Nextel Systems: The Beginnings of

Our Heritage: The Beginnings of Nextel Systems Inc

The Idea is to build a truly software centered company in Uganda. Taking into context the local needs, to build a software company that develops software products that meet those locally unique requirements -from the bottom up. This by nurturing local talent and attracting brilliant minds into our programming environment -in all domains like desktop applications, web programming, database systems and so on. The languages are open, so it would be appropriate to take the plunge. But these are the conceptual reasons why for starting Nextel Systems. There is a more personalised outlook on this. I will be discussing further in coming posts

The Beginnings of Nextel Systems Inc

Over the past few years, I have cultivated an idea -the idea of starting an IT firm. It had been floating on my mind like butterflies throughout my years at university. I used to write foot notes in the margins of my books when I took lecture notes, of what the company might be. When I read a book, I jotted down some things that came to mind, in relation to what it might be. Studying IT at university helped a lot in the advancement of this idea. Around my second year, a friend of mine who was doing computer science, called Tony, sold me his used copy of The Road Ahead. In have never looked back after reading that book because it gave me a glimpse of the potential of software and gave me an example in Microsoft. I have mused and chatted and talked and e-mailed to friends about it. Now, I have made a small move on it. You can read more on this by follow this link, www.nextelsystems.com

Nextel Systems - the initial, first website of the company - screenshot

Technology Transfer

Technology Documentation

Our Politicians have not put enough emphasis on models to have transfer of technology into the country, which includes skills, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples and prototypes for manufacturing, facilities and so on from developed  partners to ensure that scientific and technological developments are accessible by Ugandans.

Development will come if Ugandans are exposed to these methods, and can further develop and exploit the technology into new products, processes, applications, materials or services to develop the economy. China started on this processway back in the 1960s, using all means at their disposal,  and today they make everything -from military to spacecraft to the keyboard I'm using. The West did not 'donate' this technology to China, its was a great leap in the Vision of  the leaders of China then that today they're a global power. What makes our leaders think that they can Liberate their people by waiting on donations? It puzzles me..

Telecom Quality of Service

The State of Uganda's Telecom Quality of Service (QoS) As more and more Ugandans become avid users of mobile phones and the telecommunications industry becomes more competitive, one is led to think that all is good for the end user consumers. However, end users are not getting the value for their money from the providers, especially when it comes to the quality of services delivered. Quality of Service can be understood as a series of network traffic engineering mechanisms, where resource reservation and control systems are implemented by the operators, the outcome being the quality of services rendered to the users. But many people have often complained about their providers, indicating that specific pointers of quality for voice and data services are trampled upon by providers. What we get more often from the providers are ambitious campaigns to acquire more subscribers, which would be a good thing if these were necessarily equally balanced with improvements in the capacity or bandwidth in their network infrastructure. This leads to overloading the network and clogging service delivery, with symptoms like SMS and other phone transactions hanging in cyberspace for long hours or even delivery failure.  This can be frustrating to people and businesses who depend on these communication channels for operations. Capacity is the resource for telecoms - all communications products and services are tailored around it. But it seems to be taking the back stage when it comes to considerations. What use is a wide customer base acquired at the cost of service quality? In the recently concluded technology event byGoogle at Speke Resort Munyonyo, software engineers highlighted that more than 45% of access to information in Africa happens on the mobile phone. This means that the mobile phone is in fact an important platform both for access to information by common people and delivery of technology solutions in form of applications by technology entrepreneurs. We cannot reap these benefits when we’re still reckoning with broken calls, delays, jitters and bit-rate errors when we make calls or send messages. The Communications Commission needs to provide tough leadership in order to protect mobile phone users as well as prepare the ground for the next phase of mobile platform technologies. The telecoms may not regulate themselves from profit making drives, but since most of these network providers have standards-based infrastructures, it is possible for the commission to determine throughputs on the provider communication links, and save us from these performance ills. This benefits everyone.

Making Cup Phones

We didn't know much science about how sound travels when we were in primary four or so, but I could swear that we carried out some high tech projects that could pass for a scientific award; One of those projects was when we made our own own phones!  I don't know how we landed upon the technology but what I remember is that it worked so well, that I and some playmates always escaped from all other activity to do cup phones in the back yards.We made  tin can and string (or cup and string) telephones and spoke to each other through them a good distance apart; Even whispers could be heard through those cup phones .

