The week’s wrap up

September 26, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Leeuwarden » Friesch Museum

How’s my week been, you ask? Or rather, you’ve ended up here, and you want to read something new? Well, all right.

Last Friday, our statues finally arrived from Zimbabwe. That is, two of the three crates finally arrived. The third, the largest of the three containing all the personal goods as well as all the metal works, including four huge masks, is still missing.
At first, it was claimed it was never shipped. Now that it’s clear it was shipped, they’re trying to find it again in the warehouse in Rotterdam. The story continues next week.
I shipped from Zimbabwe with UTi. I know that, even if they retrieve the missing crate, I won’t be doing that again. Sure, they were cheap, but the missing crate also contains my university diploma. These people are putting me through a lot of trouble.

Meanwhile, receiving what we did got, did not stop me from starting selling the statues that we did get. I’m still working on getting all the statues on line, but what’s already there can be found at ShonaBeelden.nl. Yes, the site’s in Dutch, but that’s where we live, innit?
Betsy’s parents are completely wild about the whole thing and one of the statues is already on display at Knipping, where Betsy’s father works, in some huge mall in Wolvega (in the north of Holland, I’m sure many of the Dutchies don’t even know where Wolvega is).

While in Wolvega this weekend, we visited Leeuwarden, to check out this year’s Noorderlicht, an annual photography exhibition. This year, it’s centered around pictures taken in Arabic countries. Sadly, we were misinformed about opening times and missed the most interesting part of the exhibition: pictures by Arab artists made in Arab countries. Luckily, this exhibition runs until early next year, so there’s a reasonable chance we’ll be able to check out what we missed.

Also, I finally got round to reading ‘Does your meter work?!’ by Jim Soliski. I know Jim through Travelhog.net, where currently 31 of his stories are listed. He self-published a book earlier this year and I got to deliver a quote for it (ANOTHER of my claims to fame). In short: I liked it.

Bombs!

When I’m unlucky, I get as much as 100 spam emails per day. But today, I got the best one, ever. It invited me to buy rocket propelled grenades and anything else I might need to perform a terrorist attack (no kidding). Here are some snippets:

“You’re invited to shop for large selection of bombs and different kinds of rockets such as surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and weaponry available at reduced price. With the following types of rockets you will be able to commit terrorist attacks, destroy buildings, electric power stations, bridges, factories and anything else that comes your mind. Most items are in stock and available for next day freight delivery in the USA. Worldwide delivery is available at additional cost. Prices are negotiable.”

It even listed today’s specials. Here’s one:

******* AIR BOMBS *******
OFAB-500U HE fragmentation air bomb
Fuel-air explosive air bombs -Not in stock
BETAB-500U concrete-piercing air bomb
ZB-500RT incendiary tank
500-KG SIZE RBK-500U unified cluster bomb
RBK-500U OAB-2.5PT loaded with fragmentation submunitions
RBK-500U BETAB-M loaded with concrete-piercing submunitions-Not in
stock
RBK-500U OFAB-50UD loaded with HE fragmentation submunitions

And then it went on to list some references:

“Our clients are well known Al-Qaida, Hizballah, Al-Jihad, HAMAS, Abu
Sayyaf Group and many other terrorist groups. We are well known
supplier in the market and looking forward to expand our clientage
with assistance of Internet.”

Man. I’m no fan of that Global Supercop. But this is a bit too much.

Car-less Brussels

September 19, 2004 • Blog

World » Belgium » Brussels » Grand Place

We had chosen our weekend to visit Brussels well. Brussels was having a weekend where all architectural interesting buildings were open to visitors. And since Brussels has a lot of Art Nouveau, there was something to see everywhere we went.
Also, as with two other major cities in the country, the town was having a ‘car-less’ Sunday. Meaning that nearly no cars were out on the streets. Not that the streets were safe now; everyone was moving around on bikes, roller blades or skate boards. Fast.

The weather was fantastic and I hoped to be able to shoot several panorama pictures that I would stitch together at home. I did take the pictures, but every place was literally littered with people, so some of the panoramas will come out rather strange.
The whole city was also crawling with ‘Giros’, boy and girl scouts in many different colorful clothes. On the Grand Place, one group asked if we could join them in a little dance. We did and we only felt mildly stupid.

