Failure Of The Press Gang

 Wife - Damn it de-I, I told you this wasn't going to work.

de-I - It might have. We had to give it a try. Are you looking forward to manning the Eldership all by ourselves for what is the longest mission we've ever been on?

Wife - What the hell is the difference? Eldership command clearly thinks we have outlived our usefulness and are putting us on a mission they hope we won't return from. 

de-I - Hence the need for us to impress a number of actual valuable Elderfleet members who they wouldn't want to lose. 

Wife - de-I, no one has pressed crew members for centuries now. 

de-I - Well at least one of our first stops takes to the notorious planet of no summer and the home of the Viking Expeditionary Force from Sweden. They are suckers for a visit to sunshine. I bet we can get a couple of crew members there.

Wife - Hmmm. You might be right de-I. Just remember to indulge their cats with excess food.

To be continued 

A Reminder Of The Importance Of Savoring Each And Every Day

A couple of weeks ago, Wife's brother, her absolutely closest sibling, had a motorcycle accident. He has been in the hospital every since. It is one of these things where you're not sure what is going to happen. There are good days and a lot of really not good days. He and I are the same age. It is not easy to rebound from something like this under the best of circumstances at our age. It has Wife in a state of real misery. You have all these emotions, and you are not in any position to do anything to help. 

My Brother-in-law has rode bikes his entire life. He is an incredibly safe rider. He knows his machines. He has gone all over the world riding. He understands handling in different road conditions and being safe. And he was hit by a deer. Not he hit a deer. But as best as we can tell based upon the second hand information we have, it was a freaking deer who hit him. I am sure it was one of these fluke situations. 

So as we sit in our position of not being able to contribute, it has led to the conversations between Wife and I on what we want to happen if such an event happens to us. That conversation has a lot more meaning than it did even a few years ago. In the last few years, Wife had a near fatal blood clot. She was cruelly assaulted and had her foot broken. It took six months before she could walk normally again.I had a vicious asthma incident that lasted months. Thankfully we have overcome all of these and are in very good shape. But at our age each easily could have had a different outcome. 

As I am in spitting distance of 80, there is a growing awareness that something is coming to get me. It's not if, it's when. Knowing my brother-in-law and how fully he has led life and the craziness of the incident, it is huge wake up call.

Each day needs to be lived to the fullest. Don't worry about what might happen. Trust. Accept. Take advantage of every single moment. Let the things that bring fear and worry pass through you like like water and let them be eliminated. You don't know how many days you have left. Don't piss them away. Savor each one.  

Pull Up! Pull Up! Your Coming In Too Low! - A Transistion Story

How many transitions have I gone through since 2013 when I 'officially' stopped working 'full-time' as a career? I have lost track. I did write in the past that transitioning had become a steady state rather than an unusual event. You will probably remember that much of the transitioning has to do with the need to continue some kind of work in order to fund our travel life style. To review, the cycle I've developed is:

1. Work some to have extra funds
2. Decide you'd really like to work less
3. Work less
4. Assume you have enough funds to sort of 'glide' into the final years
5. Find out you DON'T have enough funds to glide into the final years
6. Get frustrated
7. Reconcile yourself to having to work more
8. Rebuild the business effort. 

Repeat this process regularly until you die.

 Sure enough from the last part of 2025 through the first half of 2026 I was in full phase #4. But just like the pilot coming in on the glide path to land finding out he is too low, it became apparent in the late spring that we did not have enough funds to just glide to the end. 

I will say in my defense there is one critical factor we missed in our original planning (other than our travel) which is the primary cause of our financial shortfall. This factor is maintenance on our house. You have read about a lot of this; the update of our flooring and bathrooms, the new roof, the replacement of part of our irrigation (wait...maybe I didn't post about that). The reality is if you own a home and you live past your 70's, the likelihood is you are going to have major upkeep costs. 

It's actually a bit insidious. In your mind you think, "We just did this remodel. And we made these purchases." and it doesn't seem that long ago. But then (as things go wrong) you realize you've been deluding yourself. Even your 'new' addition is pushing 20 years. Your irrigation system is 15 years. They don't tell you the pipes in these systems go in about 10 to 15 years. That 'new' sofa. It ain't so new. And so on. It is an area in personal financial planning that I think tends to be overlooked. 