Cup Phones

It workded like this; We looked for two empty tins or cans, especially plastic ones like thrown cups, jelly containers, disposable coke cups etc... and a long piece of string -the longer the thread the more fun...

We would punch a tiny hole at the bottom of each can, just enough for the string to fit through. If the plastic cup was too thick for whatever sharp tool we were using, we looked for a pointed metallic  pin and put it in a fire for a minute, then just put it through the bottom of the cup, and the holes would be created, only large enough to put the string through.

Then we pushed the string through the bottom of each can, using the end of a thin clip, or threaded it through with a small wire. Then tied a knot with the string inside the cup -the knot resting firmly in the bottom of the can. We could tie the string knot around a little piece of a stick, like toothpick but not exactly a toothpick, to get the string to stay hooked in the cup.

We then placed the second end of the string through the bottom of the other can or cup, as we did the first - tied a knot as before, and put the string tight in both cans. 

The finished phone looked something like this, but this one is short and not straight

One of us would now hold one can and move to the full distance of the string, then placed the open end of his can over his ear and the the other would speak into the open end of the other can. The string had to be as tight as it could be straight, without breaking it. When it was made correctly, you could hear your friend speak, from wherever he was, over a long piece of string. Then, you could also talk while your friend listens.

You could argue that, with that technology in our hands, we had the ability to install cup phones 

in homes, criss-crossing rooms, and charge freakin cup bills; 

The Japanese had nothing on our Cup Telephones.

Certainty Is Uncertain.

Some times challenges can seem overwhelming. One issue can build itself up as looming obstacle in your path, and make you think you aren’t gonna do this.

Challenges are scarecrows, for all they can do is create uncertainty in our wake and make us doubt our abilities. If you’re the quitting type, they can make you throw in the towel and abandon something you’ve started and believed in. Boy am I a living example of this situation -so many projects I liked have remained on paper because of this. But no more! If such a cycle continues, upon the end of a life time you’ve accomplished nothing.
Life therefore, is for hangers on –people who persist and pursue initiatives to the very end, no matter what the end is. The fact is, nothing comes easily –this applies both to the human race and the animal race. Just think about it!

Some times you have very little to work with, and perhaps nothing to our advantage. This fact is, however, the same reality behind great accomplishments; they come at the very end of the spring of hope.

Now fellows, we are not short of examples from men and women in our extended family who made hard work the theme of their lives. They persisted and this gave faith a fighting chance. If we don’t get inspiration from them, they might haunt us.

Immortal Beloved!

Ludwig van Beethoven - "Immortal Beloved"

Letter 1
Good morning, on July 7

My thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved,
I can live only holy with you or not at all,
Be calm my love, my all. Only by calm consideration of
our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together.
Oh, continue to love me; never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
Ever thine
Ever mine
Ever ours
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Love Letters of Great Men Vol.1 are letters by men who were separated from their loves by wars and hundreds and hundreds of miles.

Have You Ever Loved?

How do you know you love a woman?

To really know you love a woman, you’ve got to quite know her on the inside, to understand her at a deeper level. Otherwise you’d love the image.
To know her deeply; hear her every thought, listen to her dreams, give her the wings that she needs if she wants to fly; if you’re secure she flies in your arms. And when you find yourself lying helplessly in her arms, that’s a sign you love that woman.

How does a woman know that you love her?

You tell her! That’s the sure way; tell her that you want her, that she is the one. Tell her that it is gonna last forever, because she too has been waiting for somebody to tell her this, some one who means and looks it.

How do you know you’ll always be together?

Let her hold you, till you know how she needs to be touched. Breathe her in-out; taste her lips, smell her hair, kiss her neck. If you can feel her in your blood, and when you can see your unborn children in her eyes, you know you really love that woman and you’ll always be together.

Also you’ve got to give her something to believe –like your love, hold her dearly; dearness gives everything its worth. Your tenderness should be the first thing she wakes up to, and the last thing she knows when she falls asleep.
Then, she too will be there for you, take good care of you, think of you, and look forward to you at the end of any day. You know what you gotta do to love your woman, yeah? Do all that.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
So tell me, have you ever really, really really ever loved a woman? Send me an email.

