I have a confession to make: I’ve never written about this here or elsewhere before — but I have a deeply-rooted fascination about motor homes (also called mobile homes, recreational vehicles, etc).

And I’m convinced I’m going to live in one of these someday, that’s I’ve been incessantly shedding away all but absolutely needed “stuff” and living a really lean life (another confession, eh?). It’s just a matter of time.

For now I nurture my passion by frequenting various RV forums, blogs, newsletters. Thanks to the Internet, I can easily find and interact with like-minded people from all over the world. This doesn’t come so easily for me in the brick-and-mortar world.

Today someone passed along these massive beasts from UNICAT: The UNICAT Expedition Vehicles, passionately nicknamed “land yachts”.

Designed, engineered and built to take you practically anywhere you want to go: from the heat of the Sahara to through the cold of the North Pole, even through up to 4ft of water… God have mercy!

Fitted with redundant GPS units … so you’ll never get lost on the desert!

On board “escape” vehicle:

Now just look at the interior: real and rare luxury on the road!

I want one of these. Pricing depends on the particular model and fittings, so you want to buy one for me, just let me know… so we can take out all those stuff that I wouldn’t need

More photos of these recreational / expedition vehicles from UNICAT’s website.

Now this “entry level vehicle”, with all the fittings will take you back US$600,000, and US$800 to completely fill the tank (at current gas prices). Hmmm. Here’s the Mahalo Daily video:

Hello folks… here’s the latest in this little life of mine:

I’ve finally decided, after three years of being out of formal employment, to return to a full-time working life. And in all likelihood, I’ll be joining Huawei Technologies pretty soon.

I spent the better part of last Tuesday (08/2008) at Huawei’s office here in Ghana going through a series of tests and interviews (5 in all!), and in the end I’m glad to say I’ll be working with these folks in building Ghana’s telecommunications infrastructure.

More about the interview itself in a later post.

Huawei Technologies is a Chinese company specializes in research and development (R&D), production and marketing of communications equipments, and providing customized network solutions for telecommunications carriers around the world.

Starting from a humble beginning in 1988 by Ren Zhengfei as a distributor of imported PBX products, the company has grown rapidly into a global operation providing next generation telecommunications networks. Huawei is the largest networking and telecommunications equipment supplier in China and in many emerging markets, and also has a strong presence North America and Europe.

I’m joining Huawei as a Radio Network Planning & Operations Engineer . in Ghana and potentially other operators in the sub-region. I’ll be doing a “physical” (fitness test) next week, and then begin working shortly afterwards.

Thank you all for your encouragement and support during these past two years that I’ve been on “voluntary unemployment”. Being out of work formal work sure had its perks… but like anything else in my life, it had to change for something new to take its place.

Today marks the 51st anniversary of Ghana’s independence from British colonial rule. To all my Ghanaian readers: you’ve (presumably) worked very hard all year, and you certainly deserve a break. Go put on your best clothes, hook up with your favorite human being(s), and enjoy yourselves. It’s your day, enjoy it to the fullest.

[As for me, I'm still busy at work with a large entourage of professionals (who are much smarter than myself!!!) -- trying to put my new apartment in shape]

[Beautiful cat dog photo from DonnitaMae on Flickr, and edited with iPhoto on my MacBook ]

Later this year, somewhere in September, I’ll be packing my single little suitcase again, and head for Sweden for graduate studies. Now it’s not if anymore. It’s when — when the time comes.

That means I have about six months here in Ghana, six months in my new apartment, and six months to do all the things I have to do and clean up all the mess I create along the way.

The above is a photo exhibition at the Second House of Sweden in SecondLife.

Just for everyone’s information — yesterday I packed my single suitcase out of my Haatso (Accra) apartment, after hanging around for about 12 months. I really loved the quietness of Haatso, but I moved primarily because, I couldn’t get a faster Internet connection at a reasonable fee.

I had been using Ghana Telecom’s “Alvarion Broadband” service, which is capped at 256/64kbps (shared, with an unlawfully high contention ratio). There are no fixed lines around, and hence no DSL, and the other alternatives are prohibitively expensive.

Anyway, I’ve moved to Tesano, also in Accra. And I managed to work out a fixed line and ADSL service even before I moved in. This came as a big surprise to a friend who has lived in the area for over three years, but has not been able to get Ghana Telecom to provision a fixed telephone line for her.

So how did I get? No, I didn’t pay any bribes. Nada. I never do. In case you didn’t know, I once worked at Ghana Telecom as a Radio Network Optimisation Engineer, and a lot of my college mates are still there, some in big positions. So I certainly have a lot of strings I can pull at GT.

