A Day at the University of Nairobi

We got the chance to head over to the University of Nairobi today to tour the campus and see if it would be possible to send MIT students here for a summer course similar to the one currently held at Strathmore University. We had several of our students who are from the university show us around. Derick and Eric met us in town, and we headed over to Debinairs and ate pizza, which was a buy one get one free day. we ordered like 10 pizzas for seven people. we finished everthing but one whole pizza, and saved it to go. We ended up giving it to one of the instructors at the university who we saw as we were walking up to the school of computing. i must say the campus was very beautiful. palm trees, open space, fresh air. i hope AITI decides to come here next summer. it would be really great for the students here to get the opportunity to work on mobile applications. we had a meeting with the head of the computer science department, and had our students talk about their experience so far.

i myself got to chat with derick and eric somemore. it was great finding out how the education system here in kenya works. i guess you can say similar to China: one national exam everyone takes, and depending on how you score, it will determine which universities you are eligible of attending. u. of n. is a great university, obviously from the students we got this year. it was just so much fun chatting with these guys....i'm starting to already miss them already. i wish we could have just hung out at least once a week, but i guess we were too busy, and wanted to keep it a professional relationship during the course.

after our stay at the university, we headed over to fly540 a couple of blocks down to pay for our airflights after the program. we'll be doing some traveling for two weeks after the program is finished, a well earned break if i must say before heading back home and school. zach wanted to get a haircut, and in the end i decided to get one too. glad i did...i look HOT! haha j/k. no but seriously, i look much better than before with my chinese afro! afro's are just not my style. Will, you'll be glad to know i look like my old self again....i didn't cut it short...just the way you like it. haha.

oh, and the weirdest coincidence.....as we were waiting to get a matatu into town, a car pulled up by us...and michelle recognized the driver. he was a recent graduate, class of 2009, yup, from MIT!!! it was so weird. really small world. his name was Gee, course 6, born in Rwanda. He offered us a ride into town, and so we squished into his little car...all five of us. four guys in the back....lovely. mike was touching me in all the wrong places the whole trip...haha, it was good. got really close with the boys...literally.

so yeah, went to town, bought our certificate paper, and headed home. we're going out tonight with john the driver, who drives us to school every morning and drops us home every afternoon. great guy...super nice. can't wait to hang with him.

that's about it for now. loving my new haircut by the way!

The final push/countdown

This past weekend we had our mobile boot camp at the university. Overall things went really well. Even though we had to come in on a Saturday to teach, it was worth it. Our students from our class volunteered to be lab assistants for the students in the boot camp. It was really nice seeing them help out the bootcamp students....and when there were times i didn't know why there was an error in a student's code, i would ask our students for backup.

i also got to lecture on the Location API for J2ME, which was popular among the students. there's actually a picture on the AITI blog of me lecturing.



At the end of the day, the instructors and lab assistants were all very happy with the day's work. We took a group picture before we left. I look back on this picture, and already start to feel homesick, knowing that in less than a week i'll be leaving nairobi, and not sure when i'll ever get the chance to see these guys again. i've become great friends with many of them, and have learned just as much from them as they have from us. i really like this picture, with me and the group at strathmore:



That night we went out with John and Judy, and ate at the expensive Japanese restaurant. Did some dancing at a club...i think my 'mit breakdancing' skills are kicking ass here in kenya. haha.....i'll have to learn more when i get back to the states.

that's about it for this week. past couple days the students have been mainly working on their final projects. we had a guest speaker today who was an alumni of the AITI program back four years ago. he talked about his experiences with AITI, his career, and future plans. me and zach also gave a talk about applying to U.S. colleges. Michael gave his perspective as well. i didn't realize how good of a position i was in to be at a place like MIT. many of the students knew america was the land of opportunity-great resources, research, facilities, and teachers. i hope i can help them out in any way i can to get them to come to america for college. it would be awesome to see some of them at MIT. i hope things will work out well for these guys.

well...staying up longer than usual doing android. the database in android is really weird. same sql languge, just the android syntax could need sometime to get use to. well, that's it for now. hope everyone back in the states is having a greatnd time. i'm happy and sad at the same time that my time in kenya is almost up. until next time, happy coding!

A Night out with the Eagle

Tonight was one of those great moments in Kenya for me. A truly humbling and inspirational moment. We got to out and have dinner with Nathan Eagle. I had read about Nathan back at MIT when I was in the Media Lab. I read about him and starting EPROM, how involved he was with all sorts of amazing projects. I must say...I was at the edge of my seat the entire night. This man was/is incredible. The ideas he had, the projects with mobile technology he was working on. His lifestyle's pretty amazing as well. He's leaving for Beijing tomorrow....and then who knows where after. Yesterday he gave a talk on one of his projects he was working on...called txteagle. won't go into too much detail....cause i could spend pages talking about it...but it's basically paying people to complete tasks that normally computers could do but not as well as humans. From translating words to languages that not many people know about....to updating news reports, and even sending SMS messages on the current blood status at a local blood bank.....Nathan is incredible.