Old friends and loads of Duvels

September 18, 2004 • Blog

World » Belgium » Brussels » Da Kao II

Bob, whom I knew from Mongolia last year, has been working in Armenia since, occasionally flying through
Brussels to get to the US, where his kids live.
This time, the plan was to meet him and his wife in that European capital of capitals and enjoy a good night of drinking. And we easily succeeded.

We started at three in the afternoon, on the town’s Grand Place, which was even more busy as usual due to the bagpipe folklore festival that was going on and the beer (and wine) tents that had been erected here and were selling very reasonably priced alcoholic beverages.

Of course, we had dinner in Da Kao II (the new brother of Da Kao, which is undergoing renovations) and mostly hung around the place St. Gery. Later, we wanted to go to De Markten, or at least the area around Place St. Catherine, but the heavy rain convinced us otherwise.

The Duvels flowed freely and we stumbled into bed after three in the morning ending a good 12 hours. A short night’s sleep later, we were already enjoying a very decent buffet breakfast at the hotel Van Belle, where I had booked a discount room only last week.

Email chain letter: Scam or not?

September 15, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

This week, a friend of mine sent me one of those chain letters, we've all recieved once or more. Sometimes from friends, but more often from people we've never heard of: Chain letters that tell you to send a specific amount of money to the first person on the list, add your name to the bottom, removing the first person and then sending on the email to as many people as humanly possible.

We also all know that, if you do the math, it can be easily shown that a pyramid system like this can never work. But did anyone ever really do the math?

These letters always suggest to forward the chain letter to hundreds of people but at that rate, you soon reach an interstellar population. But most people throw the letters away, so only a small fraction of the people that actually recieve a letter will send it on.

Below, you can play around with the numbers. What percentage of people actually forward the letter? How many people to they send the letter to and how long is the list of names to which your name should be added?

Observations

Even if the numbers are moderate, it's nearly impossible to make a buck.
The letter I recieved had a list of names, six positions long. It suggested I sent the list on to 200 people and gave an example that if only 2 percent would forward the letter, I still would be making a bundle (in fact, at 10 euro per person, I would be making 40.960 euro (see note2)).
However, what the letter did not mention, was that by the time I should get paid, the people that should pay me already have to forward the chain letter to more people than are currently on the internet.
And of course, this is assuming that the person who's number one on *my* list, initiated the chain letter. If he didn't, everyone's already fucked anyway.

I did a quick internet search and found several copies of my letter. Same letter, different list of people, in fact, none of the names matched in the five letters that I reviewed.
This means that the person who was on top of my list, at best , was sixth behind the person who started the list. At the numbers the example uses in the letter, it also meant that me having received that exact email only once was a near impossibility. By the time I should be getting my money, everyone in the world should already have received that very same letter over and over and over and over and… again.

This shows that the numbers used in the example are, well, slightly over the top. The numbers should be much more conservative. Maybe anyone who does forward the mail doesn't forward it to 200 people, but only to 50. And maybe not 2 percent actually reacts, but maybe only half a percent.
What's funny is, that if you actually do the calculations with these numbers, the chain letter soon dies out or grows very, very slowly.

However, it also shows that joining in one of these 'scams' actually can pay off. Get your numbers just right and you'll see that for every euro invested, you might get a couple back. Not much, but maybe just enough to make it worth the gamble of investing the 10 euros my letter asked for.

Update (February 2011): I took out an online calculator which showed the absurdity of chain letters.

Surprise

September 14, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

This year, too, my hosting provider decided to give me a little present for my birthday. BabakFakhamzadeh.com and through that, inZIM.com, BabasProjects.com, 10GoodReasons.com and several smaller addresses haven’t been available for several days.
This happened on Friday. Now, Tuesday, things are finally sorted out again. It seems it’s time to move to a different host.

Meanwhile, while I had nothing to do anyway, I tried out a nice program called jalbum and posted some old Veto photo albums online (since removed (September 2008)).

Meat

On Saturday, Betsy and I visited the small but nice intercultural festival ‘Nyama’ in Delft. Nyama means ‘meat’ in Shona. We had hoped to see Gamelan players do their thing, but we arrived too late, having hung around the house too long.

Panoramas

Also, on my birthday, I took a number of panorama pictures of Delft. I’ve been using several programs to put them together and it’s not all that easy.

And what’s this?

