag with a copper print I had bought in Zambia in the car that took me to the airport, and of course the guy

2008-07-13T19:29:00.002+03:00

And like that, my time in Zambia is through.Its been a whirlwind 3 weeks, as evidenced by the nearly complete lack of blogging. Let's see if I can catch up a little. I spent the first week bouncing between low-cost lodges trying to save on project budget, but they weren't nice, security was iffy, and I didn't have regular power or any internet access. And my camera got lifted, AGAIN. Apparently

2008-06-30T20:03:00.000+03:00

! Lots to blog about, but here's the biggest item of late:-----Original Message-----From: TED.com [mailto:support@ted.com] Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 6:01 PMTo: Knowles, David C.Subject: We've received your TED2009 membership formThank you for submitting your TED2009 registration form. We received it and lookforward to reviewing it. Generally, you can expect to hear from us within fourweeks. If

2008-06-25T16:57:00.000+03:00

Lusaka.I've been here since Monday night. I was supposed to fly in mid-day, but when I got to the airport in Joburg Monday morning, they informed me that there was no fuel in Zambia and as such no more passengers / luggage would be allowed on the plane as it had a weight-max due to the need to carry extra fuel. I'm pretty sure I just missed the cut-off too because there wasn't anyone standing

2008-06-17T01:33:00.003+03:00

Apparently people do actually check my blog from time to time, because a few of you, my precious internet stalkers, have recently gone so far as to point out my lack of bloggery lately.Apparently being in the US is not conducive to my motivations to write.Let's see. Its mid June now. What's new...Dave and I are pretty much all settled in the new place. I was worn down into picking up a HD flat

2008-06-02T06:02:00.000+03:00

I'm a four and a half point Calvinist and that makes the fact that I've de-prioritized dating in my life an OK thing.If you're not sure what Calvinism is, well, its a reformed Christian doctrine based on the original insights of a one John Calvin, during the reformation era in Europe. Here's Dave's fast and furious recap of the 5 tenets of Calvinism:Total Depravity - man is completely dead in his

2008-05-25T09:29:00.001+03:00

Well, yeah. I've been back for what, about a month now, and no blogging. Eh.I've been busy mostly and then also not very much at other times. Here's the short recap:Week 1 - spent some time back in CA with the folks. Flew out to NY and started the apartment search with Dave. Found / settled on a place.Week 2 - worked out all the details on the place. Went to the office, got some training done.

2008-05-01T05:59:00.000+03:00

I could probably count on one hand the number of times in my life that I've felt truly overwhelmed.Now is one of those times. NYC is, quite literally, overwhelming me.There is so much to do. There are youth leader interviews with the students for the Uganda missions trip this August, and then there's trying to figure out where I'll be and whether or not I'll be able to join the trip. There is

2008-04-19T14:01:00.001+03:00

5:44 AM. Saturday morning. Its still dark, but I'm awake. In 12 hours I'll be leaving SA airspace. The project ended yesterday.I grab the last orange Fanta out of the fridge and sit down to blog.Kind of fell off the blogging horse for the last week or so - its been a bit crazy wrapping up the project, saying goodbye to everyone, packing up, juggling the possibility of 3 more months of extension

2008-04-11T17:34:00.004+03:00

Day 3 was all in the field, and rather incredible. I'll start with just the morning.First thing after the morning meeting at the CoW centre, I headed just a few blocks away through town to a building site behind one of the nicer hotels in Gulu (to say nothing of the hotel quality scale in places like these). Just behind the hotel, there was a flurry of activity surrounded by long piles of stacked

2008-04-09T17:48:00.003+03:00

My second day in Gulu started with an early morning run. I took the main road heading south out of town, and ran past literally thousands of other people walking in the opposite direction - into town (there are cars here, but the vast majority of people here have probably never ridden in one). I've tried to get out and go running in the neighborhoods in most of the countries I've visited that it

2008-04-08T17:31:00.003+03:00

It’s the end of Day 1. It's been a long day.Landed last night in Entebbe, where I met up with Diana, who drove us to her place in Kampala. She had a massive dinner cooked and after that, I went to bed, where I didn't really sleep much all night. Spent the first couple hours on the last of my geographical / historical research on Northern Uganda, and the rest of them tossing around in the heat,

2008-04-07T17:48:00.003+03:00

Uganda.It all started on Thursday, I realized as I was rushing through the terminal just a few minutes ago. But Thursday seems so long ago. So very long ago.Thursday I walked out of World Vision's headquarter offices on the northern edge of greater Los Angeles. I walked to my car and drove into the constant traffic that makes its home in that city. I drove south to OC. I saw friends. I crashed at