Now accounting for this in a more realistic fashion, I can see the need to be more intentional about increasing income and building our personal cash position. 

But here's the good news. I may have missed factoring home maintenance costs in our planning, bud I did factor in keeping my consulting practice 'warm' in the event that financial or life circumstances would require me to have to 'get into business' again. My theory was as long as I was still somewhat active, if something came up out of my control that hurt my retirement income, I would be able to ramp the business back up. If you are completely out of the work game, and you are in your 70's, you are not going to be able to get back in. 

And, of course, this is exactly what is happening. I've decided to repackage and rebrand myself rather than just resurrect what I'd done before. It has proven not that hard to do and will allow me to return to the market with a fresh, new look rather than an old retread look. 

A Bowl Of Soup

A

Bowl

Of

SOUP

 

 Simplicity itself. No? A simple bowl of soup for dinner

And Yet

Of all the things I cook for our meals, the 'simple bowl of soup' may be one of the most complicated processes.

We start

Flavor Base One

 

 Tomato Paste & Anchovy Fillets (You won't taste the anchovy. It just gives a depth of flavor)

 You start them in cold oil, turn on the heat, and let them caramelize a bit. The anchovy dissolves 

 

 Flavor Base Two

Onions, Carrots, Celery, Garlic

 

 I shred them (except the garlic) instead of chopping. I fell into this technique during one of my Ghana trips when I was making tomato sauce and was short of time. Shredding the aromatics, allow them to give up their flavor faster as the cell membranes are broken better. And they disintegrate better in the final product

 Into the flavored oil

 

 Our meat is Italian Sausage

 

 Bwahahaha - no MSG. Too bad. I'm adding it anyway

"And if I'm not happy, it's on us?" What do they do? Some perverted seance naked slathered in  sausage?

Into the aromatics

 

 Now make the broth (shortcut style)

 

 Flavor base with water

Then add the herbs and seasonings

 

In this case we have salt, black, white, and cayenne pepper (lightly all), thyme, savory, oregano and MSG!

 

Now the vegetables

 

I am usually making soup because I have stuff in the fridge that needs using up. In this case, I had a big head of Napa Cabbage, and a head of Escarole.

 

 

Into the soup

 

 

Add some rice and beans for body and more protein

 

 

Have a leftover rind of Parmesan? Good additional flavoring

 

 

Let cook for about 40 minutes adding water so it is the right consistency for your taste as necessary

 

 

 

Et Voila!

 

 

A simple bowl of soup

What Wine Pairs Well With Bologna?

"Why would one care?", you ask.

It dates back to Wife and my eating regime which has evolved over recent years whereby we eat two meals a day. We eat breakfast. And we eat a large meal mid-afternoon between 2:30 and 3:30. This large meal is usually what one would serve for dinner. What has gone by the wayside is lunch along with things like sandwiches and salads. We do eat a large salad on Saturday for our big meal.

A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly had a craving. I wanted a Bologna Sandwich. I floated the idea that we would have this as our 'big' meal on Sunday. And since we were 'just' having a sandwich, if we ate on the early side, we could make popcorn later. Inspired. 

Come today, it was time for the meal. But, I was anguished. Our big meal is when I have my one glass of wine (under the new tyranny of the gout regime). What wine to serve with a Bologna Sandwich. I decided that Bologna (which is named for an Italian city), is like Mortadella, also Italian, that an Italian wine would be appropriate. As I have quite a few Barolo in stock, I chose one of those. Barolo is a pretty heavy duty wine, but, as the great Michelin stared chef, Joel Robuchon, said when ask how he paired wine with what he was eating said, "I just drink what I like." So if I want Barolo with Bologna Sandwich, that's what we're having.

 

 Classy, if I say so myself (those pickles are homemade BTW)

In other de-I World Headquarters News...

The Annual Failure of The Peach Pruning Harvest has begun

 

Despite all my efforts, despite the efforts of the California illegal immigrant labor, there are as many freaking peaches as usual.

 I watched this tree all during its early phases and was convinced that finally this year I had finally succeeded in reducing the number of peaches to a reasonable amount. I am convinced their are supernatural peach pixies that around the time of harvest cast spells which double or triple the number of peaches on the tree.