There’s a Babak street, in America. Find the exact location here.

One year on from 30

September 09, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

Yep. 31. It was almost inevitable and it happened.
Quite a lot has happened over the past year. Just browse the entries on this site, and you can see for yourself, if you didn’t know it already.
Greece, Turkey, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Germany, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Scotland. Quite a list indeed.

Also, my plan of taking one picture every day at noon didn’t really work out, although the whole 30yp setup was, I suppose, quite succesful. Now, on the homepage, on the right, you can see the number of times articles have been read (or at least viewed) on this site. The number’s close to 35000, wich means an average of 100 articles viewed, per day. If only I had so much to say each day.

I think I will tone down a bit on my daily updates. When I’m at home, playing ‘Dancing Stage’ (I know, I AM a special fellow), there isn’t really enough to keep people interested anyway. Maybe some weekends will be interesting enough, and coming weekend might be one, with the Nyama (‘meat’ in Shona) festival in Delft, but surely, I will post heavily during trips abroad. That’s what I like doing and, based on visitor statistics, that’s what people, that means you, like to read and view.

Struggle

This year, I learned that all Zimbabweans struggle all the time, whether they have no food on the table or can’t afford to buy a third car and I like to struggle with them.
The last couple of weeks, in relation to my computer setup at home, I really have been struggling. Everything slowly but surely stopped working. Frantically, I tried to save my Red Hat 9 installation, but today, I gave up and finally opted for Fedora Core 2 and, thank your god, things go reasonably well. The two PCs (one windows box, one linux box) can finally see each other again and I’m even back to the windows box being able to transfer files to and from the linux box. The linux machine now even is able to see the windows box (a first), but I still can’t transfer files through the GUI.

Work – no work

On the money side, things are bleak. I did secure two paying projects some weeks ago, but progress is slow, very slow. I’m even looking at finding a real job now, which means things are really bad.

Farsi

And then there’s Farsi. Betsy and I started a Farsi language course with the totally friendly mrs Azami whom Betsy met through work. She’s Baha’i and already invited us to a unity dinner this weekend. I’m not sure we’ll be going. She WILL be making Persian dishes, however.
We had our second lesson yesterday, and it’s not going all that bad. Betsy is struggling a bit (hey, who isn’t – see above), but she’s doing fine.
We missed our planned second lesson last week, because someone really wanted to go the scenic route in Scotland (yes, that’s you, Joost).
It seems we enjoy the lessons as much as mrs Azami does, having tought Farsi a long time ago and finally being able, once more, to transfer her skills to some younger folks (she’s 69(!) but looks mid-50s, at most).

Statues

Our Shona sculptures still haven’t arrived, although they should be going through customs this week. I did some checks in Delft and Den Haag and it seems there’s a significant shortage of Shona sculptures. All arts shops appear to believe you can still easily get them ‘there and there’, but that’s what they all say. They keep on pointing you to the next shop, only to be pointed, well, to the next shop.
It’s a good thing. If only we can start selling them before the summer’s really over.

And birthday. Nothing much happening today. My parents are stopping by tonight. No party. I get a day older every day. I celebrate that enough already. In fact, I’ll have another whisky right now. Which reminds me, have you voted recently at 10GoodReasons.com?

A warm weekend

September 05, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Market square

It’s been a reasonable weekend. Chantal, a friend of Betsy, stayed until Sunday morning and yesterday, after trying to get her to do a refreshing experience on our PS2 dancing game, we went into town.
I finally wanted to see the market on Saturday, to see if it would be suitable for us to rent a stall when our statues come in, next week or so. I spoke with UTi and it seems the crates should be available by the end of this week. They arrived in Antwerp and now need to be moved to Rotterdam. The only thing that worries me is that according to the UTi guy I talked to, there are two crates, not three.

On Saturday night, we went for some Surinamese food in Rotterdam, after which we watched the fireworks in honor of the ‘Wereld Haven Dagen’. I’ve never really been that much fascinated by fireworks and Saturday’s display was a reminder of that.

Sunday was spent dancing some more. We had thought about going to a competition for waiters, right here in Delft, but decided against it. We played some Shrek 2, danced and had Chinese.

Interesting talks

September 03, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Rijswijk » EPO

Spent most of the evening at the European Patent Office. Every Friday, there’s an extensive drink in session here and once in a while, Betsy and I get invited through her ABN-AMRO contacts.

