BabakFakhamzadeh.com

Of pizza and Mongols

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Istanbul gets more rain than London, though it doesn't have the reputation for it. Still, upon my arrival, a steady drizzle was making my choice of wearing shorts and sandals a poor one. I upgraded my dress and later even added a sweater and went in search for baklava.

One new addition since my previous visit is the excellent metro connecting the airport with the edge of downtown Istanbul, for a mere 2 Lira, some 85 eurocents, though the machine issuing the tokens did eat on of my lira first.
Also good, close to the entrance, a supermarket selling heaps of baklava.

I'm staying in an area called Fatih, where I found a place calling itself "Best place in Istanbul's old city" through Airbnb. It's nice, but maybe that's overdoing it a tad bit.
Airbnb will be the death of the conventional hostel. I'm paying 15 euros for a double room in a private home, comparable to the price of a hostel bed in a dorm. Sure, you don't get the same social experience, but the advantages are legion.

Inside the suburb of Fatih, there's the sub-suburb of Zeyrek, a world heritage site where dilapidated wooden houses are stacked on top of each other, fairytale like, at almost impossible angles.
And kitties! So many kitties!

Dinner was had at the excellent Fatih Karadeniz Pidecisi, serving Turkish pizza. A Turkish pizza is most often oblong, somewhat shaped like a human eye, with upstanding edges. The fillings are typically cheese, meat and, more often than not, a soft fried egg. Mine was served with a stick of butter.
Next to me, three men ordered four pide, where the sides were so much standing up, that they touched along the length of the pizza, except for having a small hole in the middle. They threw in their sticks of butter, picked up the pizza at both ends and proceeded to rock their pizzas back and forth, letting the melted butter slide from one end of the pizza to the other.
Then, pizzas were wolfed down.

I was a bit surprised at the cost of my meal, pide now apparently going for upwards of 10 lira, about 4.50 euro.
Restoring my faith in economic disparity, though, my breakfast the next day, of a big toasti, ayran en tea, was a mere four lira, not even two euros.

Closeby, also the seemingly only Greek Orthodox church not converted to a mosque after the takeover of Constantinopel by the Turks in 1453. The oddly named Church of St. Mary of the Mongols was already a church and nunnery from the 7th century onwards, but only achieved its later prominence in the late 13rth century, when one Maria Palaiologina rebuilt the church and nunnery after herself having been away for 15 years. She returned to Istanbul because her husband had died. Her husband being the khan of the ilkhanate, the portion of Chinggis' empire centered around Persia. Hence the name.

This trip is so Takei

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

It's not without reason that, together with Belorus and Russia, Azerbaijan is the last country in Europe to have strict visa requirements. The sociopolitical situation is just a tad more volatile than in most. This was recently exemplified by scores of citizens being kicked out of their homes to make way for the. creation of the Crystal Hall, the soon to be venue for the 2012 Eurovision Songcontest.

Benno and I are continuing our two year streak of vacationing in eastern Europe, this time checking out the abandoned social housing in Baku, cheering for Holland and Hungary in the semi finals of the Eurovision.
We had wanted to attend the finals. I expected the ticket prices to be reasonable enough, this is, after all, eastern Europe, so far east it's regularly confused with Asia. But not so. The cheapest tickers for the finals were a steep 160 euros.
Our semi final tickets are 'only' 90 euros each. Painful.

And then we needed to find accommodation.

As soon as the tickets had gone on sale, I started to look for accommodation in and around Baku. The 100 or so hotels that are bookable online, ranging from about 15 euros to 250 euros per night, were already booked by the time I started looking. Even expanding my search to up to 100 km away from Baku made no difference.
I was ready to give up.

Venting my frustration on twitter, an old friend who, as I thought, was living in south America, assumed I was actually in Azerbaijan already, and invited me over.

We were saved.

