Hip Hop Translations

I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

RcheeStahsS

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add CHNEPR to your google hompage or what ever it is one does with RSS.

I will be amazed if any of you actually use this information.

Papers, Please.

I had to pick up some necessities this evening—besides a toothbrush—so I got a cab. The company lets me sign it to their account so I can get around. The traffic isn’t too bad, it’s jsut more of a hassle to get around.

About twice now Ngong has been all backed up and there have been police in long jackets, one usually carry an automatic rifle, an AK, I think, but who am I kidding? I know about as much about guns as I know about girls: I don’t know why I like them, I just do you don’t handle them properly, they could go off at any momentmost likely hurting someone.

Still, the first time we got stopped, It was like a DUI checkpoint, but there were no flashing lights, just stopped cars and spikes in the road to deter anyone from just speeding off.

Tonight, on the way to Nakumatt, the cab was stopped. I rolled down the window, as I was instructed to last time. The officer asks to see my ID card or passport and the driver for his cab license.

Now, I dunno about you, but I never liked cavorting about foreign lands carrying on my person the sole document that will grant me entry back into home nation. I like to keep cash, important papers safe like Dick Cheney.

So I hand him my Nevada Driver’s license.

He’s trying to keep the straight cop face but he looked like I handed him a fish.

A mackerel, I think.

He hands it back to me.

But he keeps the cabbie license and goes to check the other cars behind us. Tony, my driver, explains that the cops give cabs trouble because it’s easier to get money out of cabs. I would assume it’s because the cabs give people rides and get paid in cash. You know, goods and services in exchange for currency.

But I think it’s also cause I’m a cracker. The cop wanted me to be scared. But I had nothing of which to be afraid. I’m in the country legally and I wasn’t doing anything illegal at the time. From all my run-ins with the boys in blue in The States, I’ve learned that if you haven’t done anything wrong, they’ve got nothing.

The cop returns shines his flashlight at me and asks the cabbie to get out of the car.

I just wanted to buy some damn hand soap for the kitchen that I should’ve gotten when I went to get the toothbrush

“I asked for your passport not your driver’s license. Where is your passport?”

I did not correct him that he had asked for my passport or my ID card.

“It’s in my room. Locked up. I don’t like cavorting foreign lands about with the the sole document that will grant me amnesty when I’m smuggle 14 kilos of uncut smack into central Burundi.”

Luckily, prisons in Kenya have high speed internet.

In Barack’s Shadow

Never arrive in a foreign nation the same week as a US senator.

You won’t get credit for jack.

Nor will go get a many fine democratic ladies.

In short, make sure you check conflicting schedules.

hang on…

Where’s his left hand?

Random YouTube: QVC Big Horse

I’ve been through most of the channels at my house and I don;t think I have a home shopping network of any sort.

It must be a western thing.

Online Personality of the Week: Montana

Montana, from Pennsylvania

She’s a bee-keeping vegetarian who likes walking up hills. She is also interested in perscription pills and Yoga, though not apparent if individually or concurrent.

Go get her guys. She’s single!

A Little Bit About Work

“William! Go see the Boss!”

Since I don’t yet have a phone extension the MIS director has to field all my calls. I’d been working all day on configuring a terabyte of net storage, getting ssh to run on a Fedora Core PBX server, negotiating a price on some payroll software, and trying to finagle a few grand from accounts to get a purchase order to a reseller so we could schedule upgrade the accounting and inventory program we use. I was so entrenched in linux docs I didn’t hear him.

“William. Take you comp to the boss!”

It seems everyone very calls everyone by their last name. I’ve even heard people introduce themselves as their last name. It seems East Africa is just like Eastern PA, in that the last letter of my name is always strangely silent. They also call computers ‘comps,’ which I like and am goign to bring into American vernacular.

I had just sat down to a heaping plate of rice, red beans, and cabbage that needed salt and tabasco and I’ve got to be at the boss’ beck and call. There’s one other mac user at Base Camp (thank you Mols), who I’ve been trying to help out since her data was migrated to another user. She books safari tours, and uses her 17″ PowerBook for iLife multimedia capabilities. Somehow after the user swap she can’t access her sent mail. Boggles my frickin mind.

Since the Boss took all the pictures of wildlife, jungle, and serengeti sunsets, I figured I’d be tasked on solving the problem ASAP.

I jumped over some canvas being cut for some part of a tent, hopped across a ditch being dug for pipes running to the new tent factory, and made my way to the exec tents. They look just like the other tents but they house the big wigs.

I wiped my feet on the doormat to the tent (which still strikes me as a funny thing to do) and sat down at the desk.

“Hey! How you doin?”

My boss is great guy. He’s easy going, but intelligent and driven. I want to work hard just so I don’t disapoint him.

“not too bad, just getting over some road blocks with the back up server,” I lied. I hadn’t been able to assign it an IP for the past 3 hours. “What can I do for you?”

“Can I see your MacBook?” he asked.

“Of course,” I replied slightly puzzled, but confident, as I had quit Safari, Firefox, and Quinn before I trekked over. You see, every day is a battle with ADD. It’s not a condition. It’s a disease.
“It’s smaller than the old iBooks, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I responded, impressed with his familiarity. “It’s got the same chipset as the new Pro model, it just integrated graphics, rather than a dedicated processor so its not much of a gaming machine.”

