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| Roasted pig |
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| Roasted goat |
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
SWS IRL: Olivier from Ghana, amazing Africa
Hello SWS, my name is Olivier, I am french and live in Accra, Ghana.
I am presently working for a major (in fact the largest, find it yourself) oil and gas services company. I am based in West Africa as I am the person in charge of coordonating the actions with the national oil companies in West Africa.
I have to say my job is awesome, I travel a lot, relate with high level people, design some very interesting project, work also with universities and ministries as we do a lot of donations, conferences etc... to help these universities reaching the proper academic standards. For example, I am organizing a contest between all universities in West Africa to design a plugin for a scientific software which is doing geological 3D modeling. This will require them to establish collaboration between their IT, geology, geophysics and maybe maths depts. Learning to collaborate is key.
It's fascinating to see how fast West Africa is moving, especially countries like Ghana.
I travel every month at least once: Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Senegal, Liberia, Mali, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Guinea Bissau. Plus Europe, US, Dubai, etc... Basically, I use one passport per year. Also, salary is pretty attractive to say the least.
I am almost divorced, have a very beautiful gf and one teen daughter, pretty sharp in basically all school subjects, from maths to english through sport or music (she was in fact the winner for Nigeria of the best solo junior vocalist with a song of Nina Simone).
Because, yes, I was living before in Lagos, Nigeria. Incredible country which is at the same time, the richest and the poorest. It's a very irritating and fascinating place, bubbling with life, culture, tradition and pollution, crime, corruption. After a while, it makes you tired, so I had to change.
Accra and Ghana is simply beautiful. The town is pretty clean for a developing country capital with 2 millions people. It is safe, the beach is in town, a lot of restaurant and outing, supermarkets etc... Actually, Ghana had experienced for the first 9 months of 2011 a staggering net growth (growth-inflation) of 14%! When, in Europe or USA, we get 3%, everyone is happy. This is much higher than China and make Ghana the highest growth rate worldwide. Eh yes ! Always good to strangle the commonly accepted carricature of miserable starving and suffering Africa. Ghana is now turning to a middle class economy, with something looking like SE Asia 20 years ago.
There is a lot to see down there: for example, I visited Cape Coast and Elmina castles. They are big fortresses built by european powers 300 to 500 years ago. Very sad, a central point for slavery, you can see the dungeons where 2500 males slaves and 1500 female slaves where almost buried, the room for condemn slaves, 50 in a room of 10 by 4 m, not even executed, just left in total darkness to perish of hunger and thirst. For Regnum, it is interesting as we can see how castles were defended by forts (which is not our case).
I went to Regnum long ago, about 4 years I think. I played a bit till I reached level 38 knight and 35 warlock. But connectivity, lag was such an issue I gave up. Then I came back because of the souvenir of epic battles in wz. I am presently playing 2 characters: Makrock, a conj level 38, a bit dumb and pretty easy to kill (in fact, I think he enjoyed it) and Livero (oh, that sounds like the anagram of Oliver ?), a hunter, level 29, progressing very fast as I started it last week. I love Livero, he is smarter than Makrock, slick, deadly, fast and treacherous.
I love cooking, women, travelling, composing computer generated landscape, photos, ladies, swimming, girls... Ok, did I mention I have a passion for females generally?
I am sending here a couple of photos of various places I went.
The big waterfall is Agbokim, in Nigeria, amazing place. The river is a small river in a village in Eastern Nigeria, south of Enugu, called Nomeh. The women playing music as well.
The sunset beach is inside Accra, Labadi beach. This white fortress with canons is Cape Coast Castle. Finally, the paradise white sand beach is 30 min from Accra, a strip of white sand in the ocean, a pure paradise, Bojo beach.
I am presently working for a major (in fact the largest, find it yourself) oil and gas services company. I am based in West Africa as I am the person in charge of coordonating the actions with the national oil companies in West Africa.
I have to say my job is awesome, I travel a lot, relate with high level people, design some very interesting project, work also with universities and ministries as we do a lot of donations, conferences etc... to help these universities reaching the proper academic standards. For example, I am organizing a contest between all universities in West Africa to design a plugin for a scientific software which is doing geological 3D modeling. This will require them to establish collaboration between their IT, geology, geophysics and maybe maths depts. Learning to collaborate is key.
It's fascinating to see how fast West Africa is moving, especially countries like Ghana.
I travel every month at least once: Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Senegal, Liberia, Mali, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Guinea Bissau. Plus Europe, US, Dubai, etc... Basically, I use one passport per year. Also, salary is pretty attractive to say the least.
I am almost divorced, have a very beautiful gf and one teen daughter, pretty sharp in basically all school subjects, from maths to english through sport or music (she was in fact the winner for Nigeria of the best solo junior vocalist with a song of Nina Simone).
Because, yes, I was living before in Lagos, Nigeria. Incredible country which is at the same time, the richest and the poorest. It's a very irritating and fascinating place, bubbling with life, culture, tradition and pollution, crime, corruption. After a while, it makes you tired, so I had to change.
Accra and Ghana is simply beautiful. The town is pretty clean for a developing country capital with 2 millions people. It is safe, the beach is in town, a lot of restaurant and outing, supermarkets etc... Actually, Ghana had experienced for the first 9 months of 2011 a staggering net growth (growth-inflation) of 14%! When, in Europe or USA, we get 3%, everyone is happy. This is much higher than China and make Ghana the highest growth rate worldwide. Eh yes ! Always good to strangle the commonly accepted carricature of miserable starving and suffering Africa. Ghana is now turning to a middle class economy, with something looking like SE Asia 20 years ago.
There is a lot to see down there: for example, I visited Cape Coast and Elmina castles. They are big fortresses built by european powers 300 to 500 years ago. Very sad, a central point for slavery, you can see the dungeons where 2500 males slaves and 1500 female slaves where almost buried, the room for condemn slaves, 50 in a room of 10 by 4 m, not even executed, just left in total darkness to perish of hunger and thirst. For Regnum, it is interesting as we can see how castles were defended by forts (which is not our case).
I went to Regnum long ago, about 4 years I think. I played a bit till I reached level 38 knight and 35 warlock. But connectivity, lag was such an issue I gave up. Then I came back because of the souvenir of epic battles in wz. I am presently playing 2 characters: Makrock, a conj level 38, a bit dumb and pretty easy to kill (in fact, I think he enjoyed it) and Livero (oh, that sounds like the anagram of Oliver ?), a hunter, level 29, progressing very fast as I started it last week. I love Livero, he is smarter than Makrock, slick, deadly, fast and treacherous.
I love cooking, women, travelling, composing computer generated landscape, photos, ladies, swimming, girls... Ok, did I mention I have a passion for females generally?
I am sending here a couple of photos of various places I went.
The big waterfall is Agbokim, in Nigeria, amazing place. The river is a small river in a village in Eastern Nigeria, south of Enugu, called Nomeh. The women playing music as well.
The sunset beach is inside Accra, Labadi beach. This white fortress with canons is Cape Coast Castle. Finally, the paradise white sand beach is 30 min from Accra, a strip of white sand in the ocean, a pure paradise, Bojo beach.
* All postings under this SWS IRL series might be found here.
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