Okay. This is going to be chaotic so please just bear with me.
I am not a professional writer. Let’s first get that out of the way. I did not study literature at High school (The reason is that i found that studying Literature just drains all the juice out of the very enjoyable act of reading a novel and watching it like a movie in my head. I just want to enjoy the darn novel! What do you mean “Dissect the concept of Ineptitude with reference to the previous chapter”! What is that BS, Miss Val? Now i have to explain what Wole Soyinka was thinking when she wrote that? Miss me with that BS).
What was i saying? Oh yeah. I am not a professional writer so do not expect professional writing here. I am writing directly from memory. Closest thing you’re going to get to hearing it directly from these blessed lips of mine.
Now then. The Jinja thing.
First of all, I’d like to thank Sabrina. Very amazing person. Passionate about Law and Tech simultaneously. Balancing law stuff and her work with Freelancer’s lounge. I have no idea how she does it. An inspiration to all. Damn. This is excessive meat riding. Let me dial it down.
Sabrina introduced me to Mr Francis, who is the Google Dev lead at Jinja and it is via Francis and a timely application that i managed to secure a spot for my presentation that i so tastefully chose to title: AI Situational Awareness: A Beginner’s introduction to the future.
I’m attaching the slides at the end btw. I think they came out great, given the circumstances
*foreboding music*
Damn. There should be a wordpress AI thingie that enables some sound effects to play as someone scrolls past a specific spot on your website. To give your site intrigue and character. Lemme add that to my wall of ideas. (There’s an actual wall btw. It looks sick 🤫)
Aaaanywhooo, back to the original story. Soo, in the days leading up to the event, i was nervous asf. Like, really really nervous. My first presentation about AI to a bunch of people. What if i botch it. What if i trip and fall as i walk to the stage. Or even… GASP
What if it’s like that one time when you almost step out of the house to go to work, and you realize you’re not wearing a shirt, but were too lost in your crazy train of thoughts to realize you just nearly traumatized your neighbours.
Anyway, needless to say, i was nervous. Quite nervous. But my busy schedule doesn’t permit me time to feel nervous. I worked all week with absolutely no idea how i am getting to Jinja or when i will make the presentation slides.
Fast forward to Friday. I had about 5 meetings that day. Started out in Bwaise. Then Wandegeya, then i went to Naguru. Then i went to Kisaasi. Then finally, Ntinda. By that time, i was spent. It was 6pm in the evening. Google Presentation is tomorrow at 8am. I am in the wrong district and i have no idea what i am going to do. Fml.
7pm friday evening. I reach my place and start packing a few things I’d need for the next day. My Mifi, some clothes, the Casa Pullup banner, earphones etc. I avoided my bed like The Plague. I knew that the moment i touch that bed, all my resolve to travel to Jinja at 8pm in the evening would fade.
Around that time, i received a message from someone i was hoping to meet in Jinja that they’re not going to come. *Sigh*. Fml. We soldier on.
At 9pm, i was finally done. So i locked up the place and set off. I got a jaj to Bwaise. Then a taxi to Mukono. Reached Mukono at 10pm too tired to even can. I couldn’t even can anymore.
I got out, waited for a bit and a taxi headed to Jinja showed up. More expensive than anticipated, but i anticipated that too. I paid up. We set off. That driver was a mad man.
That man. Oh my Lord.
And you wanna hear the crazy thing? He wasn’t even the worst of it. The guy that drove us on the returning journey was a demon. I swear to God that man had a death wish. But more about that hellspawn later.
We crossed that bridge at around midnight
Anywho, i reached Jinja at around 10 past midnight. There i was, standing with a huge pull up banner in one hand, a heavy laptop-laden-looking bag on my back and pockets that looked to have a smartphone and some cash in them. I know no one. Everyone looks sus as f. Everyone on the streets was drunk. Like tits up drunk. Like call-your-ex type drunk. Can’t blame them really. It was a Friday evening. It’s basically Ugandan culture at this point for everyone to get hammered on friday evening. Not me tho.
Anywho, i hopped on the first booda booda i could find and told him “Find me a safe hotel, motel or guest house i can sleep in for a night”. He promptly listed me options and i just looked at him til he realized his options were wasted on me.
We moved to the motel and it was horrible. We moved to another, it was worse. And the next was even worse so i had to go back to the first like the prodigal son. You should have seen the receptionist’s cocky smirk when she saw me trundling back. I almost turned around just to spare my fragile ego.
