K.C.S.E. …

Now some dude will whine that the exams weren’t fair…

>> K.C.S.E. – Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education.

Never Let A Man Destroy Your Life…

It might be hard to get over the man you love but you won’t know until you try. Women tend to continue relationships that destroy who they are physically, socially & mentally. They give up their individuality, happiness, families, friends, pride, wealth & success in order to satisfy the man in their lives. Face it girls, you’re strong & can achieve so much without anyone’s help. So why let someone destroy what you’ve worked hard for? Appreciate, love & believe in yourselves. Elizabeth Nkau said: “I cooked & cleaned for him, stopped talking to all my male friends, came home early to him, bore a baby for him & what did I get? A promise to get married, which never happened; two other babies from another woman; a string of girlfriends calling his house & a death sentence of HIV/Aids. Was it all worth it? No! I knew all along he was cheating, but I stayed because I loved him. I never realized he didn’t love me back. A man who cheats doesn’t love you, he just likes you. “I’m waiting for my last breath as I lie in my bed, helpless, knowing I’ll leave my child without a mother. “Ladies, please don’t end up like me.”

Send this to all your girlfriends & male friends who can handle the truth…

8 Secrets You Should Keep to Yourself at Work…

A collegial work environment is a great thing, but there are some things HR experts recommend you should always keep to yourself no matter how chummy the atmosphere on your team.

Read this: http://www.hrworld.com/features/never-tell-coworkers-092508/

I want the Earth plus 5 %…

Want to know why money-makers aspire to be Fabian?

Read this: http://www.relfe.com/plus_5_.html

Being Educated…

Go to College, Get a Job, Borrow From the Driver…

Some things take a long time to change. Take the (dis) advantages of higher education, for example. In the 1970s, to be highly educated in Uganda was a risky business. The military government of the day was deeply suspicious of educated people, who were deemed dangerous. Many of those who did not flee the country were killed.

Today, higher education is required for most jobs. That is why, so many people are going to university to earn a degree that will open the doors of employment. But again, this kind of education has its disadvantages. It tends to condemn a person to total dependence on salaried employment, making them vulnerable to sudden destitution should they lose their jobs.

Strangely enough, at the end of the day, when you trace the adult lives of people at most workplaces, it is the drivers, messengers and cleaners who do better as far as individual financial security is concerned.

After working for five years, a tea girl will have invested more than the secretary along with whom she was recruited. The driver will be more financially solid than the mid-rank graduate officer.

The tea girl, you see, doesn’t just earn a salary. She also supplies mandazis to the secretaries at break time. She arrives at work much earlier than them, to make sure her merchandise is distributed to various agents such as junior tea girls in nearby offices and a few street side vendors.

When the secretaries arrive, she greets them politely and asks what they would like for their break. Since she extends credit, many of her bosses are in her debt. They pay up as soon as they get their salaries, because it would be beneath their dignity to default on a tea girl’s money.

Meanwhile, her younger sister, whom she brought over from the village two years ago, is manning their stall in the market, where they sell second-hand clothes. From among these, the elder sister regularly selects the “first class” pieces and sells them at higher prices to the secretaries, who do not want to be seen in the downtown market stalls bargaining for used garments.

Because of spending so much time with educated people, the tea girl has decided that the child, whose birth forced her out of school six years ago, will have the best education she can provide. She puts the child in a good school and pushes her to work for good grades. She will even make sacrifices to pay for private coaching.

As for our driver, he is doing equally well. Extremely humble and obliging before the executives, he is regarded as indispensable. After working there for 10 years, he knows the secrets of the top men in the organization. They therefore tend to let him get away with small sins like those that fuel bills that seem on the high side for the mileage covered.

Unbeknown to his bosses, he is running two or three taxicabs as well as a small shop near his home. He has a line of one-room rental houses and any tenant who is late with the monthly payment isevicted ruthlessly.

His drivers and wives, who double as shop assistants, bow lower before him than he does before his bosses at work. His children, who are subjected to very strict discipline, will be sent to the best schools if they are academically promising. Otherwise, they are absorbed into the family business at an early age. He rules over his small empire with an iron hand.

The tea girl and the driver get salaries that are much lower than those of the secretary and the middle officer. However, because they live close to the ground, as it were, they spend much less and so are able to save and invest.

The young graduate, on the other hand, cannot imagine running a soda-and-cake network in the office. So, he has no income apart from his official salary. Yet he goes to expensive clubs and wears trendy clothes. So, come the end of the month, he has no money left! Whereas the driver no longer touches his salary, relying instead on his diverse incomes to run his home.

The graduate cannot invest in the places he frequents and the circles he moves in; he cannot build a five-star hotel. But the driver can open kiosks and bars in his slum.

One day, both these people will have to leave their employment. No prizes for guessing who is better prepared for life after retirement. The privatization and downsizing of the public service gave us many sad cases of senior officers who tried to start businesses with their retirement packages. At their age, it was too late to learn new tricks, and most got cleaned out within a week, ending up as frustrated alcoholics.

The stronger ones converted their family cars into cabs, and can be seen touting for teenage passengers outside discotheques. They live in unfinished houses and are always quarreling with their growing children, who cannot cope with the fall in their standard of living.

