hanging out

hanging_out

Wishing you all an adventurous weekend! Godspeed.

Rogue FM: Harry Gregson Williams: X-Men Origins Wolverine Sountrack - I’ll Find My Own Way.

Offtopic:

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.
- Bilbo Baggins in Lord of the Rings

I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.
- Rosalia de Castro

baruch atta Adonai Eloheynu

Blessed are you, oh Lord our God.

Thank you, Abba, for this moment, for this time, for this life.

Thank you, Father, for friends, for family, for miracles.

Thank you, Abba, for enemies, for trials, for tough times.

Thank you, Abba, for your goodness love mercy grace kindness faithfulness.

Thank you, Father, for the tears pain hunger anger.

Thank you, Father, for hopes joys dreams ambition. Read more

disjointed introspective retrospect

Fact:

There are more than 6 billion people on this world, but only one you. So why the heck are you acting like everyone else? Your failure to appreciate and develop your uniqueness is an insult to yourself and your creator. Yeah I said it. Sue me.

Fact-ish:

Apparently, everything you’ve ever seen, heard, touched, said, experienced, thought, understood, overheard is somewhere in your mind. Do you even remotely know how powerful your mind is? So what on earth are you doing limiting yourself to that miserable boring existence you call a life?

Oh, wait… it’s not a life? Ha! Oh yeah. My bad.

Choice:

Apathy, Mediocrity or Excellence? Choose now. Choose wisely. Read more

Tanzania Mania - a prelude

So, from Monday to Wednesday, I was kinda all over Tanzania. Route was Entebbe to Nairobi to Dar es Salaam to Mwanza to Bukoba to Mutukula and back to our lovely country.

I took thousands of pics. Yeah. Thousands. That’s how I get when I lay my hands on a camera. This time I was privileged to travel with a Nikon D80. Awesome machine. It was my second proper exposure to the finer workings of a DSLR, over three days. My first exposure was just a few hours, in which I was too scared to mess up the person’s settings.

But, let me not bore you. I have a few teaser pics. I have tweaked in a little Photoshop magic. I can’t release the rest till the project is complete, which will be next week, so a little patience, toute le monde, s’il vous plait.

Without further ado…

This view is just awesome!

Mount Kilimanjaro. 'nuff said.

This is a beautiful island.

Dar es Salaam Port, as seen from the Control Tower

sadiq

This post is dedicated to everyone at the Blogger’s Happy Hour who said my blog is too inspirational. Ha, take that!

Sadiq was officially the scariest boy in school. No contest.

One good look at him and you knew something was massively wrong with this dude. Okay, calling him a dude was a bit far-fetched, however sophisticated your upbringing was. Actually, to be more honest, your first genuine, undeniable reaction when you saw Sadiq, was “holy sh…”

You’d never get the chance to properly articulate your thoughts if, Sadiq, in all his omnipresence, chose that very moment to look at you.

Little boys peed in their pants every time Sadiq looked at them. Frozen in place from sheer terror, their lips would start quivering, and a split second later, eyes, nose and lower appendage would start running.

The “big” boys ( they were only big when compared to the little boys ) stopped in their tracks for a full five seconds, then very slowly, they’d retreat, keeping a very close eye on Sadiq. It was, however, impossible to look Sadiq in the eyes, so they’d focus instead on that area just above the tip of his nose. Read more

how much pain can you endure?

Non Matrix fans bear with me for a second.

One of my favourite movie lines comes from The Matrix - Reloaded, where the Architect is talking to Neo about the destruction of Zion. Neo tells the Architect that the machines cannot wipe out all humans, as they need them for power.

The Architect nonchalantly replies:

“There are levels of survival we are willing to accept.”

Every time I go through a particular hard situation, you know, the ones that make you want to quit, I remember that particular line, and I ask myself;

“How far down this road am I willing to go to achieve my dream or my goal?

What level of survival am I willing to accept before I call it quits?

What kind of beating can I endure before the pain breaks me?”

In more common terms, it’s called looking at worst-case scenarios, or the breaking point, beyond which you know you simply cannot endure whatever it is you are going through.

I’ve learned from experience, that most people give up way before their breaking point. Heck, most people give up before they even hit the halfway line to breaking point.

I’ve drawn up a “Situational Badness” graph to visually reflect my views on this.  Read more

on making mistakes

The year is 2003. Month, June. Day, 6th. Time, 9:01.

I’m sitting at my desk. Staring at the computer.

I log on to True African, and send myself the following SMS. Yes, I sent myself an SMS. No, I wasn’t mad.

No, I wasn’t.

The SMS says:

“Over six months I have called this place home.
And so it ends.
The future beckons.
Shall we proceed?
After all, it is only Destiny

I still have the SMS to this day.

That day was the last day of formal employment for me. I was stepping out into the brave new world of being self-employed. You know, doing my own thing.

I was 20. I had fulfilled my dream of of owning my own company by 21. And I had beaten it by a solid year. Read more

and we’re back

Hi.

I’m back.

Yeah, it’s been a crazy time, lots of annoying things happening at Node Six (getting a laptop stolen can be more chaotic than you expect) but there are even more exciting things happening at Node Six. Kizito Katawonga (of The Master’s Apprentice fame) joined Node Six as Executive Director, which means my role is even more bureaucratically ambiguous than ever. We’re also going through a back-to-the-roots training session on everything we do, from coding to customer support. Another run at Kaizen on our part.

On a personal level, I’m dealing with a lot more stuff than usual, but thankfully, it’s beginning to make sense and all the issues are finally falling in place. So yeah, I’ve been taking a slow stroll in the shady back alleys of Life Boulevard, but despite all the drama, I’m very psyched up about it, because I finally realized how I got stuck in this rut in the first place. Read more

it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish

BHH

My apologies, dear blogren.

The week started off really badly. One of our laptops got stolen and in the ensuing chaos, I totally forgot to put up the BHH announcement on BlogSpirit.

BHH is today, 30th April 2009.

Time to go meet the crew, grab some chill time and just have fun.

Rogue out.