Idealogoue 5.5.5 and Make the Children Smile

Be Better

This past weekend was ballistic among many other things. It all begun with the PiFF meet at Kyoto which as always is a great way to start any weekend. The meet was well attended and there was a new face, Brad 'Strobe Light' Strobel of Kampala International Church. After the various activities that take place at 'PiFF meetings', I hooked up with other members of the 'Monday Think Tank: Side B' and we proceeded to the 'High Priestess' home for a reasoning and grounation and other such stuff.

If I was to relay the goings on of the think tank, I would run the risk of becoming persona non grata in the tank, so let it be known that I made my way home at 7:30 am, after breaking my no drinking rule again, no, wait, its December already so am back on the booze. Speaking of which, nothing beats beer, no siree, nothing. I have been informed that it makes for a good power breakfast, but I am yet to experiment.

Anyway, I got home and decided I would get an hour's sleep before I run off to the 'Yellow House' to prepare for the xmas party. No such luck. After flirting with sleep for 30 min, drifting in and out of Morpheus' realm, I got a call from Beqy and decided to abandon the nap.

The xmas party. Last year when the PiFF was starting out, the first activity we did was to help chaperone a kids xmas party.

smile for the camera sweetie

'Make the Children Smile' is a group of young, passionate, mostly cute, vibrant gals and boys who, much like PiFFers, provide support to the Oasis of Life orphanage and each year they organise a christmas party for the children at the orphanage, oh, they do Easter as well and I'm sure Abid can get them to organise an Idd party.They have been kind enough to let the PiFF in on their parties and allow us to add our meagre contributions and it was in this spirit that Saturday found us heading to Kiwatule Recreation Center for the annual, 'Make the Children Smile' (are u tired of reading that phrase yet? bse I'm not done with it :-) ) xmas party.

Before I could head there, I had to send out an email to Strobe Light concerning PiFF activities and the like so that the PiFF can receive support from his church. Over the past year, I have written various documents about the PiFF that sometimes I feel like exploding when someone walks up to me and asks, "So, what's this piffy, piffing, ePiFFany stuff about anyway?" But, as always, I compose myself and launch into how the PiFF is simply an idea and that's what we're in the business of, nothing tangible I say, its all about the stuff in your head.

There's this nice coffee shop in Kigowa, 'The Haven' its called, its not bad at all, nice muffins and there's an internet cafe next door with a hot spot, so you can enjoy a cup of chai while surfing the internets. I decided to stop by and send the email. The internets is big, everytime I log on, I get carried away. Ooh, there's this site, theurf.com, I found the link on uginsomniac's blog, it's malarious, hilarious stuff. Have you been to urbanlegendkampala.com? Baz, Streets, Sleek and Erique doing their thing, its brilliant. Hey, what do you guys think about WikiLeaks? I think its an amazing achievement that would never have been possible but for willing people and the internets. Interestingly, the man behind the idea is now facing sexual offence charges which of course have nothing to do with WikiLeaks. Hmmph! I think an idea is hard to kill, if not impossible, and it won't be too long before something better than WikiLeaks comes along, also, once information is out on the internets, it's a wrap! You might as well shut down a gazillion websites but it's always out there somewhere, being peddled by those who excel at it, those who push the boundaries of human knowledge.

While I was sending the email, I received two calls, the first from Beqy informing me that I was late and that they would have to leave without me, I told her I would find her at the party later and proceeded to order some food. You know, fat frog and all. Then I got a call from one of my clients, the big guy could not access his email and the world had come to a stop, someone had to come and fix it, eh eh. Knowing how important email is to business, coupled with a bit of cajoling from my business partner, I decided to go and sort out said problem. But I was in Ntinda, the party was in Kiwatule and the client in Bugolobi.

I had previously agreed to hook up with Becca of 'The House on Friendship Road' on my way to the party so I headed to her place. Becca, Carlo and Darlyne are roomies and I have been spending a lot of time at their hewis[house]. They made me watch Glee! Its this series where everyone keeps breaking out in song. I found Carlo who was in the midst of sending a message via facebook, she was totally engrossed, facebook yaja! I called Becca and she was in Muyenga, doing Yoga, she would be back in 30min. Darlyne was out there somewhere, no doubt up to some interesting stuff, she does many interesting things that one. Anyway, I put one foot in a hammock and the other in Zion and decided to take a nap. No such luck, so I just lay in the hammock and looked at the sky, trees, listened to the birds, I thought I could hear the damn grass grow. Grating of metal, the gate was opening, Becca was back, 45min, not too bad. I should pick a leaf.

