manulite delite

It's been 3 years since I last updated this blog, and with what has been going on in Zimbabwe, that much silence might mean the dude's no more. But no, I'm alive, I've survived the worst Zimbabwe ever, and I'm still here with the scars to prove it. The last time I was here, bread was like what? $100,000.00? And I thought that was bad! After a while it got to a point where complaining about life in Zimbabwe stopped making sense. I watched forex dealers moving into flats and houses, and pushing cars I could not afford with my 17 years of education topped by a bunch of professional qualifications. I watched illegal diamond dealers spending US dollars like they were being printed at Fidelity Printers (where our dear Governor used to print our beloved Zim Dollars). At some point I had like 10 Quintillion dollars in each of my various bank accounts, for it was now necessary to have an account with every bank, and whatever did I get with all that dough? Those were the days...

I consider Simon as my friend. We sort of hang out together each time we bump into each other in town. He's much shorter than me, which of course is explained by the fact that he's much much younger than me. We both live in Zimbabwe so that gives us a lot in common. But Simon practically survives on the streets. Though he doesn't necessarily sleep on the street at night, his life is a life lived on the pavements of Harare's central business district. The last time I met him, which is now a while ago, he wanted some money to buy a school trousers. Simon and I go back together a number of years. He was not yet of school going age when we met. Now he's grade 3 or 4. So hows life for Simon like? Each time I think about it, I cannot even start to image how it must be for him. He once narrated (still with all the childhood innocence) to me how he got arrested during the days of the clean-up operation. He told me how he had to sneak out and run when he got a chance. That...

Several times when someone discovers I'm from Zimbabwe, I immediately get questions like, “So, how are you surviving?”, “So, how's Zimbabwe these days?”. How's Zimbabwe? If you are hopeful, your answer to that question, ranges between, “Not so good.” and “Don't ask.”. The price of bread is up again from about $60,000 to at least $88,000, which is not news anymore. I remember a time long ago when bread was 75c, our parents were already not too happy about that price. I remember the discussions in the streets, people reminiscing on the old days, telling us how so cheap bread was back then. Then bread went up to 99c, I remember the boycotts, the complaints people saying we can't get only 1c as change from a dollar after buying bread. I remember it going up again to $1,50. Those were the days I learnt about strikes, demonstrations and all that people do to let it known that they are not happy about the way things are. Where's this country going, people would ask. Th...

There are times when you think you are having a very, very bad day. Then there are times when bad days are in season. Of course bad days can be a result of a number of various causes. For example schools are closing in a few days time. That's an obvious bad day coming your way right there, because it means in a month's time you need school fees. So though Easter is somewhere in-between schools' closing and opening, it simply does not exist. The best use for the Easter holiday is to go kumusha and basically terrorise the rural folks so that they give you a bucket full of maize, some manhanga and nyimo and a bit of peanuts. (Umm..., peanuts as in peanuts, not the peanuts you get at the end of every month.) That in itself is a cause of serious bad days for them rural folks. You see, we, or rather they had plenty rains this season. The weatherman sort of hinted that to be an effect of the cyclone activity off the coast of Mozambique. Which in itself is a candidate caus...

Yesterday I caught a cold and today I woke up with a cramp; it isn't very comfortable sleeping at a friend's couch with one blanket in this cold winter. Of course you might already be asking why I'm sleeping on a couch, well, the thing is, this is not my house and it is crowded as it is. So maybe again you ask why I'm not sleeping in my own house? Good Question! See my cottage was demolished by Operation Murambatsvina (Operation 'we don't want dirt')on Thursday last week, so I had to move in with a friend since I had nowhere else to go. At least I didn't have to do the urban-to-rural migration that most peeps who have been hit by the tsunami (which is what we now call the Operation Murambatsvina these days) . Not that its a major benefit that I'm still living in the 'bright lights'. Only the day before yesterday we had no electricity at night, I don't know whether this is one of those rationing cut-offs or someone at the power company fo...

