Friday, 23rd.

Well, I woke up a little bit later as I went to bed 2:00 am, went to the balcony to say "hello to the sun"
and I saw a car parked in front of my apartment with a sticky saying: "One Life. Live It". I told to myself: OK Sir, look at that message, live it! :-)
So at 11:30am, we went to Masai Market (itinerant market) around Village Market Mall.
The market was much better this time as we hadn't a lot of people around and pushing us to buy the things within the market.
I bought some really nice stuffs like carvings in ebony wood, paints, beads and other stuffs that you can find only in Kenya. But I have to say that I've spent some minutes bargaining with the sellers in order to get a good price on the things....
We got into the Village Mall and I ordered a pizza and shared with Mariana... She took a picture on that moment to record my "welfare"..haha.... I took one of her too, so we're even :-)

Thursday...

Started working at 8:00 am and went to bed 2 am (already Friday). A bunch of work to finish the templates... Nothing special on this day, only our project and focus to delivery our stuffs :-)
Well, I would like to comment here: Every single place that I've gone here and said that I'm Brazilian, they asked about World Cup, Neymar and others :-)... and I say: yes I will be back during the World Cup but I really wouldn't mind to stay in Kenya during the World Cup..they always open a nice smile... 
They definitely love soccer here and most of Kenyans that I talked will support Brazil on World Cup.
There is a strong influence of  World Cup 2014 advertisement here in Kenya, you can see a lot of tags advertising World Cup. 
Well, I promise that  will support Kenya if they get classified on the next World Cup as I'm really loving this country and I'm sure I will miss it when I get back to Brazil... 
There is only one thing that I can't say I liked in Kenya, that means TRAFFIC JAM, but I'm sure even Kenyans don't like it, specially traffic jam in Nairobi.

Wednesay: Visit to IBM Africa Research Lab

On Wednesday, we worked at Riverside Pearls in the morning and in the afternoon we visited IBM Research Lab (first one in Africa).
As an IBMer I could say that I got even more proud to meet scientists from the best universities in the World such as Stanford, Oxford, MIT and others and understand their visionary projects in areas like Transportation, Education, Health, Agriculture, Financial inclusions etc.
Those people are really working to make our World better.
Also we had the opportunity to meet the Research Lab Head and hear about his point of view about Africa.
In summary, it was a really interesting visit.
In the evening we went to our travel agent house for a special dinner, with an amazing food, drinks and we took this opportunity to commemorate HS' birthday.  

 

 

Tuesday - Mid-term presentation to the client and Brazilian Steak House at night

D-Day: Mid-term presentation to Federation of Kenyan Employers (FKE). A lots of work in the morning to decide who was going to present what slide and final tuning...In the afternoon we went to Waajiri House, FKE headquarter to present.
Celia Moore, Director Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, EMEA, Mildred from IBM and Muriuki Murithi (from DOT, Digital Opportunity Trust) joined us.
It was like one hour of presentation followed by a long session of questions... it was really productive and our team did well. 

In the evening our Team went to "Fogo Gaucho", a Brazilian Steak House in Kenya!!! You can't imagine how it was ... 
I was looking like a child in the playground!!! Taking pictures of everything within the Churrascaria, listening to Brazilian songs and eating a lot of MEAT!!! I think my buddies got scarred with the amount of meat I ate there... but I was really missing a barbecue, so guys, pls pardon me ! :-)
The steak house is really a traditional Brazilian Churrascaria, with the same kind of meats you can find in Brazil, like Picanha, Contra-Filé, Filé Mignon and others... It's pretty much the same, excepts the CROCODILE meat, yes I said CROCODILE!!! (ate and approved :-)

I met the restaurant owner, a Brazilian guy from Paraná who has been living in Kenya for 9 years....He was very kind and we had a very good service there. 
I really enjoyed (and I'm sure our group too) everything, it was like a perfect day, couldn't be better!

"The meaning of  happiness"

 

Crocodile mixed with Brazilian Steaks

OMG!!! Picanha!

 

Monday - 19th

Actually today Sunday, 25th, but as I promised to post what I did every week and considering that this 3rd week was one of the busiest I think it's still within the schedule and I have enough excuses to explain why I couldn't post here in a daily basis. The reason was: bunch of work this week.
So, the 3rd week started with a lot of work to be done. 
On Monday we stayed on Riverside Pearls working together on the mid-term presentation to be presented to FKE on Tuesday. In summary: brainstorming with my group, bunch of slides, reports, plenty of work.
Jackie was not feeling very well :-(.. We missed you Super Jackie!!!
It's really nice to see how the project seemed to be in the beginning,  like a "Scary Monster"  and now it's like a  quite tangible stuff... well, lessons learned:  IBMers can do anything, even in the most challenging projects/deliverable, even out of their knowledge ares, it's really impressive! Proud to be part of this...

Saturday & Sunday: Safaris... Hell's Gate, Lake Naivasha, Lake Nakuru and much more : -)