From Changi to Bogota

So, my phone now knows where it is.
Or not.

As with the rest of us, its guidance mechanisms are only as good as its experience and its source - but not necessarily in that order.
The phone knows to ask the nearest GPRS tower for coordinates.
That's experience. That's a learned (programmed) response.

But the tower does not always give valid coordinates. The Source is fallible.

So...
I woke up this morning in my own bed in Harare, but to be told that I was in the Changi aea of Singapore.
And I am now sitting in Harare International Airport being told that I am in Bogota, Columbia.

Well done Econet Wireless!
Changi to Bogota in one morning with no jet lag.
I believe that setting the correct coordinates on the base stations is relatively simple. It just has to be done right. Someone has to be told. And they have to do it.

Thanks be to G-d this Christmas!
Not only did Him tell his engineers, the prophets, what to say, but He made sure they got it right.
And above that, just in case we didn't hear them correctly and still were unable to navigate correctly, He sent His Son to show the way; to BE the Way

Latitude is restored

In an earlier post I bemoaned that my mobile phone had revolted and refused to communicate with the interwebs. Sort of a UDI - Unilateral Declaration of Interuption.

The first nice lady I spoke to at Econet Avondale told me everything was fine and suggest "some men by Herbert Chitepo Ave who do these things". Guess not.

Now I wouldn't take "yes" for an answer when the phone still says "no".
A nice man at Econet Borrowdale said "O/S corruption". Makes sense. How else could one get a POP3 connection for mail and no internet connection?
Solution: Reinstall O/S
Which practically means Hard Reboot.
So backup / sync everything in sight...
And it's worked.


Getting back what apps I want will take time. But any I don't want, I have "reclaimed" their space!

I have just got Google Maps and Latitude up, and the "Where's Mike?" feature on the righthand column of this blog is thus back online!

So...
Does your HTC P3400 have a pathological fear of the internet?
A workable solution a hard reboot.
At least, it worked for me.

Do your backups!

Unrest anyone?

No thanks, We'll just go drink my Schweppes Lemon.  We'll meet you there.  Shuuwa!

(via Cynic Harare  who also points out that "Detractor is a farm vehicle!")

Silver Spur, Holiday Inn, Harare

The "spoil myself" day which has brought me to the Woodlands began with a juicy monkey gland steak at the Spur.
Quality is as good as ever. (although I still prefer my olives pitted)
And it was peaceful.
Maybe five tables in use in the whole place.
Just what I needed. Don't disturb me. Just let me settle down and unwind.
The apple pie was not too bad either. Not perfect, but plenty good enough.
Anyone know where Monkey Gland steak gets its name from?
What do they do with the rest of the monkey?

Lunch time!

There are a number of feeding sites like the one on the right of this picture. Vegetables lie strewn around.
I guess 2011 is not just a lean year for the people of Zimbabwe. Even the animals need food assistance.
Soon after this picture was taken, the group of eleven impala gathered tightly and got stuck in... before a giraffe wandered down to displace them.
Even the guinea fowl realised that the top of the tower might not have been meant for them.

Deep knee bends

Mukuvisi Woodlands

Ok, so it's not Ngezi.
That was the plan for today. But plans have changed such that I scratch Ngezi and the first night of the national One Act Play Festival at Campbell Theatre in Kadoma.

But, God willing, I'll get to the Festival tomorrow.

Meantime, sunny skies, baked veldt, ostriches, zebra, impala,ibis, assorted water fowl...
It's not all bad!

Current Location Unavailable

Nice idea.
Put a Google Latitude widget on your blog page.
Until your phone thinks that the internet is a bad place and refuses to go there. As you currently see, my widget says "Current Location Unavailable".

I'm leaving it there because one day (maybe soon) I will be back online.

BTW - anyone have any ideas on how a HTC P3400 can send and receive emails to a variety or email systems, but not want to play nicely with internet or related apps?
The nice lady at Econet says everything is fine.
It's not.
It's just weird.

(If you want to know, at time of writing, I'm in Harare.  At time or reading, who knows?)

He's back!

Well, Harold Camping may have got it wrong when he told us that it was all over on May 21.  But I'm not sure that he has learnt much from the experience.


Driving home last night, I flicked my radio to the AM band, and along with the amazing plethora of stations from Gabarone to Zanzibar (and a few others like VoA which is relayed through Selebi-Phikwe), there was Family Radio again.