2008-04-06T21:10:00.003+03:00

Mauritius.Have you ever spent an entire week not knowing what time it was? I have.I'm on the flight back to Johannesburg and I just asked my exit-row neighbor what the time difference was between Mauritius and Joburg. Turns out its +2 hours (which means we're an hour further east of Baghdad - the MS Windows clock lists +2:00 GMT as "Harare, Pretoria" and +3:00 GMT as Baghdad - which is the same

2008-04-01T19:16:00.002+03:00

In Mauritius.Uganda was incredible and I'm working on typing up my notes from it. Produced a lot of good stuff.Surfing during the day and sleeping a lot, for a change, during the night. After about a month of < 4 hours a night, this is a blessing.Not much easy access to internet here so blogging will probably remain delayed until I return to ZA on Saturday.Also, it occured to me today as I was

2008-03-22T17:12:00.003+03:00

In LAX. Crazy week. Drove fast a lot.Off to IAD. Then JNB. Hope to get in with enough time to make it to the evening service at church. Then off to Uganda.Don't expect to blog much before Mauritius, if even by then.But I will be writing.

2008-03-20T04:35:00.002+03:00

A few weeks before I last left Johannes- burg, a church I've been attending on Sunday evenings held a public forum of sorts, entitled "South Africa: Staying or Leaving?"It was extremely well attended, if that tells you anything about the importance of the issue there, of late.Emigration isn't a word you hear used a lot in the US. While immigration is a hot topic (one that even the presidential

2008-03-19T02:57:00.004+03:00

Gaze upon its beauty, and fall before it in your terror.I have acted foolishly this week, and disregarded the apostle's wisdom and guidance to flee temptation. Nay, I have sat down in the midst of temptation, time and again, and stomped upon her gas pedal of power, pushing dangerously close to and perhaps slightly exceeding the speed limitations of the various counties of the greater Los Angeles

2008-03-18T06:30:00.003+03:00

OK so I'm in LA. For a bit.I got my shower in LHR. Turned out to be a lot easier than I thought - premier exec status on United gets you lounge acess when flying international. Go me.Flights were still long but Peter was waiting for me in SFO in his uniform, which was kinda cool, cause I was on the phone fighting with Sprint to get my super-discounted plan re-set-up, and he took my luggage cart,

2008-03-12T05:05:00.000+03:00

OK so work is crazy and tomorrow night I enter a period of roughly 30 hours that will be spent either on a plane or in an airport. Which I am not looking forward to. But I have done detailed research on LHR and come to the tentative conclusion that I can get a shower there w/o needing to drop dime on the red carpet club. So that's something. I'm pretty much packed and am taking home a bag of

2008-03-09T00:55:00.000+03:00

0-for-3, so that's a strike-out for this week. It was a crazy week. Zambia is crazy.Anywhere in Africa is crazy, but I've been pretty blessed to be based in the one country in sub-saharan that's not too dissimilar from a European feel. You go elsewhere - Moz, Zim, Zambia...and at best, things are just plain crazy. A different approach to business, a different methodology on time, just different

2008-03-04T07:41:00.000+03:00

So yeah. Today I was a speaker. I spoke, and everything. Ahoy.The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) is basically one of the leading consortiums of...well...SCM Professionals...in the industry. Today and tomorrow they're having their Southern Africa 2008 conference, and today I had the honor of presenting, along with my client lead, on Humanitarian Supply Chain Management in

2008-03-02T03:01:00.001+03:00

Retro- blogging: First trip to Kruger.So back when Brian was still here, he and I headed off for an extended weekend at Kruger, my second safari, I think his 3rd. Suffice to say we had fairly high expectations after such a great time at Medikwe.Kruger is about a 4-5 hour drive from Pretoria, basically straight east - its situated right on the border with Mozambique. I had my first

2008-02-28T14:14:00.000+03:00

Bonus story time this week! Why? Because I'm not going to jail, which is as good a reason as any to celebrate (really this is me just putting off retroblogging for another day). Read on.So its the day before I'm due to fly to South Africa for the first time. Its a warm Saturday in August, and I say goodbye to the folks and drive off with my brother Jonny on our way to San Francisco. I was flying

2008-02-27T14:34:00.001+03:00

OK. Not going to have the time for the retroblog today so that's still on hold. It'll be the long one to write so I am of course putting it off. The easy one, since its already written, would be story time, but I'm not letting myself off the hook. So instead, its reading update time. This one will be short.What is the What (Eggers) is one of the best written books I've ever read. If you haven't

2008-02-26T14:46:00.004+03:00

A clarification on pictures. I like to post at least one visual to accompany most of my posts here, as you may have noticed. It recently came to light that some people might be uncertain as to the author of these photos, so, for clarity's sake: most of the pictures I use with my posts are not my own. The majority of the time, I like to look for a picture related to the theme or topic that I'm

