Today is Thatday….the day before Friday!

I don’t know whether I should attribute it to age, but lately, including last night, I have been having some interesting nights. I find myself somewhere in between sleep and waking state. I am asleep enough to be sleep-talking, albeit quietly, but also awake enough to hear the measured (sometimes) breathing of my partner wife sleeping next to me.

(Deviation….or should that be ‘diversion’? To our road contractors, the two words are inter-changeable). What is this thing about referring to people (significant others) as partners? Life has become so complicated….we are called upon to be so politically correct that we end up being incorrect! Partners?…not to mention that there are even possibilities of partners who share the same gender pphht! Can we just go back to the God old days when partners were senior members of an audit firm….when audit firms had one name and not a conglomeration of names that now have to be turned into initials just to fit into a business card….deviation ends here!

So in that half-asleep-half-awake state, I had these rhymes going through my head. I was mouthing them silently and now I am struggling to remember what they were all about, but at the time they made a lot of sense. Someone needs to come with an App (there is an App for everything nowadays anyway) that I could use to dictate my dead-of-the-night thoughts silently so as not to wake my wife (never partner, she is wife). So there I was having these thoughts and words flowing and I was very sure I will not remember half (maybe more than half) of them in the morning. I can’t tell what time of the night it was but it was before dawn. I did open one eye (keeping the other one tightly shut so that I don’t completely let go of sleep) and noticed it was still dark outside. I considered checking the time, but my phone, though equipped with ‘an edge’ was not going to help.

(Another deviation/diversion) They did make phones with an edge. The difference between the one with an edge and then one without was quite significant, which means I paid quite a bit for ‘the edge’. One of the features it boasts of is having a night clock on the edge. The clock is supposed to have the kind of lighting that is just enough for you to read with one eye slightly open, but dim enough to instantly send you back to sleep for a few sweet minutes before the alarm goes off….I think English is just wrong….the alarm should go ON not OFF!....is a diversion within a deviation allowed? Back to the edged phone; there is either a design flaw or I am flawed. The edge screen is such that if I have my phone on my bedside table and on charge (I don’t believe any of those articles that say I should not charge my phone overnight), the edge screen ends up facing away from me. Beats the whole purpose of having the night clock on….I would have to get my head from under the pillow (what? You don’t sleep with the pillow on top of your head? How conventional!!!), sit upright, get dis-entangled from the mosquito net and then lean over the bedside table just to be able to see the time on the night clock….all this is likely to end up waking up my wife (not partner…..by now you get it, no?) which beats the whole purpose of having a night clock. Seems one feasible solution might be to change the orientation of the bed, but not sure there will be an accessible socket for charging the phone if we turn the bed against a different wall. Another option might be to convince my wife that we swap sides, so I move to her side of the bed. That might work but I am worried that on those rare nights when I venture into the bathroom for a leak in the middle of the night with one eye slightly open and the other one tightly shut to preserve sleep, I might take the usual turns and by sheer bad luck find myself in the kitchen instead of the bathroom. That would be atrocious! But maybe, it’s not the phone manufacturer to blame. Maybe there are some configuration changes I can make to either move the edge screen to face my side of the bed or move the charging port from the bottom to the top of the phone. Maybe it is somewhere in the user manual. Only problem is, these phones come with a user manual the size of a passport photograph. It only says how to load a SIM card and to connect a charger. There are no longer instructions on how to connect the battery, because the battery is integrated in the phone – no longer user-installed. Two instructions is all the user manual gives. The rest of the user instructions are ‘inside’ the phone itself. You have to know how to use the phone to find the manual that tells you how to use the phone! Absurd! Maybe one day I will RTFM (google that if you don’t know what it stands for, and in my version, the F, though being a 4-letter word, is a child-friendly word that even Jesus used). Until then, I will be content with the fact that I paid for an edge that has largely been useless to me…..end of diversion (don’t you just hate it when the diversion/deviation is so long it becomes the main road!).

