My Sister

...has informed me that I suck at updating my blog. :(

I've been busy with work mostly and swimming in the mornings before work. I haven't gotten behind the camera so much so I don't have photos to share. One thing that happened to me today that I was kind of proud of was that I gave my first presentation in Portuguese. It was on how to use the Manning's Equation to estimate flow in a river.

Oh, that reminds me. I rode with my boss Tiago down to Beira a couple of days ago. As we were leaving town, he thought it was a good idea to fill the tires before heading out. The only air pump in the city has a broken pressure gauge on it, so the attendant kicked the tires to judge their pressure. Two hours into the trip, Tiago's back right tire exploded and shreds of it were flailing around because they were still stuck to the rotating hub. They scuffed the heck out of the right side of the car with rubber marks. Anyway we changed the tire and put on the spare. Tiago starts complaining to me that now he has to keep it below 100 kmh, which is odd because I was of the belief that you drive 30 mph on a spare tire (about 55 kmh). Now the posted speed is 100. He then proceeds to blast down the highway at 120 on the tiny spare for the remaining six-hour trip. I was not convinced we were going to make it, but I've always been a worry-wart.

I head to one of Mozambique's national parks tomorrow. The country's wildlife is still recovering from its civil war from the 80s, where soldiers used big game animals as target practice. So I guess I'm not really expecting to see the animals you would expect of game parks in Zim or South Africa, but who knows right? If anything, I'll be happy to see some birds that I've never seen before. Apparently, they have these African Fish Eagles there and they look a lot like Bald Eagles. Sweet. Hopefully pics to come.

Your brother,
Stephen