So coool!!

While dealing cards in a much contested game for 500, I was pondering out loud on the mathematics behind shuffling. How many shuffles till all the cards are back in their original position? What is the optimal number of shuffles?

To be clear, a shuffle is where you split the deck in two and combine the two halves with every second card being from one of the halves.

People had theories but couldn't mathematically prove it.

Then Shira and I asked Lindsay this question last night as we dropped her off at the gym after work. Lindsay studied mathematics at MIT.

This is the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. Enjoy!

One month report

People

Ugandans are easy to smile and love a laugh and a drink and boy can they dance. They are quite relaxed about most things except maybe the state of the roads. They aren't very confrontational and will rather avoid a topic that might lead to an uncomfortable situation. Their patience is limitless and is best demonstrated on the roads. Though the traffic is atrocious, rarely do you see people raging about what would be unacceptable road etiquette. They have waiting down to an art. Whether it be waiting for meeting delayed 2 hours, being stuck in a traffic jam or waiting for someone, Ugandans do it without any complaining.
Papua New Guineans weren't very entrepreneurial and had this caustic mindset of being owed something. It was always about compensation and their right to unearned goods based on some convoluted logic. Ugandans sell hangers at traffic lights and will provide "value add" services (like the key-cutter who picked up my keys, made copies and dropped them off) for an small fee. There are people selling cheap local fare of cassava, pumpkin, rice, greens, beans and fish unlike New Guineans who are happy to subsist on fried chicken, flourballs and kaukau despite the abundance of vegetables. People are always searching for such unsaturated markets which require little setup capital. It's not perfect but it's a vast improvement from PNG.

Weather

Temperature ranges from low to high 20s. It's wet season at the moment and it's at the lower end of the scale. On average, nights are cool and pleasant and even on hot days there is cool breeze.

Work

With only 15 odd people in the office, it's surprising how much work they get through. Workmates are intelligent and easy going and it's a pleasure working with them. The projects they work on are high impact ones and go about it quite efficiently.

Also I get to save babies. Job satisfaction has never been higher.

Security

This is mainly for mum. This place is extremely safe. Crime is low and the most dangerous things are Bodas. Work has a 5'5" security guard with a rifle which is half his weight and probably never been fired. I guess he could use it to club someone over the head. The point of this story is to show how much of a non-issue security is.

Home

I have a couple of kickass neighbours in Shira and Frankie. For a little over $4 a week, a maid comes to do the cleaning and washing. House has an inverter for when the power goes out and I bought a sandwich press. What else does a man need?

Top links of the week

I should really be sleeping after this:


Legend. Nuff said: http://biplavpradhan.com/2011/09/10/amartya-sen-on-growth-mediated-development-video/

Cool: http://atlantic-cable.com/Maps/1924SchreinerMap.jpg

Before you feel like doing good: http://goodmenproject.com/doing-good/why-you-shouldnt-participate-in-voluntourism/1/

Whoa!: http://gizmodo.com/5839481/the-most-wicked-optical-illusion-ive-seen-so-far

AND STOP REFERRING TO IT AS A COUNTRY: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/the-true-size-of-africa/

The Overweight Lover's in the house..

Last week was quite hectic. A lot of things were happening; There were meetings for lab quantification, ARVs forecasting for Q1'12, a stubborn cold and Sean Kingston. I struggled through the week with pretty much a constant headache and massive workload. I made small but numerous mistakes all week in my work. It was shabby and looked careless.

Next week should be better.

Sean Kingston concert was horrible. I walked on to the grounds and it had a music festival feel to it with the green grass, fresh air, stalls and a big music stage. The local acts were almost painful to hear. The start would have you thinking "That's a nice beat right there" and just as you start moving to the music, the MC would start screaming down the microphone. They were all tone deaf. Without the auto tune feature on their mixer they are lost. I thanked the Lords of Kobol when some of them would just play a CD and dedicate their energies to working the crowd instead with nuggets such as "Yeah... Uganda. Uh!". Sean Kingston was the biggest culprit of this. He's no Heavy D.

