Summaries
I recently stumbled on Wadja,a social networking site that allows its members to send free SMS messages across the world. Just like I usually do when I find good sites, I wanted to share the link with my friends on Facebook. But to my surprise, Facebook could not accept the wadja link. This was actually the very first time for me to experience this. Whenever, I try to preview the wadja link on Facebook, the following message pops up:
Warning: This Message Contains Blocked Content
Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users.
I am very surprised with this message because I do not find any kind of abusiveness on the wadja site. I am somehow thinking that it could be a deliberate ploy by Facebook to frustrate Wadja. What do you think?
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The United Nations University (UNU) will organize the tenth regular session of its six-week UNU International Courses (UNU IC) at the UNU Centre in Tokyo, Japan, from 11 May through 19 June 2009.
Applications are open to postgraduate students and professionals in various occupations - with a college or university degree. The closing date for receiving applications is 31 January 2009. Participants from developing countries who take two courses (Core and an Optional Course) and who can demonstrate a need for financial assistance can apply for a limited number of UNU full and partial fellowships. These fellowships will be awarded on the basis of academic merit and financial need. Competition for fellowships is extremely fierce but it is worthy trying. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. You can get all the relevant information and the application forms for the course and the fellowship from the UNU site.
If you happen to come to Tokyo for these courses, please give me a shout. I stay at Komaba which is very close to Jingumae where you will be taking your courses. It will be good to go with you for some Yakiniku somewhere in Jingumae, Yoyogi, Shin-okubo or Shinjuku and have a good time.
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I have just discovered that the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) has announced that qualified undergraduate students are welcome to apply for the OFID Scholarship 2009/10. The OFID Scholarship will be awarded to support an undergraduate student from any developing country, to pursue higher education in a relevant field of development, in any recognized university/college in the world. The winner of the OFID Award will receive a scholarship of up to US$100,000. The funds will be spread over a maximum of two years, toward the completion of a Master’s degree, or its equivalent, at an accredited educational institution, starting in the autumn of the academic year 2009/10. Students from Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and many other developing countries are eligible. You can check the list of eligible countries to find out if your country is included.
US$100,000 is a lot of money. Competition will be stiff but you will lose nothing by trying your luck. As you prepare your documents, make sure that your study pertains to OFID’s core mission which includes economics of development (poverty reduction, energy and sustainable development), environment (desertification) and other related science and technology fields. The deadline is June 30, 2009.
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Happy New Year to all of you! It’s that time of the year again when I share with you links to ten great posts from this blog which you might have missed in the previous year. The list for 2008 is as follows:
- Ten Primary School teachers that made a huge influence on my academic life
- Are advertisers who shun high traffic blogs due to high bounce rate correct?
- Your Excellency, please visit Rumphi Secondary School
- Congratulations to Patrice Motsepe, the first black South African Billionaire
- Tokyo, here I come! My PhD ambitions back on track!
- A brief report on the Short Course on Wireless Networking for Developing countries
- My comments on the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that hit Northern Japan yesterday
- Barack Obama’s hungry swarm!
- Mzuzu Coffee Association to start exporting to a UK niche market.
- 2008 CNN Hero of the Year:The selection process was wrong!
Looking forward to your feedback. Wishing you a prosperous 2009!
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It appears Google chose to wind up the year 2008 with a Toolbar PageRank update. After seeing many sites reporting changes in their Toolbar PageRank, I decided to check site’s PR. I am glad to report that this blog has moved from PR3 to PR4. This is a great achievement especially when you consider the fact that this domain is just one year old. As I was migrating my blog from Google blogger, I lost all my PR such that I began the year 2008 with PR0. It’s great to begin the year 2009 with PR4. Two years ago, I used to think that Toolbar PR is not important as long as your posts rank well in search engines. But with time, I have discovered that Toolbar PR is important. Traffic issues aside, blogs/sites with high PR are considered to be more credible by many people.
Fellow webmasters and bloggers, I would like to know how your sites have fared in this PageRank update. Feel free to share your New Year resolutions as well.
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Living in the Far East offers me the advantage of entering the New Year several hours before the rest of the world does so. We are now just four hours away from 2009 here in Tokyo. This is surely going to be my last post in 2008 and coincidentally my 200th post on this blog.