After she'd taken a shower, dressed up and what not (which amazingly didn't take too long), we headed to Bugolobi so that I could hook up the client. IT tech support is interesting, among many things, it requires a calm reflective mind, a willingness to learn and the ability to handle the unexpected. Thankfully, this job took 10 minutes to accomplish and another 20 to answer the client's questions, there are always questions, mob of them.

Paul, you bastard! I can see you :-)

We left Bugos and headed to Kiwatule and the xmas party. It was great, there was face painting, nice bus[food], happy kids, cute girls, fleeting butterflies, friends, PiFFers and interesting strangers. The snaps are on facebook. The bus was so nice, there were seconds and thirds, for the kids I mean. Compliments to the chef. Some kb, a kickabout, a doughnut and much more and then I had to prepare for a 5min presentation I was scheduled to make at the inaugural Idealogue 5.5.5 event.

So, there's these guys, they call themselves 'Speakers Without Borders', mbu they're in the business of banging unrestricted kb, Ssewa would say "syuuu! you're sloping, splash! splash!" but that was a long time ago. Speakers Without Borders, Xter Inc, Kitenge Spaces, The WorkZine and Emaline Graphics got together and arranged a kimeza and called it Idealogue 5.5.5. The idea was to have 6 presenters each make 5min presentations of ideas, concepts, things that they wanted to put out there, 5min for feedback and then I guess the conversation would carry on in other forms and on other forums. The PiFF was invited to take part and yours truly was oba chosen to make the presentation. Yours truly did not have the presentation ready by 4pm and the event was starting at 5pm.

The Scouts have a motto, 'Be Prepared' and if its the only claim you ever lay to being a scout, do it and always 'Be Prepared'.

4:30pm or thereabouts and I sat down with Eunice, Becca and Davinah to finalise the presentation. We had previously flirted with a few concepts, the best of which was to have 5 PiFFers each talk for one minute and tell a simple story about paying it forward, however this was deemed impractical due to the time available for preparations and other such things, so we decided to go with a classic powerpoint slide thingy. One hour later and we bundled ourselves into Becca's auto and headed to Workers' House for my first public presentation.

It went well, I was nervous at the beginning, sweated a little bit but I think and I'm told it was great! Yay! I banged all my kb and even had time to play for guys a Marley kids song, 'The Mission' which I thought summed up the PiFf idea.

"Haile Selassie say a one respect for every man
No care the race, no care the color nor di religion
So make a decision fi bun di division
Cause each and every human being fi trod pon di mission"

The Idealogue 5.5.5. was a success, though some of us broke the rules, we had more than 5 slides, we didn't have any pictures and in fact Davis, one of the organizers and he of the unbordered kb, had me panicking to fit some pics into the PiFF presentation. I did, and one of them prompted a question from the audience.

Dinner was served by Becca after the event, i.e., I had a nice dinner with Becca and then it was off to home to see my housemate and me landlord, i.e. pay my rent. My landlord was supposed to have locked up his hewis that night at 11pm if we hadn't come up with his gees, thankfully my housemate kept him at bay and I managed to come up with gees from my end of the world. I need a break from my landlord though, he once had the audacity to tell me that he was 'sponsoring my stay in Kampala', I wanted to throttle him but I had to smile nicely and tell him I was sorry his rent was late. Sheesh!

Having had that burden off my shoulders, I finally made it to the 'Yellow House' and found everyone else blasting. I duly joined in the celebrations and capped the night at about 1am.

Sunday morning and I was up at 6am for the MTN marathon. Becca, Carlo and Darlyne picked me up and we headed to Kololo. Huff puff muff and 1:13:21 seconds after some arbitrary start time, Franis Amuriat ambled over the finish line, begging for a pail of water.

So, I didn't register for the marathon and the Barefoot Power Firefly team had an extra number and chip which I put on and became Francis Amuriat from Amuriat.

It was pretty much winddown from there. Spliff, hammock, music, snatches of despicable me, sleep, drooling, long walk home with Richard and the weekend was over.

Today is Thursday and I still feel like I need a week of sleep.