She took me to what was supposed to be my room and.. *sigh* Well.
When life hands you lemons.
I would have tried selling those lemons and buying at least a mango but god damn, i doubt anyone would want them. The room was small. Like really small. It only had enough space for the bed and a tiny table. The door was being held together by prayers and a tiny latch which only locks from the inside. There was no way to lock it from outside, soooooo that made toilet breaks very complicated. I basically had to pack up my laptop and all my stuff (except the pull up) into my bag and go with it to the toilet every time i had to go. Needless to say, i only went once. The bathrooms were clean tho. Soo, that’s a plus.
At around 1am, i begun work on my slides.
If there’s one thing 17 years of academia has taught me, it’s how to beat a deadline in the last minute.
I poured my soul into those slides. I walked through the presentation as i made the slides. I already have all the relevant facts and knowledge up in my noggin. All i had to do is create some visual aids.
Lol. Visual aids.
I wonder how that would spread
I imagine it’d be like PinkEye but without the pinkness of the eye. You’d just see the eye lose weight as the months go by. Damn. Imagine your eye losing weight. Lol.
Sorry. I derailed. Where was i?
Yeah. The slides. I finished them and finally caught some shut-eye at around 3 in the night. Standard sleeping time for me if I’m being honest, so i didn’t mind it at all. Right before sleeping, i checked on my slated presentation time. 9am. Fuck.
Woke up at 7. Couldn’t shower because some guy decided to chose that exact time to take a long heartfelt shower. Bro was in there singing at the top of his voice. Also, i would not have enjoyed that shower because I’d be plagued with images of my laptop and banner being stolen. Aint no way I’m letting al my efforts be for nothing just coz of one shower. I chose to forego it.
I washed my face in the sink and realized i forgot to pack a toothbrush. Made a mental note to buy a brush on my way to the Hotel where the thingie was going to be.
BTW i don’t know if you can tell, but i am writing this story in batches. I am a little too busy to spend a couple of hours here typing a story, but i am also really enjoying this story telling thing, sooo yeah. I write ko, i code ko, i write ko. So if it’s incoherent at some point, bear with me. I told you I am not a writer. I’m a coder.
I better finish this story before I lose gas.
I got a booda boda, told him to find me the nearest dry cleaners (because i did not pack a flat iron. Go figure). First one was closed. Second was open. Lovely lady. She tells me to go shirtless as the gets to work on straightening out my shirt. I wait patiently as she works. I learnt some Lusoga from her.
“Aye Omusaada Oyo” means “But that man!”
She finished. I hopped onto my Jaj and went to the Hotel. Time check: 8:20 am. I reached the hotel and called Francis. He was already there. Called me upstairs. I trudged up. A ball of nerves.
Quick side note here. I went to the bathroom and saw something funny stuck on the wall. Check it.
Aaaanywhoo, I get there. Meet francis. Super cool guy. We’re the first 2 people there. I get started setting up my pull up banner and preparing for my presentation.
About an hour later, more presentors arrive. And then some more people. Then a lot of people. And the whole while, there’s an entire circus doing backflips in my stomach. I am so damn nervous. SMH. I decide to deal with this the only way i know how. Coding. I open up one of my many projects and get to work.
Francis takes the stage. Gives a little introductory speech and introduces the first presentor. Meanwhile, it is around this time that i notice that the projector is spoilt. It’s not projecting well, but it’s barely noticable anyway.
First presentor takes the stage. He’s presenting about Cyber security. Super cool guy. I was miffed that he did not mention the Crowdstrike issue. It was a low hanging fruit. It was literally all everyone was talking about . Like WTF man. You’re doing a presentation about Cyber security 2 days after Crowdstrike takes down every major business’s computers and you do not mention crowdstrike?
I made a mental note to mention that during my presentation.
This guy’s slides were so goooood. And they were in that Google Theme. You know, the one that Google uses during their I/O presentations. Like WTF. Where did he get those? Did google send them to him?
Guy’s presentation gets done. It’s my turn. Soo, i take the stage.
Deep breath in.
Then i started speaking.
*epic choral music*
If you want to know the song that was this one
I spoke my mind. I started off easy. Introducing them to the very idea of Intelligence, AI, Data, training and all that. Then we moved on to the juicy stuff. Examples of AI systems and their classifications.
Honestly, it felt damn good. Definitely worth all the bother. I liked seeing their faces as they listened. They actually looked to be learning something new.