Under more normal circumstances, you'd need an invitation to get into Azerbaijan. Not so now, proof of purchase of a ticket for Eurovision being enough. When flying into the country, but only when flying, you can get a visa upon arrival.
With the same ticket, you can also get a visa at any of the Azeri embassies, but with the nearest being in south Africa and Cairo, that was not really an option for me. And the expected wait in istanbul, from where i had planned to travel overland to Azerbaijan, turned out to be up to ten days.

I postponed my departure for turkey by a week, and tagged on a one way flight to Baku.

Hello turkey, it's nice to see you after 6 years.

Visiting Murchison Falls

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

This weekend was my last in Uganda for the next few weeks, so Niamh and I wanted to spend it outside of Kampala. For both of us, it's been a while since we visited a wildlife park, so we decided to head to Murchison Falls national park, north of Kampala, on the shores of lake Albert. Marlies joined us on the drive up north.
The park, also known as Kabarega (or Kabalega) Falls national park, so named during Idi Amin's reign and after a local king, has now mostly recovered from raids by poachers and soldiers, during the Last King of Scotland's time as Uganda's dictator and is part of the 5300 square kilometers Murchison Falls Conservation Area. Murchison Falls National Park, itself over 3500 square kilometers, is the largest national park in Uganda.

The Nile squeezes through an opening of seven meters before dropping 43 meters to create the thunderous falls after which the park has been named. It ain't no Victoria Falls, but it ain't half bad either
The park itself is home to four of the big five, after rhinos became extinct in 1983. They can now be seen at a rhino sanctuary some 70km south of the park.

The northern half of the park, where most of the wildlife can be found, is pretty, with its savannah and softly rolling hills. Sadly, we missed out on lions and leopards, driving around for four hours, but seeing elephants, several deer, hippos, giraffes and buffaloes.
The cost of visiting the park aint too low, with particularly the daily park entry fee of 35 USD being a bit steep, with many of the activities requiring additional payments. Reasonable enough budget accommodation with excellent food at reasonable prices were had at Red Chilli.
Surprisingly, it was the pork sausages with mash and gravy that was by far the best dish being served. But all the food was pretty good. An achievement, considering pretty much all ingredients have to come from far away.

And, at Red Chilli, there's occasional free wildlife viewing, with semi-wild warthogs occasionally stopping by for a snack. I tried patting one, but was rudely snorted away when it became clear I wanted to right the pig.

On the way to the park, we stumbled upon a real find, Kabalega Diner. 165km from Kampala on the Kampala-Gulu highway, this halfway house serves rather excellent foods in a pleasant setting with good service at affordable prices.

54 hours to build a business

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Last year, there was a lot of buzz around technology in Kampala. Mobile Monday, the google technologies user group and the Linux users group were all going strong. The latter two seemed to have quieted down a bit, but now, facilitated by Google, just like the two user groups, and hosted by MTN, this week's startup weekend, (Facebook) was a rather interesting event.

At a startup weekend, hundreds of which have now been held across the globe, small teams, mostly students, try to come up with ideas and build something of a working business around them over the course of the 54 hours the event lasts.

It started on Friday afternoon, where anyone was allowed to give a one minute elevator pitch. When I signed up, I considered throwing a pitch myself, but I never heard back from the organizers. Forgetting about the event, I got a surprise invite only hours before the start. I still considered pitching, though I hadn't given my idea a lot of thought. But with the crowd being mostly students, I forgot about it, at least this time around.

A surprising large amount of attendees were wearing shirts identifying them as students of Victoria University, "take a shot at a UK degree in Uganda" (interesting slogan, if a bit odd; take a shot?) and, as a whole, a surprisingly small amount of whities were in attendance. In fact, it took ages before I and @boazshani, promoting the portal UGO.co.ug (hello nineties!) were joined by a trickle of more whities, and they were jurors.