2008-02-19T21:45:00.003+03:00

Have you ever seen The Sandlot(question mark)(I cant do question marks, or apostrophes, or lots of other useful stuff with this stupid Portuguese keyboard.)Theres this part in the movie where the one kid, I think his name was Smalls, well, theyre all at the pool admiring the life guard that Smalls lusts after, and finally smalls just flips his lid. I...CANT...TAKE IT...ANYMORE!Thats how I feel

2008-02-18T13:38:00.000+03:00

First blog from Mozambique. I think this makes country #8 or something like that over here.ITS HOT.Like 31c, and there's more H2O in the air than there is O. Seriously, the humidity here puts Miami to shame.Saw the Indian Ocean for my first time this morning on my morning run. So, technically, I've seen them all now. It looked wet, and right now the plan is to see it for a week straight come

2008-02-17T00:55:00.000+03:00

Didn't get around to more than a couple of things this week, and next week will likely be the same story. Leave for Mozambique for work all week there tomorrow night. They've been getting a ton of flooding so its my first exposure to emergency relief field work, which I'm really looking forward to.No idea what connectivity will be like there but its safe to expect less blogging next week. Back in

2008-02-15T14:28:00.002+03:00

Some of the songs that the mp3 player pulled up yesterday, in its usual witty and sarcastic fashion:Here I Go Again on My Own - White Snake (first song of the day. no joke.)Love is a Losing Game - Amy WinehouseForever Blue - Chris IsaakDecembers of Love - Imogen HeapLose You - Pete YornNothing Lasts Forever - Maroon 5By Myself - Linkin ParkYours and Mine - Fountains of WayneCalifornia Love - Tu

2008-02-14T13:59:00.004+03:00

girls. digital cameras. ginger ale. rain when i'm running in the morning. 5 siblings. cheese. puppies. camoflague cargo shorts. fresh-cut grass. swimming pools on hot days. martial arts. providence rather than coincidence. skydiving. gravity. that i knew all of my grandparents and they all lived long lives. snow. skiing. working with high schoolers. the internet. so very much the internet. gmail.

2008-02-14T05:16:00.000+03:00

Story time! Back to college. So its the same year that I was still in the suite with Dave and Steve, the pimp pad. This, however, is not a story about the pimp pad. This is a story about how the passion palace came to be, and how that almost derailed a train. Literally. So room draw comes along that year (drawing for my room for senior year) and I draw the 19th pick out of the entire senior

2008-02-12T15:14:00.000+03:00

I just had one of the best customer service experiences of my life.Background: I've been a subscriber to Netflix since about the time I graduated from college (that's more than a couple years now, for those doing the math). I joined when they were just getting started, and opted for the 4-DVDs-out-at-a-time plan. I figured, knowing how horrible I am at returning movies on time, I was netting a

2008-02-11T14:08:00.000+03:00

In the works this week:- Retro- blogging my first Kruger Park trip as well as my work trip to Zambia.- More story-time. Haven't decided what yet, but probably something from college. Probably the time we almost derailed the train my senior year.- Possible but not probable: a story of a rather singularly impactful memory from my childhood. Not really story-time material here, but I've been working

2008-02-10T01:15:00.000+03:00

Get the drawing up. Check.Concussion story. Check.Thoughts on questions. Check.Retro-blog Nairobi and Masai. Check. Check.Update on future plans.4 out of 5 is not bad. That's a passing grade right there.I'm pretty sure this is the most I've been writing in like...years, which is kinda scary. And I'm drawing. And playing stupid amounts of guitar. Its amazing what you can get done when you stop

2008-02-08T04:32:00.000+03:00

Retro- blogging. Kenya. Here we go.Kenya was right around the end of September because I flew straight to Nairobi after my time in London. We had Kemi, the consultant that ended up leaving the project, in tow, and once we met up at the airport (different flights), we had a cab to the hotel, a change of clothes, and were off to WV's offices in a part of town called the Westlands. Nairobi was my

2008-02-06T14:29:00.000+03:00

Questions.Late last year I had been doing some informal research on asking good questions, with a very little bit of the very little free time I had. For some reason, I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to be a better question asker - I want to be more like my friends who are good at getting other people to talk about themselves. I think it probably had something to do with the whole

2008-02-05T11:43:00.000+03:00

It is now time to talk about the concussion.That's not an entirely accurate way to put it. There have actually been a lot of concussions. More than is healthy for one person to have, but that's just one of those it-is-what-it-is situations, not much I can do about it now, except maybe try not to have many more (I've done real good, haven't had any in a couple years now! Knock on wood! Just not