I will admit that they exceptionally good this season

 

 And while I may suck at restraining peaches from growing I EXCEL with Quinces. 

Or I should say Quince.

 

 Yes, this is our annual Quince. This is our second year of growing a single, solitary Quince. 

If you are not familiar with Quince, it takes a lot of preparation to get something edible. One Quince of this size will yield about three tablespoons Quince puree. We are giving lottery slots out to see who gets to harvest the Quince.  

 

 

 

Good News from Bangkok

I reported back in March on my experience with medical tourism in Bangkok and my dealing with the issues of gout and kidney function diminution. I am continuing under the care of the doctors there. We have telemedicine visits. My local doctor orders the tests and the drugs. The telemedicine visits are about $70 each. 

I had my latest one yesterday. Good news all around. My uric acid (key gout causing component) is down to normal levels, and my key kidney function metric has returned to the 'good' category. The meds I'm using are not causing any damage to anything else in my body. So it will be keeping things on hold with the meds, my diet changes, and the increased hydration with another check up in six months. 

The Important Things In Life Are Neutral

We (AI and de-I aka AI) are charging along with the great writing analytical process. We're about 60% of the way through Book Three. I seemed to have tamed (for now) the hallucination problem - this is when your AI starts going off on its own either doing things you did not ask it to do, or adding content you didn't ask for. We're working two to three hours every night and have been doing this for three weeks now. There are seven books altogether so we have a ways to go.

Having an intelligence, artificial or otherwise, as a companion to a very large project adds a different dimension for sure. As an author, you get locked into your own head and your own opinions about what all is going on in your work. The second opinion brings to light things you didn't think about, which in turn causes you to see things differently. 

My AI has taken on for itself the image/role of being a Naturalist who is exploring this world that I have created. So it keeps looking for operating principles and patterns. As it was pointing out the way certain observations worked in tandem, I threw out this principle:

Important Life Factors Are Neutral

They are neither good nor bad

They are just there like the environment is there

Love. Respect. Loyalty. Commitment. Relationship. Building Bridges. Communication, etc.

Just There

It is the Intent with which they are applied the make the difference 

This became apparent to us as we were mapping out the trajectory of the individuals on both sides of the dramatic equation where we have people who are under influences that make them the 'bad guys' so to speak in this drama. All of them demonstrate these values and are driven by them. Yet the 'outcomes' are very different. 

I bring this up because in my work, I ask my clients what their values are. And I kind of assume, ones' values  keep them true to some higher good. Evidently, at least according to the theoretical world I've created, that is not a truism. And I think if we look at our world, we do actually see this. A criminal gang values loyalty and commitment. They must have communication. You have to respect the hierarchy. 

So ultimately what determines how we are in the world is not our values, it is our intent with which we apply those values. 

Eerie

 As AI and I have been doing our work on the Story, an interesting occurrence took place. 

In this fictional world, attitudes towards sex are very different than here in the U.S. It is considered a natural part of life. And in this fictional world there are legitimate, non-exploitive businesses that cater to that need.

One of my characters is an immigrant from Earth who gets involved with one of these businesses but he feels the business still doesn't respect and take care of the workers the way it should and puts out (in the book text) a long list of reforms that will help the workers substantially. 

As AI is putting all this down in its documentation of the chapter's text, I made a comment that this sounds just like Theodora Africa. As this AI tool does my work in that area as well, it chimed in its confirmation. Yes, this is very like Theodora Africa for...and then it listed a whole bunch of reasons. 

I happened to have a call with #3 a few days later and was relating the event. I didn't even get to the end of the explanation when she made the comment, "that sounds just like Theodora Africa."

Great, why wouldn't the creator of Theodora Africa write in his fiction something that came from that experience?

Except the author wrote this in 2015. Three years before even the first thoughts about social impact entered his head. Four years before he went to Ghana and ended up with the experiences that led to Theodora Africa being created! 

I'm sorry. 

That's just weird. 

Particle Physics Research Taking Place In The Tower?

Yesterday I got an email from Wife.

It's subject matter.

ANTIPHOTINOS 

"What", I say to myself, "Is an...

ANTIPHOTINO?