Currently there’s only data and no voice. Actually the voice number has been assigned but not fully provisioned yet. I’m also using just 128/32kbps — but so far I find it faster than the more expensive 256/64 kbps service I was using at my previous apartment. That tells how terrible the contention was. I’ll push the data speed up as soon as I settle down to do something serious. Tell you about that later.

But what about my plans to live in the streests? Great question. I had a chat with one of my doctors about this, who managed to scare me out of it. How ingeniously stupid of me! As you probably know already, I’ve been battling a heart problem for a quite some time now, and my doctors remain one of the very few peple on this plant who’s opinions I truly value.

I’ve got a lot of things coming shortly. Stay glued.

Here’s Josephine Akyeampong with her little son, Kwame. Josephine was one of the few really great friends I had, until I lost her friendship to… eh… marriage. She hooked up with another good friend of mine, Donne Darku, about a year ago. The two are currently based in Nigeria.

We’re still in touch, and I spoke to her less than a week ago. But our conversations are not like they used to be anymore. Our conversations cannot be the way they used to be. Our conversations should not be the way they used to be… not anymore.

All the best, Jossie. Miss you dearly, Jossie.

From the very beginning we knew our little baby was NOT going to be a household name. Rather we wanted her to be the unknown giant upon whose shoulders many Smart Ghanaians would stand and lead our nation and the rest of the continent towards a safe, just, and prosperous future. And while things have been moving quite uneasily slow for us, we’re moving forward nonetheless.

A major initiative currently underway is a center to be run in conjunction with the Institute of Mathematical sciences, an institution founded and headed by our very own Prof. Allottey.

Yesterday, accompanied by my two partners in crime - Christopher Bennett and Remy Edmundson - I went to inspect the status of work on a facility at McCarthy Hill, Accra, which is likely going to be our new home. This facility currently houses the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and is being expanded to temporarily accommodate the yet-to-be-launched Allottey Andam University College.

We couldn’t have access to indoor facilities, but here are some photos we took from the compound. Enjoy.

Just looking spying around…

On top of the world ….

… with Christopher Bennett

Another shot with Christopher Bennett up the roof

Christopher Bennett and Remy Edmundson

Starting the journey back to ground zero…

Almost down now…

This beast will give us Internet access… for the time being

Man… George Appiah loves to squat!

It’s been a good day… we’re ready to return home now!

Man or statute? I was going through some directories on my computer, and came across this photo of this statute young man, in full gear for last year’s 50th Anniversary celebration of Ghana’s Independence. Even from the photo you could mistake him for a statute!

And apparently everyone else knows this man, except me! I’m told he often stands at major junctions in the city — causing heavy traffic jams, as drivers slow down to catch a glimpse of him.

Here’s a little interactive map of Ghana courtesy of Google Maps. Use the arrows at the upper left corner to move around and to zoom in and out.

As you can see, you cannot get that much detailed view from this map. If you’d like to explore Ghana further from your desktop, download and install Google Earth, a free desktop application from Google.

This free desktop application combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips. Works on both PCs and Macs.

But even with Google Earth, you still cannot get as much detail about Ghana as you could from other places like the United States. This is because Google has to license the geospatial data from third-party providers.

And guess what… Uncle Google will license this data only when it makes the most economic sense! Yeah, they only buy this data for countries where they make their money from. But would you do otherwise?

View Larger Map

Yesterday’s training for the Greater Accra Regional heads of the National Board For Small Scale Industries’ Business Advisory Centers went on as scheduled, but not without problems. The training which was to start at 9am could only be started after noon!

First Zipnet, NBSSI’s ISP decided a fine Monday morning like that was the perfect time for their service to go down. And since I possibly couldn’t teach about Internet without access to the Internet, we had to wait and hope. After waiting for a while, it was apparent to us we were going to wait all day. So we decided to change venue, from the NBSSI’s headoffice to the Greater Accra regional office.

But the regional office also had its own challenges. There’s no network of any sort available (at least not in the office we used). So after struggling to get a dialup account working on my laptop computer, we had to also put up an ad-hoc network, so all participants could access the internet via my laptop.

Anyway, in the end, the training went surprisingly well. I guess much of the magic came from the participants’ open and friendly attitude, and a high level of motivation to learn.

Here are some photos from the event, taken by my colleagues Remy Edmundson and Christopher Bennett.

Setting up the ad-hoc network

Training in full swing, after the long wait

Michael and Philomike, Participants

Gladys and Anthea, Participants

Remy helping participants

Chris helping participants

My joy, when it was all over

The training continues today. Will, keep you updated.