Not an exact quote but "if we study the Scriptures hard enough we will be able to determine exactly when the Lord will return" doesn't yet tell me that Mr Camping has learned to interpret "no one knows the day or the hour" the way I do.
He still believes that the Generation of the End began in 1948 and that the Church ended then.  To get around the obvious problem with this, he says that a "generation" is nothing to do with human lifespans, but rather a period in the history of the chosen People.  Nice footwork, but it therefore follows that, so long as Israel exists as a nation-state, we are in Camping's Last Days.


He's wrong about the Church, but you know, so far as the End coming while Israel is here, I think he may be right.
We do not know when.  We cannot know when.  It is not given for us to know when.
But soon and very soon....

Like +1

So I can +1 a blog post for someone who  is not on G+. 
So far so good. 
A Google integration moment. 
But? 

I had thought +1 was the equivalent of the FB "like" meaning "Mr Writer, I agree with you".
However, it appears +1 is "Dear World, I agree with him"
Which I guess is what the FB like was too.

Interesting how I assume that fame is about "they like me" and not about "you will like him".
I guess that's the difference between "I love you because of what you do" and "Because I love you, I will tell others about you"
Greed vs Evangelism

(Seed thought from a combination of the blog in question  from @matthewhosier (http://bit.ly/qLNSns) and a sermon from @AndyStanley ("Staying in Love: Re-Modeling" Jun 01, 2011))

Winter's afternoon

The sky is a bleached blue, the air has a bight, but the doors are open again, and I'm back in short-sleeves.

Winter is not over yet, but the "nice" part of winter is upon us.  

And I like it!

22:10 from Paddington

I think that one of the things that makes London so special is it's transport. Even in the first few days when a Southern Hemisphere sense of direction is so dangerous, the trains, tubes and buses run with astounding regularity.
It's 10:30 at night. My head is full of astounding voices, and I can sit in a train and be taken to Slough.
As easy as that.
By default, I took an all zone Day TravelCard today. Maybe a simple Day Return would have been better today.
But really, it's not as cheap as it was in '91, but it works, and works well.
Next stop when we get to Slough - 24hr Tescos.
Which incidentally closes at 4 on Sundays.
I know.
I found out
The hard way.

The Albany, Deptford

They use stage lighting in the Café that we could happily use at Reps!
Note to self - frosted gel on an intelli. Nice effect.

The whole atmosphere speaks "Performing Arts Centre". The Café is more than just a Members' Bar. Mothers sit here while their teenagers are in violin, drum or whatever lessons.
And Theatre Staff walk through with their hammers and plastering hods.
It's a living Theatre, with the Café and Garden forming the central space around and through which it all happens.

People begin to gather for the Masterclass. Young, fit, self assured, self contained. Any of them could be destined for greatness. Probably few are. But it's the Dream that drives.

Hammers down, a workman wheels a piano to the Purple Room. It's going to happen. No sign of Paul Spicer yet, but still 10 minutes to go. He'll be here.

Down the corridor, glass fronted offices contain Set Designers with CAD PCs and walls full of designs. Publishers composing the community newspapers.

The function rooms are coloured - Red Room, Purple Room, etc. I'm guessing there's even a Green Room - but in the part of the building I can't get to.

This will be good.
The bigger world.

English humour

..or is just a small rebellion against the collapsed culture?

Travelog 1

Hello from London.

Yes, I know, this blog is supposed to be Zimbabwe-centric. But sometimes Zimbabwean diasporants fall in love and marry Englishmen.
Last week, in Windsor, I was hugely honoured to be at my niece's wedding.

And if the technology works, this is a sunset over the Thames the night before the wedding.  This is the view upriver from the Reception venue on Monkey Island.

[post written in a park in Depford]

Not for Camping

Wouldn't it be a little sad if we DO go home tomorrow and Harold Camping and his sect are left here?
I'd trully be so overwhelmed with joy at the presence of my King, that it's unclear how I'll feel about Mr Camping.

But Lord, speak to him tonight. Open his eyes that he may see You and may respond to Your Grace and Love. ...before his Judgement Day comes.

The Magic Roundabout

I was talking about this Civil Engineering wonder recently with friends.  Today I was  "Friday afternooning" and come across these pictures at CyberSalt.org
Enjoy!

 

"End of bus lane" - the least of your problems!

You can't believe it either?  There's more info at Wikipedia: Magic Roundabout (Swindon)

May 21

So what IS going to happen on Saturday?
We don't know. We cannot know.

We can do some clever maths, we can build in some stunning assumptions, we can create a hypothesis, but we cannot know.

Or can we?

When Jesus himself said that NO-ONE knows the day or the hour, but the Father alone, did he mean no-one at that time? Or did he mean no-one ever.

