M-PESA in the UK please ASAP

It costs US $15 to wire US $90 from the US to the UK and UK £12 to wire US $105 from the UK to the US. This is blatant extortion and what's more the aggravation involved in a) trying to receive the money (apparently the Western Union agents between Waterloo and Camberwell Green are only interested in sending money given they told me the network was down on the afternoon of 21 May, despite subsequent evidence to the contrary) and b) sending the money belongs to a bygone era.

If Kenyans can send and receive money via their mobile phones, then surely we should be able to do international transfers from the UK (this notwithstanding), especially since Vodafone partnered with Safaricom to set up mpesa initially.

Starting out young

I was trying to chat to my friend online when I noticed something weird about her status - it was full of consonants, sometimes in duplicate or triplicate and I thought to myself, it looks as if her account has been hacked. It transpired that her daughter had amended her status by "messing about" with her mother's phone. Under interrogation, her daughter simply beamed an angelic smile - she'll be 4 later on this year.

Well, the soon to be 4 year old has been trumped by a soon to be one year old whose delight on receiving her first laptop is all too apparent - she hits it repeatedly and found a novel way to use the mouse, by placing it against her ear.

Talkin' bout a revolution

Can you think back to a time BEFORE sliced bread? Nope, neither can I and yet it wasn't all that long ago that we ate bread by tearing off hunks. Then, a light bulb went off in someone's head and sliced bread was the result. The concept of slicing bread was so ingeniously simple I'm sure the originator must have had a Eureka moment similar to Archimedes in his bath tub or to Isaac Newton when the apple fell on his head.

I'm back, he's back!

With his latest defeat of the Fed at the Madrid Masters Open, Rafael Nadal has become the first and youngest tennis player to amass 18 Masters' title. Yesterday's win saw him overtake the Fed and Andre Agassi who have 17.
His problems in the last year have been well documented and I suspect his personal problems affected him more than his physical ones.
I fully expect him to reclaim the Coupe de Mousequetaire at Roland Garros in a few weeks time.

Vamos Rafa!!