Last Year I wrote a "thank you" message (its there somewhere on the internet!) to all the people who had been in my life the last 20 something years, its so unbelievable that a year has already past. This time I'm turning a year older and a lot of things have changed. I've met new wonderful people, my relationships with some of my close buddies has sort of faded, and more sadly there is one person I will never be able to get as close to as I would have wanted. Now, that is a way of putting it lightly, the other way would be to explain how heartbroken I am. She asked me "not to write" and I listened. So basically where that leaves me is somewhere between confusion and hope. Hope that I'm still quite young and have a lot to look forward to ahead of me. Hope that one of these days, I will wake up one morning to a smiling brand new day where my life will be changed forever. I have shifted from the position where I was asking "Where do you find the righ...

Seeing that I'm already in my mid 20s, I'm more and more flirting with the idea that someday I will be married (and hopefully get divorced). Now that's a bit funny cause I used to tell myself that I could do without the hassles of marriage. I could actually, so I thought, do without the hassles of a "formal" relationship. But hey, being where I am now, I think differently, I now need companionship. Now that brings me to my biggest problem. My biggest problem is not to find the right woman. No. The biggest problem is to find the right in-laws! There is in Southern Africa, something called Lobola , in shona its called roora , and dowry is the English term (I think). I still struggle understanding why I should pay a gazillion of dollars so that I can take home a wife. To me, that equates to buying a wife. I should then be able to say in one phrase, 'I bought this house last year, but that car I bought it soon after I bought a wife...' I still think that lobol...

sad. very sad. sometimes life sucks, in fact, from where i'm standing, life sucks all the time. i'm in no mood to blog sense right now, sometimes you think you have it all figured out, but it has a funny nasty little way of telling you to go *beep* yourself. sometimes you meet someone, and sometimes you really like that someone. i mean really really like them. sometimes you like them so much you can't help that small somewhere-within-you feeling that whispers this is it. sometimes you believe in that whisper (for the whisper will be making sense) so much you start building. you start building, and, when you finish, you take a look at the castles you have built. sometimes you adore the castles so much you can't even get yourself amazed at your own craftsmanship, so much you cannot credit yourself as one who managed to defy gravity and build them in air. sometimes you build a reality that can never exist (only you dont know it yet ) and you give yourself a nice little...

This is Part II to I hate Yahoo! This time I'm getting myself annoyed by how the linux version of yahoo messenger sucks. Lets take a look at the current version on messenger which I have running on my desktop. Pretty neat ha? To think that this comes from the same people who gave you the windows version that everyone so much loves! This has to be the most basic IM client I have ever seen. Visit the messenger homepage for linux at http://messenger.yahoo.com/unix.php and there, they will tell you that IM client now: Includes: Improved Emoticons Improved Message Archive Improved sound on RedHat kernels Yahoo! Address Book integration File transfer with Windows clients Please! We were doing that with "Windows 3.11 for workgroups" in pre-school (well thats a bit stretched but... please). All the cool features that come with the windows version , some of us have no such priviledges. I have to admit that its not just Yahoo! that does not take Linux as a...

I have just noticed that a couple of weeks after I've set up this blog, I still am not indexed on google. A quick search using the same query on Yahoo, Google and Altavista is a bit disappointing. but I think Yahoo and AltaVista share something in common, the results look the same. But what sucks even more is that it seems every other tom dick and harrySearch engine brings up this site except google. Now seeing how google is my homepage and all, i think I am the most disappointed googler around. Maybe it explains why noone has picked up the Gmail invites I offered ;)

Born at the end of colonization, I grew up in what they called the post-colonisation era, I understand some people out there dont know how it is to be colonised, but my parents, and grandparents will tell you how it is to be at the bad end of it. I'm more tolerant of things like "unity", "togetherness", "freedom" and all the other buzz words simply because I really did not see with my own two eyes the extent to which we were oppressed. But I've heard the stories, I've seen the evidence and I can tell you, just to listen to the stories is not an easy or comfortable thing. You ask yourself how a human being can treat another human being like they are worse than animals? But hey that's in the past right? Its all gone right? Maybe; but to say that we have come together as one, black and white, in as much as we might try, we have not. Why do I say so? I say so because we have not, I say so because I grew up in Chitungwiza and down there it wa...

