Warriorbern on the Move

I have to admit that, in the end, I did absolutely nothing last night except have dinner and pack off to bed. It was 10pm by the time I turned in but I don't know where the time went while I was pottering around the room watching the BBC World news over and over again :-). BBC World is the only English channel available on the tv and I am well and truely sick of it now! This morning I got up, had breakfast and then went for a long walk in and around the part of Tana where my hotel is. It was good to be outside for a change and I did enjoy looking at the buildings and what the street vendors where selling. What I didn't enjoy was stepping over homeless/passed out people on the side-walks and the constant "Madame" "Madame" of vendors and beggars trying to get my attention. First I walked down to the Presidential Palace which is not far from my hotel. From there I wandered along to a lookout point where I could look down into the area below the Presidential P...

Last night I had an early night and finally had a good night's sleep. I was also pleasantly surprised when I arrived at the meeting room at 9am and almost everyone was already there! We had a really good productive day and I am very happy with the work that was done. It was incredible that for the first two days everyone just seemed to be loafing and then they got down and did the work. Amazingly the one thing that changed between those first two days and the last three days was that the most senior person was no longer there. Coincidence or not? Today was our longest work day because not because of trying to finish in time but because we had to wait for the Secretary General to come and close the meeting and he only arrived at 05:40 due to traffic problems. At least he kept it brief and the workshop was closed in 5 minutes. Tonight there is a jazz evening going on downstairs here in the hotel and I might pop my head in there to see what it is all about but right now I am le...

When I woke up this morning I remembered precisely why I am no longer a party animal. Last night was Llewellyn's last night before returning home to Jo'burg so we went out for dinner and then drinks. We took a dinky taxi to the restaurant called Ku Da Ta which wasn’t too far from the hotel. Llewellyn had been there before but could not remember the name of the place. Initially he told the taxi driver that we wanted to go to Zanzibar restaurant and the driver was so desperate to have the fare that he said he knew it and off we went. At least we headed in the right direction but there is no restaurant called Zanzibar. After driving around the back streets for a little while we just happened to pass the restaurant and Llewellyn recognized it. So despite having the wrong name completely, we did end up where we wanted to be. Ku Da Ta is a small French style restaurant and seems to be quite popular with the tourists. It was full when we arrived so we sat at the bar and had a couple ...

Last night, as I was about the send the blog, Llewellyn came past my squat in the passage and invited me to join him for dinner in the restaurant downstairs. I started to refuse but then thought "to hell with it" these trips get very lonely for me and it would be nice to chat to someone. He travels a lot and has been to the same places as me and more. At one stage I was hard pressed not to cry with laughter. I asked him what he did to amuse himself when he was away and he replied in a very deadpan voice "Well, I drink really heavily". I could not help myself, it was the last thing I expected to hear and I just burst out laughing. He was actually being serious and has been trying to give up drinking but fortunately he did see how I could find that funny and we had a good laugh about it together. It was an enjoyable evening and I was back in my room by 9:30pm. After being so tired earlier, for some strange reason, I was suddenly wide awake and stayed that way until 01...

I have been so exhausted today and had to drag myself through the day kicking and screaming. I only went to sleep at 1am this morning and, before any of you jump to your own conclusions, it was not as a result of having a late dinner with the very buff Llewellyn! After I wrote the blog last night I decided to tackle a bit of work that had been requested of me. I was tasked to develop a step-by-step illustrated user guide for the installation process of the software package that is used for data collection on the Research Vessel Dr Fridtjof Nansen. It is a very tricky programme to install and has on a few occasions driven me almost to insanity. Last week, after two days of trying, I finally got it installed on a colleague’s computer and casually remarked that the installation guide given out with the programme was not very helpful. Anyway the IT manager at ORI requested that I do the guide for them so that in future they know how to do the job and then Jens from IMR (the person respons...

Where to start! Okay first of all I did not sleep very well last night because the toilet kept on spilling out water into the bowl so it was constantly filling up. This was not my fault to those of you who would think so! I was nowhere near it when it started doing this and its cistern is hidden behind a panel in the wall to I couldn't even go in there and jiggle things about. I closed the bathroom door but that really didn't help much. This morning it also stopped wasting water all on its own so I expect the problem had to be linked to water pressure or something. It hasn't started up yet tonight so fingers crossed it behaves. Today was the day for finding out where everything is in the hotel. First task – seek and destroy breakfast! I make it sound as if I had an enormous breakfast when in reality it was just a bowl of muesli, some pineapple juice and a cup of the worst tasting tea I have ever had! The tea was so bad that I did contemplate throwing all ...

As I will tell you over and over again, I really do prefer flying early in the morning. With flights later in the day I seem to waste an entire day waiting for the time to pass and generally being a bit ratty because I’m not looking forward to the flight. The downside of flying early though is that I have to get up so early and also I spend half the night worrying that I won’t wake up in time. Last night was no different. I slept well until midnight and then clock-watched until 03:30 when it was time to get up. When I switched on the light my little Rose girl looked at me as if I was mental! Anyway I did get up on time and got to the airport early enough that the check-in counters were only just opening. The flight up to Jo’burg was fine and I discovered that ORI’s Deputy Director was also on the flight on his way to Reunion. He told me that I will enjoy Antananarivo so hopefully he is correct. Jo’burg was freezing cold and the two hour wait between flights felt endless mainly becau...