Back to my half-awake-half-asleep thoughts at a time of the night that I can’t quite tell….I can’t remember more than half of the thoughts (as you probably can tell by now) but I guarantee you they were both ingenious and ingenuous (you didn’t know those two words are different?). The one bit I can recall was a bit depressing….that we have sunk so low as country. We are not just having ‘regular fraud’ where people steal from the public coffers. We now have people stealing on behalf of other thieves and we are spending all the time now trying to figure out who stole on whose behalf! We have a body charged with investigating such matters but since they can’t seem to get to the bottom of it, they abdicate their duty and the role is swiftly taken up by the unskilled (sometimes even unschooled) members of a parliamentary committee for further investigation. Each committee member gets paid handsomely (or beautifully for political correctness) and I am worried that by the time they table their report findings that will state that the investigation were inconclusive, which report will never be published publicly, we will have spent more money in paying sitting allowances than what was initially embezzled and was subject to the investigation.

We need Jesus! #NYS  - Ni Yesu Sasa!

Recruiting a CEO for Kenya - Preliminaries

(This post was to appear 3 years ago!)

The election time in Kenya is fast approaching. The date is set for 4th March 2013 and the presidential race has attracted a number of candidates - I dare not try to count them all.

In my working career, I have had the privilege of being involved in recruitment exercises. I will borrow a few of the lessons I have learnt through these experiences in my analysis and decision-making as pertains to the Presidential Elections in Kenya.

Before starting the exercise, a few principles that I hold firmly when it comes to recruitment:

1. I put a lot of weight on the references especially when they come from former employers. However, I would rather get the references in an informal setting rather than the formal recommendation letter that the candidate presents. I have had to cancel a job offer to a hitherto qualified candidate on getting some informal but factual reference to his character at a former employer. The recommendation letter on the other hand is to be held with little regard. I can bet my few remaining hairs that a majority of the recommendation letters are drafted by the candidate and then signed off by their favourite managerial staff at their former employer. If however the former employer is of unbecoming character, and the candidate is endorsed by that employer, I safely invoke the "birds of a feather flock together" ideology.
2. I believe in conducting a thorough short-listing process and only subjecting 3-4 candidates for the interviews. The rest of the applicants are dropped off at the preliminary stages. If the preliminary stages cannot reduce the applicants to 3-4, then it cannot have been thorough enough.
3. I prefer having the cut-off criteria decided before the interviews begin. Anyone who does not make it to the cut-off mark after the interviews drops off from the race. It is not uncommon then that none of the short-listed candidates makes it through to an offer. I am OK with that and I have no qualms in starting the recruitment exercise all over again if none make it through.
4. Candidates who present clumsy applications or display any clumsiness in the application and interview processes are just living their true character and will most likely be even more clumsy if offered the job. Such candidates are shunned at the earliest.
5. I believe in evidence-based interviews. Do not just tell me what you can do, show me what you have done in the past in similar (not necessarily the same) circumstances and I can extrapolate and judge how you would perform in the new job should you get it.

So these are the 5 principles I hold firmly and exercise whenever I am involved in recruiting.

I would want to imagine that Kenya at the moment is my company/business and I put in my money to fund the ventures of this company. I am now in the process of recruiting a CEO for this great company to run my affairs for the next 5 years with a possible extension for further 5 years. The incumbent is set to leave and although he has done some exemplary things and brought in some growth and achievements, he has still left quite a bit to be desired. I am now looking for a leader that will take this great organization to the next level.

The advertisement for the position has been out in the public for a while now and has attracted quite a number of applicants. The ones whose applications I have acknowledged receiving are (in alphabetical order):

1. Charity Ngilu
2. Eugene Wamalwa
3. James Ole Kiyiapi
4. Kalonzo Musyoka
5. Martha Karua
6. Musalia Mudavadi
7. Mutava Musyimi
8. Peter Kenneth
9. Raila Odinga
10. Raphael Tuju
11. Uhuru Kenyatta
12. William Ruto

I know this is not the full list, but it represents those whose applications I have received and acknowledged. There might still be some who are yet to table their applications, but I have a feeling that such will be time-barred.

Next will be the short-listing exercise...coming soon.

Wairugu’s Hide and Seek – A fictional story

If you grew up in the country-side (aka ushago/shags) setting like I did, you will probably recognise and even reminisce about this game. For ease of telling the story, I will use some fictional names. Any semblance to a real person, in the public domain or otherwise is to be taken as purely coincidental. So here goes a not-so-common scenario in the game:

Wairugu is selected as the ‘it’ to start the game. The rules are simple. Muhati Nguyi will do the ‘I draw the picture of a snake on your back, which finger did I point you with?’ and Wairugu is then to guess which finger Muhati used. With every wrong guess, she accumulates 10 seconds. On this particular instance, she guesses wrongly 4 times (she clearly lacks in some acumen) and thus ends up with 40 seconds.

