Warriorbern on the Move

The course was officially opened this morning by the Acting Permanent Secretary, Mr Gondeea. The Fisheries Minister was supposed to do the honours but he blew us off to go officiate (well at least that's what I hope he was doing) at the last export of bulk sugar from Mauritius. From after this morning, all sugar will be exported pre-packaged - not sure what the significance is of this but there you go, something you didn't think you needed to know LOL. Does "Acting Permanent" sound like a contradiction in terms to anyone else? So here is Mr Gondeea addressing us. After all the formalities I was able to have a quick meeting with Mr Gondeea to discuss the inclusion of the Mauritian fisheries in the WIOFish database (the project I coordinate). They are very keen to be part of the project but it needs to go before parliament for government approval. This will happen next week so I should have a definite answer from them before I leave Mauritius next week. With all t...

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 boo...

I am finally out of my office again and am spending the next 2 weeks in Mauritius. I am here to attend a course on a software system called Nansis which is used aboard the Norwegian research vessel called the RV Dr Fridtjof Nansen and which is being used in one of the projects I work on. The Durban to Johannesburg flight was uneventful but for those of you who were with me at 7 Squadron, the Captain was none other than Angel - Russell Angus. I had a brief flash of that Imp that he threw away at Langebaan but then decided to forget about that! Johannesburg to Mauritius was also an ok flight. When we landed though we were not allowed to disembark for ages and the pilot told us that this was because they had problems with the No 2 engine and the only way for it to be checked out was to leave it running while the ground crew inspected it. Needless to say there was much nervous giggling from the passengers and a lot of relief that the pilot only mentioned it when we were safely...

I am currently cooling my heels at home, battling to deal with being couped up in my office. Next trip should be around 1 November to Mauritius for some training on the software programme used on board the research vessel Dr Fridtjof Nansen. I'm looking forward to this trip since I have never been to Mauritius and it should be interesting. Just hope that we get some time off to explore. Watch this space!

Yesterday and today have been really tough emotionally but I am here in Cape Town at someone else's expense and the show must go on. Yesterday we worked through all the FINSS modules to get a feel for how they work and whether we would be able to cope with the program on our own. The front end has really been set up as simply as possible so data capture of all the facets of fisheries is straight forward. The trick comes in when you want to get the data out. The programmer, Marco Garcia (who was in attendance) reckons that anyone can figure out SQL so most queries need to be written from scratch. At least these queries can be setup at installation though and never thought about again, unless of course you want something else out. The photo is of Shaheen Moolla explaining the finer details of the database. Today we were given presentations by the participants from Mozambique and Seychelles where the software has already been installed and is in use. They seem quite happy with it. It ...

Tonight this little bit of space is dedicated to the memory of a long-time friend who senselessly lost his life in a motor car accident last night. Thanks for all the good times Jason. Go well.

My head feels like it has been steam-rolled! The program has so many aspects and trying to remember how everything works is tricky. We started with a general introduction to FINSS had a tea break and then got down to installing the software on each of our laptops. This took TWO hours! Obviously installation proceeded at the pace of the slowest user and in some cases this was really, really slow. So we would be told one aspect and then had to wait for everyone to get to that point - very frustrating. Thankfully though everyone had a working copy and we went for lunch. The afternoon sessions were very technical introductions to some of the modules and included numerous references to programming language which were so far over my head. I think though that once we start getting our hands on the modules and using them, things will fall into place but for now I can't grasp exactly how useful the programme will be. On a different note, I am so glad that I didn't have to fly through Jo...