It has been reported by both Nyasa Times and Daily Times that University of Malawi (UNIMA) has embarked on a massive retrenchment drive among non-academic staff. This exercise, according to Nyasa Times, is aimed at boosting the salaries of UNIMA’s academic staff. If this true, it is a very welcome development. Actually, it is long overdue. UNIMA should have privatized catering services, accomodation etc. many years ago. The costs of feeding and accomodating a student in UNIMA must be calculated and itemized based on the prevailing market forces. The courses must also be fully modularized and semesterized. The cost for each module must be worked out based on the following parameters: 1) market value of the module, 2) scarcity of its teaching staff, 3)learning materials including lab equipment. If a student registers for six modules in a semester, s/he has to pay for each one of them. If s/he fails some modules, s/he has to pay for them again if she wants to register for them in the future. You will agree with me that the annual fee per student would be much higher than the current MK25,000. Students would then be admitted into the UNIMA in three fee categories:

1. Bursary: This should cater for top class students. It must be the government’s task to provide enough bursaries (not loans) to these students. The private sector could also come in with bursaries for some of these top students after agreeing with the students on specific terms.
2. Loans: The government should also be in a position to provide loans to some good students who fail to get the bursaries.
3. Self funding: This should cater for students who have satisfied minimum requirements for admission into the UNIMA similar to the current non-residential students. The only difference now will be that the amount of money that these students pay will be the same as everybody else.

Nyasa Times further reports that the academicians will also be trimmed in order to remain with a small, efficient and highly paid intellectual community. I am quite surprised to learn that some faculties (education, humanities and science) are overstaffed. For a long time, I have been of the view that the University of Malawi is generally understaffed and that there is no single department that can claim to have excess staff. If (and only if) the Nyasa Times report is true, this development is also a very welcome one. But more than this, one former UNIMA lecturer told me that UNIMA must implement a differentiated salary structure in order to ensure that it retains staff in some departments. He told me that in other countries, members in some university departments receive higher salaries compared to their collegues in other departments. This happens because Universities and industry compete for staff in those highly paid departments. In UNIMA, some departments are severely understaffed and on the verge of collapse simply because their graduates and profession,in a general, have a huge market value both within and outside the country. Therefore, it would be very wise for UNIMA to implement a higher salary scale for them. The other factor coming into play is that, because of the market value of graduates and staff specialiazed in various fields offered by these departments, they attract larger numbers of students compared to other departments.Their average work load is also generally huge but the salary is the same.Therefore, UNIMA will not make a mistake by implementing a differentiated salary structure. These are my humble thoughts as we, together, steer UNIMA in the right direction.

Popularity: 9% [?]

In the evening of Thursday, 1st May, 2008, I had a great outing in Shinsen. Mr. Shimpei Mori, Mr. Kiyoshi Chikaoka and Mr. Akitoshi Nomoto took me to one of the restaurants where we had dinner together. These guys are former Japanese volunteers in Malawi. We ate a lot of delicious stuff. We had a good three hours of chatting. They shared their Malawian experiences with me. They also laughed at me when I said “Watashi wa Malawi-jin desu”, in Japanese, which means “I am a Malawian natonal”. They laughed at me because this reminded them about Malawi Gin, a popular spirit in Malawi. They also pointed out that the Japanese word “doomo” has the same meaning as the Chichewa word “zikomo”. Mr Chikaoka also told me that he still keeps a DVD of Malawian music. He specially mentioned the song that was done by Fugie Kasipa and Njati Njedede. 

Although the food was not photographed, trust me it was nice. Chikaoka-san is also missing out because he was the one taking most of these photos. Towards the end of our outing, as I was preparing to contribute to the bill, Mr Mori told me that the three of them will pay the whole bill as it was my welcome dinner. I felt greatly honored by their kind gesture. I am very grateful to them for the sumptuous dinner. Arigatoo gozaimasu (Thank you very much)!

Popularity: 12% [?]

I visited the iwebtool page for the first time in July 2007. I was prompted to visit the site because for sometime I had been receiving a good number of visitors on my blog from their backlink checker service. My curiosity to know more about them drove me to their page and I instantly fell in love with their Backlink checker, PageRank Checker and Google PageRank Prediction tools. The performance of these tools was great such that I could not even think of searching for other tools. When one searches for “PageRank Checker” on Google, the first position was always occupied by the iwebtool home page. Such was the dominance of the iwebtool page!

Towards the end of 2007, I began to notice some problems with their services. The PageRank checker service became so inconsistent. Apart from the inaccuracies and differences in the PageRank results from different Data Centers (DCs), some results were above the PR range of 1 to 10. Some friends of mine on BlogCatalog also took note of this problem. At first, I thought that this was probably a temporal problem. But now 4 months into 2008, the problem continues. Their backlink checker service also produces few back links compared to the Google webmastertools. The PageRank prediction system is not functioning at all. The iwebtool home page has lost its first position on Google SERPs for the “PageRank Checker” key word. With all these developments, I tend to wonder if the iwebtool people are still there out there? Please give me a shout and let me know what you are doing in order to reclaim your lost glory.