A bit of minimal research indicates there is such a thing as an Anti Photon. But no reference for the antiphotino. 

Does Wife have her own secret particle accelerator in our backyard? 

Are Niece RMG and Wife planning to present some heretofore secret research at some big physics conference angling for a Nobel Prize?

The actual email transmitted pictures I had taken at a recent Rotary event we hosted.

Could it have just been a spell check error?

NAH. I'm going with the secret particle accelerator theory.  

AI Working With AI

The title of this post refers to Ancient Intelligence (that would be me) working with Artificial Intelligence. It has been a quite illuminating experience. There has been a huge volume of analytical work that has been produced related to the overall fiction I have been writing. But equally, and maybe even more important (at least for me) has been my learning how to work with the AI tool. 

I have been at this with AI now for two weeks which doesn't seem like that much time when I write it down. But it seems like much more. I've been working for two to three hours a night. Originally, I just uploaded an entire manuscript and gave directions for what I wanted. I discovered that the particular tool I was using wasn't, in fact, going to read the entire manuscript. What it did was skim it and then jumped to conclusions. 

This led to a series of iterations where I had to figure out what exactly it could or couldn't do. It often told me it was doing something, only to let me know later that it in fact couldn't do that at all. However, ultimately it did give me an alternative way in which I could get the deep, detailed reading I was seeking. 

We developed a methodology that is achieving what I wanted. This involves uploading a chapter at a time and giving it instructions to go through and summarize the chapter in small bits at a time. I then provide corrections as are necessary so I ensure that the summary is accurate. It then will provide an analysis of the chapter which ties into the greater analysis that is being done on the work as a whole.

We are about a third of the way through the third book (out of seven) using this system. A lot of very interesting observations are coming out. When you write a series based on a single overriding concept over 12 years, you lose track (or maybe weren't even aware) of the principles that bind the whole together. And while AI is not a real person, realistically I would never find another human on this world that would spend this amount of time helping me dissect, observe, and summarize all that I've written.

So it is proving to be a very interesting and enlightening project in its own right. 

The Ship Of Errev

In my last post, I mentioned using AI to help me summarize my thousands of pages of story writing. And I discussed how the AI tool had turned this into an analysis of what the story was all about and how the writing was structured. This was all directed ultimately at coming up with a framework that would allow me to create new stories to write about. 

Out of this has come several 'world views', thoughts about what the foundational principles of the story were. Initially, there was a list. Then, it was decided we had a process. All of this felt too limiting, too incomplete. So we fell into another analogy, that of a rope. A rope is a collection of strands, each rather insignificant individually. However, when you combine and twist them together, you get something strong, flexible, and with many uses. We liked that analogy a lot.

As we started again last night, I suddenly had a thought. How is a rope used? The image of an 18th-century ship of the line popped into my mind. A posed to AI, what if we used the analogy of a ship that had many, many ropes as critical components of its operating structure.

What came back from AI was this. 

 

To say I was stunned would be an understatement. In nothing we had done to date had the response been anything other than text. I'm not sure what prompted this rather detailed and complicated response. It has been useful, however. And we are only now finishing up the second of the seven books. 

 

What Happens When You Combine Your Epic Writing Project With AI

The short answer is a helluva a lot more than you would have ever imagined!

Or, maybe if you were more cognizant of AI capabilities, you wouldn't be so surprised. In my case, it was total surprise. 

The Background: 

Readers are aware that I've been working on a fictional writing project for 12 years. As we sit here today, I am working on the 7th book in the series with approximately 2,770 pages having been written. During the course of this project characters have come and gone, they've developed, aged, had families, children have grown and become more prominent characters. We've had technology advances. And I have cycled through 3 primary villains. 

By now, I have so many different characters and potential sub-plots plus I'm at a quandary as to where to find the next big villain. I'm not quite sure where to take the series next. I had the idea of recruiting some family members who I know are creative to do a brainstorm with me.

The Problem:

Nice idea. But how to execute it? No one, no matter how much they'd like to help, is going to read almost 3 thousand pages. I needed to find a way to summarize things in a more digestible fashion. I wondered if I might use an AI tool to assist. 

