This is the thirteenth in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.
 
Part 13
7/8/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe
On Monday I discovered that I was to spend yet another day in a meeting but I didn’t mind. It was a staff meeting that takes place on the first Monday of every month. I actually participated a lot between writing letters and sending email when the discussions got too bogged down. I’ve finally started receiving messages from people. On Friday I got email from Jennie and Francis. On Saturday while I was away I got a postcard from Mom, two letters from Grandma Betty and a card from Graham. Monday I got email from Jennie and today I got a letter from her and a package containing my hairbrush.

The saga of that hairbrush continues. I took it from ex-boyfriend Dylan because it was the only brush I had found to get through my often tangled curls. I forgot it at home and Jennie, wonderful woman that she is, sent it to Zimbabwe for me. Soon, maybe it will travel completely around the world! So anyway, I’m feeling much better simply because I now have some sort of contact with most of the people I love and miss very much. I called Mom and Dad on Monday morning (Sunday night their time). They were happy to hear from me, I had been sending Mom email but I guess her account is disconnected. I called Dad at the regular home number and he gave me Mom’s number at the Catholic church rectory. I guess they have been staying there too because it is currently vacant. I hope that house they are building gets done soon because their living situation is getting stranger by the minute!

My hand is hurting so I’m going to stop now. I am unsure of how this “travelog” will play out. I’ve been using it as a record, but worry that I’m writing too much or not enough, am I getting too emotional? I have a separate journal for more private reflection. I wonder who will read this when my trip is over. Anyway, whoever you are, reading this account, I hope you find this adventure that I’m on to be interesting. I’m trying to make note of the cultural differences so that I, and perhaps you, can have a better understanding of life in this particular part of the world. So without guidance, I will continue to plow on…

Another point of interest, I washed my underwear in a bucket full of soap in the shower/toilet room last night. I guess it is taboo for someone else to wash it. Anna the maid washes everything else for me, even socks and bras, but not underwear. So I washed it and left them in a bucked overnight and she hung them up outside for me today. Apparently, once they are washed it is OK to at least hang them up. They came back a bit wrinkled but clean at last. It feels good to have clean underwear!
 
To be continued…

This is the twelfth in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.
 
Part 12
7/8/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe
I was supposed to go to the movies with Jayson, but he had more family obligations so I had Lucilia drop me off near the theaters in city center but they didn’t have anything I wanted to see. I ate at a place called Wimpey’s. They server breakfast, burgers, milkshakes, etc. It is a pretty common chain (no McDonald’s here), but the food wasn’t very good. Here the french fries are called ‘chips’ and you are expected to put vinegar on them. Lucky for me there was also ketchup on the table. I got a paper from one of the waiters and discovered that The Fifth Element was playing at Westgate, a mall which I discovered was very far away. I took a taxi and it cost me over $70z. I got out there early, a very fancy mall, but as I wandered around, most of the shops were closed because it was Sunday.

I bought my ticket, only $13z! Then I looked at the fabric store, I haven’t figured out how much meter of cloth is so I didn’t want to buy anything. They had some really nice polished cotton prints, $80z for 5 meters. The woman there said it was enough to make one outfit. Everyone around the mall and in the theater was clearly wealthy, no one from Chitungwiza would go to this mall. It made me feel a little uncomfortable. The movie had assigned seats which was strange, but the movie was good, it was nice to lose myself in something familiar.

The taxi was waiting as I had instructed, to get back I just gave him $100z. He let me off at the wrong bus stop though and I had to ask several people where to go. The bus stops have recently changed so nobody really knew where to to, it was getting dark and I was getting pretty worried. I finally was directed to the right bus stop for Zengeza 3 and actually managed to get off at the right stop and find my way home unmolested. Florence, Anna, Kuda and Tapiewa were in the living room with the fireplace going. They had just returned from a weekend in the ‘rural areas.’ Francis was asleep, I guess he had too much to drink. The power had been off due to high winds and it went off again soon after I got home. We ate around the fire and I went to bed, exhausted from my adventure.
 
Continued in Part 13

This is the eleventh in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.
 
