Category: kikuism

Wie komme ich an ein Nokia N95?

Motiviert durch meinen Vertragswechsel letztens von Vodafone zu Blau.de, und sicherlich auch durch den momentan berechtigten Hype ums iPhone habe ich gestern abend kurz bei eBay reingeschaut: auf der Suche nach einer guten Finanzierungsalternative fürs gewünschte Nokia N95.

Die Vorgeschichte
Bisher bin ich natürlich ein Handyvertragsmensch gewesen, d.h., alle zwei Jahre ergab sich die Möglichkeit, ein Handy zu Vertragsverlängerung finanziert zu bekommen. So entschied ich mich letztes Jahr für das eher schon ältere Nokia 6230i, welches im Gegensatz zum erst kurz getesteten 6233 über eine entscheidende Unterfunktion im Kurzmitteilungsmenü verfügte: die Auswahl einer Kurzmitteilungszentrale (SMC) direkt vorm Versenden einer SMS – was für die Fortführung meines alten Vertrages mit DM-Preisen bzw den Versand vergünstigter netzinterner SMS von elementarer Bedeutung war. Nach dem Anbieterwechsel fiel dieses Kriterium jedoch komplett vom Tisch, so dass ich endlich ganz unabhängig vom Vertrag & anderen Einschränkungen in Zukunft jedes beliebige Handy verwenden kann.

Was will ich?
Gewohnt durch den Komfort des Abrufens meiner e-mails via GPRS bzw. direkt vom Handy aus in Kenia (!), zahle ich bei Blau jetzt fast genauso wenig wie bei Safaricom für das Megabyte an Daten via GPRS. Durch die Möglichkeit, jetzt auch noch UMTS als prepaid Kunde nutzen zu können, erscheint diese Technologie bei den relativ geringen Kosten natürlich in einem viel besseren Licht.
GPRS, EDGE und UMTS, sowie – natürlich – WLAN und Bluetooth möchte ich auf jeden Fall in einem neuen Gerät haben. WLAN alleine schon deswegen weil ich dadurch eine Menge Kohle sparen und zB zu Hause via FritzBox telefonieren kann.
Dazu eine vernünftige Kamera mit Autofokus und mind 3,2 MPx, einem Blitz/guter LED zur Beleuchtung bei Dunkelheit und einen vernünftigen MP3 Player. Mit vernünftig bezeichne ich jene Player, die nicht bei jedem Neustart des Handys die MP3 Sammlung komplett einlesen und daraus einen Index erstellen wollen und dann auch noch irgendwann im Betrieb abstürzen – so wie es leider bei meinem 6230i in Verbindung mit der 2GB Speicherkarte der Fall ist.
Einzig die fehlende QWERTY/Z Tastatur macht mich ein bißchen stutzig, denn einer der Gründe wieso ich unbedingt so ein besonderes Telefon haben möchte wenn man doch meist eigentlich nur telefoniert und Kurzmitteilungen verschickt, ist natürlich die Möglichkeit, unterwegs Texte ausformulieren zu können. Das mache ich nämlich am liebsten unterwegs – texten :-)
Das Nokia E61, so nen BlackberryClone mit Tastatur, wäre so ne Alternative zum Nokia N95, allerdings ohne Blitz/LED, dafür für ca. die Hälfte des Preises zu bekommen. Hmm.

Was zahle ich?
Bestandskunden werden in Dland irgendwie schlechter behandelt als Neukunden – insofern erscheinen die meisten Neuverträge günstiger zu sein, als wenn man jetzt seinen Vertrag verlängert. Da ich ja jetzt eh prepaid Kunde bin, muss ich mir das Handy vollkommen selber beschaffen. Nur wie?

Wie finanzieren diese Typen es, ständig ein neues Handy mit sich rumzuschleppen? Neukauf, 2monatige Benutzung und dann wieder verkaufen? Bisher fallen mir nur folgende Optionen ein:

A) Im Versandhandel neu bestellen, lt. Preisvergleichsdienst schon für ca. 590,- EUR zu bekommen. => zu teuer!

B) Gebraucht kaufen, zB bei Ebay. Kostet aber im Grunde meist fast genauso viel wie wenn man es neu kauft. => zu teuer!

