Back in Mombasa
One last trip for the year and I'm sure it is going to be good as I have an excellent little side trip planned for the weekend. After three weeks of rain, the sun finally came out in Durban on the day I left! Something so wrong about that! The flight to Jo'burg was uneventful and I arrived to find my friends, Jo and Diets, waiting for me to meet up for lunch. It was so good seeing them and I spent a little more time with them than I probably should have and by the time I got through security and immigration, I had to dash to get to my boarding gate. Got there just in time but it was well worth seeing Jo and Diets again so I don't mind the run at all. Jo'burg to Nairobi was a bit bumpy in the middle but my anxiety over flying seems to have dissipated somewhat so I was not worried about the turbulence. We arrived in Nairobi 10 minutes early but there was another plane in the regular bay so we had to park miles away from the terminal and hotfoot it across. I made a mad dash to immigration but got the slowest queue - Murphy's Law. There were only three people in front of me but it took twenty minutes before I was processed. So by now it was 19:50 and I should have been at the domestic terminal at 19:45 for my connection to Mombasa! So yet another run - I certainly didn't need a gym session yesterday. Luckily there was only one guy ahead of me at the security check and I went through quickly. I had 5 minutes of waiting at the gate before boarding the next flight. It was enough time to meet up with the crowd from the Seychelles who should have flown to Mombasa at 18:00 but had been delayed and were still standing around waiting for their connection. The Nairobi Mombasa flight is probably one of my favourites because it is over before it has begun and I was very relieved to get here without any hassles such as missing my flight.
We are staying at the Mombasa Beach Hotel. It is yet another old Mombasa hotel that has seen better days but is clean so I can't complain too loudly. It has two issues though that would make me never stay here again. The first (and most important) is that there is no safe in the room and I was told that there were safes at reception but when I went to find out about it, I was told they were full. So now I have to carry my camera equipment around where ever I go. This is going to be a pain having to drag everything to the KMFRI offices every day. The second problem I have is that the pool hours are 8:00 to 18:00 and since our pick up time is 08:30, it means no early morning swim and considering our work days are usually very long, no afternoon swims either!
On the plus side, I have another fantastic view of the ocean from my room and the breakfast is really good.
So on to today! The work session opened with the usual waste of time introducing ourselves - you'd think we all knew each other by now. Actually I am being a little unfair, 3 of the French facilitators are new to the group but it still feels like a waste of time. I'm always really tempted to make stuff up for the intro but I guess it wouldn't go down well.
We started the working part of the day by having tea LOL ... my kind of working day. A couple of the delegates had flight issues with Kenya Airways so arrived later than expected and one other was just MIA for a while but he eventually dragged himself to the work session and we could finally begin.
The first task was to check our database inventories and make sure that they were correct. Since I only have 3 fisheries (9 datasets) to get together it took all of 5 minutes. The next task was assimilating the vessel registers - another 5 minutes. I started to tackle the metadata and this is where things got tricky. The rest of the day was spent trying to figure out exactly what was required. In the afternoon we were given a presentation on how to do the vessel registration sheets which I had already completed but it was interesting to see how the Excel spreadsheets have been set up to do automated data conversions - great if you have thousands of records. This is going to be useful when I get around to doing the catch tables which are much more substantial that the vessel registers.
After we were finally allowed to go home (18:15), I went with Cindy (from the Seychelles) to the Nakumatt store to do a bit of shopping. I managed to get a book to read so I am happy now that I can curl up with a book and relax in the evenings. There isn't much to watch on TV and even less going on at the hotel so alternate entertainment is required.
I'm off to get stuck into that book! Take care for now.
We are staying at the Mombasa Beach Hotel. It is yet another old Mombasa hotel that has seen better days but is clean so I can't complain too loudly. It has two issues though that would make me never stay here again. The first (and most important) is that there is no safe in the room and I was told that there were safes at reception but when I went to find out about it, I was told they were full. So now I have to carry my camera equipment around where ever I go. This is going to be a pain having to drag everything to the KMFRI offices every day. The second problem I have is that the pool hours are 8:00 to 18:00 and since our pick up time is 08:30, it means no early morning swim and considering our work days are usually very long, no afternoon swims either!
On the plus side, I have another fantastic view of the ocean from my room and the breakfast is really good.
So on to today! The work session opened with the usual waste of time introducing ourselves - you'd think we all knew each other by now. Actually I am being a little unfair, 3 of the French facilitators are new to the group but it still feels like a waste of time. I'm always really tempted to make stuff up for the intro but I guess it wouldn't go down well.
We started the working part of the day by having tea LOL ... my kind of working day. A couple of the delegates had flight issues with Kenya Airways so arrived later than expected and one other was just MIA for a while but he eventually dragged himself to the work session and we could finally begin.
The first task was to check our database inventories and make sure that they were correct. Since I only have 3 fisheries (9 datasets) to get together it took all of 5 minutes. The next task was assimilating the vessel registers - another 5 minutes. I started to tackle the metadata and this is where things got tricky. The rest of the day was spent trying to figure out exactly what was required. In the afternoon we were given a presentation on how to do the vessel registration sheets which I had already completed but it was interesting to see how the Excel spreadsheets have been set up to do automated data conversions - great if you have thousands of records. This is going to be useful when I get around to doing the catch tables which are much more substantial that the vessel registers.
After we were finally allowed to go home (18:15), I went with Cindy (from the Seychelles) to the Nakumatt store to do a bit of shopping. I managed to get a book to read so I am happy now that I can curl up with a book and relax in the evenings. There isn't much to watch on TV and even less going on at the hotel so alternate entertainment is required.
I'm off to get stuck into that book! Take care for now.
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