Off to Soroti!

I am so totally excited....I am off to the field. Woohoo! Outside of Kampala for the first time.

Am organizing a recovery training in Uganda and we need a place where we can do field visits and have the training there as well. Four hours away, we have Soroti and it's been recommended, so I am realllllly hoping this works out.

I leave in about an hour and I have yet to pack. Or get anything organized. So I am off to do that.

If anyone else has recommendations for places in Uganda to have trainings, pass them on!

It's published, it's published!

I don't know why I am so excited about this, but I am. Desicritics published my twitter piece about the Kampala riots. You can go and read it here for now. I would need to reformat the WHOLE thing to put it up here, and I will since I am proud of it.

Watch this space!

I twittered and tweeted and now I Wii.

Hello everyone! I am feeling super happy today. Why? Because, my friends, I did it. I ACTUALLY wrote a post about twitter. You have to wait to see it since I had to FIRST put it up on the desicritics website because they will not publish stuff that has been previously published. It was a real hang up for me to write. See, on my blog here, I can just come on and write and it's not a big deal. For some reason, I have a real mental hangup writing on other blogs. This is why I have been unable to blog for work. They asked me to, they trained me to but I just feel like there are too many quality control issues and I can't deal with that pressure. This space, my blog, is MY space. I can say or do anything and it just feels better.

So, I blogged about the riots we have been having in Kampala and I'm very proud of the post and as soon as they publish it over on the other site, I will put it up here. Yay!

In the meantime, my darling husband returned from a week of working in the UK at his head office and he brought back a Wii!!!! Woohoo! I had been wanting one for the last two years and would forget to mention it to him and out of nowhere, he brings one home. He's so great. I love you, Micky.

My body is in so much pain. I am so utterly unfit, it's sad. The stupid Wii Fitness thingie calculated my fitness age, and though my BMI is PERFECT, I have the fitness age of a 42 year old. It's only because they had this one test, where you have to shift your weight around to fit into these tiny blue boxes, and dude, I can shift my weight around as well as the best of them, it's just that I can't coordinate my eyes with my legs very well so I totally messed up that test. It's not fair, but that's ok.

My knitting, a blog post waiting to happen, with photos (!) has now been put to the side but it's ok, since I am almost done with the great knitting project of Aug-Sept 09. I have never knitted this much in my life and having M away for a week helped with that.

I added something TOTALLY cool to my blog by the way. It's on the right hand side. Scroll down a bit. It's a live traffic feed thingie and it shows me where people are visiting from! I love it. I still love my cluster maps thingie too but this one is more precise. Like Burdett NY...who are you? Tunisia, you came on too. How freakin cool that I can stalk people who stalk me. I can't really stalk you, it just tells me where you have logged on from, but really, that's good enough for me. I am a lame stalker when it comes down to it.

I now need to go and work but i wanted to touch base, say hi and share my joy of being well, alive and soon to be super productive at work!

Itching to blog!

So, I have been wanting to blog. I keep going and seeing my cluster map and it tells me about visits in each 24 hour period and it's cool when I post, that I do get traffic (not because I am trying to be popular but I do find it fascinating to connect to people in this way...RANDOMLY).

Speaking of connecting to people....I made a new friend! Through my blog!! Again!!! You know who you are, new friend. I use the term loosely. A fellow resident in Kampala came and left a comment on my blog...confirming my worst fears about jiggers (they do exist...they are actually called mango flies...I had my facts wrong-Micky did, to be fair and I do believe him...most of the time) and they do lay eggs in your body. Thanks new friend!

Here's the thing: If I see this expat mom in the grocery store...I will have no idea, but she will know it's me and Micky since there are photos of us up. I have over thought this, but still, it's fun and I'm bored in Kampala. I went to the 24 hour Nakumatt the other day and was like, OMG, it could be her, or her or her...and then I realized that was lame and I should be more nonchalant about it...y'know...play it cool and shit. Not be walking around the Nakumatt (with the carts they have to entertain little kids but they fit me and my arm span better...I'm not super short...I do have super long arms though)...where was I? Oh, right, the Nakumatt...right, so I should not be walking around there at 10 pm on a school night gawking at every white woman who passes me by (the only thing I know about my new reader is that she's an expat mom (guessing white) who grocery shops but can't be arsed to go to the post office...ahem).

I have totally over thought the situation but it is awesome to get comments from people and have that connection.