C) Einen Neuvertrag abschließen bei einem der vier Anbieter und mindestens ca. 250,- EUR dazu zahlen, sowie mindestens 9,95 EUR monatlich. => zu teuer!

D) Zwei Neuverträge abschließen und monatlich ca. 20,- EUR an Grundgebühr bzw. Mindestumsatz bezahlen. Für Studenten sogar schon ab 7,96 EUR/Monat/Vertrag.
Hmm. Macht das Sinn? 24 Monate x 20,- EUR = 480,- EUR. Wäre immerhin günstiger als Lösung a) & b).

E) …. ?

Fazit
Momentan erscheint mir nur der Abschluss von zwei Verträgen ? je 9,95 als kostengünstige Lösung attraktiv. Hmm…

AOB:

> Hallo liebes Blau Team,
>
> wieviele Rufnummern kann ich auf den neuen UMTSfähigen SIM Karten
> speichern? Handelt es sich dabei auch wieder nur um 16k Karten, auf
> denen man nur 100 Rufnummern speichern kann?
>
> Vielen Dank!

…

Auf der SIM Karte können Sie bis zu 10 Rufnummern speichern.
Weitere Daten können auf dem Handy gespeichert werden.

Viel Spaß beim Sparen

Wer spart hier?

random thoughts on a furahiday evening

It’s furahiday evening, I’ve just returned home and found some nice items in my snail mail. Things that brought a smile on my face.

pons

A dictionary on words as used by the German youth. With some equivalent translations for French, English and Spanish on each entry.

Ok ok ok, the other day I already asked for comments on some of these colloquial words as used in today’s German, but this booklet actually is a bit strange. Nevertheless, if you ever wondered about the real meaning of Gazellenfraktion, Bitchburner, Hülsenfrucht or Wurstmensch – this booklet might help.
Thx, Annette! :-)

—

SANY0640

“Ukweli – the truth” by Anna Mwalagho

Irene forwarded this CD to me and I still need to listen into it (I’ve just unpacked it – is this some sort of poetry made for the US market? lemme check..).
THANK YOU, Irene! :-)

—

Speaking of music, I currently enjoy listening to the audio stream of Radio Okapi. Soukous, baby!

—

Attended another blogger meeting late last night right here in Frankfurt. After enjoying a few beers with my jamaas in the Kenyan blogosphere some time ago, I thought about trying to explore the scene over here in Frankfurt, and it turned out to be really nice!
Fellow blogger Silke organized the event, and next to my new colleague Christian, I also had some nice conversations with Robert, Henning and Arno. There’s a webmonday coming up this next monday, and I am already considering going there. The beauty of such events is that you are actually talking to folks who read the same blogs (at least those from within the German blogosphere which is btw still very limited) and who are showing some interest in the international scene. The German section of GlobalVoices, for instance, is still very deserted, but as much as I like bridge-blogging, I currently don’t have the energy to cover the German blogosphere. Also, blog posts such as this one here clearly show that I am more interested in contributing my own content instead of just reposting another youtube video that seems to be cool or writing a summary/round-up on the important stuff that has been going on (another point is that I do not consider my English good enough for GV, but that’s another story..).

8 years ago, my bro KPT, Tammo and I went to a big VC guy right here in Frankfurt where we presented our (still cool) idea for an online application which was based on the wireless application protocol. This VC guy carefully listened to our idea and then ripped us apart, but also gave us some valuable feedback on how to improve that idea.
Later on, as everyone else had different careers going on, the project stalled, but this experience is still very vivid in our memory, and last evening, while talking to Burkhard who also works as a VC, I was reminded of this event. This particular VC guy from 1999 actually quit his job soon after the dot-com bubble bursted and is reported to be working as a salesman for prefabricated houses nowadays. LOL!

Vielen Dank für den sehr netten und interessanten Abend, liebe Rhein-Main pl0gger :-)

—

SANY0644

To Braun, or to Philips: that is the question…every serious man will ask himself one time in his life. I know my bro-in-law actually only uses a wet shaving technique, but I prefer an errectricooor shavaaa.
So I am in the lucky state of owning both systems, and while I’ve been a die-hard user of the typical Braun shaver system (as pictured on the left) with this very Shave 1.0 blade in the past, I am currently trying to see if I shouldn’t use the Philips three-bladed approach instead.