“Hmm. Don’t the white ones have some discoloration problems?”

Hang on a sec. The reps at Fashion Show in Vegas didn’t know about that one. The guy at the genius bar did, but he was a genius and all. It was a fairly limited problem, with the first production models. I told him instead, “my girlfriend has one. She hasn’t had any problems with it. You sure know a bit about Apple….”

“I’ve used them since high school,” he said. “I wanted to check yours out before I asked [the CEO who's in NY right now] to bring me one over from the States. The G4 over in Safaris used to be mine.”

At this point, of course, I had to refrain from nerdifying myself any further by explaining how to find Universal Binaries, how to three OSes at once, how intel just released Merom, the mobile version of the Conroe line today so he might want to wait a week or two if he can, or how I desperately needed more tape for my glasses. So I said, “cool. Lemme know if you need any help setting it up when it arrives.”

It’s nice working with a firm that respects quality.

*

Toothbrush

Jerry’s girlfriend uses a toothbrush that he dropped in the toilet. Of course, he’s so hilariously neurotic that he has to beat her with a sack of oranges. Or something wacky and urban like that.

But even so. It was his toilet, wasn’t it? Not some strange, African toilet.

Most of my friends from school could, without much support, recite most of the episode after only seeing the picture and reading the word, “toothbrush.” I don’t typically remember Seinfeld details. Though at one time I was a crack shot at Saved by the Bell plots….

Yet from the Seinfeld episode in question, I remember one detail quite vidily. The moment after he drops the toothbrush, the shot cuts to inside the toilet—through the still rippling water—looking up at Jerry looking down in shock, surprise, and utter disbelief.

It’s like how can you drop a toothbrush? Brushing your teeth is an every day, habitual, repetitive action. When was the last time you stabbed yourself in the nose with a fork? Or have you ever tried to start car with the keys in the cigarette lighter? With the toothbrush, I guess I could understand a bobble here, juggle there, but a full-on drop? And if ever you do drop it: kerplunk, right in the bowl.

Like toast landing butter side down.

Now, Jerry’s dilemma was that through all the crap about the toothbrush, he had to break up with his girlfriend.

My dilemma, is that the most exciting thing about my Monday was going to buy a new toothbrush.

SOAP

I haven’t seen snakes on a plane. But I hope some of you have.

If you can’t make it to the original, please see the sequel:

At least check out the soundtrack. A guy I know from Cornell is featured with his band Gym Class Heroes.

I worked with him at the Mac Helpdesk.

Now his band is on a the soundtrack of a major motion picture.

I’ve written song about The Olsen Twins.

The Maasai

The Massai are one of roughly 40 tribes of Kenya and arguably the most internationally notorious, due to their colorful dress, leaping warrior dance, and body modification.

My house is just off Ngong Road, past the Nakumatt Junction shopping center, on the western side of downtown Nairobi. It’s only short walk to work and, lucky for me, the firm has outfitted the place with wireless and 150 channels of satellite TV. There’s little yard out front^, as you can see, and it over looks a pond past the electric fence.

It’s not like I’m in a bad area or anything. Most of the apartment complexes and office parks by which I’ve driven have an electric fence around the perimeter. The fence is, I think, the first line of defense. My firm employs members of the Maasai tribe to be the second. They’re nice guys. They have they stretched out lobes that they loop around about the tops of their ears. They dress casually in sneakers, jeans, and rugby shirts; they always return a smile.

Oh.

Yeah.

And they carry bows and arrows.

There’s this one guy who works in the tent factory (yes, the safari hotel/camp/tour/supply firm also makes their own tents) who also always carrys a stick. I don’t quite know what the stick means, but it looks to be carved from a single piece and heavily polished. It’s too short to be a cane, but not big enough to be a club. the stick wouldn;t knock anyone out or inflict serious headwounds, it would just elicit an, “Ow. Why would you do that?”

It may have some cultural significance—a status symbol—but I don’t know enough Swahili to ask.

At first I thought the bows and arrows were similar, since only a couple guys carry them, so I thought them to be only symbolic, rather than functional.

I still haven’t seen them shoot anything, or anyone, but the guys with whom I work have said they’re pretty lethal. I went for a little walk today, to check out the area. Goats seemed to be running around everywhere, and there were three or four little pubs along Ngong Road. I mustered up some courage to walk into one (of the pubs, not the goat) and ended up a having a great time. I had some beers with some local guys who asked a lot about The States, and said I had to go to Mombasa.

As I walked back to place, I said hello to young fellow on my way past headquarters*, and we talked a little. He was Maasai himself, as he proudly professed, and he said he was a pretty good shot. He also said that the weapon itself is indeed symbolic as a rite of passage as a warrior or something like that.
I’m gonna try to learn more.

I’m still working on understanding the accent.

It sounded like he said his name was Robot.

^no I don’t have to mow it.
*OK, headquarters is stupid term. But what else am I supposed to call it? It’s not an office, its tents and a factory…I’ve already dubbed my home The Compound. So I’m welcome to suggestions.