Countdown to Namibia

After my trip to London and Tanzania I knew I had caught the international travel bug - BAD. Every day at work I stare across my desk at the 50 x 70 National Geographic world map and think about the possibilities. An infatuation with flight price checking on kayak.com also seems to work its way into my daily activities.

There are few places in the world I don't want to visit. Places in Africa, however, always seem to rise to the top.

When I was 17 or 18 and still lived at home I stumbled upon (of course this was before stumble upon) the Christmas Island Marathon. The annual event held on the Australian Island just south of Indonesia. It made perfect sense, train for a marathon, travel to a tiny remote island in the Indian Ocean and have stories for a lifetime.

It's always seemed like a good idea.

In the last ten years I've looked up information on the Christmas Island Marathon a handful of times but the timing or desire was never quite there.

After returning from Tanzania the idea began to intrigue me more and more. The last time I had looked up the Christmas Island Marathon I couldn't find anything past 2006 or 2007, I was concerned that the event was no longer being held.

A few weeks ago, when the idea once again crossed my mind, a google search revealed information about the 2009 Christmas Island Marathon. Thrilled that the event is still going on I got information about travel to the island. I was getting very excited about the idea.

I don't know what the google search was but later that day I came across something that just clicked with me. I knew, right from the time I read about it that it was for me: the 2010 Namibia Marathon.

I registered, secured my spot, and paid my registration fee of 150 GBP. I have a shit load of work ahead of me but am incredibly excited about the challenge. The wait for my Tanzania trip was horribly long and drawn out. This time I get to work each and every day towards the trip.

And so, I have begun my training for the 2010 Namibia marathon and I couldn't be happier.

PRK Laser Corrective Surgery

Six minutes after I first met my surgeon he was removing the epithelial layer of my eye. As what I can only describe as a drill descended towards my cornea, I couldn't help but think about the multitude of disclaimers, both pre and post op procedures, and my coworkers suggestion to go "one eye at a time".

Despite the numerous eye dilations, the dry eyes, the nerves and cost, my experience with PRK was amazing. There was virtually no pain during the procedure and the despite minor complications my recovery was almost pleasant.

Four weeks ago, after a couple weeks of pre-op appointments I had PRK laser eye surgery to correct my astigmatism and near-sightedness. PRK is similar to LASIK only the reshaping of the eye to focus light occurs on the outside of the eye as opposed to under a flap.

My Optometrist told me that LASIK is so popular because it gives people the instant gratification Americans seek. With LASIK, your vision is clear almost immediately and the recovery time is very short.

While the results of PRK are about the same, (my Ophthalmologist told me there is an argument that PRK will create better vision- of course he probably says the opposite to the LASIK patients) the recovery time is much longer.

As most people who about to get PRK do, I searched the internet to read about the experiences of a few. Willingly allowing someone to scrape off some of your eye and shoot lasers in it deserves more than just a googling...but it can't hurt.

Once I had been prepped for surgery, adjusted in the chair, had my eye locked open with a ring and my eye "sucked" up (its the only way to describe it), I was asked to look directly at the light in the laser. I did. Or at least I thought I did. When the surgeon said "I don't think you're quite looking at it" I got a bit nervous. I've been using my eyes for not too short of 30 years and I have a pretty good idea of when I'm looking at something. After being instructed to look slightly left of where I was looking I got very nervous about where I was supposed to look. Should I look right at the light or just to the left of the light where the surgeon half-way suggested? After what seemed like a half a second but in reality was more like ten, I sort of went with in between the two. As the ticking of the laser machine began I became very nervous that I was doing something wrong. It was too late for questions so I just focused all my energy on keeping my stare as still as a robot's until the laser stopped.

One down one to go.

After the surgeon rinsed the residue out of my eye I could tell that my vision was pretty clear. Not crystal clear, but much clearer than I can remember. The feeling was reassuring. I thought to myself "at least you'll have vision in your right eye!"

The procedure for the left was much the same only no issues with the direction of the light. About ten seconds after the laser began ticking I heard one of the surgical tech staff say "procedure stop" followed by what seemed like a sort of sigh from the surgeon. I'm convinced my eye jumped at the fear of "procedure stopping" but after a split second of confusion my eye was right back to the light. Apparently I heard something wrong. The procedure continued and concluded about 20 seconds later.