So, dear comrades, what kind of shaving system are you using? And beware, I already tried the alternative one day, which left some little spots on my face the above mentioned dictionary would describe as “ant titts”. There you go…

professionaaaal titooools

So I caught myself updating my profiles on xing.com and linkedin.com (isn’t that enough already? facebook, twitter & co for private stuff, xing & linkedin for the pro section?) and realized that I actually can’t think of any professional title, something like an instant keyword that describes my job.

Well, which job? My rummaging here, here, here, here and here?

And what do I put there?

a) what I learned? (~industrial manager, oil business)

b) what I studied? (~ environmental & civil engineering, with an emphasis on sustainable waste (water) management & eco-efficient product design)

c) what I’ve been employed for in the past? (~ list too long)

d) what I actually did ? (~ office “best boy”)

e) what I consider myself? (~ imagineering dude)

f) my current job description? (~ intern)

g) what I am currently doing? (~ editing technical datasheets & setting up a CMS)

h) ……?

As for those social network platforms online, I’ve started? mentioning my own (imaginary) company called Kikuyumoja Inc.. Job description: “optimizing idle time”. The dude abides…

AOB: thx GoogleAdSense for adsensing my blog with “composting toilets” and “biological dry toilets”!

DRC

The beauty of running a private blog is that I can actually cover various topics, without being forced to please anyone with a certain quality of content. As time goes by and rants pass through the fingers, different stories have been told so far and it was on the commuter train this evening at 8 pm when I realized my blog is 2 years old.

I started blogging in June 2005 because of a) Mzeecedric, who encouraged me to do so, b) i had an idle website and c) another community website refused to publish a story of mine (much unlike the Kenya Times :-), so I opted to publish my stuff on my own website. And although I sometimes feel the urge to write in my mothertongue, most of my entries have been in English so far.

That’s 2 years of this still burning desire inside to share a lot of small and a few huge things with the world out there. Sharing, and also a desire to write about people, describing situations, often, not always, trying to portray a glimpse at another world. A subjective view, my thoughts on a few things of interest.

My favourite entries of course are these DoItYourself (DIY) projects like the water filter and/or the hinge issue with Irene’s notebook – both entries I am still getting lots of hits for on a daily basis.

Interestingly, the water filter issue – as I sometime later on realized that there’s another NGO in Kenya actually promoting the filter system I built – served as another hint for me to formulate an idea I’ve since then been working on. Have you ever wondered about the work of some NGOs, active in the sector of environmental protection, that just reaches a few selected groups? Capacity building, as they so often call it, still is an interesting subject.

But I digress.

I think it’s the silence of these warm summer nights, paired with the reflective mood on the train tonight that made me pull out my (paper!) notebook and put down a few lines I wished to directly type into a still non-existing PDA instead. And it may also be influenced by the book I am currently reading:

Michela Wrong’s “In the footsteps of Mr Kurtz” – a book I’ve bought in July 2001 and had left in the shelve since then, waiting for the perfect reading moment to arrive.

06-11d017
“New Zaire Inn” in Garissa, Kenya, later on renamed to D.R.C….

While Michela has a disputatious way of reporting her stories and apparently isn’t always welcomed by her hosts, I like this particular book. She actually describes the scenery in old Zaire pretty vivid, and what I – of course – love is that special part about les sapeurs – these men who dress in expensive fashion clothes and aim to be different any given moment.

The Congo.

As a blogger, I of course associate this with “007 in Africa” and am reminded of those hectic days in 1996/97 when a completely confused former president Mobutu, who had for long already lost any reality for his role as president of a nation that has always been in the waiting line, flew into exile. Ahhh. Memories.

That’s 10 years ago! It feels like yesterday.

Waiting 6 years before eventually reading Michela’s “brilliant account of Africa’s most extraordinary dictator” (the Economist) wasn’t such a bad idea afer all. The distance provides the needed room which is required to enjoy movies like this one.

Die Verwandlung

There has to be some kind of special relationship between me and insects* I still have to understand.

Still haunted by ever returning images of roaches that keep on bugging me in my dreams in a very Kafkaesque way, I only yesterday encountered another one of those strange phenomenons.

