Category Archives: housekeeping

Kenyan Guide to the Hague

A guest post

Arriving at Schipol, you can take a taxi to The Hague (around € 45) or for the budget conscious traveler, you can take the train (€ 7.90) to go to the Hague. Within The Hague, transport seems to consist of many, many cyclists, trams and cars. There are two bikes per Dutch person in the Netherlands, but despite knowing that the Dutch use bikes as the main way of getting around within the towns, it’s still a surprise to see all the people cycling to work, to the pubs, to the stores and pretty much everywhere.

When crossing roads, keep an eye out for the bike lane, the tram lane, AND the car lane. And you might want to obey the traffic lights as well, as the pedestrians also wait for the pedestrian crossing light to turn green before crossing, even in the absence of incoming cars. When being driven within The Hague, you might decry all the “wasted” driving lanes that are taken up by the bicycle lanes, but there is no overlapping from drivers into the bike lanes as the cyclists also seem to have significant cycling rights.

For accommodation in The Hague, there are a range of hotels to choose from. The Ibis hotel, part of a European chain is a pretty safe bet (€99 before tax), and is an environmentally friendly hotel, no frills hotel. Prepare for sticker shock for meals though as breakfast goes for €15.

You can get around even if you speak no Dutch, as almost everyone in the service and retail industry speaks English. Window-shop in the Noordeinde area which has really high-end shops located near the Noordeinde Palace. Make sure you soak in the old architecture while you’re there (Google says the Palace was built in the 16th century). The real shopping takes place in Grote Marktstraat where many retail electronics, clothing, shoes, bath & body retails chains have stores, and there are plenty of small shops that sell the distinctive blue and white Delft pottery.

To get the full tourist experience, take a day trip to Amsterdam which has great shopping and tourist attractions. The Van Gogh Museum and the Rijk Museum are must sees. For sightseeing and shopping, a good place to start is Dam Square where shops are flanked by waterways, and with tourists attractions like Madame Tussauds. Many of the international chains have retail stores in this area. Amsterdam isn’t, of course, Amsterdam without a visit to the Red Light District, so if you can, try and see that as well.

Biggest surprise about Holland? That the dikes aren’t brick walls that prevent the sea from flooding the country. They’re more miles and miles of mounds of earth. Oh, and this boy? He never existed as part of Dutch history. It’s an American children’s story!

More on the works of Vincent Van Gogh at Artsy.

DABRA 2011

The 2011 Diageo Africa Business Reporting Awards – DABRA were launched today in Nairobi, Kenya and entries are invited from all African countries for the winners to be announced in London later this year.

The 2011 DABRA’s will feature entries for blogs, podcasts, online content, print, radio and TV entries, published or broadcast between 18 April 2010 and 20 March 2011. Entries can be submitted in eleven categories – ICT feature, finance feature, infrastructure feature, agribusiness / environment feature, tourism feature, use of new media in a story, business news story, business feature story, newcomer, media of the year and journalist of the year and the deadline is March 21 2011.

The 2010 awards attracted 750 entries that were narrowed down to the finalists including this post.

How is the GOP’s opposition to Obama’s decision affecting USA?

A Guest Post by Jason Holmes

The Grand Old Party or the GOP very commonly known had asked President Obama to fire his entire economic advisors because they had failed to take out recession and job loss problems out of the country. The decisions taken by Barrack Obama are criticized every now and then by the GOP. Take a look at how the compromises are forced in to the decisions of Obama and how it in turn is devastating the country.

Republicans against the financial reform by Obama

Barrack Obama’s decision to sign a bill for financial security in the country is jeopardized by the strong opposition from the GOP. The decision lies in the regulation of derivates which are financial instruments and their value depends on the underlying assets such as mortgages or stocks. But there is also the risk that these assets can sink giving rise to losses and other financial crisis. 41 Republicans are against any bill by the Democrats including this bill. It’s predicted that the regulation of derivates market is quite risky and will badly affect the small businesses as well as community banks. But even if there were some of the well-known financial crises in USA due to the regulation of risky derivates, it can also reduce the loss and produce huge profits if the underlying assets don’t sink.