I heard the following comment on slashdot and I thought it was a cool way of dealing with the windows to linux migration. The peeps were talking about Microsoft not being worried about Firefox ! So try this approach, I use it. Setup an X server with a pretty desktop. Tell the users "We'd like to enable you to work faster. From this point forward, just doubleclick this. We installed a new version of Office and Internet explorer, they are called OpenOffice and Firefox. If you don't like this, feel free to use your Windows98 system." I had zero Win98 users within a month, and zero Windows XP users within 3 months. That's a 400+ user environment. They still think it's new Windows. The management thinks that not paying for 400 terminal services licenses is priceless. Coool, shows that you can really move away you know. i am manulite

I got this from an email forward and I thought why not post it to here as well. 1. Crying is blackmail. 2. Ask for what you want. Subtle hints don't work. 3. Don't cut your hair. Ever. 4. Sometimes, we're not thinking about you. Live with it. 5. Get rid of your cat. 6. Anything we said six or eight months ago is inadmissible in an argument. 7. Anything you wear is fine. Really. 8. Christopher Columbus didn't need directions, and neither do we. 9. You have too many shoes. 10. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us. 11. Learn to work the toilet seat; if it's up, put it down. 12. Mark anniversaries on a calendar. 13. Yes, peeing standing up is more difficult than peeing from point blank range. We're bound to miss sometimes. 14. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers. 15. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor. 16. Don't fake it. We'd rather be ineffective than deceived. 17. Sunday = Sports. 18. If you do...

Having moved from M$ Windblows to linux, one starts getting frustrated by all things Micro$oft. You will hate a site that is "optimized for IE 6" and anything that thinks Windblows is the only platform. I used to love Yahoo, I'm still attached to it in a big way, but it has slowly started to piss me off, especially when it fails to support the very things I like it for, on my Linux platform. So i've decided to post all the annoyances that I encounter with yahoo onto this blog, this is the first. As a linux user, and naturally a firefox user, u'd think that a rich text editor is a given on Yahoo Compose mail screen. I mean if blogspot can do it in firefox then surely Yahoo! can. Maybe they can, but they didn't. Try composing an email in firefox and what you will get is a simple text editor, I did not notice this until today when I wanted to post some HTML message to my blog. I thought maybe my options are not set right, but then, well... Yahoo! thin...

I came across this site and i thought it was kinda funny. Here are my results for the " Whats your number ?" quiz You Are the Enthusiast 7 You are outgoing and playful - always seeing the happy side to life. You're enthusiastic and excitable. You love anything new. Multi-talented, you do many things well... and find success easy. You prefer to keep things light with others. Opening up is hard for you. What number are you? i am manulite

I still have the 3 invites that I offered the day before christmas. Just let me know why I should give them to you that's all! i am manulite

Have you ever wanted to convert your pdf documents to html? Have you then tried to google for a pdf converter and came up with a thousand sites where you download a trial of this or a trial of that? I did that before, and in one of my google results it managed to send me to what then seemed like the most obvious place one would try first; the Adobe site! They have an online tools section where you can convert your pdf files to text or html. Simply send an email with your pdf attachement to pdf2txt{AT}adobe.com or to pdf2html{AT}adobe.com. Dont ask me why you'd want to convert, I did it for someone I knew and I did ask why. I am manulite

I have a couple of Gmail invites (again!) and I'm feeling in a good mood. I'm giving away 3 invites to any 3 people, just tell me why I should give it to you.

Seeing how i go on and on about being african i've sat down and did some thinking, I need a blog in shona, so what i'll do is start another one , this one purely in shona, and the thing is, i'll translate all the posts to this blog. you can check it out on manulite.blog.com . i am manulite.

A few days after starting this blog, someone sends me an email to my faithful yahoo and it goes hi manulite, i saw yo blog at blogspot, and i was wondering are you really from africa? did you grow up in a typical african village? do you think we could be friends? i'd like to learn more about african cultures... regards, xxx S o i quickly run to this site thinking damn, my email is displaying all over the place, the next thing i'll have thousands of the so much hated spam mail. not a single reference. i think again, i'm now using the beloved gmail , so if this person got my email ad, they'd have found my gmail address(if they could, i know some can do it somehow). getting worried i think how did whoeva this is get my email address? feeling kinda threatened, i reply hi xxx how did you get my email address? manulite I can be polite sometimes. so whoever on the other end quickly replies, of course trying to be nice as usual, they tell me a...