Careers file

Welcome to the folder that will contain postings on developments in our careers -the particular occupations for which we are trained; so this will contain whats going, whats not going - are we moving headlong at high speeds, zeroing in on a job, starting business, or headed for intellectual invisibility! However, the total sum of one's life experiences goes beyond education paid work. It involves community, volunteering and family activities, so there you go...

African Giselle and Me, who is faster?

Lately, my cousin Stephen Twahirwa and I have been catching up on lost ground -so many years in school and we had never really known each other on personal level. So, we’ve been visiting book stores in town –Aristoc, to quench our thirst for titles. This is one of the most enduring traits I love about Steve -he is a reader, and so am I. Thanks to his initiative, we started jogging between the reading. He had been doing this back in Rwanda for a long time. So the jogging has been going on for about a month now. I din’t know I could run a long distance until Steve came along. 

I have been slowly turning into a Giselle of sorts.

Some dimwit who was sitting on a cliff along the route we take once shouted at me;“what are you chasing?” If didn’t know better I’d have told him about his mother. But jogging, I've discovered, has its rules. It takes some focus –you don’t get distracted, if you do you lose pace and get tired easily. Running or Jogging is one sport that puts your endurance to a test.

I can say I’ve picked some insights into how people run marathons; you have to maintain a constant pace through the distance. This constancy harmonizes your breathing to motion ratio –you have to acquire a pace for the running-breathing motion, which are in harmony. Otherwise you get tired quickly because you use uncoordinated energy to move. See, you don’t have horse power, you have oxygen power. You create your energy on the road, by your mechanism of breathing. The more length between your in and out timer the better.

Anyway, the amazing thing about jogging is that when you do a distance two to four times, it becomes nothing, you begin to want a new threshold –so you keep upping the ante until you reach your limits; which, going by this formula, there isn’t! That is how Steve has been turning me into a Giselle. Where we used to go one round and feel like the end has come to the world, now we’re going there two rounds, and looking forward to a third. This is a distance of about 8 km a round, so we are currently doing 16 km –not very bad for starters.

I don’t exactly want to acquire the identity of a running junkie on any competitive scale. It’s just that I don’t want to get heart disease or any of those ailments that come with body inactivity. That’s why I am burning off all traces of fat that might intrude; I just want bone and muscle, that’s the way it’s got to be. Plus, once you’ve started it’s kinda enjoyable, its kinda heard to stop -when evening time comes, little alarms go off in the legs.

And who knows, in future we might be required to contribute to a global or national cause by running a marathon in which each family is asked to participate with its members -I want to be one of those that finish the race, in case that happens.

Self Definition -continuation1

I was saying in my previous article on the subject of Self Definition, we arrive in this world with an original identity — then we spend the first half of our lives either abandoning it or letting others disabuse us out of it. This is because when growing up, we are surrounded by expectations -which may have little to do with who we really are. These expectations are held by people who are NOT trying to understand our perspectives, but to fit us into theirs!

In families, schools, workplaces, communities, we are trained to gain images of acceptability; this training is carried in social pressures, fears and pursuits. When you are done 'training', your original shape is deformed beyond recognition; we therefore, too often betray our true selves to gain the approval of others. That is not how 'it' works.

.. i will continue this later

The Concept of Self Definition.

It does take such a long time before you finally become the person you have always wanted to be, doesn't it? I am interested in what happens during the process of becoming it, which can be plenty of drama!

A person has to undergo lots of dissolving and shaking off egos to discover their true identity. Every person has got a deep-end which is the seed of his or her true self. Its imperative to find that impeccable character in you that enables us to outlast anything -whether it is a nuclear holocaust or an invitation to chat with God in the beautiful gardens of His heaven.

But I get the nagging feeling sometimes, that I am not being absolutely myself when I do or say certain things -we all do, I know that. There are times we mask ourselves in identities that are no even close.

Yet there is a character in every human being that doesn't pretend or call upon external entities. It doesn't need to be different,or better, or go beyond your personal reach. It is just you - all the portraits you picked up in the life circles you've been discarded. Portrayals which created distortions about yourself. It is you -strong, good enough!