I called a volunteer and guided her in how to make a video game using claude. She was left thunderstruck. Shoook. Bamboozled. Befuddled even. Confounded. Bumfuzzled.
I could keep going btw. Miss Valentine had us revising Thesauruses in preparation for the composition writing paper in Form 4. A salty bead of despondency cascades my visage every time i take a lonely stroll down memory lane.
Aanywho, i talked. For about 43 minutes. Here’s the presentation.
And here’s the slides (compressed because i don’t want to finish your data trying to download a 12mb pdf file)
After my presentation, I was feeling hungry so i ate a cookie. It cost 4200 UGX. Pretty cheap for a cookie that tasty.
After my presentation, there was a guy who presented about Angular. The programming language by Google. I swear, that presentation was painful to watch. Everyone was soooo lost. Only about 6 people in that room had a laptop. 4 of them were speakers. The guy was so knowledgable and so eloquent and such a good speaker, but his crowd was just not the best crowd for the knowledge he was sharing. But hey. What do i know. Aanywho, he presented and finished.
A Web3 team presented. Very cool guys. They knew their shit. They finished then a Flutter specialist from Benin presented. Cool guy. He presented WASM from flutter and followed it up with like 7 reasons you shouldn’t use WASM.
Then lunch time. Good food. The chefs were cooking (*snicker*). Then pics (of which i have not yet recieved those pics btw)
Then all of a sudden everyone left. Like, in the span of 10 minutes, the room was empty except for me and Benin guy who were trying to solve a flutter problem which causes images to not load on Flutter Web.
Then he also left and i was left standing there. And that’s when i realized i barely made any new friends in Jinja. But then again, i should cut myself some slack. I was barely in the district for a day. Anyway, i got my stuff and trudged downstairs. Huge bag in one hand and Pullup banner in the other. I heard some guys were going to check out innovation village Jinja, so i came along and we went there. It was a long walk. Along the way, i talked to a very interesting young man. I suck at names. Let’s just call him The IYM.
The IYM told me he works at some IT company but he’s not too happy there. He builds softwares that he never uses and his company barely understands the people they’re building for.
Really got me thinking.
Also, Jinja is a beautiful town. I took a few nice pics. Check these out. This building had a garden right infront of their offices. Like… hooooowwww. Don’t the plants cover the window displays?
Anyway, we reached Innovation village. It’s one huge room with a lot of nerds in cubicles doing lots of nerdy stuff. The architecture was quite impressive though. It looked different. It just looked well done. Like the people were not crunching to finish the work but were actually putting time and work into it. And the finishing? Mmmm 👌🏽 Exquisite. I mean, look at this ceiling pillar thingie.
Oh btw, that person I’m talking to in the video is IYM. Really wish i could remember his name. I should buy Meta Rayban glasses.
I got onto a Jaj and left Innovation Village and IYM and headed to the taxi park. This super polite conductor ushered me into a very cozy looking death trap of a taxi. I sat down, prepared some music and strapped in for a crazy ride (It was around 4:20 in the afternoon by that time).
This driver?
Lord.
Ah ah
I recorded a video of how fast we were going because i was moderately sure no one would believe me. This guy drove so fast that the lady sitting infront of me accepted her fate, pulled out a Bible and started praying for her spirit in the event of an untimely death.
And see the song that was playing on my spotify at the time of this drama
Last march of heroes. Lol even. My neighbours were all freaking out, banging on the ceiling of the taxi to signal that this man needs to slow down, but either he couldn’t hear them or this sadistic a-hole actually enjoyed giving people mini-heart attacks because wtf.
Aanyway, i got home. Freshened up and slept for a couple of hours. And that’s how my first trip to Jinja went.
Actually second. But that’s a story for another day.
Lessons learnt from this:
1) I need more friends from other districts and countries.
2) I need to travel more. Jinja was amazing. I wonder how Arua is. Heck, i wonder how Mbale is. Dare i say even Nimule?
3) I am really good at public speech, especially about things i am passionate about. And i am passionate about tech.
Yeah. I’m done. That’s all i have. There’s really not much else i can write about that.
I don’t know how to close off these things. How do writers close off a writing. Is it a writing? Or an article. Or a post.
Idk. Lemme just say bye. Til next time. Yeah. Bye.
PS: If you ever need someone super knowledgable about AI to talk to your people or to grace your event with tonnes of wisdom, wit and charm, reach out to me. I mean, you’re already on my website. Might as well send an email too.
Here’s my card: codewithsimeon.com
Simeon(http://codewithsimeon.com)