Just another year, no?

Up through the summer of 2011, everything was normal, going sort of according to plan.  Very normal, very suburban.. and then it wasn’t.

In 2011, I spent New Year’s eve at the house of my friend Carlos.  I had met him long ago and didn’t really know him, but in the short time we met before that night and since, we’ve become friends.  That night was spent as his house on Msasani Beach, we ate some typical holiday Finnish foods and pastries and watched the fireworks over the bay, courtesy of the Yacht Club.

In 2012, my New Years was spent in my town, in Metuchen.  It was a very low key night, we woke up the boy near midnight, bundled him up and went to see the fireworks near the train station.  It was magical and cold.  The next morning I would fly off to spend a couple of days in Dubai and then the next few months in Dar es Salaam.

After an extended stay at home, I returned to Dar es Salaam, yet again taking the operational helm at Push Observer, and having a blast by expanding our market and getting into proper market research. That adventure continues.

But then the holidays came, and thankfully, thanks again to Carlos two years ago, the holidays far from home are not as sad as they could be. good friends, much like family, are around us here. No one need feel left out or sad for long. Thanksgiving, that all american holiday.. that… I would not celebrate, choosing instead to make it a regular thursday.  How could i celebrate it, my brother on the wst coast, my folks and family on the east coast and me at Qbar…it was easy to ignore.  However, Navidad!  Christmas was celebrated with novena, vallenato and lechona (although no aguardiente.)  And New Years? In a few years, New Years….

So tonight, as the clock strikes 12, and the fireworks don’t fly over the same bay as in 2011(safety issue the authorities said), but this time from the other side.. from within the Yacht club, I will once again celebrate the turning of the old into the new, forget old resolutions, make new ones to be forgotten.. not at home with family, but with new friends, with famila, in a far away land, under the stars and hope that this year, this year things get back on track, maybe not the same track as before, but definitely towards the track that leads to fulfilled hopes and dreams.

Yo no olvido el año viejo
porque me ha dejao cosas muy buenas
aaahhhiii yo no olvido no,no,no el año viejo
porque me ha dejao cosas muy buenas
me dejo una chiva,
una burra negra,
una yegua blanca
y una buena suegra

me dejo una chiva,
una burra negra,
una yegua blanca
y una buena suegra

me dejo una chiva,
una burra negra,
una yegua blanca
y una buena suegra

ahi me dejo, me dejo, me dejo, me dejo
cosas buenas
cosas muy bonitas

ahi yo no olvido el año viejo
porque me ha dejao cosas muy buenas
aaahhhiii yo no olvido no,no,no el año viejo
porque me ha dejao cosas muy buenas

me dejo una chiva,
una burra negra,
una yegua blanca
y una buena suegra

me dejo una chiva,
una burra negra,
una yegua blanca
y una buena suegra

me dejo una chiva,
una burra negra,
una yegua blanca
y una buena suegra

ahi me dejo, me dejo, me dejo, me dejo
cosas buenas
cosas muy bonitas

Random thoughts, from random days.

An evening that started out at the Yacht Club, ended up on the opposite side of the peninsula, at Cocoa Beach.  If a mention of the Yacht Club to many evokes a very colonial scene..you’d be right.  Possibly in another time, in another situation, that’s where I’d be.. but here and now, i prefer Cocoa Beach.

A sight I hadn’t seen since a long ago October night driving north from the Florida Keys a at nearly midnight (Ft. Lauderdale to Key West and back in the same day, all to swim with the dolphins only to find out directions were misread, so had to settle for waterside beers and a few hours snorkeling… but that’s a story for another time.)..Shooting stars crossing such a starry night I was sorry my camera and tripod were left at the apartment;  then what appeared to be a comet fragment streaking down and disintegrating a few hundred meters out to sea while still overhead., and many, many expats amongst the locals, all fueled by local beers, Konyagi and shisha.. singing in many cases, bad karaoke.  Who knew that La Bamba (the movie version, not the original one) would be such a big draw at Cocoa Beach in Dar es Salaam on a cool December Wednesday night?