I value this kind of me very much, that is why I've set it a goal to find him: to find me! I want to find the me that is humble about my own convictions, that respects the world's diversity, that has no illusions, that has no superiority or inferiority complexes.

I want to drop all false portrayals I picked on the way, because I've grown strong enough to discard it. Why shouldn't I be myself? Some one tells me its in the belief that the self will always be “little” unless corrected by external forces of virtue. This notion can make you feel inadequate to live your own life, creating guilt about the distance between who you are and who you're supposed to be, leaving you exhausted as you labor to close the gap.

People who have discovered themselves do not scramble or gamble toward some prize. They accept the treasure of their true self they already possess. Being great is not a goal to be achieved! It is rather a gift, to be received.

So, I am shutting out all voices “out there” calling me to become something I am not, and welcoming a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born, to fulfill the original self hood given me at birth by God.

It is strange. Trying to become yourself, accepting and living happy with it, turns out to be even more demanding than attempting to become someone else. So for now, am striking between the universal tendency to want to be someone else and the ultimate importance of becoming myself:

.... to be continued

The hero in you.

Julius Ceaser once wrote; "There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. But omitted, and the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves -- or lose the ventures before us."

Pondering onto these words brings some meaning to surface...
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved but have never been able to reach.
The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.

After final exams, then what?

Ever since I finished my course finals, i find myself staying indoors,a lot. The other day, a little spider came down from the ceiling. He said his name was Eliin, and that he'd been
living in my room his whole life. He said he'd never
seen me spend so much time in the room.

So he asked if he should spread some web all over the door so no one could come in. I told him... No thanks, and he disappered in his hide out.
Huh? Lemme be clear, the spider did not speak...
I just saw from the way he crawled on the floor and looked st me that thats what he was telling me.

Perhaps the spider made a point; that stop staying indoors, its boring. So, I've started partying... thats how I ended up going for the Medical students' dinner on saturday at kabila country club. I got a ticket for two and invited Cindy to go with, but she was attending some one's kasiki.
I went there anyways, even though i didnt know any one except the gal who sold me the ticket.
Am beginning to think; partying is what kids do when they cant handle reality.

How long does life take to change

Did anyone wake up with their clothes on from the previous night? Are you grumbling in bed, still too tired from working on the computer all night and sleeping
at five am? Any one there?

Oh, well i guess its just me.

Anyways. Let me ask you guys a good question.
Do you ever wonder how long it takes to change your life? Comment here if you do, I'd like to hear it.
Is it six years, like in High School? I know that some of us are always waiting for the next level of education to determine the change in your life.
Does it take one year, like every Christmas?
Can your life change in a month, a week or a single day?

I don't know how long it really take to register change in one's life.What I know is we are always in a hurry; to grow up, to get a head, to go places...

But when you're young, when you still have beauty and energy, 1 hour can change everything. The measure of time isnt anything to be life altering.

Undergrad Exams.

Well, well -a few days ago, on Friday 23rd of May 2oo8, I did the last of my bachelors final exams, that was (Database Programmming) and finished at about 1500 hours GMT.

Huh, its a big deal, you know. My undergraduate career is coming to its dignified end.

That now leaves me with one major task required before I can graduate -The final Project.
We are`required to do a study in our choicest subject areas in the IT field and then apply the learnt skills, like (programming, networking, internet technologies, software engineering, mobile computing) and so on... to create computer-based solutions for identified problem(s).

In my case, its not just a final project, its an opportunity to contribute and handle a few things I would like to change. Am doing a project in E-commerce. Its an electronic commerce application to enable the fashion industry take their business online.
Electronic commerce is mostly about being able to buy or sell things using the internet as a medium, and this has been lacking in Uganda inspite of the change of times and proliferation of internet.