As the driver’s and tea girl’s offspring join the business sector with ease, the former officer’s sons and daughters sit around idly talking about Western film stars and singers. Such are the dangers of an elitist education...

Scary!!!

The author, Mr. Buwembo is Editor of the Sunday Vision of Kampala.

Local Software now set for exponential growth…

Government institutions will be required to spend half of their IT budgets in the local market in a move meant to promote software development.

Full story: http://www.bdafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10707&Itemid=5847

Red Hat CEO: Money crisis will boost open source…

Sydney, Australia – The global economic crisis will provide a boost for open-source software, Red Hat chief executive Jim Whitehurst claimed during a visit to Sydney.

Full story: http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-241870.html

Kenya’s Banks ask for regulation on Mobile Money Transfers…

The banking fraternity is crying foul over what it described as unfair & increasing competition from money transfer operators. The industry says the operators are enjoying privileges similar to those extended to deposit taking institutions despite not being covered by the same regulatory regime.

“Currently, there is no legal framework within which these entities provide their services despite behaving like current account institutions,” says John Wanyela, executive director of the Kenya Bankers Association. “If these operators want to join the financial sector, they have to be properly licensed.”

The bankers are calling on the government to subject the services to prudential regulations “for robust and secure movement of funds across the economy.” Under the proposed guideline, the services will have to be
supervised by a specialised financial regulatory authority that will oversee their financial soundness and stability.

Currently, the two leading mobile phone service providers – Zain and Safaricom – are offering money-transfer services in the country under Sokotele and M-Pesa brands respectively. Like other deposit takers, the bankers association wants the mobile cash transfer operators restricted on how much deposits they can take.

To avert undue competition with the banking fraternity, Wanyela says, M-Pesa and Sokotele services have to meet the capitalisation requirement as stipulated in the Banking Act. According to the Act, a deposit taking
institution should maintain a minimum capitalisation of Ksh250 million ($3.5 million).

This is however expected to double come December next year before hitting Ksh1 billion ($14.2 million) by 2010 after capitalisation requirements were amended in this financial year’s budget. The bankers also say the “digital money” has implications for the conduct of monetary policy by the Central Bank of Kenya.

To control inflation levels in the country, CBK continuously monitors the amount of money in circulation, mainly in the hands of people and commercial banks. With the monies in circulation, CBK is in a position
to maintain a reserve money target and, therefore, intervene to control inflation. Observers say it is this huge amount of money circulating electronically that has defeated CBK in the fight against inflation.

Wanyela says it is time the government stepped in to ensure M-Pesa and Sokotele services are regulated before “something goes wrong.” Debate has been rife on who should regulate the mobile phone money transfer operators, with some arguing that the CBK should be party to the issuance of guidelines as “part of M-Pesa and Sokotele services fall under the national payments system.”

Fundamentally, the two mobile operations are guided by the Communications Commission of Kenya. Early last month, CBK said it had no intention of bringing the mobile cash transfer services under the Banking Act.

It claimed that treating the money transfer services under the Act may impede competition in sector that is still at its infancy in a country whose majority population has limited access to financial services.

Safaricom statistics show that as at the end of the first quarter of this year, more than Ksh3.1 billion ($44.2 million) had been transferred. From its launch in March 2007 till May this year, the service has facilitated the transfer of more than Ksh23.77 billion ($339.5 million).

(Source: The East African)

Modern Elevators – Did You Know?

• The Door Close button is there mostly to give passengers the illusion of control. In elevators built since the early 90s. The button is only enabled in emergency situations with a key held by an authority.

• The only known occurence of an elevator car free falling due to a snapped cable (barring fire or structural collapse), was in 1945. A B25 Bomber crashed into the Empire State Building, severing the cables of two elevators. The elevator car on the 75th floor had a woman on it, but she survived due to the 1000 feet of coiled cable of fallen cable below, which lessened the impact.

• Elevators are twenty times safer than escalators. There are twenty times more elevators than escalators, but only 1/3 more accidents.

• Elevators are also safer than cars. An average of 26 people die in elevators each year in the U.S. There are 26 car deaths every five hours.

• Most people who die in elevators are elevator technicians.

• The Otis Elevator Company carry the equivalent of the world’s population in their elevators every five days.

• The New York Marriott was the first to introduce a smart elevator system that assigned passengers to elevators depending on what floor they were heading to.

• Elevators used to require a two-man dispatcher/operator team to function. The advent of navigational buttons rendered those jobs obsolete.

• The area required for personal space is 2.3 feet. The average amount on elevators is generally 2 feet.

• Elevator hatches are generally bolted shut for safety reasons. In times of elevator crisis, the safest place is inside the elevator.

• The myth about jumping just before impact in a falling elevator is just that — myth. You can’t jump fast enough to counteract the speed of falling. And you wouldn’t know when to jump.

• Due to the laws of physics, elevators can’t be any taller than 1700 feet. Hoist ropes become too heavy after that, snapping at 3200 feet.

30 Skills Every IT Person Needs…

Can you call yourself an accomplished Information Technology employee? Find out by reading about the 30 skills you should have.

Full story: http://www.cio.com/article/443617/_Skills_Every_IT_Person_Needs?contentId=443617