I asked her not to stalk us and now she's definitely not going to. I am not a weirdo, I promise...not like a major one at least. Someone, a chartered accountant in fact, which is a good profession, married me, so I can't be totally insane...though I bet a chartered accountant could be totally creepy when not at work...mine isn't and he doesn't do the whole CPA thing anymore anyways.

On another note, I read a book on tweeting by Tee Morris. Called All a Twitter. I'm not a total newbie at it and I learnt some good stuff. Yay for that. I want to write about it but I want to do it first on the desicritics website since they won't publish previously published stuff. So any reviews etc, I am going to write up there first and then post here after...annoying but I can understand. I have no pretensions of turning into a social media anything...well, a practitioner..a user. I just wanted to know if I was using it right and getting the most out of it. There were things I didn't get when I saw them posted, but now I get it! And can't wait for #followfriday!

There is a post about facebook and twitter that need to happen. Everyone writes about it now. I mean, they have been, but all of a sudden, when there is no news (no news of strategic interest to America), they come out with a FB or twitter article. Each contradicting the other.

I might just write the post, so I should stop. My hand hurts anyhow from writing too many thank you cards and playing computer games. Still have not finished writing the damn cards.

I wanted to blog, and I did. Well done me.

We got married!

We got married. We did it. Yay for us.

I felt like I needed to announce that on my blog. Do we feel any different? Not really. We deiced to move to NYC and stop the hobo nomad life and have nice kitchen appliances. I guess that counts.

I think the change is more for Micky than me. Maybe I am in denial about the changes.

I think the changes are more subtle. Like, for instance, I feel like doing more things for him…like cooking and getting him a glass of water when he wakes up. Subtle and TOTALLY LAME changes. What the hell am I turning into??? I shouldn’t be mean to myself. It’s cool that I love Micky that much.

I might be turning a molehill into a mountain and attributing normal love patterns into marriage changes. I don’t really have a way to know, though, do I? It’s not like parallel universe me, living in sin with Micky is sending me messages or anything. Biatch.

Am going to add a tag to my blog called married life and just attribute anything and everything to it. That should be fun.

My active life on facebook means, by the way, that I live facebooked my wedding, instead of live blogging it. Facebook sucks and I am addicted to it.

Some photos for your viewing pleasure. It was a blast.


View from the Bride cam!



The wedding ceremony...and elephanta.


Chillin with Elephanta..before I make my entrance.

Tunga penetrans

Normally, in my profession, when you move to a new country, you get a security briefing, which is not just about the conflict etc in the area but also on health issues. Since I have moved without actually being assigned to a delegation and as a consultant, I am on my own (my line managers back in Geneva and London are kick ass so I’m not really alone)…

Lucky for me, Micky actually got a briefing etc from his agency and when I arrived, he sat me down and gave me the low down. He did this since he knows now from experience how seriously I take security briefings…he was my boss in our last job. He talked about the north of the country (it’s pretty much fine now and we aren’t really going there anyhow), the situation in Kampala (so safe and so nice), atms and credit cards (not as bad as it could be), health (malaria in the country, but not so much in Kampala, yellow fever but we are both vaccinated against that and oh, there are these things called jiggers…they lay eggs in your body and get into your clothes and it can cause an infection and…WHAT??????) My jigger paranoia, like a female jigger attaching itself to your body, took root.

It’s the only thing I have been terrified of in Uganda. The dreaded jigger. You can get malaria, bilharzias and other nasties but the one that has captured and wrecked havoc with my imagination is the jigger. There is something so totally gross about the idea of something getting into your body (and it’s miniscule), laying its eggs and multiplying. I know Micky and I are perfect for each other since so many things point to it (and I just KNOW), but he laughed when he saw my face when he first told me about jiggers and said he had the same reaction when getting his briefing. We bond on our mutual jigger fascination (ok, mine is a way more heightened fascination).

It must have been high school, and this is probably an urban legend, but I heard this story about this girl who got a spider ‘bite’ but really, it was a spider laying it’s eggs in her face. What started out as a pimple, grew and grew and one day, shit loads of baby spiders emitted from the girl’s face. I have carried that story with me for so long and the story about the woman who stuck a lobster up herself and the lobster, I guess, ejaculated inside her and the next day, she started having lil baby lobsters (which when she saw that, she freaked out, hit her head on the bathroom floor and died).

Neither of these stories is probably true but they make excellent daymare material.

I walk around Kampala and our house citing any issues on jiggers.