The idea of siting infront of a computer at home or anywhere and send orders for items from a store in town and they are delivered to your doorstep in the next half hour truely inspired me on this project.
The concept is that the costs involved in physically going to the stores to get what you want can be done away with, if you can access the store online. My task literary is to 'put the store online' where consumers can access it, and then create an electronic money transfer function in the back end to process payments for purchased items direclty from the consumer's bank account, without you moving from your seat.
The value addition here is that; if you know what you want, that knowledge should be an incentive to your time and finances and therefore you shouldnt suffer the same fate as some one who doesnt.
What you want is a click away, not a mile of burning fuel and being upset by queues at banks to withdraw money.
Thats it, stay at home and maximise relationships while our comperised systems work their way through stores and bank accounts in a matter of nano seconds, to do work for you that would take a lot of time and hussle.

In the broadest sense, this kind of approach to business, if adopted massively by Ugandan businesses, can help reduce traffic jam on Kampala roads and remove the barriers of time and distance from the consumers' list of worries.
So am on that one right now, and its exciting.

Otherwise if everything goes according to the University plan, graduation is set for some time in
January 2009. I dont know why it takes MAKUNIKA [Makerere University Kampala] such a long time to gradute off students who have finished, but I can guess thats because they lack computerised systems for processing and integrating students' information fast enough.
Actually some colleagues in IT and Computer Science have done Projects to that effect, I dont get why those applications are never put to use to speed up university-to-students services.

Anyways, thats not my problem, thats the university's problem. My concern right now is to avoid the unemployment boogey that comes crashing into the lives of fresh graduates from university.
Record has it that in order to get a job anywhere, they will require you to have minimum of 3 hundred years of experience in that area. And here I am, with 000 years of field experience, and yet Ihave a right to work.
So am contacting possible employers to fit me in their programs [at no payment] so that I can get the 3 years of experience to qualify for my first real job. Huh, its funny isnt it?

Music and Me

Some times I ask myself why I love music the way i do. It can't be normal the way love music, -i could literary spend a day playing music.

Music surely is one of those spices of life I would gladly carry with to a 'desert island', as they say.

I wonder which one of my parents am following on this, because I'm certainly not alone.

I cannot correctly asses my mother's likes for music because I've never got a chance to interact with her to discover such things. But grandma (Kaaka) once mentioned that the Bene'Ishemurari, the Banyankore clan that my mother comes from, had nice voices and were the custodians of music and other plays in the glorious days of Ankore Kings. Okay, I guess am far fetching it here.

My grand father owned a gramophone, a big thing then

But my dad, I know one or two things about his taste for music. He was a great listener to local 'kadongo kamu' music when were growing up.
He owned a few hundred music tapes that he used to play on his radio cassette. On one of his good days he would come home with a new box full of new battery cells. I remeber he used to listen to Luganda cassetes by Ssebaduka, Ssebata, Kafeero, Basudde, Sekakka Suuna and many others. The songs used to tell satirical stories.
This part of my dad seems to have come to pass. Coming from school for me always entailed discovering the house afresh and looking for any new developments; I no-longer see the boxes full of cassetes anywhere our homes, not even in the village house. I was told that visitors took them one by one and my dad doesnt own a single one anymore. He hardly listens to music in recent years. I can only assume he lost interest in it because getting replacements wouldnt be much of his problem. Ahh, I guess things really come to pass.
I have also learnt that my grand father James Kanyorozi owned a gramophone on which he used to play music, and this was in a remote village so he was a first in the whole county. Uncles and aunties tell us that this was one of the things that illuminated his hi-side of life. So I may offer no apologies after all.

My interest in music seems to be growing, not passing. I'm into country, western type, hip hop RnB and Gospel RnB. I like Brandy songs a lot. As I write this, there are two pieces of high bass earphones blazing music in my ears, and guess who is on? Keisha Cole is doing 'Sent from Heaven'.

I so like music that a crazy idea lingers somewhere in my grey area, that I should get a 500 GB portable Hard Drive and gather all my favourite music onto it, atleast for the next five years. I dont want to miss a thing. As soon as a hot song is out, i want it in my collection, stored somewhere.

What is intriguing though, for all the love for music, is that I dont know how to dance. Most people who love music also love to dance. But I don't! Instead I just want to sit and take it in from a comfortable chair or bed. But thats not to say that when a favourite song pops on, I don't raise arms and do some weired moves on the floor when no one is watching...true story.
I guess have to go ask my mother sometime, if she is the one who likes RnB; I have to be absolutely certain...