Part 11
7/8/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe
I left the theatre meeting early, at noon on Saturday, to catch a bus into Harare. I was just going to walk to the stop nearest to the CHIYSAP offices, but Lance insisted on driving me to Makoni where the buses originate. It took 20 minutes just to get there! So I got on a bus there and after basically re-tracing the path I had just taken, we headed for Harare. The walk from the bus stop to the hotel was much farther than I thought so I was about half an hour late to meet Jayson (the South African boy I met on the bus from Johannesburg). It turns out that he only lives 15 minutes (walking distance) from the hotel so he had at least been there on time. We got into a taxi to try to find the 4th of July picnic for Americans that I had heard about from the embassy. It was in Mt. Pleasant, one of the poshest suburbs and pretty darn far away, it cost $50 Z to get out there! There was baseball, pony rides and one of those jumpy castles for kids, lots of tables with American theme stuff as well as a books and magazines table containing old American publications for purchase. Jayson, being only 18, wasn’t too excited about the name tags and the silly American flags. It was nice to hear familiar accents and eat hot dogs and hamburgers, but it only made me realize that I don’t much fit in among Americans either. The soon to be ex-ambassador was there and some Marines. There was a speech, they displayed the colors, played the national anthem, then we said the Pledge of Allegiance, it was all a little silly. We ate, drank several beers, then left. The taxi driver actually came back as agreed! We went back to the hotel for more beers and I called Graham’s (my friend in San Francisco who helped me organize this trip) friend Lucilia as we had arranged earlier in the week. She came and picked me up, I left Jayson to deal with his relatives who were coming to see his Grandma because she just got out of the hospital.

Lucilia had just moved all of her stuff into a new ‘flat’ and was still cleaning so she took me to her girlfriend Leslie’s house (an apartment). Lucilia is from Mozambique but she is here attending the University of Zimbabwe studying business. It is illegal to be homosexual in Zimbabwe so very few people are out. I would never have met these friends if Graham hadn’t initiated this contact. Leslie was very sweet, she works for an architectural firm in town and she is also a painter on the side. She is white and a native of Zimbabwe so some of our discussions touching race were colored by her views of black people which were not negative but occasionally ignorant. Lucilia, her girlfriend, is park black like me so she doesn’t have that much prejudice I suppose. I got to take a hot bath at her house and it was heaven! While Lucilia was cleaning up back at her new flat I talked with Leslie, we discovered we had a lot of things in common. Later Juan, another friend of Graham’s, came over. He was very cute and very gay, he helps run GALZ (Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe). We ate dinner: some chicken and broccoli baked in the oven with bread, then went to pick up another friend, Ruth. It was decided we would go to “The Tube” club first to see if it was crowded. It wasn’t so we headed to Xscape, in a suburb called Borrowdale. The people there were a mix of gays and straights. It was almost like the Blue Lagoon (at home in Santa Cruz, except that the music was different.

I spent most of the night dancing, it was a mix of predominantly ’80s music but it included some stuff like Michael Bolton, AC/DC and Guns & Roses which I didn’t find very danceable. Juan is a fabulous dancer and we spent a lot of time together after he had cruised the place and declared that there was no ‘eligible talent’ for him to take home that evening. Ruth had a bit of a crush on me I think, but I found her a bit abrasive. She knew I had a girlfriend at home. We danced all night and went home around 3:30am. Lucilia dropped me off at her place and she slept at Leslie’s house. It was nice to have the bed to myself. In the morning after several tries I manage to talk to Jennie on the phone. My Sprint card doesn’t work in Zimbabwe and I couldn’t remember the AT&T number so I had her call me back and I left money for Lucilia’s phone bill. It was so great to hear her voice. I think her phone bill is going to be huge though…

 
Continued in Part 12

I’ve settled into more of a routine this week. With the exception of Monday morning (when my parents do their work), I spent most of my time at the Mt. Shasta office. I was up very early for 7am (10am ET) meetings most days so I usually finish up around 3 or 4pm. If/when I transition to full time virtual work on the west coast, that will likely be my regular schedule.

I’ve been taking all meetings on my iPhone, rather than using landlines, to avoid long distance charges. This tends to run the battery down so low that the phone can’t cover the remainder of the day’s activities (usually taking photos and using the GPS to locate hiking spots and restaurants). So I’ve been having to charge it again around midday. On long calls it sometimes drops me off the call after about 45 minutes. This isn’t a big deal, but it has been somewhat disruptive.

I had my weekly one-on-one with Pat on Tuesday, we used the video component of Live Meeting. It worked well and her video only dropped out once. For as many virtual meetings as we have in our organization, personal video is almost never used even though most people have that capability. We do have specific meeting rooms available in the Webster office that have built-in video capabilities for the group, but they are not used on a regular basis. I haven’t seen much advantage to adding video to a meeting when I am present in the room. It just makes me more conscious of my appearance, attention and attitude as it is reflected back to me on the screen. It does serve to keep me feeling a little more connected to my group out here so I would probably use it more as a virtual employee.

Between meetings I’ve been continuing work on my primary projects. For our upcoming internal conference I spent some time searching for images that would best represent our theme “Advancing the Edge of Innovation” on the program cover. Image searching can take up a lot of time and it is always difficult to come up with something that will meet the Xerox brand imaging guidelines which are very specific. Working with another committee member, I managed to come up with 6 options which I then placed in the cover design template and pushed out to the entire committee for voting. So far, my favorite image is winning so I’m happy!