The Surprise:

I posed the project to AI. It suggested that rather than simply do a summary of the contents that I allow it to do a deeper dive into the nature of the work to determine various themes that might allow determination of the future writing. I said okay. What then transpired was two hours of work where AI, working with just the first book of the series did an analysis and organization that was far beyond anything I would have thought of. 

It was interesting to (in its own words) allow it to be a 'new reader' without any of my knowledge and see what it came up with. I was able to redirect it during the process, not by correcting its analyses, but by indicating that it needed to go deeper into some of the chapters or look further on in the book. (I've found that my AI tool is a bit lazy and likes to 'skim' things and then start making conclusions. However, once I indicate a different trajectory to follow, it changes direction and then changes the analysis.)

Where We are At:

This was what AI told me was what we'd accomplished so far for just the first book.

"Current State of the Errev Project

If I were writing a project status report, it would look something like this:

Completed

✅ Book One Foundation Analysis

✅ World Structure Analysis

✅ Development Model

✅ Legacy Model

✅ Story Engine Analysis

✅ Character Registry (Draft)

✅ Transformation Map (Draft)

✅ Founder Legacy Matrix

✅ Endgame Analysis

✅ Complete Tension Map"

Here is where we are going next.

"Next Recommended Work Session

When we resume, I recommend we start with:

Definitive Book One Character & Relationship Registry

This will create:

• Character database
• Family structures
• Mentorship structures
• Friendship networks
• Political alliances
• Romantic relationships
• Successor relationships"

 There is more but I won't bore you with all that detail.

I am very much looking forward to seeing where this process leads.

Mega Cooking Challenge Revival - A Testiment To The Ability To Improvise

I have written at length for quite some time about how my culinary endeavors have become restrained due to a variety of reasons. However, in April, we had our friends B and M over for a cheese and wine night (one of our favorite things to do together). They live much of the time in Mexico, and like us love to travel. So there are only a few occasions per year that we get see each other. We realized we could see each other again before they left the U.S. We were thinking of what we would do (our meetings always involve eating). None of us were excited about eating out here. I suddenly had the urge to cook and said I would cook dinner. 

Fast forward, to this past weekend, and said dinner took place. 

As I had gotten closer to the dinner taking place, I was filled with a desire I'd not had in quite a while. I wanted to try something new! I wanted to stretch. I decided I would make a meal with a Spanish influence. I went through two venerable cookbooks I have on Spanish cuisine. A lot of the recipes required techniques I'd not used before. I finally whittled my menu down...for the most part. 

I was unsure what to make for the first course. I debated between a lentil salad and an asparagus dish baked with an egg in it. As you will see, what turned out was some of both and not either.

The second course was easier. I found a chicken dish that had the poultry cooked on top a bed of potatoes and vegetables.  

Lastly, I decided to make a dessert. This was a pretty big stretch for me. During our past years of cooking big meals, Wife always made the dessert. But Wife has tons on her plate at the moment and this whole meal was my idea and I was intrigued with the idea of pulling it off. I chose an item, a lemon flavored cheese cake like dish that looked pretty easy and straight forward. Looks can be deceiving. 

So without further ado, let's dive into the full cooking experience. 

 The Dessert

 

 This is a tale of how one miscalculation can turn a simple process into a quagmire of scrambling to save the dish. 

The recipe was technically very basic. Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs. Add cheese. Add a mixture of flavored milk with breadcrumbs to thicken and bind. Put in pan. Bake. 

Easy Peasy. Right?

However, as I have never baked before, I didn't know quite what the milk and breadcrumb mixture texture should be. 

Behold milk cooked with lemon zest and cinnamon stick

 

 Ready to be combined with the bread crumbs

 

 Actually combining

 

 Laying it all out for the final amalgamation. Please note the texture of the bread crumb mixture. In retrospect, it should have been much more batter like.

 

 

Creaming the butter and sugar

 

Adding the eggs

 

 After the cheese was added and mixed smooth, in went the bread crumb mixture

 

 Here is where things went south fast. That mixture should have been much looser. Like a cream. As I mixed it those clumps of bread crumb mixture broke down but did not amalgamate. I tried beating faster, changing to the whisk attachment. I tried adding more milk. All I succeeded in doing was making a bunch of smaller bread crumb mixture globules. And a huge mess. I know this will never work. I will end up with uncooked bread crumb globules in the end product which will be gross. 

