Travelling to India guys...m excited!!

ok guys..

its absolutely sure now....I m visiting India.. :D......

hope to use my time quite nicely there.....and hope to complete all the pending craps!!

I dont expect to get a good lazy vacation as its all too hectic coupled wid a few train and flight journeys.....but nevertheless its home!! (oh i do consider Uganda my second home, but then the place u spent 23 yrs of ur life does have to be ur first home!!)...

I wud hav to miss BHH as i m leaving on the same day as it is slated on!!....sorry Jny...but i will make up for it next time around.

While in India....i wud like to talk to a few people pretty seriously...and harp to a few ones not so seriously...i want to buy things, which I thought wont be very useful and also things that i have waited to buy for ages now :D (dont worry I wud give u the names when I lay my hands on them)....

Basically its gonna be a spending spree...but then i hope the spending helps to erase some of the odds that i have been doing lately!.

Neways, good afternoon and a very good afternoon and morning for the rest of the 25 days..... I would surely miss UG...but I wud also like to see Ahmedabad again!!..

good day every one...and a very gr8 weekend and 3 more in advance!!...lol that was unnecessary....i m not leaving the cyberspace...I wud be writing!!

cheers

santosh

Frauds-an overview from here

I had been thinking abt this lately...if got a chance to fraud someone or some organization, how much would I siphone off!!!.....After a long perusal of the matter at hand, I came to a conclusion that it shouldnt be more than an Crore Rs or a 200,000 $s....thats the extreme it can go...

So based on this, when I learnt about the amount of money defrauded in the Global Fund scandal in Uganda, I was astonished, shocked, delighted (at them) and pityfull (at the country and the donors), all at the same time. Individuals scammed a total of over 210 Million US$s from the Global Fund money allocated to Uganda. The money that was to be used to buy anti-malarial drugs, to be used to eradiction of diseases, infrastructure etc. That amount in itself could be some small country's year's GDP, that money could had been brought to so may more better uses. My frustration(and many others) must have come to the highest limit when you get to know that no one found guilty of the fraud has been punished yet and not a cent has been recovered. How can some one be so blatant and blind to tolerate such a fraud. From the stories I heard, the bill for a lunch during this siphonage was UGX 70,000 each plate at a village restaurant. Thats like 41$s for a lunch. It wont even cost me that much on moon to have lunch.

Just when we were coming out of it, came the NSSF-Temangalo land saga. NSSF is a body that manages money retirement security of workers in the country. So when they were said to have bought wetlands and lands for twice or thrice the amount of normal land in normal places. What makes it more pathetic and worse than Global Fund fraud is that the money used here was from the pockets of the poor working class. The money here in question is about 11 billion shillings approx. equal to US$6, 470,000, which is a alarmingly large sum of amount. The battle is still going on for the same, so we dont actually know who is the culprit. 

So today is weekend and I would be having a bland weekend again. I dont expect to booze today and most probably wont be tomorrow too. Neither am i expected to be going to some place cool here in Kampala. So I m at home, anyone wants to have fun drop home. Anyone's invited.

cheers

santos

The Preview to The Royal Ascot Goat Race and more

Note: This post was to be posted on 30th August, Saturday, but after trying for like 5 hours I could not succeed to post it. The post is still valid but the recuperations of the post is to be followed up in the next post.....read along!!!!!!
The Gmail network has trully sucked for the past two days. Even today I have been trying to open blogger, gmail etc. and it has been like 3 hours before I could write this entry. Nevertheless I have been able to write.
The big revelation of the week is that there is a car from Nissan named Pulsar (huh!). Well that may not be a big enough revelation for you people but an automobile entho like me it is. Well i come to know about it due to the fact that yesterday the lady driving the car was damn good looking that her vehicle warranted a second look from my side.
On other fronts, the most anticipated event of my stay in Kampala is here, I have been waiting for two years for the Royal Ascot Goat Race for two years now. I missed it out the first year due to unfamiliarity to the place and the second year due to our own laziness that ended up that saturday afternoon boozed up and woke up about 6.00 in the evening approximately the same time the Goat Race ends :(. Anyways I m intent on going there this time. Lemme go into some history as for the Goat Race. It started out as a cultural get together for the Asian Expats and still is, but the only difference is that now we have many other cultural activities also. The best part of it and the one of the major reasons for attracting me is the free booze and the food that is supposed to be coming with it. I actually can't stop thinking about the idea that FREE BOOZE can be available anywhere in the world (:-)). Neways I m looking forward to it and will snap some pics and sincerely try to upload some onto blogger (if in the first place I figure out how to do it).
In other things, I had been too busy the whole of last week, working my asses off. I was literally working for like 12 hour session coupled up with the French class. Well the only other side effect of that apart from the effect on my health is that, for the first time in my virtual life of 15 years I had to block some one on my chat list. The most saddening part of that is that I blocked her due to no apparent fault of hers but due to the fact that I had to work like anything doing some really tough sensitive work and I thought that I didnt want to be distracted. Nevertheless the fact is that I had to block one of the sweetest person I have met (not the most sweetest but close by). Anyways whatever happens happens for good (I have been following that philosophy for times immemorial)
In other things, next week is also going to be hectic and filled with a lots of work and I dont expect the health to get any better. But still if it doesnt go worse thats a bonus.
Cheers then, I have to run to the Goat Race (ya the goats actually race and the one which wins gets a price and the price money is apparently given off to some charity of the organisers).
Happy weekend and happy boozing to me.
santosh

Kenyan Situation and Me

Living in Kampala, Uganda or for that matter any place with whose topography your folks are not well versed with is problematic. If anything happens any place nearby, you are the ones who are bombarded with emails, smses and phone calls.

Take for instance, the case of the Kenyan trouble. Kenya is a different country and everything associated with Kenya is different including the people, culture, security, infrastructure and even the expartriates living there. The only problem is that it is near to Uganda and whenever the crisis in Kenya is talked about, Uganda is named invariably.

There have been a lots of things happening there in Kenya and the worst affected are no doubt the common people living there but people like me living here in Uganda are also well affected. Our fuel and most of the Raw material comes through Kenya, so it has affected most of the supplies incoming into Uganda and production in local entities as well. On personal front, Everytime I find anyone from my friends or family circle online, I have to convince them that Kenya is a different place than Uganda. The airtime expenses have gone up. I have to call my family everyday to say that I m fit and fine here, that today's violence was in so and so place is not in my residence 'country'. It may feel funny for us to comment on it, but the situation was really grave and worth giving a thought that can Africa ever be sure of having regimes, which can boast of being democratically elected and constitutionally correct. From Kenya's example, we can say that even economical powers dont have a stability, when it comes to governance.

For that matter, I can reliably comment that Uganda is an oasis of peace and stability (for the timebeing, but hopefully will continue to be so in future).