This night, we met two Brits, one of which who had given princess Diana a peck on the cheek during her honeymoon and had met president Mandela in the mid-nineties. The other had met both Mandela and Tutu at a function in Trinidad (as you do).

The first guy was going to work as head of security of some major bank, balancing an annual budget of 14 million pounds (!!!). He also had been stationed in Iraq, during the first world war and said he had never felt so uncomfortable, with all those Americans around him.
He had some interesting views on the hostage crises in the south of Russia, which ended today. He believed the Russians should have stayed put, not attack, when the bombs went off inside the school. It wouldn’t have been nice, but chances of the 200 children, or so, who died, would have been better.

Chantal, visiting us from abroad, I mean Limburg, had gone ahead to the function in Rijswijk, but by taxi. Betsy and I had gone over by bike. It meant we cycled back with Chantal taking Betsy’s bike and me pedalling on the other bike with Betsy on the bike seat.

Developing a development portal

September 02, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Bloemendaal » The Jesse residence

Spent the evening together with Jesse and Sander. Sander’s working for XminY, a development aid organization from the Netherlands. They plan on building a development portal with reviews of development related books and articles.

We met at Jesse’s house, in Bloemendaal, of all places. Walking from Bloemendaal station to his house, I came accross two young guys working on their car, a convertable. It was a rather posh neighbourhood, so allthough they looked like they had just returned from a good night of clubbing, they still had to greet me as if I was their next door neighboor.

Dance, baby!

August 31, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

Czechoslovakia had Musha, Brussels had Horta, Glasgow had Mackintosh. Art Nouveau can be found all over Glasgow and, reputedly, Mackintosh finest creation is the Glasgow School of Art.
Betsy and I walked around the building to enjoy the basics, Joost and Neha went on a tour while we went to the Gallery of Modern Art.

Back in South Africa, Betsy and I had gone crazy about ‘Dance Revolution’, an arcade dancing game where you have to, well, dance. I knew the game was available for the PS2, and had already been surprised at the fact that it’s nearly impossible to buy it in the Netherlands.
So we had conspired to buy it in the UK. We hadn’t, yet, easily found a place selling the game and the necessary dance-mats. But today, walking around Glasgow, we had plenty oppertunities to shop. And so we did.

We were able to get on the plane and had dinner in Brussels to avoid the traffic congestions during rush hour. Da Kao, everyone’s favorite Thai restaurant has moved around the corner and has gone slightly upmarket. The food has become even better, so it’s worth it.
Before the day was over, Betsy and I had already started to dance the night away. Our performance was so refreshing.

Setbacks

August 30, 2004 • Blog

World » United Kingdom » Stirling » Princes street

We started the day with a bit of bad luck. Upon leaving the B&B, we noticed a flat tyre and Joost was so kind as to change the wheel. But not before wrecking the plastic strip which ran along the left bottom side of the vehicle.

After visiting Loch Lomond, Joost insisted on taking the scenic route to Prestwick airport. It has to be said, the route is beautiful, right along the western coast of Scotland.
On the other hand, it was a bit sad it also resulted in us missing our plane. We were put on standby for the next day’s flight to Brussels, which was fully booked to start with.

This, however, did give us time to get our tire fixed. If returned to Avis, we could have been charged as much as 100 pounds for a new tire. Now we only had to worry about the plastic strip Joost had wrecked.

We ended up in Glasgow, where the hostel we had stayed in on our first night still had some beds available. Joost, who never complained before about having to share a room with others on our trips, now made a point of getting a private room with Neha. Even tough it meant having to go to Glasgow, instead of Edinburgh. Then again, right after a Chinese buffet, they went to bed and slept before 9pm so they never saw anything of the city anyway.
Betsy and I stayed out and only stumbled into bed around 2am. Hey, if you’ve got an extra day of vacation, you have to make the best of it!

Japan Experience – Death of a Samurai

August 29, 2004 • Blog

World » United Kingdom » Edinburgh » West Princes Street Gardens

We had wanted to sleep late, but were kicked out at 10am. We had no choice but to enjoy Edinburgh. Neha, suffering from the expenses of the weekend, decided to go shopping. Joost, Betsy and myself walked around town a bit more, down the Royal Mile, to the new parliament.