During our dinner conversation we talked about the companies in kenya...and how entrepreneurs have many barriers of entry into the mobile market...we talked about the students and computer science education here in africa....and how ways of expanding our program to other countries within the continent. i asked him some questions about his travels....his ideas...his life. he does so many things...to improve the community..and make it better...all while being an entpreneur...an innovator. And he has a wife as well....although he admits it's tough traveling all the time and not being able to see her. He told us he would be back to the states next summer...hopefully he'll be in the cambridge area...i would love to chat with him more often.

we departed to our seperate ways after dinner....i think we all agree Nathan Eagle is the man. So intelligent....yet so so humble. Amazing guy. I would be lucky if I ever became half as smart as him. And what's even more amazing is that he studied mechanical engineering while at Stanford for undergrad. pretty cool stuff. Michael was saying that if you have an idea....you can easily teach yourself the necessary skills to make your ideas a reality..with or without a C.S. degree....or even a degree at all. I joked while would people need to go college....or get a C.S. education....and even more important why he was doing his Ph.D. He told me so that he didn't have to go work. he's hilarious. i would want a job where i was free to do what i wanted. no restrictions....no cubicles. hearing nathan and all of his adventures...the people he's met....just absolutely incredible.

in other news.....things are starting to wind down...at least for us instructors. haven't been able to blog recently because i've been staying up preparing lecture slides...4 to be exact...on location awareness, bluetooth technology, persistent storage....and wireless messaging. i think i'm done with J2ME for awhile. Messed with Android all day today....familiarizing myself with xml and the android platform. We also decided to extend our stay till MOnday, the 20th of July...hopefully giving the students more time to work on their business plan and projects. It's going to be good....i know it. i'm already impressed with many of the projects that the students have done. i'll be sure to talk more about them soon in my next entry.

well...good night. we have class tomorrow ( saturday ) for this mobile boot camp that we signed up for back two-three weeks ago? i don't know....it's very unorganized by the people in charge....whatever. i'm happy to lecture and spread the joy of computer science education. untl next time...happy coding!

Independence Day in Kenya

What a great day for a BBQ! Although today is the day after independence day, we decided to have a mini cookout to celebrate America's Independence. Mike and Zach went out in the afternoon to buy a ton of meat....from goat to lamb, and chicken to steak. even some tilapia. it was great. judy and her friend peris came, and john and his fiance judy also came. very relaxing....although we had some trouble getting the coal to heat up the grill. i must have inhaled a ton of smoke trying to heat up the grill. the food was great, and the night was awesome. got to sit around and talk story with everyone. then we headed back to work on our lecture slides for the week. I spent all day yesterday and this morning researching creating powerpoint slides. Initially my task was to create a lecture on persistence storage for J2ME. Then i mentioned about bluetooth, and whether we would cover that. Mike said sure, and assigned that task to me. Then he came in Friday night, saying how we also needed to go over Location awareness with GPS, and told me I seemed interested in that topic, and that i should create that lecture as well. So, that means three lectures for me.....yay!!!!

I'm almost done. Did most of the research and coding today. it's actually very interesting. i've been playing a lot with the nokia phones we got from univeristy of nairobi. i even made my own J2ME app...nothing fancy, just an application to record and keep track of our expenses...dinner, groceries, recreation, etc. good way to keep track of who paid what and who owes what. it's really good for me to cause i learn and make apps at the same time. what's even cooler is the bluetooth and GPS on these phones. there's actually a sample bluetooth in the book on how i can make a dating app...where people can find potential partners within a room based on their cell phone. when the phone 'senses' a girl with the right profile, the one you define obviously, then you can retrieve that individual's contact info. pretty cool...might make and use this app for myself. don't worry boys, you can use it too :)

the GPS is also very cool. still new to it, but hopefully i can exploit it to its fullest potential. last night judy took us out to dinner, and then we went out dancing. it was a lot of fun, and it's funny how mike says i'm the best dancer...and that i got 'moves'. hopefully next year i'll have more time to learn more dance moves.

that's about it. the students have spent a lot of time last week creating their SMS apps, which they'll present tomorrow. looking forward to that. cant' believe july is already here. time's flying by real fast. until next time, happy coding!

the chinese is back!