Mr. Flavour (it's actually a good song) came on stage for his one hit. He killed some stage time first. He spent 30 secs taking his shirt off, 3 mins to throw it into the crowd and then just walked up and down for 10 mins spewing inane shit like "Are you ready Kampala?". It was at 10:45PM and the concert had started at 7. WHAT DO YOU RECKON MATE?

The people did not mind though. They were here for the spectacle and not the music. Charles (one of the drivers) had a blast. He felt he got his money's worth. I guess in retrospect so did I. It was only $26 and it came with 4 free beers, 2 sodas, 2 waters and food. I got exactly my money's worth and no more.

Bears Beets Battlestar Galactica

My eyes are heavy, my nose is running and my head aches but I'm too engaged in following Roslin, Starbuck and Apollo to Athena's cave to care.

While everyone is getting ready to go to Noa's party, I sit in bed waiting for this dose of psuedofed to kick in. Ugh! those two sneezes rocked my brain so hard that it's still ringing. Gauis is talking to No.6 about his future child. I really should sleep after this episode.

Miranda, Frankie and Shira say bye as they leave for the party while Helo and Boomer talk about reality.

I have brunch with a friend and many games of Settlers of Catan planned for tomorrow. I really need to be on top of my game. This shit is serious.

Oh great! Now I'm coughing.

Top links of the week

ARVs work b**ches: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IExRHL7D_NI

If you want to volunteer overseas: http://goodintents.org/volunteering-overseas/guideline-1

Principles of economics as limericks: http://www.limericksecon.com/2011/09/ten-limerick-principles-of-economics.html

Intro to US politics: http://crookedtimber.org/2011/09/03/american-electoral-politics-a-brief-introduction/

Cool visuals on the growth of Kiva: http://www.aviewfromthecave.com/2011/09/visualizing-kivas-growth.html

India/Pakistran border from space: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2033886/India-Pakistan-border-visible-space.html

I enjoyed this

From the New Yorker 5/09/2011:

As the senior alderman of the East Chemply, Pennsylvania, Town Board of Overseers, I, Walter K. Heblinger, would like to apologize to my constituents, and most especially to my family and my beloved wife, Kirsten, for sexting a nude photograph of myself to various citizens, and I would particularly like to apologize for circling my genitals, in the photograph, with red lipstick and adding vibrating exclamation points, thunderbolts, and the word “Yowza!” I would also like to apologize to my mother, Sylvia Heblinger, of Tassament, New Hampshire, for allowing her full-length oil portrait to appear directly over my nude left shoulder, and for permitting an unknown hacker to Photo-shop horns onto her forehead, along with a dialogue balloon reading, “Give it to me now.”

I also deeply regret the fact that my wife’s newly purchased floral linen duvet is visible in the photo, beneath an inflatable sex doll that is wearing, to my further regret, my wife’s wedding dress, a cowboy hat, and a ball gag. And I would like to assure our friends and neighbors that even though, in the photo, I am wearing Kirsten’s tortoiseshell headband and her double strand of pearls, I did so entirely without her knowledge. She also had nothing to do with the hand-lettered sheet of notebook paper I’m holding in the photo, which reads, “I’m prettier than Kirsten.”

I would also like to apologize profusely to my teen-age son, Walt, Jr., for initiating an online correspondence with his American-history teacher, Ms. Kelli Withers, in which I pretended to be John Boehner, seeking a ghostwriter for my memoirs and a participant in what I referred to as “some extra-spicy late-afternoon Embassy Suites boom-boom-pow.” I also apologize to Boehner for insisting, in my correspondence, that I had learned “deepwater love techniques” while I was a Navy SEAL.

At this point, I would also like to apologize to my lovely teen-age daughter, Jessica, for leaving messages on the Facebook pages of her best friends Haley, Ellyn, and Jilleen, using the name Jag Bronco, who I claimed was a quarterback and a triple-extreme snowboarder from a nearby middle school. I’m sorry that, as Jag, I also invited each girl to prom and sent all three a photo of my actual genitals, with the advisory “My genitals look older than the rest of me because of all the wear and tear from my triple-extreme snowboarding.”