Obama fears for the failure of bipartisan prospects

In the new reports it has been recorded that Obama is not against a lot of decisions of the Republicans but fears that he won’t be able to take other decisions freely if the GOP runs the House. He wants to make some changes in education and energy-related decisions that have been overlooked. He fears that if GOP comes into power, he won’t be able to make any decisions regarding foreign policies even. His bipartisan cooperation prospects are looking bleak due to the GOP opposition at every step. But if given a chance, Obama’s decision may work for the betterment of the country but due to the problems in the House due to the Republicans, public is showing less interest in any decisions. Since the term of Barrack Obama started in 2008, Republicans have shown very little interest in working with Obama or the Democrats in the whole.

GOP create problems for Obama for building foreign relations

Obama has taken decisions to bring US troops from Afghanistan back to the country by July, 2011. But Republicans oppose this decision and say that it’s arbitrary and that war commanders shouldn’t withdraw forces just like that. Obama’s plan to improve relations with other countries such as Cuba and Iran is also not accepted by the Republicans. They fear that if there is no border control, US may have to face another war since the World War II. But against the Republican concepts, Obama’s decision may mean peace with other countries and no war.

USA and EU relations affected if GOP comes to power

As per the latest reports, it’s foreseen that the relations between America and European countries may come to a halt when the GOP comes into power. Obama’s decision to have good relations with European countries especially Turkey will be highly affected and opposed by the Republicans. If the New Strategic Arms Control Treaty with Russia is signed by Obama and the Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, it may lower limits of both the nations’ nuclear arsenals. But the Republicans are not sure whether or not Russia would be fair in its decisions to be fair.

Whether Barrack Obama or the Republicans take decisions, they should always use a fool proof plan so that it positively affects the country. In their fight to stay in power, both the Democrats and the Republicans are overlooking the public interest. The downfall of the big economic countries led to the financial crisis. They must look for reforms to improve the countries financial status and create more jobs.

About the author: Jason Holmes is a regular writer with debtcc community and is also a contributory writer with other financial sites. His expertise is woven around various aspects of the debt industry and with his e-books he tries to impart to people the different situations and simple solutions to get out of difficult situations. Some of his works include e-books like ‘Credit Score The Quintessential Therapy for a Happy Pocket’, Take Creditors and Collection Agencies to Small Claims Court’ and, My Story- From Depression To a Smile’.

Idea Exchange: Nokia C3

I’ve been fortunate to be a tester for Nokia C3 in Kenya. It’s a phone I’ve been waiting to buy for almost three months, and while waiting, the local Nokia team lent me one to try out before the market launch. Prior to that, I had an Nokia E72 loaner, which highlighted the shortcomings of the C3 in a roundabout way, and these include:

– Not 3G enabled, so E72 functions like watching YouTube videos are out.
– Not a true smart phone, no multi-tasking like with the E72.

Also at the Tuesday media launch, one reporter pointed out that the camera was 2 mega- pixels only, but the Nokia Manager pointed out that their research showed that people wanted to take camera phone pics that they could easily share, but that large high-res photos takes a long time to upload and have to reduce the size to share across platforms.

The phone is a compromise of sorts, an affordable smartphone, with office tools. heavy on social media, connectivity, networking, and data features.

Features I like (so far)

– WLAN so can browse on Wi-Fi at coffee shops or office hotspots
– You can set up up to 10 mail accounts, with new e-mails push updates right on the home screen, for response/action (can also sync with office e-mail Nokia and Safaricom)
– It also has a community page for Facebook, Twitter updates appear on the home screen
– Pictures taken on the camera, upload to Facebook in a snap. Also unlike with E72 which had too many folders, picture are easier to find and organize, and because of their size, easier to e-mail
– The home screen with all these updates (e-mail, twitter) shuts down at night so brings no midnight disturbances
– Expandable memory (yet to try it out)
– More C3 features

C3 smash: The phone was officially unveiled on Wednesday in Kenya by Nokia and Safaricom, who are both market leaders in Kenya. As promised, it’s a sleek nifty smartphone, with its QWERTY keyboard which makes it look like a much more expensive phone (E72) or a blackberry, but costs Kshs 10,000 ($123)! It is being sold in Kenya exclusively at Safaricom stores and comes with 40MB free data from Safaricom with every C3 purchase.