Problems come; in multiple numbers!

April 2008 has been the worst month ever, since I joined Makerere University in 2005. A lot of problems hit me like volleys from left, right and center. My thoughts hit the danmest low that April.

First of all, my cousin Cindy's laptop gets stolen from my hall of residence room (B6) at campus. I had borrowed it from her to work on my projects. The pressure of courseworks and deadlines was surging up on me.

Before I could get over that, my mobile phone gets snatched by a thief riding on a bodaboda bike. It was crazy timing. Around 9 pm in the night, I was getting into campus from the small gate, around University hall, from getting fast food from Wandegeya. The thug came up behind me riding on a bike, me thinking he is as a normal bodaboda rider. He slowed down as he approached me from the back. I am walking slowly, busy texting a message to Alex, a guy who had refused to pick. The thug reached for it when he got within arm-range, snatched my phone and speeds off; that was the last I saw of that phone.

Alex Atwiine is a guy who had upset me the whole evening, I'd been trying to get him on the phone but he was not answering. He had sold me his laptop a week earlier, in my efforts to replace Cindy's, [ a Gateway brand at 900,000 UGX which i had paid in cash in the Stanbic banking hall at Garden City] . But the laptop was full of his material when I took it -so we had agreed he had to come with a portable hard drive the very next day of the sale to take the 80GB stuff off. He didn't come for a week. Now, on the day my phone is to be stolen, he calls me to take his data of the laptop; it turns out he wanted us to go to a friend of his who works at The Independent magazine, so we went to his friend's office on Kanjokya street in Kamwokya.

When we reached there, they failed to put the data onto the friend's workplace computer. Apparently this required networking the two machines (which quite a simple process) but apparently it would take a long time and the battery on the laptop would go out before transferring the 80 GB data, [the battery had atleast 1 hour to go out]. So I had to go back to campus to pick the laptop charger, and leave them doing whatever they had to do.
That, my dear became the last I saw of the laptop. I called Alex from campus to know whether they were transfering and he told me that it would not be possible because they were closing at work and so we should do this tomorrow. I ask him to stay there and I pick the laptop since I had coursework on it to be handed in the next day and I had to finish it tonite.

He told me he was leaving for Entebbe to pick up a friend but the laptop is with the friend at office. So I took a bodaboda fast to the workplace and found the friend there, who told me that Alex had taken the laptop.

I knew then that Alex was turning a crook. I called him up, to know exactly where he was so I could get there by all means and pick the laptop from him, but he told me lie after lie until he stopped answering the phone altogether. I therefore went to use the faculty lab computers to re-do the coursework from scratch that evening. This went on from like 7 pm till like 9 pm. I realised it was getting late and that i had missed dinner served at my hall of residence. Thats how I went to get fast food from wandegeya.

So, when I was texting him a message to be sure he wasnt running away with a laptop he had already sold me, my phone was snatched by a petty thief. I cursed that evening. In a flash moment I had just lost all contact numbers, including Alex's on that phone. What the thief didn't know was that i wasn't only losing the phone to him but also the 900,000 UGX to Alex.

Pissed off is not the exact way to describe me that evening.
I went in my campus room and ate the take away, which was supposed to be an escape from the bad hall food. But even it tasted like crap.

The next morning I went to town first thing and bought a new (similar) phone from a Simba Telecom shop on Kampala road, and passed by MTN Wandegeya to get a simcard replacement. Then I began on the process of finding Alex's number again through the contacts I had known him in the first place. I gave them the story of Alex running away with the laptop, which they had signed to as witnesses during the sale. I told them I would hold them accountable. Some how they managed to get a hold of Alex before he flew back to school abroad and he returned the money.
That is how the month of April  became the worst in my days at MUK.

Making the Big decisions

A lot of young people find it hard to make big decisions regarding their lives and most often leave it for chance to make decisions for them. As such they end up blaming some one or something for the misnomers that follow them. By I try to differ from that. I believe in taking full control of our lives and leaving nothing to chance. This is because circumstances are very unpredictable, and nature does not exactly fix human problems.