But primarily I would like to express my most profound remorse for mass e-mailing a video of myself to all the registered voters in East Chemply, in which I simulated various sex acts, in a public park, with a bronze statue of Josiah T. Chemply, who founded our fine community some two hundred and fifteen years ago. I am appalled that at the beginning of this video I am dressed as Josiah’s lovely wife, Annabeth Bowers Chemply, wearing a mop wig and a disturbingly bosomy Colonial gown, and that as I rub myself against the statue I can be heard to moan, “Oh, Josiah, you’re so much hotter than your ne’er-do-well brother, Big Ned Chemply.” I am mortified to admit that, as the video progresses, and after chugging a container of something I refer to as “hundred-proof mighty-man-mojo juice,” I strip off my gown to reveal my sister-in-law Joyce Nersten’s hand-crocheted pink cardigan, which I’m wearing over a tank top with iron-on letters reading, “Joyce Looks Like Big Ned Chemply.” I am further horrified that, as blaring techno music is heard, I turn from the camera, dancing provocatively, and reveal that on the seat of my bikini panties I have scrawled the words “I wish I lived in West Chemply.”

I don’t know if I can ever properly atone for my many unfortunate actions, including using the credit-card information of my father-in-law, Otto Nersten, to order twenty cartons of sex toys, which I then floated in Otto’s aboveground swimming pool on the night before his annual Fourth of July rain-or-shine prayer-a-thon and barbecue. I am therefore, at least temporarily, stepping down as senior alderman, in order to enter a program of intensive rehabilitative therapy, especially in the light of this morning’s podcast, in which I’m wearing leather chaps, a harness, a military cap, and a bright-blue pageboy wig and demanding that the viewer address me as “Miss Smurfette, sir!"

Health centre visit

It is easy to forget that you are in Uganda.

Last weekend, I found myself at a cafe in Lugogo mall sipping a cappuccino and reading Chinua Achebe's 'Things fall apart' (I'm about 40% of the way the way through the book and it is not clear to me if Okonkwo is being exalted as the best of men or being used to represent an out of date definition of what it means to be a man.). It was a cool and wet day outside just as it might have been in Melbourne. Coffee and reading is a Sunday morning ritual which has been seamlessly amalgamated into my Ugandan Life.

My first site visit on Tuesday made me realise how unrepresentative Kampala was of the rest of Uganda. My work took me to a health centre in Luwero. The health centre had single story buildings in front and to the sides and in the middle of the plot was a tree with a few goats munching on the only bit of grass in the entire compound. There was a pungent smell in the air which I later identified as goat dung.

Most of my time was spent in a bare office but before leaving we went through the paediatric ward to meet the clinician. This ward was not Baylor. Cots were squeezed in so tight that I had to walk sideways to slip between them. Instead of strong disinfectant, the smell of sweat and urine lingered in the air. A mother slept on the floor while her 5 year old with stared at me wide-eyed from his cot. The clinician's office was at the other end of the room and it had a plastic table and two chairs. Though I must add that the equipment shelf looked well stocked.

For lunch I had a rolex. The guy working the coal stove couldn't speak english so he called this old man (who I later found out was his father) over who spoke some broken english. As I waited for the rolex, the old man skipped the 'hellos' and asked me "Are you a protestant?". While I considered how to tactfully answer that, he rephrased "Are you a christian?". He really wanted to hear just one answer.

"I am"

"Oh that's great! That's great. We're same. Were brothers."

He showed me his dogeared Luganda bible with much pride. A few minutes later he pulled out his english King James and asked me to read a page from Romans II. I did.

Friday night out

It's 3AM and I have just returned from drinks with some of AMB's Global Health Corp crew. We started at Bubbles O'Leary, a mediocre Irish pub that I would never have partonised willingly in Australia. Yet, here I was. All the usual categories of expat dancers were represented. There was the carefree but awful dancer, the over enthusiastic carpet scorcher, the douche bag with the raised collar, the reserved shuffler, the self-conscious mover, the lyrics enactor and the tired stumbler. Why was I here?

After, we went to 'BBQ lounge'. During the day this place might actually be a purveyor of barbecued delights but at least on this particular friday night, it was a serving up some serious beats. People were moving to the music like only Africans can; with no reservation and leading from their hips. The packed crowd was moving with each beat, surging with every chorus. The building was not much more than an extended tree house but the energy was infectious and the music carried us.