In the afternoon, we met up again to see the last show on our list, Japan Experience – Death of a Samurai by Afro13. This was one fantastic show.
A Japanese group of performers, with only very limited knowledge of English (“Don’t forrow me”, “I rov you”, etc) had created a fast paced, adrenaline packed show that felt like 100% anime. The visual tricks they used and the speed at which they performerd, weaving scenes together and showing continuous action, were so entertaining I had an emotional high for hours afterwards.

Next was our drive to Falkirk, a pretty village some 40 miles north of Edinburgh.

Open festival season

August 28, 2004 • Blog

World » United Kingdom » Edinburgh » Esplanade

We arrived at our first theatre, only minutes before the show started. We had first driven to Falkirk, to make sure we’d be able to check into the Formula1 I had made reservations at, only to discover we couldn’t get in until 12. Meanwhile, looking through the entrance door, a fat cat was, visibly content, sleeping on the reception desk.

Edinburgh is a really beautiful city. A bit like Luxembourg, but more cosmopolitan. Anywhere you look, there’s a nook or cranny to explore, a pub to try or a restaurant to lounge in. Our first show, Arabian Night, was reasonable. The story wasn’t as well developed as the actor’s intentions and the best part was the style, where the players were not only acting, but also telling their thoughts, as if reading aloud from a book.

The gap between Arabian Night and 1001 Nights (The Arabian Nights), our next show, left us to do some exploring around the beautiful city.
The show was total crap. Three, but mostly one, lady danced on oriental-ish music. The dancing was mediocre and not very entertaining. Near the end, the dancer tried to explain the act, but nobody really seemed to believe her. We quickly made our exit to do some more walking around on the Royal Mile and waiting for our next show, a midnight tour of some of the haunted underground vaults of the city.

Edinburgh has a very colorful history and, based on some of it, it’s not surprising many people believe the city’s haunted. Then again, it’s just a large British city, so it *should* be haunted.
After the tour, we had drinks with Clyde, I mean Claire, and two of her girlfriends. First in ‘The Vault’, the club where the underground tour ended, and later in some pub the girls wanted to go to but closed shortly after we arrived. Clive, I mean Claire, was a fun character who was easily satisfied: it only took a cardboard box to make her happy. That, and everyone’s favorite magician Paul Zenon (who?).
We decided to call it a day and, after downing what seemed like a bucket full of fish and chips, each, slept only minutes before 4am. We had to get up at 9:30 since checkout time was at 10…

A Glasgow funeral…

August 27, 2004 • Blog

World » United Kingdom » Glasgow » Beanscene

Some years ago, enjoying Munich for a weekend during the Oktoberfest, Joost and I started talking to some Glaswegians staying at the same hotel as us. According to them, a Glasgow funeral was more fun than an Edinburgh wedding. It only made sense to check this out for ourselves.

Together with our girlfriends, Betsy and Neha, we headed over to investigate. Right during the Edinburgh festival season, so I’m sure we didn’t get a proper idea of what Edinburgh’s like, but so be it. Our plan was to have a good time. And yes, it has happened, after struggling for 15 years, Joost finally has landed himself a girlfriend. What is the world coming to?

Joost had wanted to leave for Charlerois at eight in the morning. He showed up at ten. Heavy traffic on the way south meant we no longer had time to stop in Brussels for foood and we drove straight to the airport.
During the busy but uneventful flight, I made plans for dinner and drinks in Glasgow, where we would stay our first night. I had made reservations some four weeks before, which wasn’t a problem for Glasgow, but a pain for Edinburgh, where we would stay for the remaining two nights. That is, one night would be spent at a Formula1, some 25 miles out of Edinburgh, the other in Stirling, some 40 miles out of Edinburgh. It was the nearest available accomodation.

Glasgow turned out to be a nice, but not great, city. It is surprising the many curry shops manage to stay afloat, considering their very reasonable pricing. But that only worked to our advantage. We had dinner at a run-of-the-mill curry joint where the waiter had a stained tie, the food was delicious but the icecream terrible.
After that, we had coffee at a Beanscene, a Starbucks-like coffee shop with WiFi, for the punters who can’t go a minute without. And we ended the evening at Uisge Beatha, a whisky bar with lots of choice and reasonable prices. It was here that Joost ended up with one woman on each teat.