Because, when we start down the road of "well that is no longer true", where do we stop?
Those who are telling us that we are going Home on Saturday have already crossed the heresy line by saying that "the Church Age" is finished. Leaving aside the nonsense that is pedalled as "Dispensationalism", any idea that the Church is ever over is directly contrary to what Jesus taught. "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it".
Ever.
Period.

These folk (who Jesus loves enough to have died for, by the way - just before we deride them unnecessarily), they also tell us that we have in recent years been living in the Great Tribulation.
Really?

True, there have been more Christians martyred for their faith in the last hundred years than in the previous 19 centuries together. But can we really say that things are so bad that, were He not to cut the time short, none of us would survive?
No, we can't. Not yet.

And has there been persecution on a greater scale than we can imagine?
Happily not.

Sorry, Brother Camping. The Great Tribulation is coming, and probably soon. But, with mixed emotions, it is not yet.

Bottom line, we cannot, and will not know the day or the hour of Jesus' return, our departure or "Judgement Day".
But that does not mean it won't be on Saturday. And if it is, there are a good number of Christians who will find their joy mixed with a little embarassment when they are raptured.
"No, it's not May 21. It's... Er, um, Hello Lord, I wasn't expecting you just yet".
He told us to be ready, precisely because we do not know the day or the hour.

And as I contemplate if it is on Saturday, or tonight, what a wonderful excitement I feel. Tinged with pain, yes. I have so many good friends who I don't honestly believe are yet ready.

But I know that He is still Sovereign.
He is still in control.
He will set the timing perfectly.

And I know in whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I've committed unto Him against that day.

Collective Blogging

And now for something completely different!

It was Thandi's idea. "Why not start a story blog where a whole bunch of people write the story, each writing the next section, and see where it goes?"

So we are seeing where it goes!

The blog is The Amazing Story

Thandi started, I've continued, and the story in my head is amazing.
Probably nothing like where we end up, however. That's the joy of it. That's the risk.

Come along. Take a read.
Better yet - join in!

Twenty-nine years ago...

Much has been written this weekend about Zimbabwe's 31st Independence Anniversary - much of it bemoaning how little we have to celebrate.
That's the Zimbabwean way.  Moan and wait.
It's easier that doing anything either constructive or destructive.

But my mind went back to 1982.
I remember sitting in my room at University, listening to a short-wave broadcast from ZBC. 
The broadcast used the Crosby Stills Nash and Young "Teach Your Children Well" theme.  It was a Zimbabwean Government propaganda broadcast, but it was up-beat!   It didn't speak of how other people were to blame for our woes.  It didn't try to ignore the problems faced.  It spoke of a utopian Zimbabwe powered by free universal education.

But reality happened.
Universal education cannot be free.
Universal nothing can be free.

Or can it?
It's Holy Week.  What better time to remember that the best ever Free Gift was given to the whole world.
God loved the whole world so much that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Sadly, not everyone will accept this Gift.  But that doesn't diminish it.
Unlike universal free education, eternal life remains a current reality.  Sadly, more people than necessary will not accept it.  Sadly, the Good News is not universally known.
There is still a need to "Teach Your Children Well".
To teach them the Truth.
The Good News.
There is a hope.
There is a God.

Conflicting evidence

What do you do when you have two pieces of evidence that cannot possibly both be true?
What if the one source says "Danger! Rectify now!" and the other says "Nah. Relax. Everything in fine. Moenie panic nee"?

Which do you believe? Which do you act on?
What if the fuel light in your vehicle is shining brightly and the fuel gauge shows a little over a quarter tank?

Step one - assume that the good people who serviced the vehicle broke something while working on it last week. This is obvious. Someone must be blamed to justify everything wrong or confusing in life.
Step two - to fill up or to keep driving?

This morning, as I walked to the fuel station from my now stationary vehicle, I had the time to ponder this question. Was it the optimism of "tank half full"?
Living in Zimbabwe, however much we winge,our survival has dependent on blindly trusting either that things are good, or that things will get better. I generally land on the former. Sure, life is not perfect, but it's fine. I mean, so what if there has been no water supply to my house since about July last year? Life is good! Godfrey gets water from the borehole down the road (when there is power for the pump!). I can shower at work or at the theatre. It's OK, really it is.
So did I therefore say "Hey, the fuel light is on. No problem. I'll be fine. Life is good"?

