12th International Nairobi Bookfair

Last week I went to the International Nairobi Bookfair. Held at the Sarit Centre in Westland. We live 22 minutes walk from the Sarit Centre; thus, I left the kids with the babysitter, and walked to the fair. This was a life time experience, have never seen so many people who took pride in what they're doing. More than 70 publishers, hundreds editors, and authors were seen everywhere. Children from different schools filled the place like a can of beans. It was interesting to see children as young as 8 years bargaining to get the best prices. Books, from children novels, to educational materials, religious, where displayed. It was such a good feeling to rub shoulders with editors, collect business cards, and share knowledgeable thoughts.

Laptop charge wireless, without plugging.

From Christopher Null blog: "Yesterday I had the chance to check out a new laptop from Dell. With its crisp screen, ultra-thin profile, and cutting edge specs like an SSD hard drive, it's certainly a looker, yet there's nothing immediately obvious about the machine -- part of Dell's business-class Latitude line -- that makes it unique. But there's a rare first secreted within the Latitude Z: Its battery can be charged wirelessly, without plugging it in.

The system works a lot like your electric toothbrush. A special dock (available as a $200 option) has a coil of wire inside that matches up with a coil on the bottom of the Latitude Z. When the two coils come in contact, power is transferred over that small distance through induction. Dell says it is no slower to charge this way than through plug-in power (a standard plug is also available when you're on the road and away from the dock). Getting the laptop situated just-so on the dock so that the two coils are in contact didn't seem as easy as it should be, but overall I found the innovation to be decisively cool.

The Latitude Z has other enhancements in its innards, though none as exciting as the wireless charging feature. Dell has long included smart card slots in its corporate-class machine, but an option with the Z lets users simply swipe the card across the palm rest to log in. Dell also uses a separate processor on its own motherboard to give the Z a non-Windows, instant-on mode to give quick access to a web browser, email, contacts, and calendars. Dell says use of the low-power quick-boot mode could provide battery life of half a day or more.

Then there's a wireless docking system -- separate from the wireless charging option -- that lets you connect to USB devices and an external monitor without plugging the computer in. An implementation of long-suffering UWB technology, Dell demonstrated the computer using a secondary monitor connected to the dock, the screen smoothly updating as a company rep walked around the room with the laptop in hand, unconnected to the monitor by wire. It's probably less useful than some of the machine's other innovations (the range of the wireless dock is only 12 feet), but still very cool.

The Latitude Z starts at $1,999 (on sale for $1.799 at the moment) and goes on sale today. Expensive to be sure, and possibly only in reach of the most "C" of C-level executives"

I thought this is interesting

Last week my family and I were seating in the malls having a snack from Wimpy! A Caucasian male smiled at me, thinking whether to ask me a question or not. I smiled back, and that broke the ice, he came near and asked, "Do you have a blog" I said "Yea" He spoke with highly enthusiasm, "hi, I'm from California, and I visited your blog while you where in USA, and few days ago, I visited it again, and thought wow, you're in Kenya." I thought that was nice, we chatted for few minutes... We living in a small world indeed.

Inernet, and phone service in Kenya!

When we first arrived in Nairobi, Internet, and phone connection were some of the things on our top list. You gotta be connected right? Y, right. Anyway, we asked couple people to give us insight on these. Safaricom, Zain, and Orange are the two most internet, and phone services provider in Kenya; however, Safaricom is the most popular one, and many people prefer it because it's easily accessible and faster; you see all the people around selling fruits, snacks, you can buy your top up cards for as law as 20 Kes. We didn't waste much time, on the first month we bought ourselves a safaricom modem, that you can connect to your laptom, and you go wireless. It's fast and very reliable, but a bit expensive. The modem costs 3,999 Kes, and you're charged per MB. The beauty about this is that you can travel to Mombasa, and many other east African countries, and still be connected. Now the phone, because I have a dual card cell phone, I decided to try Zain too, and guess what it's cheaper than safaricom, but I still use my Safaricon number to call the Safaricon friends. Unlike in the US, in Kenya you can receive a call or sms message from anywhere in the world, any time, any day it's free you hear that my friends in US....Don't have to wait for weekends or after 9pm to receive calls. But, there are no free weekends, or free after 9pm and before 8am like in the US. I think I like this system more because you don't have to spend much time on the phone. Safaricom does not offer monthly payments, so this make it very expensive especially if you use your internet for business wise. But the good news is we're waiting for the arrival of the fiber optic cable expected between October and December of 09. Africa has much potential and business opportunities.

Nairobi Kenya Part 3

As we drive through Mombasa road from Jomo Kenyatta airport, I could see the beautiful plantation from the distance, even though it was winter time, the trees have refused to lose their leaves, unlike Ohio's winter. They say every country had it's own culture shocks. My goodness, it didn't take long before I could notice the crazy driving on the Mombasa road. There were no street sign, street light, everyone from different directions will push in to go ahead, sometimes our driver would drive on the side walk for a little while, and find another spot to push in on the road, the interesting thing was that as crazy as the driving looked, there were no accident. All the drivers looked like they've been doing this for years, and it was just normal. We arrived safe at Methodist Guest House where we spent our first seven days in Nairobi. We were greeted by two security guards carrying big guns. We drove through two big gates. At Methodist Guest House we met missionaries from the us, we met Canadian who were adopting children from Rwanda, and many other people from different countries like The Netherland, UK, Philippine, etc. People where friendly, and always wanted to play with the kids. Almost everyone we met called my son, a she. He really didn't like it, he started telling people, I'm a B not a G, then he'll ask them, "do you see me in pink clothes? Because of the water/food, my son got sick during our time in this guest house. We rushed him to Nairobi hospital, he recovered within two days, but after a couple days, he kept complaining about his tummy, and we kept going to the hospital. The children had a little play ground to play which was really nice, I also enjoyed getting my manicure, and pedicure, for pennies it cost less then US$10.00 for both. Below are some of the snap shots from the guest house.

My friend's special day!

Helvi is one of my good friends, and August, and December are the months most Namibians decide to celebrate their special days "Weddings." So happy for you dear, will definitely make it to the baby shower, don't rush whenever you're ready! Love you I'm waiting for the wedding pictures. Many blessings, will see you soon!