Busted!

No, Anil and I have not been arrested :-) Actually, one of the advantages of hanging around with cops is that you get to ride in their cool cars. In this case, it was Commander Cornelia's a tricked out BMW 5 series...hot!

We met this morning with a private security firm affiliated with the police -- they seem like really good guys who want to make a difference in the region (along with, of course, making a good living doing security.) They were so interested in our project and really willing to help. We learned from our client (Business Against Crime) that this region is different fro the rest of the South African states in that there is an unusually high level of cooperation between the state police and the local security firms. Before I left the US I'd seen a documentary that presented these firms in a very negative light -- and it's true, there are some fliy-by-night operations out there. but there ar also a buch of firms that are really doing good work in conjunction with the state police and filling gaps in under-serviced areas.

One of the things my little team is going to do is to build a prototype web application for smart phones that will help people report security incidents and get help etc. It will be a like an iPhone application. Believe it or not, we learned that the local phone provider has already deployed a 3G network in the area (that's the super-fast wireless network) and they are introducing iPhones and other smart phones to the market now. I say 'believe it or not" because the state of Mpumalanga is quite rural, but that doesn't mean the people here are happy with slow wireless!

In other news, we have been making group meals with everyone...tonight is my turn. I'm making veggie lasagna, salad and garlic bread. We have a few people who are vegetarian and, well, it's hard to go wrong with lasagna. So easy and I can serve the whole group in one shot. Also, we've been eating soooo much meat...it'll be nice to have something alittle lighter.

Just now I was teaching a few of the other people on my team how to use the Sony Vegas video editing software -- they are so excited about it and it's fun to teach them. It's nice to actually know what I am doing for a minute and feel like an expert on something. Being here is great, but very foreign -- even when I was teaching the software one of the people had it in Spanish, so it was a bit of a challenge to teach it without really being able to read what was on her screen.

Oh, and driving has been fun. The GPS has been indispensible and now I know how to drive on the left side of the road :-) Which some people claim is the right side of the road.

Ok, time to put away the computer and get some lasagna in the works!