Random kelele

Instead of trying so hard to become Zulu, Oprah should apply for a Kenyan passport as soon as possible for Kenya is Oprah country. Where else in the world would you get two different episodes of Oprah broadcasted AT THE SAME TIME on two different terrestrial channels?

In July Nairobi is colder than Naomi Campbell on the Tyra Banks show. It dropped from 20 degrees C to 13 degrees C in just under an hour one day last week. My blood vessels were in shock. Meanwhile when you step out of the plane in Doha, Qatar you feel like someone is blasting a very hot hair dryer in your face while wrapping you in ten blankets.

There is a noticeable difference in quality and taste between different Kenchic outlets. This is probably due to the heavy franchising which has lead to an explosion in Kenchic outlets. (One night last week I was meeting a friend in town and told them I was outside Kenchic on Moi Avenue towards TSC. They were also outside Kenchic on Moi Avenue towards TSC. After a while we realise that there are at least two Kenchic outlets less than 50 metres apart on the same street. Starbucks’ rapid expansion has got nothing on us.) I suggest KBW sponsor my Kenchic quality research where I eat at every establishment in the city in search of Nairobi’s best chicken. It is all in the name of science no?!

If you are going to be in a building when a fire breaks out make sure it is Barclays Plaza. I was in there trying to get some information at the Flashcom office when a fire alarm rang out. The speed with which people were moving down the stairs was impressive. All the people who worked in that building seemed to know where to go and they all took it very seriously which made it very easy for us visitors to evacuate as well (we just followed the crowd). Yet another indication of how security perceptions have changed in the Nairobi we live in.

As a veteran of travelling up country by bus I have to say EasyCoach have got many things right. For starters they have a maximum capacity of 41 which means much more leg room and you can do that “lean back” thing with your seat like you can on a plane, hehe. EasyCoach also give you seat numbers when you book which means there is none of that scrambling and pushing once the doors open to grab the best seats. However they do take their name a little bit too seriously. They are Eaaaaaaaaaasy. It took us over 10 hours from Nairobi to Kakamega and while I like my buses to take their time when travelling at night (what’s the point in reaching your destination at 4am and then having to sit in the vehicle until 6am when it is safer to walk around) it took us 2 hours to go from Kisumu to Kakamega I nearly pulled my hair out. 2 hours for 51 kilometres, that is ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as the bus behind us where upon reaching Kisumu the driver asked if she could sleep for 1 hour because she was very tried. Needless to say the reaction she got was not very supportive.

There are cigarette adverts everywhere. In some of the leading supermarkets and at some petrol stations a cigarette brand, Pall Mall I think it is, is running a promotion from some attractive stalls where you win a gift with every purchase of a packet of cigarettes. The promotion is run under the campaign “Everyone is a winner”. Well the tobacco companies certainly win. There are cigarette promotions in magazines, on massive billboards, everywhere. This is a big difference from the UK where cigarette adverts are banned everywhere and where 50% of the space on a cigarette packet in devoted to a health warning. This aggressive advertising is reflected in that while cigarette smoking is frowned upon and falling in the developed world it is rising in the developing world. This is further reflected in the dramatic shift in the global death toll from smoking, with about as many people now dying from smoking in the developing world as in industrialized nations. (Originally reported in The Lancet medical journal VOL362 ISS9387). John R. Seffrin, president of the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) wrote “Without immediate worldwide action — most notably, strong support for the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control — we can expect tobacco’s death toll to nearly triple in the developing world over the next 20 years, killing in numbers that will rival any other world epidemic in human history.”

I am writing this from CallsMall a cyber café in Hurlingham area of Nairobi. I was fed up with the 115 kbps speed oozing out of the Flashcom service and wanted to see 100 Mbps next to a network icon again so I came here. The computers are new, the monitors are new, the speed is fast, it is dirt cheap 1 Ksh per minute and just as important for me, the computer mice are new. I hate, with a passion, using broken, old, unresponsive computer mice. They drive me nuts when I try to click something and the damn cursor takes a trip across the screen. Any advice on good ISPs for home use in Kenya would be very much appreciated.

Microsoft’s online products continue to frustrate my attempts to use them in Kenya. I have blogged about the impossibility of opening my hotmail email account in Kenya. Add to that list Windows Live Messenger and the whole MSN Messenger family. WLM will not even let me log on at all. I have had so many error codes I have given up googling them. MSN Messenger 7.5x logs on for about 5 minutes and then drops. Windows Messenger does a little better lasting around 10 minutes. MSN Web Messenger works but it slower than an EasyCoach between Kisumu and Kakamega. Kenya is the biggest advert Yahoo could ask for (they just have to share the country with Oprah.) This at a time when Microsoft turns its focus to “Emerging markets” (read: developing world) and is planning on hiring 70,000 new people in emerging markets in the next year in an attempt to get computers at the same level of saturation as mobile phones. Microsoft’s head of Emerging Markets was talking about a PAYG computer, it will be interesting to see how that works out (hopefully by then their online products will have been sorted out.)