Some of the speakers dropped a few tidbits of interesting information, though I suppose for the younger crowd, they were somewhat more interesting. @mr_maina, CEO of the groupon clone Rupu, mentioned the interesting concept of white space, and how applicable it is for doing business in Africa: "when rules are vague, authority is fuzzy, budgets are non existent and strategy is unclear".
Sadly, though, Ben didn't quote the source, which is an 11 year old Harvard Business Review article. Ben continued with describing best practices for starting a business, but then admitted that he himself hand't followed any of his own guidelines. Clearly, being considered successful, this was a clear, and pointless, example of "do as I say, not as I do".

Easily the most enjoyable, and also most seasoned speaker, of the weekend was the 'honorary guest', handing out the first prize at the end of the event, Dr. Ham Mulira, ICT governance big shot in Uganda (and having no less than four LinkedIn profiles). Mulira's speech contained a few nice anecdotes, but offered little wisdom, with his most choice insight also being lifted from someone else.

After a quiet start, no less than 35 pitches were put forward. Only two were presented by women, which pretty much comprised all women present. Of these, my favorites were:

+ A service called "Show me around", where locals could show foreigners where to do what in the Kampala region, in person. Quite similar to a service I once used in Hanoi, OurExplorer.com (now a part of Viator).

+ A service to allow for transfers between a PayPal account and the mobile money services popular in Africa.

+ A tool to compare Ugandan cellphone plans based on consumer's past behaviors.

+ A setup allowing for food-orders to be delivered to your door after paying for them with mobile money.

None of the pitches were highly original, though a few were relevant in a local, Ugandan context, such as comparing the cellphone plans, a local iTunes clone and a SMS-reminder service for young mothers.
Of the 35 pitches, 16 were selected, voted for by the audience, to try and find a team to support themselves, of which 12 were eventually presented at the end of the weekend. None of my favorites made it all the way, though "Show me around" reincarnated as a geolocation service.

The idea of a startup weekend is to create a Minimal Viable Product in the space of 54 hours. I was highly skeptical, and indeed, most of the presentations at the end of the weekend were just that, presentations, with little or no demo of the finished product being shown.
Three winners were selected by a somewhat professional jury, and only second place I could really agree with. MyZiki, a platform to distribute local music and collect revenue even showed off a working, if barebones, demo on a Samsung Android phone.
Third place went, surprisingly, to a fund raising platform, Sonda, where the presenter failed to describe an actual product or value proposition.
First place was for betotm.com, a proposition for a portal to allow for mobile online sports betting, which appears to be quickly gaining traction in Uganda. These guys did some decent market research, though I have a hard time to believe that existing betting agents are willing to fork over 5% for their revenue for having it piped through betotm.com.
And I'm surprised the judges were willing to award this betting portal first prize, as it's a bit like awarding a business venture which has a great plan for selling cigarettes or booze.

What was great to see, was that the shy, quiet, mostly, boys from Friday, had changed into much more confident speakers by the time they had to present their products on Sunday, even though most presentations were quite meager, most business plans seemingly not thought through very well, too often relying too much on context sensitive advertising.

It would be nice to see any of the final 12 presentations making it into an actual product somewhere down the line but, though prizes for the top 3 were mostly free use of useful services, including office space, it seemed no actual investments were awarded, meaning that, most likely, most, if not all, of these students, will revert to either studying, or to work that will simply make them some money in the short run.

Kampala's coming of age

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Last year in Uganda, I found Kampala to have changed much for the better since my previous visit, three years earlier. Now, a year later, positive change is visible yet again. Last year, I was amazed at how the quality and availability of restaurants had increased significantly in the three year time period. Now, a few more restaurants, as well as malls, have popped up, but the change I'm noticing now is primarily related to cultural activities, an indicator that, indeed, the Ugandan middle classes are thriving.

