Students In Free Enterprise

So much seems to be happening, keepin me so busy, away from my blog and all!! That's more or less the reason why i've not posted in ages. Today, however, i've decided to push aside a few things... to share the exciting... (ok, maybe not quite) , happeninings since i last wrote.

Well for one, i did pass the Ortho CAT i was telling you about. 53% was the score, being in med sch., i'm told gettin over 50 is enough for yo' patients (sic). We were quite a number of us who didn't make it all the way to 60, the bookworms, and the not so bookworms. Enough rationalising.

Back to wat's kept me so quite. Ever heard of SIFE? That's Students In Free Enterprise. What's it's all about is summarised by this extract from their site.

..SIFE team members leverage their personal educational experiences, the expertise of their faculty advisors, the support of their local business advisory boards, and the resources of their institutions to implement programs that create real economic opportunities for members of their communities. The effectiveness of their programs is judged at competition. Each national SIFE organization conducts a national competition, which is judged by leaders from its business community. At competition, SIFE teams present the results of their educational outreach projects and compete to determine which team was most successful at creating economic opportunity for others. SIFE National Champion teams advance to the top level of competition, the SIFE World Cup...

Being the business-minded fellow that i am, i promptly joined. I can't think of any other person from med sch. who felt this was worth their time.. boring lot! So indeed we went forth and "leveraged our personal educational experiences" and changed the world, took part in the National SIFE exposition with top business leaders in Kenya as judges. This is where we put together all our projects with a nice audiovisual presentation runnin in the bk ground (read powerpt presentation), and try and convince the judges that ours had the most impact to our communities.

Hours later, we got to the finals against USIU and Africa Nazarene University. Sadly for them, we were definitely better and UoN-SIFE was declared the winner of the 2006 Kenya National SIFE exposition!

Hurrah! We had a month and a half to put our passports in order, coz we were on our way to Paris, France, for the World Cup...

Keep it here, because when we return we find out,
.. shall i actually make it to France?
.. the university is broke.. again!
.. that'll be 3k for your visa..
.. then cough 20K if u want to survive in Europe!


and many more trials and tribulations that is my life..

Keep it blogged people,
Baadayez,
The WebDoc.

now the Ortho CAT

wow...
how time flies, (and how lazy i've become).
The surg CAT went ok.. to put it mildly. My essay had lots of cancer questions, esophageal, colorectal, breast... some of which i'd not prepared for, but my 3rd yr pathology kicked in to save me quite a few blushes.

The clinical was worrisome though. Took a good history and made a not too bad examination. Question time was however a bit rocky, especially when i couldn't recall they called an incision made during an appendectomy (appendicectomy)! Not very impressed, the good doctor asked me to read harder! That's not something you want 2 hear just after your exam, u know. Thankfully, i seem to have made a good enough impression for him to award me 59% (--applause--) remembering that not too many of my classmates got 60's let alone 70's, i think i was doin ok.


Anyhow, it's been so long since then, mpaka, i'm now just about to do my ortho exam (we have 6 weeks of each(surg and ortho) promptly followed by an essay and clinical assessment). So right now, i've hit the books again. I should actually be in theatre right now, but the reading doesn't allow me such pleasures.(unless some irate consultant summons us!). And as i read on Weber's classification of Ankle fractures, i thot i should post one more time, seeing that i haven't for such a long while.


Otherwise,
Keep it blogged.

My Surg CAT..

Here i am, writin this post, when i know all too well that i should be hitting the books like no one's business. I have this surg(that's surgery BTW..) exam next week and i just can't seem to get myself to read!! It's totally frustrating! And when i say exam i mean the full maneno's. A long-case, where we get to take history from a patient, take a full physical exam, and come up with a management plan for the same. And that's the day after we do our essay paper. Five essay questions and 3 hrs to knock ourselves out answering them.

Anyhow, looks like i really should be reading... ama? Things could go awry come Wednesday. I'll definitely tell how the clinical went.

I almost forgot. Jana, while i was 'not in the mood for reading' - again - i went to shoot a TV ad! Yep! One of those. It should be hitting Kenyan tv in a month or so. I'll keep this wire live, 4 sure.