This morning there were brochures being handed out on the street and promotions on the KISS FM Group for a happy hour during which the phone would be sold for one hour at a price of just Kshs 5,000. This brought out crowds of people seeking the Nokia C3, with some unfortunate effects, as captured by @wanjiku on twitter.

– Huge crowd gathered @safaricomltd sarit for #NokiaC3 looks like a political rally via
– It’s wrong; 4 @safaricomltd @dorothyooko you should see the fight at Sarit 4 #NokiaC3 its bad; looks like people fighting for food; extend offer about 4 hours
-How about extending this offer 4 #NokiaC3? It’s wrong to advertize so much if u can’t meet demand @dorothyooko did u expect it to b this much?
-@Ngendo87 u should see the way men & women are squeezing on the queue @sarit its chaos, guards throwing their weight… #ThatIsAll
-Sarit management has complained that the crowd @safaricomltd is intimidating the precious clients who spend lots of money; PA system; offer over
– Scenes from sarit with buyers and guards fighting over #nokiac3 http://twitpic.com/2t0tz0
– Angry buyers storm Safcom entrance. The shop was forced 2 close doors, switch off lights http://twitpic.com/2t0u8k
– Police called to calm crowd: sarit manager was there asking if crowd is gone. http://twitpic.com/2t0v5w
– some sarit pictures
EDIT: – Video from the C3 launch in Indonesia (June 2010) with round the block queues

Best of 2009

recapping 2009: 2009 has been another great year, for me in blog world. I was trying to do a year-end post, and decided to adapt from ken banks formula by analyzing the most read blog posts.

the top 10 were
1. Kenya exam results online
2. Safaricom jobs & other business
3. KCSE Results are out
4. Nairobi Kenya Jobs
5. Where to buy Shares
6. Media Bill 2008
7. Jobs with Emirates Airlines
8. Bank’s Need to Embrace MPesa
9. Money Transfer within Kenya
10. Safaricom Success

so what are Kenyans looking for online? Jobs, exam results and money transfer? But many of these posts are a few years old, and ½ the blog traffic is from search engines and just 25% is direct visits. So I put on my Kivuitu hat and refined the searches to look at direct traffic and posts from 2009 alone and the tally was:

1. Media Bill 2008
2. Which Kenyan Bank Has Best Transaction . . .
3. Kenya Infrastructure Bond
4. M Pesa IPO
5. Urban Inflation Index (March 2009)
6. Zain In Kenya
7. Equity Bank 2009 AGM
8. Mostly Equity Laptop Ni Lazima
9. M Pesa As Low Cost Bank Account
10. KCB And Triton
11. Google Launches Local Maps Domain
12. Analyzing Kenya Pipeline
13. Mindspeak With Professor Calestous Juma
14. Money Transfer In Kenya
15. Zuku Slashes Kenya Internet Prices
16. Nairobi Stock Exchange Fiddles
17. Athi River Board Mining Evicts Bamburi
18. Skunkworks Nairobi September 29
19. Best Bank For Netpreneurs
20. Pyramid Schemes In East Africa

so popular reading topics are cheaper banking, financial scandals, money transfer, local tech events, and again money transfer

In terms of blogging there have been positives and negatives in 2009

ayes – Peaceful Kenya: and many ex-diasporans continue to stream back and set up tech & other business ventures
– Pictures: after several years of procrastination, got a camera from a fellow blogger and have tried to incorporate a relevant picture in every post; the best picture I think I’ve taken was during the ‘test’ period before got the camera – (forest in Kericho) – maybe it’s just the beauty of the area and not my skills, and the first one is fireworks from a wedding I attended last week.

– Also thanks to a fellow blogger, I finally got onto twitter, two years late – and if you’re not on it (individual or local company), you’re missing the world.
nays – vitriol and in-fighting in the small local blog community remind one to be careful while networking in the online world
– did not travel outside Kenya. I made many local trips, but I need to breathe kerosene fumes and eat re-heated airline dinners; travel blogs are the most fun and I plan to have some more in 2010, maybe even the world cup in south Africa
– facebook goes mainstream, but the endless tweaks they make take away form the experience