SANY0579

I call it the attack of the Arachnids. Or whatever kind of spidery critters it was this time. This kind that makes you feel “eeeewwwwhhhh!!!” in the first moment.

What you see in the first picture is my washbag, and I’ve put it in that place just a few days ago. Yesterday evening I needed something out of it and discovered these little cocoons at the side of the top cover.
Upon turning the cover, one of the five cocoons fell off and broke to little pieces of dried soil on the floor, releasing about 10 to 15 little baby spiders.

SANY0584

The second picture shows a close-up of the cocoon. I still have them in the bathroom and will keep them until I’ve figured out the exact biological name for these spiders. Any idea?

Talking about insects, I had to kill a tenacious wasp today who apparently thought about building her house BEHIND the books in the shelve over the bed. I wish there was a better way of convincing insects not to interfere with me.

(* insects, as in everything that moves and doesn’t have a brain to understand the simple words: “pay rent or move out”.)

soup, baby!

The following post on cooking goes out to all my friends out there who hardly ever cook. Yes, those very same ppl who enjoy watching Jamie Oliver creating some culinary miracorrrrs, but prefer to opt for the quick & dirty solution when it comes to organizing dinner.

Ok now, this is Germany, which means lots of people eating bread. Healthy wholemeal bread and not that kind of white bread the Brits (who can’t cook! yes, I said it!) presumably introduced to a country like Kenya. If there’s one good thing about Germany, then it’s the beer, a wide variety of whole-meal breads and different kinds of sausages.

As for the bread, there are ready mixtures available for as low as EUR 0,35 that just require 320ml of warm water, 2h hours of resting and about 45 minutes of baking in the oven @ ~ 200°C. A simple and quick solution for your own bread that doesn’t come with any preservatives and other fake ingredients. Since you’re the one who bakes it, you know what’s inside. Pefect.

soup
vegetable soup with fresh parsley and home-baked whole-meal bread

And then there’s the vegetaboooool.

The vegetable they are selling here in Germany often comes from some articifial plantations in Spain or the Netherlands – and while it looks great, it often tastes like…nothing. The potatoes I bought, for instance, have come from Israel.

Israel! Now that reminds me of the apples from China we had the other day…

So I went shopping and came across a bunch of more or less cheap vegetables: potatoes, onions, carrots and celery. I added a bunch of parsley and headed home.

“No, I don’t want to eat any carbohydrates in the evening”, I heard this friend of mine complaining the other day. – “Yeah, sure…how about a light soup then?”.

Yes, how about a nice vegetable soup? My initial plan was to slightly cook the vegetable and eat it with some curd cheers, but then I just chopped everything, threw it onto the stove with some (very) salty water and let it boil until the vegetable had this particular “al dente” firmness: ready to bite.
I then pureed everything with my favourite kitchen gadgetimoja and added some nutmeg and fresh parsley and a bit of milk.

This recipe is just so simple and yet healthy as it contains no oils or other evil stuff that makes you think twice about the evening beer. Also, you may want to freeze any extra soup that you can’t finish in one day, which just makes it perfect for those many many singles out there who eat nothing at all in the evenings just because they are too tired to cook a single menu.

(this article is part of the “cooking with Juergen Kamau” series :-)

you can actually blog on small things / the shoji task

Being extremely bored by writing a paper on water quality assessment guidelines, which btw is something I’d rater leave to those who get a kick out of interpreting the European Water Framework Directive and it’s applicability in order to classify water bodies in Germany, I chose something else that I had been procrastinating for the last…uhmm….20 years?

Fixing a wooden cover on a Japanese stone lantern .

shoji2

These Japanese lanterns actually come without such covers, but it somehow looks better and also reminds us of the shoji, a traditional “room divider or door consisting of translucent washi paper over a wooden frame” as found in traditional Japanese architecture.

shoji1

I love working with natural materials, and I sometimes think I should have chosen another path in my life. Doing an apprenticeship on carpentry, for instance, instead of learning to become an industrial manager & studies in water and soil management. Everyone can sell and work as a broker, but not everyone enjoys working with his hands. These manual jobs are a perfect retreat for those who are forced to work in an office environment, and, sad but true – I’ve seen quite a few comrades in civil engineering who could perfectly calculate the static equilibrium of a fixed end beam, but were hopelessly swamped with the simple task of hammering a nail in a perpendicular way into a wall. Obviously, such specimens of the academic world never enjoyed building their own toys during childhood .