At a time like this, it is important for me to look at some of the major events in my life in the past twelve months. Last year, at a time like this, I was in Malawi. I had returned from South Africa seven months earlier where I was offered a PhD scholarship by the Meraka Institute soon after completing my MSc studies. I chose to take a break and go back home because of the crime wave in that country. For a long time I used to think that crime in South Africa was not that severe. But that impression changed completely when thugs hijacked my friend who was driving to his home. They robbed him of his car, the groceries which he had bought and cash. Thank God his life was spared. But in another incident somewhere in Durban, another close friend was butchered to death. The thugs wrapped his body in a sack and dumped it in the bush close to his home. It took close to two weeks before his body was discovered. As you can imagine, it was in a very bad state. These events forced me to leave South Africa for Malawi. I am glad because the people at Meraka Institute understood my situation.
After going back to Malawi, in the midst of my fading interest in the South Africa PhD option, I submitted application documents to the Japanese Embassy for the Japanese Government scholarship. I was shortlisted for interviews with four other applicants. Two days after the interviews, I received a phone call from the Embassy notifying me that I was successful. They, however, told me that I had to wait for the final approval from Ministry of Education in Tokyo. By the time we were entering 2008, I had not yet heard anything from Tokyo and I did not enjoy the festive season at all. I kept asking myself whether I should continue waiting for Tokyo or I should just forget about Tokyo and go back to South Africa. I really liked the Meraka Institute. The people at Meraka were so nice to me but I feared the crime. On the other hand, the experience of doing my PhD research at Tokyo Institute of Technology was also very interesting. But Tokyo was quiet and it was very difficult for me.
While I was still in the horns of dilemma, I was attacked by Malaria (4 plus) and I ended up being hospitalized for the very first time in my life. That was in January, 2008 and, somwehow, I was thinking that maybe 2008 was going to be a bad year for me. But I received a lot of encouragement from fellow believers and within a week I was back to normal.
In the first week of February 2008, I received a phone call from the Japanese Embassy in Lusaka, Zambia notifying me that the Ministry of Education in Japan had approved my scholarship such that I had to liaise with the new Japanese Embassy in Malawi for travel arrangements. I also received some emails from my professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology notifying me of the same thing. I arrived in Tokyo on 3 April 2008 and I am now a PhD student at the Hirota Lab in the Department of Computational Intelligence and System Science. I am enjoying each and every moment here. My supervisors, Professor Hirota and Professor Dong, and fellow students are all nice to me. The environment is really good for research.
2008 Hirota Lab Members
Mine is a busy desk
Spiritually, I am also not starving here. I have found a good church - the Full Gospel Tokyo Church - a branch of the Yoido Full Gospel Church founded by Rev David Yonggi Cho. I fellowship with christians from many countries in this region.
Christmas party at Bae's house
Chilling with fellow christians from Nepal
Christmas party - Yakiniku
I started this year with great difficulties. But I am ending it with tremendous joy. I thank God for taking me this far. I am now looking forward to the arrival of my family in Tokyo in the next few weeks. I pray that the year 2009 will be even much better.
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Now that we know that Liz McCartney is the 2008 CNN Hero of the Year, it’s time to start reflecting on the selection process. One issue that easily comes to my mind is the unfairness of the web based popular vote method used in declaring the winner. I am not saying this because my compatriot, Marie da Silva, did not win. I am also not trying to suggest that Liz was not the deserved winner. All the ten nominees are special people and their works are phenomenal. But the popular vote was not the best way for selecting the winner as it gave an upper hand to nominees from richer countries such as USA where a lot of people can readily access the Internet. Even my own compatriot, Marie, because of her Los Angeles connection, had an upper hand compared to the likes of Yohannes Gebregeorgis from Ethiopia and Phymean Noun from Cambodia.
To make matters worse, the voting system did not put any limits on the number of times one could vote. I think CNN was using this exercise as a way of boosting traffic to their website. It was very unfair as it made it very easy for people with good Internet connections to call, email one another and set up voting networks for their man or woman. With these kind of developments, it was very easy for a US based nominee like Liz McCartney to carry the day.
My advice to CNN as they start planning for the 2009 episode is that they must borrow a leaf from the way FIFA selects the world footballer of the year .Voting should be restricted to a group of professional people from all over the world.
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For sometime, I have been looking for an online service that allows users to send free SMS messages to Malawi. A few days ago, I stumbled on Wadja, a social networking website, like Orkut, Facebook and Myspace, which goes one step beyond the rest by providing FREE SMS across the world. After signing up, I managed to send a couple of free SMS messages to my family in Malawi. I also configured the system in such a way that the replies come straight to my mobile phone. I am now using this service on a regular basis. If this trend continues, expect to see less of me on Facebook.
Unlike many other social networks, Wadja does not rely on users bringing a social group to the service. Many social networking sites rivals are only truly useful for a user if their peers have signed up to the service, as the services are often contained within the network. For instance, currently, I do not have any friends in my Wadja network but I am already enjoying their service to the fullest.
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