Time out with my extended (Esoko) family

I officially packed out of Esoko a couple of years back breaking free of the 9 - 5 shackles, but just like the man who packs out of his matrimonial home leaving all his clothes still in the closet just so he can come every other day to see his wife all in the name of picking a shirt, I still spend a lot of time with these folks. Don't blame me. They are a very fun bunch plus they still throw brain cracking projects my way.

The team is coming up with some very exciting stuff later this month dubbed Esoko 2.0 and have been working round the clock to birth the release. Everyone has been working really really hard and it honestly gets scary at times when team members "go crazy". Some burst into spontaneous singing of songs that belong to no recording artists. Others, after coding nonstop for about 5 hours raise their heads only to ask the rest of us why the heck they got into programming. Just when we think we've seen enough madness, other team members tell us of their traveling experiences to countries they have never been to. Amazing!! Sorry... scary!!

I don't know who gave the order but it came as very pleasant news when we were informed of a company-wide day out to just go chillaxing at the Bojo beach. A nice place those Bojo folks have.
The excitement at the venue was so intense you could cut through it like a cake. We first had to cross over in a boat to the beach area. I had my noise-cancellation Bose headphones on but I could still hear the heartbeats of boys trying to stay tough all through the very wobbly ride. "Eh what if we all fall in this river?" one girl retorted. Just then I saw this guy grabbing a life jacket.

Believe it or not we sailed over safely. He let go of the life jacket.  We disembarked the boat. Everyone was thankfully in one piece. Click click. More poses for the camera. Click. 

If this were a church picnic there'll be a program lineup with opening prayer debuting on the list. A few songs maybe, followed by some words of encouragement from a deacon, a much needed offertory to cushion the transport costs etc. No no no not here ... before I could blink these guys had gone wild already climbing each other crab-style. Don't ask me how they did it. I guess that's what we call team building? Just see the excitement on their faces. If you have vision 20/20 like me you can, if you strain a bit, see the stress running towards the beach.

There were lots to eat. Lots of sea to swim :). Lots of games to play (not the play stations and x-boxes). We saw some interesting dance moves.

People run around a lot. Some for the wrong reasons ...

...others for the right reasons.

The next two pictures.. My favorites... This stress had to go away at all cost before Monday morning. Anyway possible.

You know in an office setting there is always some struggle for power right?... We even took that to the beach. I just had to put this guy's hand down.

The day out was loads of fun. Everyone was fun to be with. We crowdsourced 730 pictures in total. Well that's just counting those that were tendered in. Some iPads and iThisandThat are still hiding a number of pics. In my opinion the day out with my extended family was very much worth it. You know what they say about all work and no play... Even Swabera agrees with me.

Google Translate... a real life experience.

Who would have thought I'd ever use Google Translate for anything other than making my softwares multilingual. It never crossed my mind. Not once.

I found myself in this country colonised by Portugal, making them a portuguese speaking nation. I on the other hand was unfortunate in this particular case to have been colonised by, is it Great Britain or the United Kingdom? It didn't really matter at that moment who my colonial mistress was because clearly the major language they left me with wasn't helping me get past immigration. Even though everything about my travel was clearly stated in my travel documents, this immigration lady just wanted us to have a conversation. I usually wouldn't let such a scholarship slip by but.. in portuguese!! Wait.. Google Translate. I took out my phone. Useless move since I had a Ghana sim card in there.

Somehow I managed to get out of the airport eventually. It was at this point I wished I had instead stayed in the airport. At least the signs in there had english translations. Everything in the city was written only in portuguese. I wondered... are these folks that proud of their language or do they hate the English folks that much. I managed to change some money without uttering a word. Back at home I would spend more time convincing the forex bureau to give me a higher rate than they actually spent in changing the money for me. Not here. I hadn't even learnt how to say 'good afternoon' yet. First thing I did was buy a local sim card. Yes!! Google Translate was back online now. Things were beginning to make sense. I was proud of the Google boys for their hard work on this very useful tool but that pride was soon going to be punctured.