Last night, at the opening of @The HUB, a collaborative workspace, or incubator, in Ntinda, I was lucky and won a month's access to its facilities, currently priced at 220 USD. A friend, Marlies Pilon is already based there and considers it her second home and, it has to be said, the venue feels very pleasant. Well maintained, sturdy desks and chairs, decent enough wifi and free tea and coffee for those working @The HUB, straight from the on-site Junction cafe.
Funnily, before winning the night's grand prize, Marlies was saying how she liked the fact that, by working from @The HUB, as a freelance journalist, she is able to nicely separate work and private life, arriving in the morning, leaving at the end of the afternoon. I, on the other hand, said that I actually love working from home, where I can do what I like when I like it, dress how I like and not care about anything or anyone. Except, perhaps, that with the maid we have, I can't sit behind my computer in my Adam costume. However, I did go through 10GB of 3G data in the space of two weeks. Working from @The HUB, if internet access is indeed decent enough, could save me 100 euros per month.

But, back to cultural activities. Jantien Zuurbier (there are too many Dutchees in Kampala!) who runs @The HUB recently got involved with publishing a monthly magazine listing "what's on" in Kampala, called Arts 256, a much needed resource, in line to replace, or at least compete with, The Eye.
Also, there's now a decent website/blog on east African arts called StartJournal and another nice looking artsy website on Kampala, InKampala.com also opened its doors in April.

Furthermore, the monthly poetry nights hosted by Masaani Art have gotten significantly more professional (though many of the performing poets also try to assert themselves a bit too much with their Ugandan-ness, to the extent where their work sometimes feels juvenile) and the Alliance Francaise is now regularly organizing cultural events at the National Theatre.

All in all, Kampala as Nairobi's little brother is slowly and properly coming of age.

A wedding kiss in pictures

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Todd and Felicia's wedding kiss as a mosaic of photos taken on their wedding day.

Jane Bussmann - The worst date ever

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

A disappointing show, where Bussmann, judging from her website an established comedienne and once a budding celebrity journalist, tells her story of leaving her career as a celebrity journalist, in pursuit of peace maker John Prendergast in Uganda, in 2005, where Prendergast's objective was to broker peace between Museveni and Kony of the LRA.
The show has received a lot of critical acclaim, but didn't even come close to living up to the hype. Bussmann was clearly doing a spiel she had done many times before and, as her story is really seven years old, felt very dated. She briefly, not even for a minute, ad-libbed, comparing her entering Uganda seven years ago with her return now, where the joke was fresh and the tone noticable different. The rest of the show, sadly, had little value and was at times even annoying.
Bussmann has her show prepared for a 'northern' audience that has little understanding of the Ugandan conflict, individuals that would be challenged when asked to find Uganda on a map. She addresses this during her show, using slides and showing a map of Africa, pointing out Uganda and then, in Uganda, Kampala. Considering this show was held *in* Kampala, where everyone, on top of that, probably has a decent understanding on the (former) conflict in northern Uganda, Bussmann actually pointing out where in African you can find this country called Uganda was downright insulting. She apparently didn't even have the decency to skip these two slides and throw in a few lines specifically for this particular audience. That's just plain lazy.

In the end, I was expecting much more. Not so much because of the reviews of the show, but because Bussmann also wrote a well received book on her experiences, on which the show is based, and now claims to live in Nairobi and recently wrote a few comments in relation to Kony2012. I was expecting not a (perhaps once) clever one-man show, but something that was more engaged, both socially and politically, being able to give a fresh, or perhaps unorthodox insight into Uganda's current state of affairs. Instead, we were served something canned and stale.
And, I suspect, many other spectators were expecting something fresher as well. Bussmann admitted that this performance, at the fairly new, and trying to be very hip, MishMash, with some 600, mostly whities, attending, was her biggest crowd yet. Sure, Kampala ain't no New York or London and options for a night out are limited, but not that limited. I suspect that few attending were waiting for a seven year old review of the conflict in northern Uganda by an outsider, presented to be digestible to individuals who have little clue about Uganda in general and the conflict in particular.
And, sadly, Bussmann set the tone from the very start, making it clear she was only going to say one thing on Kony2012, which ended up being a somewhat funny commment on wanking in public.

Slightly related, Prendergast strongly reminded me of the character Jurgen Thor from Ben Elton's book This other Eden.