I haven't blogged for a long time. Reason being: sore stomach, headaches/sinus problems, running nose, bursting eyes. yeah, this past week was horrible. My body just broke down, and I couldn't fight it off. This past weekend I had to stay back at the apartment while the others went off to Nakura and had a blast. I stayed home, sick, using the bathrooom 10 plus times a day. I had to take the cyporil that the MIT Medical doctor prescribed for me for traveler's diaherreaha. didn't think i'd have to use it. thought i was a big boy now. damn wrong. i missed my mom so much this past week...cause i knew she would have taken care of me, and i would've have gotten better so much faster. but no, i was by myself, crying as i blew my nose into an infinite amount of tissue paper. i was probably high on meds.

anyhow, i'm alive now, again. today was actually really good. me and michelle gave our lecture on SQL and JavaDB. I spent a lot of time making those slides, and the students really enjoyed the presentation. I thought it was pretty funny in the way I presented, and glad the students liked it.

I think for my first J2ME application I'll make an expense app for our group, since we're always getting mixed up on who paid what. i need to figure out how the persistence storage workins for j2me...damn it, so many constraints for the little devices.

last week was also the start of sms. many of the students had the chance to come up with ideas, form groups, and present to the class. they got feedback from the instructors and their classmates, and now they are starting to implement some of their ideas for the project they will turn in next week. i'm really excited..some of the ideas could really be a huge success for the kenyan market.

i didn't realize how big of a name MIT was here in Kenya, and how much respect it has. last week one of the students asked me if the certificate they were getting towards the end of the course after successfully completing the project was issued by MIT or Strathmore University. I told him it was going to be from MIT AITI, and he was really happy. It would give him something extra, and shows he acquired a certain set of skills taught my MIT Instructors, and help him during his job search. i can't believe i only have three more years at MIT. There's still so much to learn, and not a lot of time.

oh well, i'm glad my health is good again. i don't want to be missing out on any more trips.

love,
julian

This week was the start of SMS applications. We had our lecture today on interfaces, and a gentle introduction to callbacks, and its relevance to sms applications, j2me, and android. I was having some trouble understanding SMS myself, and was unable to help out some of the students today during lab. I did not enjoy that feeling, the feeling of not having the knowledge within me to help others nor myself. As soon as we came home, I started looking through the lab more thorougly, and had Michael explain to me again how callbacks worked and the overall process of how SMS applications worked. I thought I met my match today, and was ready to throw in the towel, but that's not who I am -> that's not the AITI way. So get ready, cause I'm ready to take on the upcoming challenges that come my way!

on the bright side of things....I started working on the slides for our lecture on SQL and JAVA DB. it's amazing how you can learn so much from making lecture slides, trying to think of ways to teach the material so that your students can understand it without much confusion. hopefully when it's all done i can post a link to it for others to check out the lecture.

this is week is going to be tough, and i can't imagine how the weekend is going to be like. i'm learning a lot, so that's good. though from time to time i get moments where i miss people. i'm a strange person now that i think about it. oh well, i'm glad i met the students here. i got to eat lunch with edwin and rose, chatted with them about life in kenya, education, a little governement stuff. edwin made fun of me when he found out i was from hawaii, and the fact that i couldn't surf. he said i had no balance, which is probably true.

tomorrow there will be a lecture on exceptions, and then in the afternoon another lecture on SMS, probably go a little more in depth. i started the lab for SMS...still need a work out a few kinks, but for the most part I understand the overall foundation. can't wait to see what's in store for tomorrow!

a day of databases, and terrible chinese food

i got to see my parents today....online of course. thanks to skype, and my sis, i got to chat with my parents, and see them. i just realized i haven't had face to face contact with them for almost six months now. they looked healthy, and young, while i saw myself, old, tired, getting sick. i feel much better now. i was sneezing like a horse yesterday, snot going all over the place. hopefully tonight i'll get a good rest for tomorrow.

anyhow, spent the whole day learning JDBC, Derby, and SQL. good refresher for sql, and to be honest, i'd rather do php with sql, then java with sql, but oh wellz. i looked over so many tutorials i think my pimples started going crazy again. finally got Eclipse to work well with the database, and learned the java.sql package. really cool, and now i'm preparing my lecture slides to teach the students the exciting world of databases.

anyhow, we had dinner tonight around 8:30. we decided to go to the nearby chinese restuarant. it was probably the most worstest chinese food i've ever had in my life. michael was swearing and saying how terrible the food was. on top of that, there were chinese people singing chiense karaoke the entire time we were eating. it was bad, but funny. that's about it for today. short entry, need my rest. this week is going to be tough, yet i think ideas and businesses are goign to be born during this critical week for the students. i'm excited to see what's going to happen, and the ideas that these students have in their minds, ready to be turned into a reality.