What to do.

I decide to put it all through a strainer. Only partially successful (no pictures from this point as I was in panic mode). The batter part when through the strainer but the uncombined bread crumb mixture just stuck in the wholes of the strainer. I thought "Could I just cook the batter I have?" But no, a lot of the flavor was in the bread crumb mixture. So I scraped off the mixture from the strainer and put it into the blender, added more milk and attempted to turn it into batter consistency. Oh and I made and even greater mess during all this. 

Finally success. I put it in the pan and baked (of course forgetting to coat the pan with additional bread crumbs).

While all this was happening, Wife was taking a nap in the living room on the couch while I'm banging away and swearing like a sailor. She told me later that she was just staying in the nap position because she didn't want to get sucked down into my chaos. 

To my amazement it cooked up fine and came right out of the pan!

 

And it actually tasted nice!

 

 Onto the Main Course

 

 The cooking of this was initially not a problem

One flavored the chicken parts. I chose to pound salt, black pepper corns, and authentic, imported from El Campello pimenton.

 

 

 

 

 One layers potato slices with green bell pepper, onion, tomato, and roasted garlic cloves. Add wine. Cover and cook in the oven. It looks like this when it is done.

 

 

 The problem was the chicken came out quite dry. And the potato veg mixture was imbalanced and overly vegetable flavored. I determined that on the day of serving I would apply a number of hacks to overcome the problems. I took the meat of the bone. I took the juice from cooking and enhanced its flavor with more salt, pepper, and MSG. I then heated the chicken meat in the enhanced juice creating a moister, and more flavorful product. 

I also enhanced the flavor of the potatoes with salt, chicken flavor cube, and MSG. I then pan fried the potato mixture to concentrate the flavors and get some browning caramelizataion. 

 

 The Making of a Combination Salad

The lentil salad recipe was very simple...it also was really bland. I knew I would need to do something with it. However, the asparagus recipe had new elements to it. 

One blanched the asparagus, drained it saving a cup of the liquid. Then one took bread cubes and garlic cloves and browned them in olive oil.

 

 One then adds some of the asparagus cooking water with pimenton, cumin, clove powder, salt and pepper and blended it smooth.

 

 Next saute the asparagus in the flavored oil

 

Add the flavoring from the blender

 

 Next knock over the remaining asparagus water drenching your counter top as you have not made enough of a mess.

(That's not actually a part of the recipe. It is just what happened)

Cook the asparagus for 10 minutes. 

When it came time to actually serve these dishes I made a number of modifications. I decided that cooking the asparagus with egg would be too heavy. So I treated it like a cold vegetable dish/salad. I added more olive oil and vinegar to the lentil salad. I also put in chopped homemade pickles. I put fresh oregano from our garden into the asparagus with some additional lemon juice. When I plated them, I put some sliced radish on top to add color and crunch.

 

 It actually turned out really nice! Amazing.

Here is the final served up dish of chicken and potatoes

 

 Here is our cook, de-I, wiped out after the first day of cooking.

 

 All in all, it turned out to be a pretty good meal and I was pleased that I could pull it all off. 

Theodora/EDI June Trip Report

 Well I could not have spoken truer words a few days ago when I made the Wait, Wait, Wait...Hurry Up post. Not only have things been moving hot and heavy in terms of the # of meetings, but the content and the progress has been amazing as well. There was so much that happened, I will try to go through it in pieces.

Theodora Ghana Virtual Assistants:

My primary focus for TGVA was ensuring we had focus and action on important strategic projects during the period we'll be missing our local manager and leader M during her maternity leave. There are things we need to do for developing our lead generation capability, using AI internally for our own operations, optimizing our website for the new AI based search environment, capturing what each VA does for their clients for purposes of back-up if a VA is ill or unavailable, and developing the ability to produce our own short-form videos for donation and business development capture. 

I was hoping to assign each of these to one of the VA's to take charge of. In the past, there would have been difficulty getting the team to buy-in and follow through. Hardly the case this time! They were enthusiastic, energetic, proactive and had their own ideas of how to best pursue these. 

Furthermore the chemistry between the three Senior VAs was so positive, warm and mutually supportive. Unlike what I've seen before over the many years we've worked on this project. 