An example of such hard decisions that requires taking full control is one regarding marriage. You know, you are in these twenties where society expects you to find some one and perhaps take them home for introduction and so on. A lot of guys fall victims of this 'group think' and make the most pre-mature decisions of their lives.
I have seen at University, a lot of young ladies in my own class start to swell bellies and bearing children in the very second year at university. Its really inconvenient and a sign of bad planning.

Marriage, as I understand it, must be one of the most carefully planned milestones of ones life. Just because you've become of age or you have earned enough money to make a wedding doesn't mean you should. Its more than that. Its carrying out a personality test on yourself to see how well you've managed your own life before you think of managing some one else's. If you have not managed your own life, it follows logically that you'll not manage two lives, let alone three and four. You will only get married as an escape route from your failures and make some one's daughter curse life for ever meeting you. But God forbid that should happen.

Let me let you in on a little secret, about my own idea of a future wife. I used to have a set of variables for a perfect wife when I was small. They were; perfect shape with white snow-white teeth, long fingers and toes, hips (don't lie), deep navel hole and so on. That was me in my teens.

Now its different. She should be studied, and studied broadly especially in the Humanities. If she went to school in the US or UK that's much much better because the schools down here in the pearl don't take humanities that far. You get some one with a myopic outlook on the world and therefore life itself. The thing about a good wife according to me, is to have a liberated view on life, rather than living in the dictates of a single cultural orientation. So I believe any broad study in academic disciplines that digest the world system and the human condition, like literature, history, philosophy, religion, anthropology, world studies, communication and cultural studies, the arts(including music) would make a good mother. That's the kind of woman I'd like to have kids with. This is a wish, just a wish that's not aware of what God has in plan for me.

That's the first thing I would be looking for.

Partyin wit the animals

Okay, you have probably gone partying and found out you are partying with the animals of the game, right? This was the case with me on Kandy's 19th birthday.

Cindy organised this one for her sister, and as luck would have it, the venue was at Good Fellas, Grand Imperial Hotel Kampala, the same hotel that hosts the Quest.net business presentations i attend on Thursdays. So I got there easily.

Cindy and Kandy were still at home dressing up, or somewhere along the road from Zzana, racing to catch up with their invited guests. A pool of seasoned party goers showed up, including three friends of mine I had invited that evening. Horrace, Uthman and Malcolm. The former two were also my OBs.

Lucy, aunt Agather's daughter was also present. When I arrived she was the only one I could recognise, I hadn't met the rest pool of girls boys before. She was already doing what the gracious host would do, tossing a smile here, shaking hands there and so on. The Cindys later arrived and things got warmer with taking of pictures, most of which are in the slide show above.
Cool music was coming from somewhere in the walls and drinks were shifting. Wines, waters, sodas, name it. Two big fat cakes were also waiting somewhere to be cut and eaten... and I was waiting for that moment!!

It so happened that rings were being formed around exclusive friends, so I hang with my friends as did the rest, sitting in groups of five, 8 etc. But the urge was there to mix up and chat with some one new. So someone would join (intrudingly) into a pool of friends and soon there would be no conversation. Malcolm was looking for a real hook that night but he got away with none. Horrace called up his gal friend and she joined us later on. A lovely gal I should add.

Serving began at around 4:00 pm or so. It wasn't a real dinner party or something but plates full of fries were passing by, chicken, goats meat, cow meat, pork, chips, tea and lots of drinks..
This is the time when Kandy got to a one by one introduction session to the people who attended her 19th. I joined working on the serving bit, passing the plates around several times so that every one had enough . Its like every one wasn't caring about time and soon were clocking mid night. Apparently aunt Agather was now calling up Lucy to know what the h*** she was still doing outside beyond mid-night, so she had to summarise.

I am rushing the party to the good parts now. Some boys had had one too many by this time, and arguments were getting louder. When the cake cutting session came, one dude gave himself the task to do so. People who were around the table noticed that he was cutting the cake more with his hands than with the knife. Another guy complained about it and tried to stop him and... the unthinkable happened! Blows were flying in the air.

After the party, that was around two o'clock, the real party animals suggested club, and me thinking it was time to go home was in for a surprise. Cindy assured me it would do me no harm to step in club for the first time. Soon we were at Rooge, I stayed in the car and all the rest went in, found it boring and came back and we drove home at four in the morning. Bye