I was ushered into a post-op chair where I saw the optometrist. Dr. Hayes was very reassuring, provided me with some eye drops and said things looked good.

For the next few days I really milked it. I got meals cooked for me, laundry done - the whole nine yards. The evening of my surgery I did have a scare; one of my protective contact lenses fell out. I talked to the surgeon on the phone and he told me to just keep the eye closed. I had an appointment at 7:45 the next morning but it's HARD to keep one eye closed for 14 hours.

My vision slowly improved, however, after three days I was scared. I could see hints of clarity but the crispness just wasn't there. I had read about how vision continued to get better after surgery. I felt as though I could get glimpses of where my vision would be and it was not great. It was a difficult few days. I knew I was one of the less than 1% of people that have significant issues.

By day four I was cleared to drive. It was great to drive without glasses but my vision was still at a point (20/40 at best in both eyes) where I felt like I shouldn't be driving.

My vision continued to get better. Still not great but I was getting to a point where I though that if it stopped improving I could still lead a happy life.

Then dumbass me was drinking with some friends at a work conference.

I should point out that the Doctor I saw in Battle Creek (near where my conference was) told me a couple drinks would be ok. What wasn't ok was me agreeing to play "belly-busters". That is the game where you run towards someone, jump in the air and bump stomachs.

I'm not a big guy and the guy who "belly BUSTED" me has some weight and height on me.

BOOM

Down goes Ryan.

Another friend told me I was bleeding from my eye. This is not what I wanted to here. I had a small cut over my right eye but I felt fine. I went to bed not worrying too much.

I awoke the next day and noticed that the vision in my right eye was significantly diminished from the previous day. After freaking out for a few hours I made an emergency appointment with my Doctor.

It turns out everything was just fine.

So, four weeks after surgery my vision is a touch better than 20/20 in my right eye and not quite 20/20 in my left.

My surgery was not cheap, $3,900 at the TLC eye center in Ann Arbor. My surgeon, Dr. Sensoli was great. My Optometrist, Dr. Hayes has been the most encouraging, friendly Doc I've ever had. I have to be careful about what I saw or the man crush accusations come out.

For those of you who are about to have or just had PRK surgery and are concerned about the surgery - it's not bad as long as you go to a reputable place.

I had virtually NO pain during recovery. As Dr. Hayes told me, with PRK you have to EARN your vision, it takes time and will test your nerves but the benefit is amazing. Waiting and hoping for your eyesight to get better is a rough experience. Trust in your surgeon and prepare for a life without glasses!

Twitter and Africa

In what may prove to be the most random thing ever, I embarked on a new nerd project today. I incorporated three interests of mine, Africa, Maps and Twitter. I wanted to compare the "twitter footprint" of each country- just how many mentions might each African country get in a week? I used tweetdeck for my "research". I quickly discovered that, using the week long search history, most of the countries had reached the maximum 100 search records. To combat this I instead searched using the hashtag #. I've never understood the reason for using hashtags but it helped this exercise since it greatly reduced the number of search records.

I went ahead and multiplied the results by a million. I did this a.), because it seems to be the way to do these things and 2, because comparing .0000001 and .0000003 isn't all that interesting, or at best, less interesting than when increased to numbers we're more used to seeing.

A few things stood out:

1. People don't often refer to their friends named Chad using hashtags. That, and I'm glad Ocho Cinco hasn't done anything worth mentioning in the last week.
2. I forgot Lesotho! Oops. I checked - zero hashtag mentions, so it's safe to say it would be yellow in the map below.
3. Differentiating between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo for this exercise is not worth the effort.
4. Not a single person mis-tweeted the word Mail by typing Mali in the last week.
5. More people live in Washtenaw County in Michigan than Western Sahara. While that isn't a surprise, it was surprising to see that the county which boasts both Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan had no #mentions in the last week.

You can click on the map below for a larger image.