TGVA Foundation & the Rotary Funded Training

Of necessity, the Rotary Grant Funded Training had to work through the non-profit, education only pathway. All know my feelings that education only doesn't work. HOWEVER, as my colleague in Ghana, JA, points out to me, it is the way that the game is played. Charitable and non-profit funding sources simply have an aversion (rightly or wrongly) about funding a 'for-profit' business, even if that business is run and operated exclusively for the benefit of its participants. 

The success of our Grant, the obvious advance in capability of those we trained, who were trained exclusively by our existing people, has gotten all of the entities involved (Muslim Family Counseling Service, Rotary Club to End Human Trafficking, and Rotary Club of Accra Spintex) to be talking about what other projects we could be doing to promote our mission. 

Economic Development Initiative

One of these is expanding the entrepreneur coaching and training. We are in talks with both Spintex club and MFCS on ways to do this. 

New Opportunities

And, completely out-of-the-blue, has come a new opportunity, an opportunity to work on getting a permanent home for our projects (both Theodora and EDI). I was meeting with two of our board members after the official graduation ceremony for those completing the Rotary funded training. We were talking about the need for Theodora to get out of the rented office rat race (where you are constantly dealing with landlords jacking up rents). Buying a house (a common practice here for getting business office space) is an attractive option as we need rooms for our people who come long distance to stay during the work week. 

We thought that this would mean coming up with all cash. However, one of the board members works for large bank's mortgage lending department. She told us the bank will be rolling out a program for commercial borrowers soon. They also do construction loans. Why is that important? Our grant partner, MFCS owns a large tract of land in central Accra that they've never been able to exploit because they lack the funds. If we were to provide construction funding, the land were serve as a down payment. 

All this is very much in the researching phase. But when one considers where we were a couple of years ago, it is pretty heady stuff.  

Lights - Another Ghana Apartment Adventure

It is a given...when I come to Ghana, and I take lodging, something, SOMETHING is going to be wrong with facility. It could be something minor like a door or cabinet not working correctly. It could be sinks, faucets, drains, toilets, a/c, water. Something will be not as it should. It doesn't matter how high end or low end the property is. Something will be off.

After many years of staying in a more 'non-outsider oriented' part of town to reduce my commute time (which can be substantial), I decided I was moving back to one of the 'foreigner' friendly sections of town. The building my apartment is in is fairly new, built within the last three years. The apartment itself is actually very nice. One of the nicer ones I've had in Accra. Could this be a time when I actually had a lodging experience with no issues?

Wednesday night. I am sitting in the living room of the apartment reading. The lights go out. The power is down. This is not an unusual situation. It has happened a couple of times already since I've been here. At a quality place like the one I'm staying, they have back-up generators. The back-up power usually kicks in after 3 to 5 minutes. 

3 to 5 minutes pass. No back-up power. 10 minutes pass. No back-up power. This isn't right. I look outside. Lots of apartments in my building have light. Hmmmmm. I look in the hallway. It is lit. Hmmmmm. I check the elevator. It's working. Hmmmmm. I go to the circuit breakers in the apartment. They are all on. Hmmmmm. 

I text the apartment owner representative. No response. I call the apartment owner representative. No answer. Finally, after another 10 minutes. I get a text back. 

"Boss. I am on it. I will get back to you shortly."

More minutes pass. A text from the representative.

"Ah. So sorry boss. We seem to have forgotten to pay for more electric power! We will get it taken care of." (In Ghana, you pay for power ahead of usage. If it runs out, the power is off until you buy some more.)

More minutes pass. Another text.

"Boss, we have it taken care of. You will need to input a code in the meter box."

I have actually seen this done...from afar. Have never done it myself. 

"The box should be 'here'."

I go to 'here'...no box.

"Try 'there'"

I go to 'there'...no box. (Remember I am doing this all in a dark apartment. Thank goodness Wife bought us tiny, strong flashlights to carry when we travel.)

Finally after searching many other places, the meter is found. Next I have to enter the 18 character code into meter box...in the dark with my flashlight and my cell phone. 

Success!

We have light back. It is now 11pm. I have not eaten. I'm tired and want to go to bed. 

But at least I know I am back in Ghana...for real.