I got a suspicious looking bite on my inner thigh which kept growing. I was not a happy camper. The only person who took me seriously that this could be a jigger bite was my mom, a bonified doctor who knows her tropical diseases. Bless her. It wasn’t diagnosed as a jigger bite in the end, and some antibiotics cleared up whatever it was (sort of), but that’s not the point. I just finally googled jiggers and wikipedia says that (thankfully), the eggs actually fall out so there will be no baby jiggers growing in me, HOWEVER, I could still have a jigger bite and other nasty consequences (which wikipedia doesn’t get into and my internet is too slow and I am too scared (and a hypochondriac to boot which really, doesn’t need ANY more encouragement) to look up other sites), could still occur.

What a totally horrible sentence. It’s because I add things after writing one complete sentence. I have a parentheses problem.

Maybe it was a jigger bite, and this means that there are now baby jiggers growing into adult jiggers at my parent’s place in NJ. Whoops.

I am putting myself on a medical alert and am shouting out to Micky as I type this to monitor me for jigger reactions.

He just looked at me and said, that’s nice and smiled and went back to his computer. Hmph! You wait till I start frothing at the mouth in a jigger reaction, buddy.

Wikipedia also says that jigger is an ethnic slur. That’s not nice. It means lots of things actually.

It’s a small town in Louisiana.

Tennis!

So, I love tennis. I may have nothing more to say about it than that. Played for the first time last night...like properly played...though it was lessons so that doesn't really count as playing, but still. I am sore. Very. My upper body gets a zero work out and is very weak so this is an excellent sport to go with for me. It will force me to get some arm strength. Sometimes, when I carry home some grocery shopping and walk for 15 minutes, my arm shakes with the trauma of it. That's the definition right there, of a total sad-o.

Sad-o is a great word. Mick used it on me (I was whining about being away from him..because I am a sad-o) but then I heard my British boss use it too! I was going to credit Mick with creating a cool word but I think it's a part of the Brit lingo, (something I am still figuring out). Lucky for me, my boss didn't use it in conjunction with me. Whew. I would have had to quit my job. I do and seek constructive criticism but when I get it, I get really gutted about it. Gutted is another good Brit word. I think I have heard it used in the States as well, but not in the same way and with the same feeling that the Brits do. I have started picking up Brit words...not a surprise though, is it? That's pretty good though, innit? By the way...when Micky calls me a sad-o, he says it in the sweetest way ever. That's yet another sad-o remark from me. I'm going to tape him and put the audio on here and then you guys will see what I mean (and agree with me).

I was speaking about tennis. It's great. I have immense issues in moving my whole body around, not using my wrists but my elbows and whole body instead and I can't do a proper follow through. I had a one hour lesson and it was very funny to hear the guy shouting at me...in a good way. He was like, WHY are you scared of the ball? Stop crouching down! Direction, please, direction! Follow through, don't use your wrists only!

All in all a good lesson and i am thrilled to be playing a sport and learning how to play one. I am trying to recall and I think this might be true...: I have never really learned how to play a sport before. Not swimming (jump in the pool and don't drown), not badminton (hit the birdie), not soccer (my first broken bone, my wrist, in gym class when I was 14, so that put an end to that), not baseball, not basketball, not cricket (swing; jump and shoot for the hoop; if you can do baseball, cricket is easy). So, actually taking lessons to learn how to properly hold a racket is really great (and there is a proper way to hold the racket...I let go of the my way or the highway and I'm special and rules don't apply to me attitude pretty fast once I figured out that just placing my thumb closer to my fingers and not in a wayward way which I wanted to, made a huge difference).

Lessons will have to take a three week break while I go off and get married but am realllly looking forward to the next one...which is where I will re-learn everything since I will have forgotten it by that point. Oh well. Maybe I will just take a racket and swing it around and get practice. And do push ups to get some arm strength going. Micky is going to have real competition.

Next things to learn: Cello and Golf. I wonder if they have lessons for that here. Or the piano. Or violin. Any musical instrument that doesn't require me to blow into it. My lungs would never cope. Also need to learn Luganda...though most people speak English out here but I have a real issue with not being able to speak or at least follow along with context if I live someplace. Really annoys me. Feels like you are half under water most of the time. It's amazing how much ambient noise and sound are actually conversations and the amount we can pick up about where we live and how we live through that.

I was going to hit publish for this post right there, but realized that there is little finesse to my writing actually. I could do better. End with a flourish or something. Or at least some coherence?

Maybe next time.