The next morning was spent rushing through Glasgow. We had to hurry to be in time for our first show in Edinburgh, but I still wanted to see some of the sights Glasgow had to offer. One of the things that struck me was that the city resembles so many of the downtown areas of the major South African cities Betsy and I had visited only weeks before.

Neha, who seemed to have a fetish for anything English (“coronation chicken is my *favorite*”), had her share of goodness with a full Scottish breakfast. However, it was Betsy who ended up enjoying the full range of typical Scottish foods: black pudding, square sausage and haggis.

Geekcorps reloaded

August 26, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

Unfortunately, Geekcorps seems to be in the process of dying a slow death. The organization with which I’ve been working in Ghana and Mongolia is being swallowed by IESC, the organization they partnered with some years ago. Now, with internal changes inside the IESC, Geekcorps is no longer heading in the direction any of the current employees wishes for it to go.

Ethan Zuckerman, Geekcorps founder, already quit earlier this year, after he had long since stepped down as ‘CEO’. This year, all the current employees at the head office in North Adams will quit their jobs.
Too bad.

Meanwhile, Ethan has moved to even bigger projects (he’s a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, doesn’t that sound cool?) and he made the frontpage of Slashdot, once more.
This time, he’s talking about how blogs and bloggers can be grassroots news collectors. If all goes well.

And…

Meanwhile, Betsy, Joost, Neha and I are about to visit Edinburgh for the weekend. Anything to escape the little work I have to do.

Language lessons

August 24, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Oegstgeest » Azami residence

Yes, Betsy and I are doing language lessons again. Not for my next assignment, but because we feel like it. The language? Farsi. Yes, we are learning Farsi.

Some weeks ago, Betsy was working at the Oegstgeest branch of the ABN AMRO, when an older Persian lady walked in. They started talking and within minutes, Betsy and myself were invited for language lessons. The lady used to teach, but is now retired. I suppose she’s a bit bored, or feels she has some good deeds to do.

The lesson today wasn’t very hard, although Betsy struggled a bit. We only learned six, or so, letters and four words. Not a very impressive start, but still.

Over the past years, I started teaching myself a couple of times, but time and again, I stopped rather quickly. Let’s see what happens now.

Almost abroad

August 22, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Wolvega » Home of Betsy’s parents

Spent the weekend up in Friesland, at Betsy’s parents place. It was our first time visiting them and the first time since before we left for Zimbabwe we saw Betsy’s brother Anton again.

On Betsy’s mother’s PC, I discovered a rather fun game called ‘Zuma’. It’s a bit sad it sells for 20 dollars, even though it’s fun. So I went over to Suprnova and made sure I got myself two copies. Which reminds me, I also discovered AllOfMP3.com. Worth it. Although it doesn’t stock stuff like Soulwax or Oliver Mtukudzi.

The last of Jimmy

August 18, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

I’m afraid I’ll forget, but before I do: The scars that Jimmy (the red cat from Small World in Harare) gave me on my right hand, just before us leaving have almost faded. The last physical evidence of our being there has almost disappeared.
True, next week, or maybe the week after, our statues should be at the Port of Rotterdam. But I’m stressing the word ‘should’.

Finally a revenue stream?

August 17, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

Yesterday, one of the people I took a picture of on Saturday, by email, offered an extra revenue stream for Portreat.com. Now, it’s possible to have a picture from Portreat.com sent directly to your mobile phone. Nifty, but I have to admit, I’m amazed people actually want to pay for this. And they do.

Meanwhile, I’m working hard on a content management system for one of my new (and very old) customers.

Baitak Ghana

August 15, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Rotterdam » The Jim and Oesha residence

Half my day was spent recovering from yesterday’s challenge. In the morning, suffering from a bleeding headache, I put the Portreat.com pictures I made of the FFWD online and I spent a some time in the afternoon to create the BabaCam.

Also, Betsy and I visited Jim’s new house where he was celebrating his 26th birthday.
A wannabe coolie, he loves everything related to Suriname so, once more, we enjoyed a good Baitak Ghana (‘making music while sitting down’) with more Hindustani people than you can shake a stick at, or two.
Jim’s girlfriend was a bit annoyed with Jim. He had told her that, maybe, as much as 12 people would show up when, in fact, over 50 men, women and children made their way to the Jim and Oesha residence to enjoy a decent helping of food, drinks and dance.

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