Oh No - it's a Brit whinging about the weather AGAIN!

Big story of the day on Thursday is the weather - it's getting chilly.  The Malawians in the office said that it was cold, but to me it felt just chilly.  I was still in shirt sleeves, whereas they were wearing fleeces and coats. It's also raining on and off - a heavy drizzle, I guess you'd call it.  All in all, a bit miserable.

I had a couple of client meetings, and spent most of the day trying to progress the larger project I'm working on. But the internet was still down, and worse still, the water supply went off, so the loos were out of bounds.  Peter, the Programme Manager, and I wandered down the road for lunch - he gave me a whistle-stop tour of several local eateries, before we settled on the place I'd had some somosas earlier in the week.  I opted for a quite good vegetable curry that came with a huge amount of rice in relation to the quantity of curry.  But when I'd finished the curry, the owner came over and offered to top up my supply, which was nice.

Sharife is going to see his parents and attend a wedding in Australia tomorrow (he hasn't seen them for around 4 years as he's been working in Edinburgh), and went off in the afternoon to buy a few pressies.  He came back with some nice stuff, so I've an idea what I'll be taking home with me for my beloved and my mother-in-law.  I'm not sure the son and heir would appreciate the same things so I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for other things as well.

Evening was more football on the telly, then to bed.  Unfortunately, when climbing into bed through the mosquito net, I managed to kneel on the net rather than the bed, and the net detached itself from the cord holding it up to the ceiling.  I couldn't get my own net onto the ceiling hook, so spent the night cowering under the duvet - thankfully I escaped without being bitten.

World Cup Day 1

... and we're hosting people from the office for a bbq which was to mark Rick's leaving next week after 4 months on the project, and also (this was a surprise) a welcome to Blantyre for me.  This is a team picture taken on our verandah - all a bit indistinct I'm afraid, but a larger version is available on my Flickr page.

The morning was taken up with a weekly team meeting with the apprentice consultants where we review any issues that may have arisen over the week, and also get any feedback from them on how things are going.

After that I had a financial review meeting looking at the financial analysis that has been done on the project I'm taking over from Rick.  I then got my mobile phone to use whilst in Malawi, and my laptop was finally connected to the shared drive so that I can now access all the project files and the teaching materials for the apprentices' training programme.  Peter Moar, our Programme Manager also arrived back from the UK today, so I've been able to catch up with him this afternoon.

It was then back to the house and set up for the barbecue - chicken, sausages, salads - and there was then a presentation for Rick followed by cake.  In fact there were two cakes - one for Rick's departure and one for my arrival.  They were home cooked and very good indeed.  The barbecue ended at around 3.30 and we then went into town to a bar in the KPMG office building to watch the South Africa v Mexico game.  Great atmosphere in the bar, but a bit weird because they had two TVs tuned into different broadcasts of the match, and there was about a 5 second difference between them - so there was a big shout when SA scored from the people looking at one screen, and the goal went in shortly afterwards on the TV we were watching.  I also met several ex pats that Rick and Sharife have made friends with over the past few months, and many of them are coming to the house for tomorrow's England v US match.

I decided not to stay in town to see the second game tonight, so I'm back here doing this blog and a little bit of work.