NGOs, local companies, multinational oil firms, the EU and several entrepreneurs.. in a mix of Spanish, French, Dutch, English and plenty of bad Swahili. The conversations were as varied as the folks around the plastic Pepsi tables on the stretch of beach.  Packed crowd, good times.. but the outing wasn’t in the plan, laundry was… so off my friends and I left, past midnight but still in time to catch six hours before heading in to work in the morning.

Not a lot outside the usual drudgery of work, eat, sleep in the past few weeks. Found a new place, next to the most recent place.  Hotel living is what it is. Cozy, clean and lots of satellite TV… that’s good, but also very bad.. as time previously spent doing more productive things has a tendency to dissipate when the TV goes on. At first I’d only found the channels showing futbol, but then I found discovery and animal planet and natgeo.. and then … HBO.  Although it says HBO, it reminds me of the HBO back in the 80s and 90s… plus there are commercials…. and promos. ..  Think I’ll stick to the nook for a while longer.

The holidays are here.  As most of my friends here don’t celebrate thanksgiving, it was no major effort to avoid the day, save for the call from the family at around 4 their time… which of course found me at the usual Thursday night location, enjoying the music and downing a few kilis…. This weekend will continue the holiday parties, with multiple Christmas parties, and even some random gift exchanges.  Good thing Monday is a holiday, will have time to get some extra work done and catch up on sleep.

2013… or Year 2 A.VMS… a bit smoother than the Year 0 or Year 1, but the roller coaster continues, while it appears headed up on a gentle grade, I’m fully expecting it to shoot up in coming weeks.  Not the best year, nor is it over yet, nonetheless, not a bad year. Here’s hoping.

Varado! Broken Down Car.. in Dar. Now What? AAA… think again!

All proud of myself, actually left the hotel when I wanted to, at the car well before 7.. traffic looked very light on Old Bagamoyo Road.. Good, i thought. I’ll get started early.. busy, busy.. Then the car didn’t star.. the tell tale sign of the started firing off while no power was flowing. Battery. No jumper cables, and no one around the parking lot.  A couple of calls, a short wait, and the rental car guy showed up, when he couldn’t get it going offered me his car, but then he got it going and promised to stop by the office to put a new battery in. Promises.  You get a lot of that here. I mean, they may happen.. but it is pole, pole after all.  In their own time, not in the time you would naturally assume.

Anyway, after a longer ride than usual to the office due to the time i got on the road, as well as due to the dala dala accidents (no one hurt) i witnessed just inches from me.. long day at the office. Salesforce.. Sales Operations.. Thanks Giovia and Cape for getting me into that mess years ago. Delving into the land of opportunity that is SFDC took the better part of the light of the day.  So it was getting on dusk when i got back to my car.. oh yeah.. rental car guy Emma never came.

And thus we come to the reason for this post.  After another raft of phone calls to the rental guy, two guys showed up.. of course they spoke only Swahili.. and my swahili.. kidogo, kidogo. Just enough to get by and then some.. but not with these guys. So.. two guys, in a car.. no jumper cables, but they did have a couple of metric wrenches.  Verify the battery is dead (so dead that even the auto-door locks on the Carina don’t work).. They pull the battery out of my car.  And here i think, ok.. they must have a new battery in the trunk… nope. They proceed to take the battery out of their car… install my battery.. and while a third guy (the one doing the translating) starts the car, the other two lift the good battery, hold it perpendicular to my battery now installed in another car.. and with the aforementioned metric wrenches, proceed to attempt to make contact between both sets of points.. Sparks fly. Liquid (acid?!) leaks out of the sideways battery.. but the car won’t start.  Think that’s it? Nope.  They re-install their battery onto their car.. and start the car.. but the cables aren’t tightened.. why? oh.. one guy pulls the cables off the live battery, holds them apart while the other guy takes the battery out of the car, installs it in mine and reinstalls the dead battery onto their car. THEN the first guy puts the cables onto the points.. so the battery starts charging.

The good battery is installed in my car, they verify it works. I say Asante Sana a few times and off they go.

What.The.Heck?