Cool bananas

If you ever happen to find yourself in Lahinch, try a coolbanana smoothie. They make the best smoothies in the village country.

There you go Kieran, I said it. Now that’ll be €3 for advertising on my blog please.

Freshly Ground

No, not coffee, not pepper, not nutmeg either. Just Freshly Ground. Serendipity, that’s what it was. After a quick browse of the entertainment listings we stumbled upon Freshly Ground, a South African band playing in Dublin. The gig was entertaining to say the least, they’re primarily a jazz and rock band with incorporated SA rhythms such as kwela and marabi. I definitely recommend their music to anyone looking for something fresh and different. Meet the band here.

Brian & Baby

Dear Umpundulo

Mankind has always been fascinated by lightning. Our primitive ancestors turned to superstition and myths to try to explain lightning. They felt it had to be a manifestation of the Gods. In Greek mythology Zeus, the God of Thunder got all his thunderbolts from Cyclopes, the one eyed monsters. In Scandanavia they named him Thor, the Thunderer. All his enemies were struck with lightning (on Thursdays – derived from Thor). In southern Africa they believed that Umpundulo, a thunderbird flies high in the sky and lets one rip every now and then.

Even today lightning is considered a sign from God. Take this for example, a preacher struck by lightning after asking God for a sign. Or when Jim Caviezel was playing Jesus he was struck by lightning while filming Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.

 

Struckbylightning.org describes an incident that happened near Dodoma, Tanzania. Children who were part of a choir were rehearsing for a special service. It is at this point Umpundulo decided to strike them twice. Some were injured and left unconscious, others hid under the altar. Such a terrifying experience. It’s no wonder they’re afraid to return to church. Dear Umpundulo, oh benevolent one, what did these young ones do that could possibly have angered you? I should probably stop asking these questions just in case He decides to strik…….ahhhh! Ouch! Thank God that was only static!

Prime Suspect

What lovely neighbours I have. Let me share an amusing experience that has happened to me lately. It’s almost 3 months since I moved into my current place of residence, a quiet housing estate in an Irish town that I won’t name ‘cause I don’t want to tarnish their reputation. I was away for a while and in my absence a neighbour’s house got broken into.

The police (or Gardai, as they’re called in Ireland) being as efficient as ever knocked on everyone’s door and asked if they noticed any ‘suspicious activity’ of recent. That’s right, you guessed correctly! A number of them described ‘a black man driving a grey Subaru’!

It wasn’t until a few days later when they got hold of my landlord. When asked if he saw anyone that fitted that description the matter was resolved. And this is what the officer was heard saying, and I quote: “…there goes our only line of enquiry”. Hahahaaa! Can you believe that? I’ve never been a suspect in a police investigation before, let alone the prime suspect. How flattering. I’ll cherish this experience for the rest of my life.

Eco friendly citizen

The world’s gone green mad. The Chinese city Guangzhou has banned all motorcycles and scooters. Prince Charles is being criticised for flying across the atlantic with a jumbo jet to collect his green award. Here’s someone else who deserves an award, well at least some recognition – a random man transporting furniture in the streets of Magomeni. I have a dream….. that one day we’ll all rid ourselves of fuel guzzling 4×4s and use bicycles instead. Naw, never gonna happen.

Mathias

Mathias stopped me on my way back home from the shop the other day. He asked me if I had some change to spare. I didn’t have any and explained this to him and he suggested that I buy lunch for him. His pleading got to me and I turned the ignition off and got out of the car. On our way to the nearest chip shop he introduced himself properly and thanked the Lord. Mathias had a polio limb and walked with a wooden stick.

I asked him why he thought I went out of my way to help him. His reply was: si ili mwenyezi Mungu akubariki. After thinking about this for a while I told him that was not the reason as I have had doubts about His existence.

Sasa unamuamini nani? he asked.  Kwani lazima nimuamini mtu? I replied. Ohoo, dhambi hiyo! I was warned. Basi unanisaidia kwa vile unapenda. We had to agree on this. On my way back I wondered whether a truly unselfish act existed. Did I  do it because of fear of an omniscient God? Was it for a blog entry? Was it for the ‘feel good’ feeling people get when they’re being generous? God only knows.

December Sun

My impromptu trip to Dar went well with no glitches. The heat is quite a contrast and I’m enjoying every minute of it. First things first, after I got hold of some TShs I headed straight to the barbers.  My afro/mmea is no longer existent. My granmother let me have her sim card, thanks bibi. No power cuts yet. I hope I haven’t jinxed it by saying that. Anyway, go to go, next stop – Tha beach.

5 Must Have Firefox Add-ons

I’ve always been a fan of Firefox for both security reasons and the different types of extensions they let you add. This weekend I installed version 2.0 and had time to browse through their add ons. Tabbed browsing changed my life a few years ago. Here are a few other ones I liked:

1. Ageing Tabs – Unused tabs fade with age to a colour of your choice.

 

2. Download status bar – view & manage downloads without interference from a new download window

3. Flickrfox – This one I highly recommend. Anyone who’s used Flickr knows how cumbersome it is going back and forth just to view images. This makes searching and browsing them effortless.

4. Forecastfox Enhanced – “Weather, its just wind, it blows all over the place“. A forecaster on your browser. You get a satellite picture too.

5. Save as image – This one is handy if you want to save the whole or part of a webpage as an image.

Bugatti Veyron

Nice car huh? Meet the Bugatti Veyron, the fastest and most expensive car in the world. Ever. This piece of machinery makes Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s seem like Mitsubishi RVRs (aka Mama Koku). It’s built by Volkswagen who named it after the racing driver Pierre Veyron who raced for the original Bugatti firm.

Cost: They say the cost of making one of these is about £5 million but VW sell it for only £800,000 meaning they make a loss of over £4 million for every car they sell.

Speed: It’s maximum speed is over 253 mph and it does 0-60 mph in 2.5 seconds! Lets put that to perspective. According to Jeremy Clarkson, if the McLaren F1 car reached 120 mph in a race before the Bugatti started, the Bugatti would still be the first to reach 200 mph.

There are only about 300 of them made so don’t expect to see too many of them on the road. Famous owners include the likes of Tom Cruise and Ralph Lauren. Imagine the insurance they pay.