The next step is now to close her eyes and count up to 40 seconds, while her playmates – Kabure, Muhati, Ntuale, Mukomeni and others take the opportunity to hide. The one who is able to pull an MH370 stunt (no trace to be found), is the eventual winner in the game. After the 40 seconds are gone, much like the 40 days grace-period of a thief – I wonder who decided on 40 – the chase is now on. Wairugu is to try and find as many of her playmates as possible within the shortest time and with each find, she is to run to a designated spot and ‘Tipo’ – much like calling a press conference and tipping the press on your find!

In this particular case, Wairugu keeps searching over and over but her playmates are proving rather elusive. As an additional rule to the game, a hiding participant can observe the search party from their hiding place and if situation allows, they can run and try to get to the press (Tipo) before the one who is searching, in which case, such a person earns immunity for some specified time.

Kabure being a novice at the game, assesses that Wairugu is not seeing her and so she bolts for the ‘Press’ but Wairugu sees her and they both make a mad dash to the press getting there at virtually the same time. An argument ensues on who got to ‘Tipo’ before the other and they simply cannot agree. Kabure tries to pull Muhati into the argument, saying he witnessed her get there before Wairugu and so she should be safe. Muhati unwittingly comes out of his hiding place and Wairugu promptly ‘Tipos’ him. At this turn of events, he tries to argue that he only came out to be an arbiter between the two but Wairugu dismisses him as having lost in the game. In her books, she now has both Kabure and Muhati as having been ‘found’. Muhati distances himself, saying he did not witness what was going on between the two of them and insisting the only role he played in the game was to innocently draw on Wairugu’s back to start off the game. He goes ahead to claim that he was not even part of the hiding game and his role ended at the kick-off.

While Kabure is still arguing on whether she beat Wairugu to it or not, Wairugu starts getting frustrated. She needs to find someone else to nail and hence graduate from being the ‘it’ in the game. She therefore devices a different strategy – she can be astute sometimes. She decides that she will just shout ‘Ntuale I have seen you!’ and then proceed to ‘Tipo’ him. She does this but decides to add Mukomeni to the list. She shouts out loud for all to hear that she has found both Ntuale and Mukomeni and she runs to press ‘Tipo’. Ntuale having the quicker mouth (and slower brain) comes out breathing fire that it can’t be true. He argues that Wairugu had not found him and he should be allowed to go back into hiding. Mukomeni seeing this, also comes out, against his better judgement and joins in pointing fingers at Wairugu. The soon join forces and even start defending Kabure, although they were in hiding and did not witness what went on between Wairugu and Kabure, suddenly they are taking sides and saying Kabure statement is true and Wairugu has basically not found anyone and therefore she remains as the ‘it’ in the game. They are now even willing to serve as witnesses for Kabure in this matter…but Muhati has since distanced himself completely and already looking for a different game.

At the end of the day, what was meant to be a game for all to enjoy, has ended in bitter exchanges and finger-pointing with accusations and counter-accusations. As things stand, Wairugu is still the ‘it’. In the meantime, there are still other faceless and nameless players who are still hiding and with the way things stand, Wairugu is running out of energy and patience to find them. They are probably the winners in this game, but until Wairugu finds them and exonerates herself, she remains the ‘it’ in the game and the pressure is still on her. If the day and hence the game ends with the way things stand, Wairugu is the loser.

Gone Till November.....

So its been 8 months and for some reason, today my memory was jolted and I remembered my hitherto abandoned blog. Maybe it was the date today 1-11-11....but more likely, the morning cold shower courtesy of KenyaPower (formerly known as Kenya Power and Lighting Company). I think the change in name to some extent was ideal....they just acknowledged what was already common knowledge in the public domain - that they are not in the business of lighting and they are not much of a company anyway, at least not one many Kenyans are willing to keep.

