Madsvibe – Mad Vibe

the  This post self-destructs after 24 hours(may be not).

Whenever am having either dry or busy days, I repost something from my mail. This arrived an hour ago.

It is suppposedly from someone who accopanied ODM presidential aspirant  and a Ksh 40 m Hummer owner Raila Odinga in the recent London trip.

A complete pictorial is available here.

I got this from Felo, after continuous and patient prodding and begging.

In the world of romance, one single rule applies to men:

HER BIRTHDAY

Pass it on to the poor fellas for info & to the gals for a good laugh !

Enough said.

I like to think of myself as possessing a fair amount of info but this time I was caught flatfooted. Really. I just discovered the other day that the overly-publicised World Cross Country Championships coming to Mombasa this 24th is a one-day event. Actually, its a half-day affair, starting at around 1.30pm and over by 6.30pm. So much for the cross country ‘coming home.’

It is for just that single event that Government spokesman Alfie has been worrying about the general outlook of the coastal city. Street children have been thrown out of the only home some of them know, several millions are being used to spruce up and amenities(or at least some of them) are working again.

Like is always the case, the foreigners will go and we’ll be back to business as usual.

Only, the crosscountry will have come home, and gone just as fast.

Hey,

Was just passing around and dropped by the new-look KTN website and boy, does it rock! You can always trust me for those updates. It is more informative, blends well their corporate colour (which is my favourite colour as well, and my campus’)  So good, couldnt help stealing a graphic. two actually, from there:

Did I say cool? Sorry, I already did.

NTV however dont seem to be having it all easy. They still list shows that are no longer running. But I guess they were too busy with the closure of NTV Uganda to care. Plus, they got that Flash thing all over the website that does not allow me to copy their logo except this:

 and one of my favourites:

They have apparently gotten themselves a satellite transmitter(valued at Ksh 12 million, they reminded us) that allows them to broadcast live from anywhere in Africa. Wow! So deos that mean that we will be watching my classmate Bernard Otieno live from South Africa for the world cup in 2010?

SO, we are all aware by now that the much-hyped ‘bonding’ trip by the ODM brigade was a non-starter. Which is not hard considering that the kind of elements in ODM are not exactly the ‘bondable’ type, but you already know that, dont you? There is far too much ego in ODM to hold together and sooner rather than later, it will fall apart. Again, you already know that. Listening to Kwamchetsi Makokha this morning on Kiss, he said something that I couldnt agree with more: ” every politician has selfish interests.” That is why they get into politics in the first place, duh?

Anyway, as I was saying, the failure of the trip has not all been bad. The journalists had a field day. For the Standard’s Ben Agina, it was a ticket to London. But he was not the only happy journalist in the land. Practically every media house had a few. A story had just been handed to them in a silver platter. There were countless analyses for reasons that may have caused the split(none of which we didnt know) and acres of space and countless soundbites were dedicated to this. Editors had leading stories all of a sudden and the public had a discussion topic to last them until the next big thing or building collapse in Nairobi.

Then there is Deya. The bishop of miracle babies was making miracles of a different kind this time. He was allegedly promised the high commissionership to London.

 Whatever

Hey, I was just checking out almost all the free sms sites and could not get any that’s working. I was at Sasanet and they had this notice: “Due to a system upgrade that is currently in progress, the Sasanet Free sms service and purchase of sms credits are temporarily unavailable. Please check back again later.We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused, but strive to continually improve our service to you.” Instead, they have this massive banner at the place am supposed to be sending the sms at:

A fine sense of humour that. I said fair and moved on to Afritext and they have new regulations (or at least they seem to me). Apparently, you are required to purchase sms credits of any amount(starts at 50 bob) every 30 days in order to enjoy the daily ‘free’ service.

So, how is it free if am supposed to pay for it?   I let you advertise on every sms I send then you ask me to pay again? Tell me another.

Meanwhile, the good people at Bernsoft have converted Smsanyone into a commercial sms tool for corporates and moved the accounts to Afritext.

Koinonia (which means community in Greek, sounded very Kikuyu) Technologies’ Freesms says its simply unavailable. Very explanatory as you can see.

and then with their sense of humour, they sell secular ringtones?

And the most interesting one is the new players in the market called Mango.  It can not allow you to register on their site. So why exactly are they in business?

