Maputo to Cairo

Yesterday afternoon my "office" was the garden of the Cardoso hotel in Maputo. Got lots of work done on the laptop, our nowadays "always there" office. Today on my way to Cairo via Addis with Ethiopian Airlines for meetings relating to our project in southern Egypt in partnership with the Aga Khan Development Network. At the Maputo airport I find "Simba" potato chips. In 1980 I worked in Johannesburg during an internship at the Simba plant for three months (time flies...36 years later).

Costa do Sol

Oh sweet memories and current delight at the same time. Some 27-28 years ago I had these very nice grilled shrimps (or "cameroes grelhados") freshly fished that morning in the famous local historic restaurant of "Costa do Sol" along the coast line of Maputo in Mozambique. During the period 1988-1990 colleagues of MSF and I treated ourselves to this food regularly. Today a few colleagues of the Ministry of Education took us for a nice lunch to the same place.

Back in the late eighties the inside was not as fancy as nowadays and we mostly ate outside on the patio. But at the moment they are converting the building of the restaurant in a culinary training school so sitting outside is temporary less attractive. But the surroundings are still spectacular.

Mozambique is going through rough economic times again, but never lost some of its natural beauty and friendliness. It is very nice to be back here again to work with colleagues in education. Seneca together with a number of other Canadian colleges works on assisting the system of technical and vocational higher education institutions with funding from the Canadian government.

Maputo in Mozambique (again)

A week in Maputo to run workshops on "management & leadership" with senior managers of five vocational education & training institutions located in the northern provinces of the country. It is the start of activities during the coming three years as part of a contract with the Canadian government.

The Mozambicans worked in groups on leadership topics and then presented to each other. The country's higher education system has a long way to go, but there is a positive spirit. It is always nice to be back in this city where I worked for almost two years during the 1988-1990 period.

On the road again...

Started Friday evening with a flight from Toronto. Before boarding in the KLM lounge a late lunch (or early dinner) accompanied by a Dutch newspaper. Easy to make a Dutchman happy...

From Toronto to Amsterdam and then Saturday the long day flight of 10 hours to Johannesburg, as always with 100% load on both flights. After all those hours in planes, the sleep in a hotel near the Johannesburg airport was blissful and deep. Today lunch with two former colleagues from the Walter Sisulu University (Ghana and Andrew) - we were so busy catching up that I forgot to make a photo!

Right now waiting for my short flight to Maputo where we will start a week of project work. Those who have been in South Africa will recognize the name of the famous coffee chain here...

Kingston in Ontario

Today we had time after the workshop to visit Fort Henry in Kingston (built in 1836). This fort was constructed by the Brits after the war with the USA in 1812 to protect what was going to be Canada's capital city before they decided to go a bit further land-inwards (and then it became Ottawa).

It has a couple of nice restaurants for the tourists and we checked out one of them outside on the patio overlooking Lake Ontario. It was good to see the windmills at the lake knowing that our colleagues of St Lawrence College train capable technicians for the maintenance of this sustainable energy...

Wind turbine maintenance program

While at one of the other Ontario community colleges this week (St Lawrence College in Kingston) for an international education leadership seminar, we were shown an innovative new technician program (2 and 3 year diploma options) for the maintenance of the fast growing number of wind turbines. These technicians work in pairs, climb a few hundred meters up in the towers, work in the restricted and complex small spaces, and have to learn to repel down in case their colleague would get injured while working at that height.

This college has been a leader in Ontario (and Canada) in the field of sustainable energy equipment maintenance. Our host Don (Dean International at St Lawrence) also showed us a special heat absorbing wall which heats (when needed) and cools (when needed) the technical laboratories of these kind of programs inside the new building.

Seneca School of Aviation

Today we visited the Seneca School of Aviation located at the Peterborough airport. Important for a few new colleagues of the Seneca International team to know this campus. It is about an hour drive from our main campus at Newnham in North York. The campus has been custom designed for the degree program in aviation from which the graduates also walk away with a full commercial pilot license. In addition this school offers 2 and 3 year diploma programs in airport operations & safety.

The campus has almost 30 training aircraft and 10 simulators of different types & levels.

The campus simulates as much as possible an airport and airline environment. Very cool.

FC Toronto

Our son Mark got us two tickets to a game from the FC Toronto which plays in the American professional soccer (football) league, the MLS. Beautiful evening to be among 27,000 people enjoying a very decent game which Toronto won with 1-0. They are having a good season.

Very good atmosphere in the stadium - an all around nice evening mid-week!

Hilary taking off again

Hilary and two friends took off tonight from Buffalo airport via Washington to Lisbon, Portugal. Let the fun begin (like last summer) with this time 5 weeks in Portugal, Spain, Hungary (big five day pop concert), Austria, Germany, Holland and then Ireland. Mary and I will meet Hilary in Amsterdam in early September and after a fun filled weekend in Holland, Mary and Hilary will venture into Ireland before flying back to Toronto.

Hilary plans to take off again in November to Thailand on her way to a year of work in "down under" Australia together with one of her nursing colleagues. Oh to be young and well trained...!

Have fun and stay safe, Hilary!!

Annual summer family vacation

We had a great week in a cottage near Fenelon Falls, where we rent a cottage every summer with Mary's brother, sister and our kids. Last year Hilary was in Europe and Mark in Calgary, but they were both with us this time. From left to right in the front: Chris and Matt (two friends from Mark), Hilary, Mark, Spencer (with broken leg this time) and Ralph. Second row from right to left: Susan, Fiona, Parker, Marcy and Wils. In the back: Joe, Mary and me.

Relaxing with Hilary who will leave tomorrow again for a few weeks Europe (and in November for a year to Australia), while Mark shows off at the solo water-ski....

Mary watches it all and shakes her head. But our kids are 50% her gene-pool!

I had some fun in our little laser sailing boat, but we concluded that we will put it up for sale again because we don't get enough use out of it. Might have been my last hurray with such action...