A few months ago, I had the pleasure (when I do not have a choice, I choose pleasure) of being one of the guinea pigs (did I just call myself a pig from guinea?) for a badly-electrocuted executed project by Kenya Power. I had my meter changed from post-paid to prepaid.  I think this is change we should embrace, putting me in control of my power consumption. I was therefore pretty excited to be among the first (few thousands) of Kenyans to make this giant leap forward. The excitement did not last long as I soon discovered that I needed a degree in Mathematics, Statistics, Legal Technology, Logistics Management, Criminology, Public Administration and Juvenile Justice to interpret and manage the prepaid billing (if you can call it billing)....My stints at Department of Electrical Engineering and School of Computer Science have proved useless when it comes to understanding how the prepaid costing is done.

Why would Kenya Power make the system so complex? Why not settle on a tariff like the mobile phone companies have done? I would be much happier knowing Kshs 500 buys me say 20 units of power (in kWH - at least my Electrical Engineering comes handy here). Currently, this amount fluctuates based on so many varied factors making the process very hard to understand for a mere mortal like me!

Just when I though I had mastered the science of managing my power consumption (and that was the main selling point for this prepaid technology), I got a shocker this morning! I woke up to find I had no power....and I could hear the meter beeping - to the 'unschooled' this happens when you have less than 20 units of power. I went to check the meter and it reads -4.14....how did I go into negative overnight? I have not subscribed to an overdraft facility with Kenya Power! I am normally very credit-shy. Seems my prepaid meter has now moved to postpaid, if only they could allow me to continue consuming and then pay....Urrrghhhh!

I am off to go investigate this with Kenya Power...assuming the strike (like their power) is actually off.

At least you can be thankful that the cold shower has jolted me into some action on this front.

I would be happy sad to hear your experiences with Kenya Power.

Blackberry and silent photos

I just learnt something new....and not classified in my list of totally useless things one should know! I was in church sometime ago (not to say that it was a long time ago) and saw the proverbial church mouse in all its glory.... I mean poverty! I thought to myself, this is a classic "kodak" moment. I whipped out my BB to take a photo to share with my friends later (I am not one to go to Facebook in the middle of the sermon). Just before taking the photo, I checked that my BB was on stealth mode and took the snap....To my shock, my camera shutter sound was still audible and ohhh the embarrassment of all those people turning to see who is taking photos in church!

This got me preoccupied with figuring out how to turn off the shutter sound when I take photos with my BB.....turns out that it is practically impossible, at least not without having to spend some money/time!

On further investigation, its apparently backed by some legal issues! Cellphone manufacturers are required to enable the sound of the shutter on all camera phones...What crap! Which leads me to some unanswered questions:

1. Is it that we are by default considered perverts who will be looking for opportunity to take those silent photos?

2. How come I can take a video clip using the same BB without it making a single sound?

3. I have a fairly small digicam and which gives me the option of shutting off the shutter sound...how legal is that now?

I blame this on politicians (and lawyers....as if there is a difference anyway)!

Of Unions and strikes

So Kenya Airways employees have been watching South African news and seem to have learnt a thing or two on how to go on strike. Reminds me of a joke I heard on one of the South African Radio Stations during the Confederations Cup. A presenter asked what were the chances of Bafana bafana (I wonder why the cant change that name which literary means Boys boys) winning the tournament. One listener called in and claimed the chances were very high that they would win, to which the presenter asked why he made that assertions. The listener quickly answered "because South Africa has very many strikers - Doctors, Teachers, Municipal Workers, Construction Workers, Taxi Drivers etc".
Kenya Airways just added to the number of strikers in Kenya - if only that could some goals to the scoreline of our beloved/obsolete Harambee Stars!
The one thing that I could not fathom during the 3 day strike was, how does anyone in their right mind demand a 130% pay increment for 3000 employees from a company that is recording losses? Do the union officials ever pose to do the maths? If the company gave such a pay increase, it would literary shut down in a few months and then what would become of the unionisable employees? They would simply add to the statistics of unemployed Kenyans.
I am not however claiming I condone the practice of underpaying workers, no, just that I find unions rather unreasonable in most instances and I am glad I have not had the chance to be in any union (apart from the marital union with my wife - but that is a different sort).
Secondly, we get the news they have reached a "back-to-work formula". And the agreement is....drumrolls....20% pay rise staggered over 2 years. The union demands 130% payrise, the management offers 20% (over 2 years) and everybody is happy???? Am I missing something here or was the "1" in 130% a Uhuru Kenyatta kind of typo?
Anyway, I am glad they are back to work as I was personally grossly affected by the strike and I hope the management learns how to read the moods of the employees/union better and know what to safely dismiss and what needs serious considerations.