For Open Xerox this week, I’ve been doing some research on mobile website design. I have worked on several mobile applications on the iPhone platform, but I haven’t yet done a mobile website design. There are programs/services that you can use to create a mobile version, but we will probably develop our own for Open Xerox. Xerox.com does not yet have a mobile version, so I’m hoping I can be a little more creative with the design. This may even be an opportunity for me to influence the future mobile design of Xerox websites, but I won’t hold my breath. Right now I’m in the research phase, looking at the trends and existing sites that are doing creative things. I also need to understand how the sites will be displayed on a variety of mobile platforms (I have an iPhone so I’m a little biased). I’ll probably start sketching some ideas out next week. We have a great development team on Open Xerox so I know that they will be able to implement anything I come up with.

Working for Xerox, there are many things I do that I can’t write about here because they haven’t been released to the public yet or we don’t yet have patent coverage on them. One one such project, I’m primarily providing high level design direction, but I also have the opportunity to address some challenging design issues. One such issue I’ve been exploring this week is how to express the social value of a digital object (such as a blog post, news article or image). There are some very basic ways of expressing this out there (such as number of likes, tweets, diggs, votes, ratings etc.). But they are fairly one dimensional. The Facebook ‘like’ takes it a step further by adding the number of your friends who liked it. I’m trying to come up with some more multi-dimensional ways to capture value and to present them in a more visual way. For example, how many of my friends and friends of friends have read/used this object, how many of them have shared it, how did they rate it? I’ve been doing lots of thinking and sketching on that this week. I don’t have a complete solution yet, but I’m getting there. Who knows, maybe I’ll get a patent or two out of it…

I’ll be taking a long weekend off to do some traveling down to San Bernardino, CA to visit relatives. Then traveling back home on Tuesday. I should be back to my regular, non-virtual work by Wednesday. This has been a fun experiment and I look forward to doing it again sometime soon!

No, I’m not in San Francisco or Sacramento. If you were in Sacramento, then got into a car and drove north for 4 hours on Interstate 5, you would be where I am now: Mt. Shasta. I’m here visiting my parents and my manager at Xerox has been kind enough to let me work virtually from here two weeks so I can spend more time with my family. I eventually want to transition to full time virtual work so this is a trial run.

This is a picture of my temporary office in downtown Mt. Shasta, you can see the mountain that dominates the landscape here just behind it. My parents live in Weed, a smaller town just north of here, but they have an office space in Mt. Shasta that I can use for most of the time I am here. I know it will be better for me to have an office space that is separate from my home base. I worked from my parent’s house yesterday but found that there were a lot of distractions and it was hard to find a good place to situate myself. I did a lot of catching up on email and some reading (I brought several months worth of Interactions magazine, the ACM’s computer human interaction publication).

I’m quickly discovering the importance of ergonomics in even a temporary office setting. Yesterday I set myself up in front of the picture window in the entryway at home. It was somewhat out of the way and I had a nice view of the yard. The table there is a little high so I sat on a stool for three hours, looking down at my laptop. Needless to say, this was not good for my back or my neck. I had to take some ibuprofen and spent the rest of the afternoon reading on the couch.

This morning I got up and came into the Mt. Shasta office early. I’m also dealing with the 3 hour time difference so most of my regular meetings happen during the first part of the day. I’m not used to getting to work at 8am, but it will probably have to become a regular practice for me out here. I was able to set up my laptop on a desk and there is an adjustable office chair. I raised my laptop up on some phone books so I wasn’t looking down on it as much. I had project-related meetings all morning which I took on my iPhone using my headphones with a microphone built in. For some of the meetings we also used Live Meeting to share screens. Many of the meetings that I have throughout the day are with groups of people that are not co-located (Xerox has research centers in India, France, Canada and California; we also work with development resources in India) so phone conferencing is a standard mode of interaction.

My last meeting today was my weekly one-on-one with my manager Pat. I called her a little bit early because my Dad showed up and wanted me to go to lunch with him. Pat and I decided to forgo the video conferencing through Live Meeting because we had some technical issues with it last week. Pat’s computer has been a little fussy about video sharing. It was nice to hear her voice and check in. After lunch I worked for a few more hours but my back and neck were bothering me again. I’m starting to realize what a nice office setup I have back in Webster, NY. If I plan to do this long term, I’ll need to invest in a comfy chair, as well as a full size keyboard and monitor. Luckily I don’t have many pressing things to do this week so I’m heading home now to read some more Interactions.