Sunshine and rain

This morning I was awakened by a very rude mynah bird sitting on my windowsill and squawking for all the world to hear. It was so loud I initially thought it had snuck into my room and was perched on my pillow. Thankfully it gave up after a while and flew off but my after that rude awakening there was no going back to sleep.

Breakfast was a really good healthy meal, lots of fruit (with paw paw Mother) and cereal. I had a bit of deja vu to the trip I did to Egypt with my cousin when the restaurant manager brought me flowers at my table although in Egypt the flowers were given on the last morning of our stay and not on the first morning! So here is a picture of the flowers I got today.

As I said yesterday, our course was due to start in the afternoon so I went for a walk around the neighbourhood after breakfast. Port Louis is really interesting. It is a complete mish mash of architecture with very old buildings right up against modern glass structures. I followed a map in a guide book that I got out the library but it really was not too much help. Essentially I went looking for a supermarket and roamed all over the place but could not find the one marked on the map. The book is six years old so maybe that particular one has closed or maybe it is because it is a Lonely Planet Guide and, as Jo will affirm, not always very accurate. Eventually I came across the Photographic Museum which is something I want to see but it was closed - today is a public holiday. It is First Labourers' Day that commemorates the arrival of the first indentured labourers who came to Mauritius from India. Anyway I will try and get there another day. What I did find though, just beyond the museum, was a supermarket and this one is a mere 350m from my hotel. Below is the view down Intendance Road. Actually it has a double row of palm tress and this is just one half of it.


The course got underway at about 14h30, well it didn't really. This afternoon's session was just a meet and greet event where we all had to introduce ourselves and give a bit of background about what we do and why we are attending the course. Jens-Otto Krakstad, our trainer, gave a brief overview of the software system and provided some information about what the system is and is not capable of doing. So tomorrow morning we have some formalities to get through - as in the Mauritian Minister of Fisheries will be addressing us - and then hopefully we can get on with some learning.

And about the sunshine and rain, it was a beautiful hot sunny day this morning and it is now overcast and raining.

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