I hope you enjoy this little nerd project. I've done a few others you should check out including:

Africa-US Relations
Michigan Man on the Moon
Unredeemed Giftcards

Each country is listed below in its category

Tweet Champs
Seychelles
Western Sahara
Botswana
Mauritius
Liberia
Namibia
Gabon
Madagascar

Very High
Somalia
Gambia
Ghana
Zimbabwe
Cape Verde

High
Congo
Guinea-Bissau
Kenya

Moderate
Rwanda
Swaziland
Malawi
Uganda
Sudan
South Africa
Mauritania

Low
Morocco
Djibouti
Senegal
Burundi
Zambia
Egypt
Tunisia
Congo (Kinshasa)

On Twitter life support
Libya
Mali
Eritrea
Tanzania
Ethiopia
Nigeria
Guinea

Tweet Chumps
Benin
Niger
Algeria
Sierra Leone
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Togo
Chad
Angola
Mozambique
Côte d'Ivoire
Comoros
Central African Republic
Equatorial Guinea
Sao Tome and Principe

Happy map making, wander-lusting, tweeting and blogging.

For a great perspective on the topic, check out Soyapi Mumba's Blog post

My Top 10 Pet Peeves

On any given day this list could look quite a bit different but I thought creating a list of my Top 10 Pet Peeves would be fun. I'd love to add yours to the list. Go ahead, let it out!

These are in no particular order.

1. When people pronounce the "s" in Illinois. If it doesn't belong to the state, it didn't make a noise... Get it?

2. Old people who use the u-scan at the supermarket and use change to pay for all of their "no barcode" items for which they can't read the #'s.

3. People who open the door and stand there for more than six seconds, therefore forcing you to run to the door to offer your thanks.

4. People that don't pay attention to the other bidders on the price is right and therefore don't recognize the bid that would guarantee a spot on stage.

5. Waiting in line at Subway only to discover the person in front of you brought a list of customized subs for the entire office. They often start with "Sorry, but I have a lot." Don't apologize to them, apologize to me.

6. Twitter timing out!

7. Commenters on posting boards who criticize others for their poor "grammer".

8. ohio. Both the state and THE University.

9. Ugh, Nancy Grace!

10. Heirs to Nigerian fortunes who need me to hold on to their money for awhile, but who will reward me handsomely

Discussion and Map of US-African Relationships

With President Obama's recent trip to Africa I started thinking about the political relations between the US and the many African Nations. The forgotten continent is a source of great natural resources, cultural richness and strategic geographic location.

I thought it would be interesting to facilitate a conversation on US-African relations. I've created a draft map of Africa showing each country's relationship with the United States. I've broken the map into six different categories, Negative, Strained, Neutral, Improving, Positive and Good.

These ratings ARE completely subjective. This draft is based on my knowledge of African-US relations along with some quick research. It was hard to define criteria for the six different categories I used but listed below are a few general guidelines.

Negative - Beyond minor political differences, a negative rating suggests severely strained and complex relationships.

Strained - Various issues have caused either sanctions or specific actions by the US Government.

Neutral - While some positives are included in the relationship, various issues prevent a better relationship with the US

Improving - Countries who have historically had a strained relationship with the US but are improving and steps have been made to better the relationship.

Positive - Most African Countries were placed in this category which represents a cordial relationship, mutual respect and support.

Good - Often involving military agreements with the US and strong support of each other in International groups such as the United Nations. These nations also generally have respected democratic political processes with duly elected leadership willing to work with the United States.



Again, this rating system and the ratings themselves are subjective. I welcome your comments, suggestions and criticisms. I'm really interested in facilitating a discussion on the US relationships with African countries. Let me know if you agree or disagree and WHY!

I've included the categorized list below. To get a large, high quality view of the US-African relationship map, click on the image.


Negative
Somalia
Sudan

Strained
Eritrea
Zimbabwe

Neutral
Mauritania
Gambia
DRC
Libya
Central African Republic

Improving
Liberia
Angola
Congo
Uganda
Algeria

Positive
South Africa
Burkina Faso
Ghana
Côte d'Ivoire
Guinea
Sierra Leone
Guinea-Bissau
Cape Verde
Seychelles
Mauritius
Comoros
Malawi
Madagascar
Mozambique
Rwanda
Burundi
Swaziland
Lesotho
Namibia
Gabon
Ethiopia
Kenya
Egypt
Chad
Niger
Cameroon
Equatorial Guinea
Nigeria
Benin
Togo

Good
Morocco
Mali
Senegal
Tanzania
Zambia
Botswana
Djibouti
Tunisia
Sao Tome and Principe