A month in this country and I had picked up quite a few phrases and words but not enough to help sustain the smile on the face of this friendly lady who walked up to me at the shopping mall trying to sell me a product.  "Não falar português" (I can't speak portuguese) I told her. I had used this line so many times it got auto-memorised. This lady was so determined to sell she didn't stop talking. Then she asked a question I had heard before. "Ghana" was my response. At that point her portuguese got advanced so I whipped out my phone, opened my most used app by now - Google Translate, gave it to her to type what she was saying. That was it!! We were by now having a full conversation on my phone. Who would have thought. Google Translate? Unbelievable!! Mobile internet in this country is sooooo expensive compared to what I am used to in Ghana I kept thinking of my credit running out. Already a month here and I had spent so much on phone credits just for Google Translate's sake. Of course, I kept my cool as if burning my internet was okay. Oh how men suffer! So what was supposed to be her pitching her product to me ended up as we having lunch together. Don't blame me for having the vibes.  We ate, talked, well I mean typed, laughed. Was this  turning out to be Romeo and Juliet? I asked her one question and as usual she took my phone to type her response but what I read left me confused... "I am not liking your question" was the translation Google Translate gave me. I think this just became Romeo and Bullet. What did Google Translate tell this lady I said that I didn't say. Obviously, my sentence must have been translated wrongly because in my mind there was absolutely nothing wrong with the question. You'll never know what the question was so stop having wild imaginations :)

Since there is more than one way to say stuff, I rephrased and this time, Google Translate made me proud again. I have been living solely off Google Translate for a little over 2 months now and so far ... so good.. It causes confusions every once in a while but hey... It's a software not a portuguese brain. Great work Google boys!! More Vim.

Looking back at 2012

When looking back, depending on how you tilt your head and 'angle' your eyes, you either see the immediate past events first or the very early events first. I defy both and look back in a very random manner. What comes to mind first.

A couple of very interesting things happened on the tech scene in Ghana. A lot more people made noise about stuff they were working on. A lot more techies sprung out of their hiding places to catch some fresh air and of course we caught their faces. We also had quite some interesting tech events spicing up our 2012 plus I almost got married but overslept on my wedding day. Ha!! I wouldn't have been alive to write about it.

VIM Series
Vim series is basically a weekly Thursday meeting of tech enthusiasts in Accra. The series was given birth to last year or I'd say it rather got fired up more last year. We had a few interesting meetings. Started wrestling with the electricity company for constant power supply. We of course lost the war and had to move meeting days to Wednesdays. The few successful meetings we had were productive I would say. Lots of giveaways from Google Ghana on a number of occasions. If even nothing academic was learnt, I put a few faces to names I had had several email exchanges with.

DEMO Africa
An event to showcase some apps from around the continent and provide a platform for them to launch. I happened to be a participant in this and was thrilled by both the event and the city of Nairobi. Hopefully I get to come up with something great this year that gets me into DEMO Africa 2013. I met and spent time with the great guys from MPawa and Yeboao. Guys I had been in Ghana with but had never met prior to DEMO.

Topapp Awards
Ghana's first ever app awards was received with mixed feelings (skepticism and excitement). It wasn't until it really happened that a lot of people believed it was real. This in my opinion was a great initiative by Maximus of Pop Out. It's great to have an awards ceremony to acknowledge people in technology in Ghana. I was impressed with the setup and organisation of the event except it started way past the advertised start time. Hopefully we experience a better Topapp Awards this year.

MPower Payments
This was one service I was really looking forward to all year round. A payment platform pulled off by Alfred Rowe of ncodeDev Labs and SMSGH. Developer friendly, sweet UI, works as expected. Now developersinghana have a way to monetize their apps. If by end of 2013 you meet any broke developer that dude is just plain not smart.

GDC Hell aka Iron sharpening iron
Haha!! This was my favorite part of 2012. GDC is the short for Ghana Developers Community for those of you who didn't know and is a Google Groups group where we as developers in Ghana share stuff. We share stuff that are permissible. Last year saw some serious activity in the group. Emails were flying in on a very regular basis from left right center. A few developers had their fair share of peer review, sharpening and scolding - blasting for short. Others had their share of encouragement and help while others still had their mouths shut. Another year gone and they still said nothing. It was great seeing all that action because in a way it helped us amplify our need for professionalism. Every app that made its way into the forum got very well scrutinised and advice constructively given.

I have really run out of memory in my head and cannot recollect anything later than a few months back. On the whole it was a great 2012. Looking forward to a greater 2013. MEST48 is already kickstarting the year with their "2nd MEST48 Product Development Challenge". Get busy and be proud of something you achieved come December 31, 2013 when you look back.