Am outta here, very annoyed I might add.

I recently got myself a phone that comes with FM radio and if you have listened to radio in Kenya, you know what I have been suffering through. After analysing all the morning shows in great detail, I like to listen to Kiss 100 not because its any better but becasue of the drama that goes on there, and did I say DRAMA? While we are still  there, if anybody from Kiss 100 is reading this, not having a website for a station like yours is not exactly cool. Actually, after crosschecking, Kiss 100 actually does have a website again but you cant listen live, boo!

Anyway, I was telling you about my mornings listening to Kiss. For the last few weeks, the host Caroline Mutoko and her sidekick Nyambane have been planning a dream wedding for her. The plans were all aired for the listeners to hear and anybody with even a little brain would have known there was something cooking. Kiss prides itself in setting the standards but there is no way they were going to allow their presenter to use company resources to plan her wedding and hog that much airtime.

 All the time, the bridegroom was not mentioned apart from the fact that she was finally in love. ‘Adoring’ fans kept calling in asking to help in the preparations, others even offering their ‘cute’ babies as flower girls. Like I said, it makes dramatic radio and am sure its the stuff ratings are made of.

Logo from Kissfm.co.ke

Today finally was the day for the big announcement. Nyambane asked Caroline if she would give the wedding away and she said ‘I do.’ Apparently, its the biggest wedding in this part of the world and everything is catered for. One lucky listener gets to win the Victorian wedding and all they have to do is just show up. For the unitiated, send a mail to bigwedding@kissfm.co.ke and nominate yourself or someone else and attach a picture of the couple and then ‘cross your fingers till it hurts.’

The phones didnt stop ringing with all kinds of people asking for details. At that time, I had to do my station-hopping coz I had had enough.

Somebody told me of Kenyans’ love for free things and ‘celebrity worship’ and I just muttered. Forgive me for all the quotation marks in this post, am just a skeptic like that.

To all those who have been inquiring where I have been for the past so many weeks, am back. Specific mention goes to the Kenyan Analyst whose blog gets interesting every time I look at it and my boy Felo who if he didnt switch blogs so often would have a nice home( I stand corrected, the blog is like very cool). There is the ever energetic Oliver Mwandishi and that of his better half, the irreplaceable Wakasa. Thanks to all of you also who from time to time drop by. Thanks to KBW for their kind service to the blogging community in this country.

 Having written my roll of honour, a few things happened while I was away. First and very significant, I visited apostle Ssuna’s church, the World Harvest International Church and you may want to check back for that yarn, trust me. Also, slain ‘most wanted gangster’ Simon Matheri was laid to rest and I just love the way the Nation reported it.

A friend JP, sent me a short email titled ‘Wonders of the World’ and posed:

“Hey boy i was just watching the news yesterday and wonering of what nxt

The criminal is burried and the son is born and you know they say like father like son,the question is: do we kill the son immeditely to avoid inconviniences in future?

Good day”

Two things about that: one, why would anyone call me ‘boy’ at my ‘advanced’ age (and that reminds me of something that appears later in this post). Two, who cares what Matheri did with his life, that son deserves every shot at life like any of us. Its a good thing he will never see his father and we only hope his mother is straighforward enough. On a lighter note, anyone believe in reincarnation? The kid was born two hours after the burial of his father, you follow…?

While I was away, Kamangu and the Maendeleo ya Wanaume (what nonsense!) had their day in court and had Bishop Wanjiru’s wedding stopped, at least for now. She meanwhile joined the ODM and is all set to vie for the Starehe parliamentary seat. You now know why the Orange people will not win Starehe. Not that the incumbent Maina Kamanda is popular or effective or anything positive but who would vote for the  drama queen? Not me, and am a voter in Starehe.

Last and very significant to me was the turning away of some 20 Form 1 students at Kiriaini Secondary in Meru for not being circumcised. The media had a field day. The Standard’s Palaver had a field week demonising the headteacher. I have it on good stead however that he was in fact doing a big favour to the the boys. My close friend who is a Merian, went to a school in the town tells me in schools around there, discrimination for the uncircumcised is the order of the day. You can not go through an all-male school in Meru without being circumcised, and it has nothing to do with discipline and/or lack of it.

So, that is a brief look at some things that made news these past days. I will try to be more frequent but I dont promise.

Always, Madsvibe…