Baadayez,
The WebDoc.

Revenge by any other name..

More than one year ago, i designed this website for a local band musician right here in Nairobi. I never actually got to meet him, in fact, the plan was that i'd probably never need to. What happened was this.

I had this 'friend' in college who's doin dental surg. and we are both into comps and stuff. So one day he approaches me and tells me about an entertainment portal that some band musician that he knew wanted designed. He had all my attention at this point. We talked about it at length (at least i thot' we did) and it was agreed that i would do the job for a paltry 10k, but i would then get 10k every month for updating the site. Now that sounded almost like a small salary to me! And i was in, hook, line and sinker.

A few weeks later, after being called, hustled and rushed, the site was finally done. Looked good, better than work i had b4, and i couldn't wait for the cash to start flowing in. I had been given 4k before starting with promises of more to come.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. The remainin 6k for the site was not 'currently' available, and the site owner had decided to go slow on the project and so there would be no further updating for a long while to come. The whole story was soundin all so Kenyan! You work, someone sits on your dues and the effort you put in doesn't seem to be appreciated that much. And as fate would have it, the months turned into years; almost 2 years to be precise. I had only 4,000 shillings to show for my efforts. My college-mate contact told me that the idea had been abandoned and i had to wait to get the remaining 6,000 shillings.

I figured, this was just one of those bad things that happen to u as you live and learn, in this classroom that is life. I just forgot about it. So, u can only imagine my surprise when one cold sunday afternoon i pass by Kenya cinema and spot a huge, triumphant banner announcing the greatest 'Entertainment portal in East africa'!! Yes, the very site that i had worked my ass off dzn'ing. A visit to the site and an email exchange later, i was in touch with the elusive local band musician whom i'd only heard about.

According to him, he'd never heard about some 3rd party that had dzn'd the site and only knew of my cunning college-mate as the "greatly skilled" webdesigner that had come up with his website. Back in college a heated exchange was 2 follow, during which, my hitherto trusted contact was slingin mud in the direction of the said local artist.

"He knew about u designing the site! He gave someone else the job of updating it! Do you think i would lie to you?? How long have i known you??"

The spirited defense was soundin very convincing. Someone was screwing me proper. The site was littered with ads, and @ the rates he was renting this virtual real estate, i'd say i was being screwed over. My efforts at recovering some money from the whole deal started floundering. Non-replied text messages, "u will get your money.." reponses, and for sure i was fed up.

That was when i remembered that i had been given the password to the site's FTP logon just after i finished the site design! That was just 2 days ago now. I thought of just deleting everything, maybe leaving a horrible message on the home page...

Now it was my turn to have them by the balls! i won't even tell them what i just did. I'll just wait for 'em to come crawling back, when advertisers on the site realise that it is no longer running!

As i write this post, they haven't yet, but it'll be soon!

www.showbizeastafrica.com

The initial site: http://www.showbizeastafrica.com/index_old.php

Aah, the wrath of God. It spares none.

Any tips from you guyz out there? Maybe i should never pick their calls and texts like they did mine? The look on their faces will be priceless. Just priceless.

The WebDoc.

Wired!

Yep, finally! I'm wired, right here in my room in the med school hostels. That might sound rather mundane 4 yo' all in the states and stuff, lakini, over here, we are over the moon.

What makes it even sweeter is that it was all the efforts of a group of us web savvy med students, who put in the extra effort... against all odds. And quite some odds they were. We had tried to get the sch admin to do it, but it sounded like..

"we've not even wired offices in the deans office, nani nyinyi?"

"we haven't thought about the hostels you live in yet, but maybe in the next few years!"

Ha! I've only a few months in this joint and this was the crap they were telling me? Any how, we already had all our comps connected to a local area network and i had got a wireless router when i was in the states, so then we thot' how do we do this? hmm?

Easy, there are internet points in the lib, and the lib's just across the fence, across the road, across another fence...

So a few connections here and a bit of reading there, and b4 we knew it, we were off into cyberspace!

So akina Clemo, Gacheru 'n everyone out there that checks out me blog, i'll do my best to keep the posts coming..

Baadayez,