Flight or Fright?

Blame it on the cabin pressure but the flying experience always somehow puts my brain in overdrive.... So, although my brain has recently been obeying the law of diminishing returns religiously, when I took a flight a few days ago, it went back into overdrive and considered many possibilities.
Picture this:
I am flying from Joburg to Nairobi aboard KQ 763. Its time for take off and the doors have been closed (or rather in their lingo, armed and cross-checked). Now, I wonder, why do they arm doors? Sounds like something that should be done in Military helicopters...
Then follows the long and laborious demonstration of "safety features inside this aircraft" which I try to "pay attention to even though I am a regular traveller".

I wonder who scripts those announcement, but one thing am clear about, they seriously lack a sense of creativity....but maybe we should blame it on the lawyers who insist the warnings must be in clear (read boring) plain (read boring) english...but I digress.

The smoothly smiling cabin crew demonstrate to us the use of the life jackets and I am tempted to stop them and ask, "does the life jacket work if we crash land in a forest or mountain?" There is minimal chance that you would crash into water while flying from Joburg to Nairobi, unless the pilot is clearly looking for a water body to aim at. Why do they waste their energy demonstrating how to use a life jacket when the flight will not be flying over a water body?
While am still musing about this and looking for an opportunity to ask the question, the cabin crew have finished whatever else they have to demo and are doing a final check before take off.

I absolutely love take-offs and am gazing absent-mindedly or is it absently-minded at the diminishing objects on the ground when the captains voice breaks my thought pattern from the intercom. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking...." I have those words so many times that I as soon as I hear the first 3 words, my brain does and autofill for the rest of the statement. The captain goes ahead to whisper to himself for another 2 mins or so and I finally hear him say, "thank you for choosing to fly Kenya Airways". I am left wondering why he bothered to speak to us in the first place if he was not going to be loud enough for us to hear what he was saying. Whatever happened to the "mic check one...two..." procedures to confirm you can be heard before you launch into a long monologue which no one can make out. And why don't the cabin crew page the captain or go knock on his door and tell him to either speak up or shut up?

The flight progresses well and we reach our cruising altitude and the captain comes back on to announce this major milestone on our journey. This time round, with the engines not revving as loudly as during the climb, I am able to hear what he is saying...and hoping that he would also tell us what he had been trying to tell us earlier (maybe some ingenious member of "the entire crew) informed him that he was inaudible in the previous address. Well, he does not do such a thing and I figure out he must have told the ingenious member of the crew "don't worry, it was nothing".

As it always happens, after I have enjoyed my meal and the crew have just served tea, we hit turbulence. "Ladies and gentlemen, from the flight deck, this is your first officer" - I gather calling it a cockpit is degrading and so the correct term is Flight deck! He continues: " we are experiencing some turbulence currently and this will last for another 120 miles...." 120 miles?? What does that mean to us mere mortals? Is Joburg from Nairobi that far away? Does that mean we will be in turbulence for the rest of the day, never mind the flight is just under 4 hours? Just because he has all those instruments in front of him telling him what speed we are moving at and how much distance we will cover does not excuse him to be oblivious of our ignorance...

Eventually, we do reach Nairobi and I am tempted to insist that I want access into the cockpit...nay, Flight deck to:

1. Ask the captain what he was saying soon after we took off and if he was in deed addressing us.
2. To ask the first officer how far 120miles is and whether the measurement in air is the same as on the ground.

I take a quick look at the flight purser and decide to just proceed on my way out.

When I eventually get out of the airport building after filling out a health questionnaire to determine if I have the Swine Flu and another card written Departure Declaration (although in actual fact I am arriving) - useless government paperwork which will be a rant for another day - I find my cab driver and I am on my way to my humble aboard.

I get into the cab and immediately put on my seat belt. The driver does not put on his belt and only many kilometres (how far is 120 miles??? ....forget it...) down the road when we approach a police road block does he hurriedly fasten his seat belt. I am left thinking, statistically, its proven that car seat belts save many lives in case of an accident, Aircraft seat belts????I doubt there are lives that were saved by wearing a seat belt in an aircraft after a crash. So, how come we religiously wear seat belts while flying and are reluctant to wear then while in a car? Is it just because of the fright of the flight???