Popularity: 18% [?]

On Thursday, the Charge d’affaires at the Japanese Embassy in Malawi, Mr Hiroshi Matsumoto,  announced that with effect from next year, the government of Japan will be offering research scholarships to two Malawian scholars. Currently, they offer only one research scholarship and I happen to be the 2008 recipient. Chomora Mikeka of Yokohama National University and Felix Kamala of Kyushu University received this scholarship in 2006 and 2007 respectively. The addition of one more research scholarship is a very good development. According to the Daily Times, Mr Matsumoto also announced that Japan will also be offering scholarships to undergraduate and technology students. The Daily Times article does not disclose the number of scholarships offered to be Malawian students in the latter category. 

Those of you who frequent this blog might recall that some few months ago, I blogged about the the opening of the Japanese Embassy in Malawi. In that post, I pointed out that I was expecting the Japanese government to increase the number of scholarships offered to Malawian students with the opening of the Embassy in Malawi. Now that this has come to pass, I am very excited. Besides that, the increased number of scholarships to Malawian students implies that there will be an increase in the number of Malawians here in Japan and it will be fun to be in touch with more people from home. In my Japanese language class of less than 20 students, there are 4 guys from Indonesia. These guys have huge fun amongst themselves.

Malawian students who are interested in applying for the Japanese government scholarships must contact their Embassy in Lilongwe. You must also take a look at the Study in Japan site. This site provides comprehensive information regarding studying in Japan. Wishing you all the best :))

Popularity: 24% [?]

I am already enjoying the atmosphere in Hirota Lab at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokodai) The major reason I opted for Hirota Lab was because of the world class research that Hirota-sensei has been doing over the years. But besides that, the other major attribute that made me settle for his lab is the international atmosphere in this lab. There are more than 25 students from more than 10 countries. Apart from Malawi, my nation and Japan, the host nation, other nations represented in this lab include Vietnam, China, Croatia, Bulgaria, Tunisia, Canada, Cuba, Brazil and Peru. I am so far the only member from Sub-Saharan Africa. But I have been informed that a Nigerian student will be joining us in October 2008. This is globalization at its best!

I have so far attended one seminar, where Hirota-sensei was making giving general research guidelines for this academic year. On Friday evening, I attended a journal artcle reading session, where one student led the session. We discussed a Robotics paper. After this session, we went for a welcome party organized by the lab where there was a lot of eating and drinking. I was surprised to observe that only three of us were not taking alcohol.

Popularity: 29% [?]

I am two weeks old here in Tokyo, Japan. I am having a great time even though I am terribly missing my family and that most people here do not speak English. I live in Komaba International Student House which is close to the Komabatodaemae Train Station on the Keio Inokashira Line. My days here in Japan have been made easy because Hrvoje Markovic, a Croatian PhD student in Hirota Lab, is helping me to adapt to life here in Japan. Actually, he is the one who welcomed me at Narita Airport. He continues to help me on a day to day basis. I am very grateful to him.

I started attending Japanese lessons on Wednesday, 16 June 2008. I have started with Class A, the lowest level. My classmates are from Indonesia, Phillipines, Bangladesh, Turkey, Iran, Nigeria, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Nigeria and England. Hirakawa-sensei and his team have been super. I am now mastering the Hiragana and Katakana characters. I can now construct a few sentences in Japanese.

On Thursday evening, I attended Jingjing Wang’s birthday dinner in Machida. Jingjing is a Chinese PhD student in Hirota Lab. There was a lot of food. I saw my new friends eating crabs, octopus, sushi etc. I, however, ate only spaghetti with bacon and some pizzas. But it was a great experience for me.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Today, many organizations in the world strive to have high definition video communication services at their disposal. But the quality of video communication systems currently on the market is generally poor. As a result, a search for high definition video communication services continues at an ever increasing rate. In one of my aimless browsing sessions, I stumbled on a video conferencing bridge site which provides a complete range of high definition video communications solutions that use advanced technology to deliver a true telepresence experience. Those of you in search of such services may consider giving them a try and see if they are within your liking.

Popularity: 35% [?]

I arrived in Japan on Thursday night at about 20:00hrs Japanese time. I initially intended to write one post while in Johannesburg but I failed because my schedule was so tight. Let me also take this as opportunity to issue an apology to Candy, Arnold, Richard, Gary and many others for failing to link up with them while in South Africa.

I flew from Jo’burg to Hong Kong on South African Airways (SAA) again.It was a 13hour flight but it was delayed for two hours. We started off from Jo’burg at about 19:00 (South African time) and arrived in Hong Kong at about 14:00 (Hong Kong time). In spite of the delay in Jo’burg, I still managed to catch my final flight (Japan Airlines) at 14:50. I, however, was afraid that my bag was going to be delayed at Hong Kong International Airport because of the little connecting time. But I thank God because I found my bag upon arrival at Narita International Airport. This was great because all my stuff was in the bag!

Now I am three days old here. Everything looks strange but the Japanese people are so nice and friendly. It also looks so crime free compared to South Africa. I will be attending some orientation sessions on Monday.

Popularity: 44% [?]