I don't think so.
On reflection, I think that I am driven not so much by optimism, but by selfishness. It is nicer if there is fuel in the tank, so I assume that this is so.
In the rest of life, there are warning indicators to tell me when to stop and when to proceed. But I choose to believe the voice in my head that says "You aren't hurting anyone, and no-one will find out so long as you are careful". This is the "nice" indicator. This path pretends to offer the most fun. The voice that says "Be ye holy even as I am Holy" is such a killjoy!
And it's not just my fuel tank status that brings me to a spluttering halt.

Will this experience change my life?
Of course!
As least as long as it's enjoyable to be changed.

20 minute interval and citizen journalism

Twenty minutes is too short.
I tried to blog the first half of the evening during the interval.
But ran out of time.
And afterwards...
Well, by the time I got home this morning, no, that was not the time for blogging.

But, in summary, a stunning evening.
Two excellent plays (not nearly as "dated" as some had feared) providing more than enough food for thought, however much thought one thought one might like to think
Two great casts doing fine things to them.
And then an evening of wonderful craic with amazing people who I am honoured to call friends.

Tired now
And the weekend is still a'comin in!

Happy birthday Tracey Garrard!  A day later, and many years younger than REPS, but also a very important part of our lives.

Links to REPS 80th

The Repertory Players turns 80 (H-Metro - 6 January) 
80th anniversary of The Repertory Players (Zimbabwe Lifestyle - 16 January) 
The Reperatory Players Celebrate 80th Anniversary (Herald -15 February)  
Chairman's Letter - 17 February (Zimbabwe Lifestyle - 17 February , ZimboJam - 17 February,  newzimsituation.com (link dodgy) )  
REPS @ 80 (ZimLemming - 17 February)
Reps turns 80, present plays that launched them in 1931 (The Standard - 26 February)

If you stumble upon any other relevant links I have missed, please let me know and I'll add them in.

REPS @ 80

80 years! Quite an achievement!

It was in 17 February 1931 that the Repertory Players staged their first production. As part of the celebrations, the two plays from that far off night are being presented tonight at a Gala Evening.

They are "Fame and the Poet" (Lord Dunsany) and "Magic" (G K Chesterton).

So it's black tie and party frock this evening.

And I expect more to write about afterwards.
But for now...

Happy Birthday, REPS!

Swanny rules!

So I was on the CricInfo site looking for stuff about the upcoming World Cup.
Some interesting stuff, including an elegant description of yesterday's AUS-RSA game where the "Australia bowlers were dealt a heavy snotklap (slap in the face) as South Africa chalked up a seven-wicket win"
Snotklap.  Good use of vernacular!

Then I spotted the article about the end of Graeme Swann's drunk driving charge.
Leaving aside any discussion of drink-driving (a generally bad idea) or the pedantry of legal process (a generally bad idea), I was struck by some of the humour of the incident.

Swann, ... was stopped near his home in West Bridgford shortly after 3.00am on April 2 last year, as he drove a white Porsche Cayenne towards a local supermarket, having arrived home to find his cat trapped under the floorboards.

Sorry? Read that again?
He had had four or five glasses of wine for his birthday, and it's 3am on 2 April.
Does that make his birthday....  No really?  Swanny?  1 April?  I might have guessed.
Any follower of Graeme on Twitter knows he is an arch-nutter.  Seriously - This is a twitter feed well worth following if you can even spell "English cricket".

But wait!  There's more!
He "arrived home to find his cat trapped under the floorboards"!
Like, how did...?  O never mind.  Put it down to a family likeness.

And to think that Graeme is currently home "on paternity leave".
Seriously, he's been allowed to breed?  Who dropped this catch?

But all the best wishes to the Swanns - both parents and baby.
And all the best for the World Cup (except vs Zimbabwe!)
And get yourself a chauffeur!


[For complete accuracy, Wikipedia tells me that Swanny was in fact born on 24 March 1979, not 1 April as I inferred. Such a pity to let the truth get in the way of a good story. And he's not even a "Born Free"!" ]

Valentines @ Pizza Inn

OK, so I'm a little cynical about 14 February generally.

But tonight I am waiting for two downloads and have popped out for a pizza.

Most tables at Pizza Inn tonight are either one man, one woman, or two men, two women (safety in numbers!). More than usual to my biased eye. And they are all looking uncomfortable.

A middle aged couple arrived - him in a neat grey suit with red shirt and tie, her with a pink suit over a red blouse. Put the kids to bed, dress up smart, and go out.... to Pizza Inn in a Food Court.

Zimbabwean romance is not dead.
Not quite.

(For Google's benefit, the one download is a backup of www.kingdompeoplechurch.org. The other is some CISCO software for one of my team.)