The last time I built this wooden cover some 20 years ago, I actually didn’t give a damn about philosophy. That is: I was apparently using some fancy glue and nails. The result was and still is a horrible *thing* that used to work as the interim solution.

And now, after the Stone lantern travelled with us from Japan to Germany to Kenya and back to Germany, I thought it would be nice to eventually substitute this with something more adequately fitting the Japanese philosophy of perfectionism. Just as the Stone lantern is a piece of art, perfected into every detail, any additional cover should be made out of natural materials and proper joints such as the T halving and Cross halving as seen in the pictures.

shoji3shoji4
the wooden frame + covered with paper

When darkness sets in, the candle behind the shoji (let me just call it a shoji, ok?) begins to illuminate everything and that’s exactly when the lantern is in perfect harmony with… looks good.

I sometimes wish to have a small Japanese garden somewhere.

nimekuchagua wewe

Ingawa wapo wengi wazuri mamiii, lakini nimekuchagua wewe, tabia zako sawa na sura yako, nimeridhika kuwa na wewe…(“Afro”, Les Wanyika.)

It was a blessed morning, and something had made me get up early. Last night’s dream brought back pictures of an older Nairobi , the city whose sights & sounds had been lingering in my head for a while. For quite a while.

Finished watching “The Last King of Scotland ” last night. Despite of the story that somehow tries to paint a closer picture of Idi Amin’s rule in Uganda, one thing about that flick instantly made me fall for it: Ishmael Jingo ‘s “Fever” – a track the world has been blessed with since Duncan Brooker (where are you, man?) unearthed it some time ago and put it on his still marvelous “Afro Rock Vol.1” compilation we had been talking about earlier .

If there’s one thing that best describes situations, it should be music.

Ryszard Kapuscinski, the legendary polish journalist that died earlier this year just a few days after my Mzee, added another point that had left me thinking. In his book “The Soccer War“, he mentions the bars and pubs people had been attending during those days back in July 1960 when Patrice Lumumba was the man. Kapuscinski, who was supposed to fly to Nigeria only, took a flight to Cairo instead, another one from Cairo to Khartoum, and from there he and some other journalists somehow managed to drive into a completely lost Congo.

Would you take such a journey upon you only to spend the biggest time of the day locked up in a hotel somewhere in a boring 1960 Stanleyville , or Kisangani as it is called nowadays?

“The African Bar”, Kapuscinski goes on explaining Lumumba’s approach on people, “is like the Roman Forum (…). This is where people started listening to Lumumba’s speeches…(…)”.

So you’re sitting there, reading these lines and thinking to yourself: did this actually change since 1960?
Maybe there are less idealists out there since Lumumba – and where Kapuscinski still talks of Partisans who fought for uhuru & other theoretical goals, today’s world seems to be made up of HipHop proclamations and cyberwars. Welcome to the 21st century.

It’s one of those days that I start dreaming and think about how life must have been in the 1970s Nairobi. Life, as in nightlife. Clubs? Music? Styles?

It certainly was different from what I witnessed while growing up in a very futuresque Tokyo (Japan) in the 1970s. And what exactly is it with Nairobi – this once “Green City in the Sun”?

“Nairobi”, the lady asked me, “why would you want to live in a city like Nairobi? I stayed there for a few month and didn’t like it. All those houses with barbed wires and high fences – I wouldn’t like living behind a fence…” – “Well”, I replied, “neither would I…but maybe you never saw its real beauty” .

Home is where your heart is, and mine is still somewhere out there (with a very Kenyan “somewhere there”, the hand pointing in no particular direction).

@AfroM & EGM: what happened to the Nairobi Architecture Group? Maybe a FlickrGroup?

AOB: doing a search on Nairobi via del.icio.us reveals blogs like Paul‘s that somehow remind me of my own blogged worlds (this & this, this & this, etc.)…his blog definitely is a must-see for all Nairobians in exile! :-)