Mo Ibrahim and his award

Mo Ibrahim, a Sudan native, who created and sold Celtel, a prosperous cell phone company. Mo Ibrahim is a very wealthy man, enough so that he set up the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. This foundation grants money yearly to former heads of state that were determined a good leader. So far Ibrahim has handed out two awards, each of which will receive half a million dollars a year, for the first 10 years, then 200,000 dollars every year after that until they die. In addition, they would receive funding for promotion of certain things like HIV/AIDs awareness, total 200,000 dollars year beginning the first year. The award is handed out yearly, based on an index created by a student of Harvard, by taking certain criteria into effect. That criteria is Safety and Security, Human Development, Sustainable Economic Development, Rule of Law, and Participation and Human Rights. Ibrahim is one of the 100 most important people in Africa.

Broken Thumb?

So I jammed my finger about a month ago, playing flag football. I didn’t think anything of it, it was just a jam right? Well either it was and I just keep aggravating it, or something more serious happened. I am normally able to play sports through pain. I never missed a game in high school due to an injury of any kind, but I actually had to take myself out of the basketball game tonight, because I could put any pressure on my thumb. When I go to catch the ball, it hurts. When I dribble the ball with my right hand it hurt. When I was try and steal the ball, it would hurt, and after grabbing a simple rebound it hurt, I finally decided I should stop and try and figure out what is wrong. Eight hours after the game and I can officially say my thumb hurts the same as it did when I was playing, so I’m guessing something a little more serious than a jam finger occurred.

Studying

One thing I regret about high school is the fact that I never learned how to truly study. Everything in high school came easy to me. All the classes had attendance policies so I couldn’t skip out, so I heard all the lectures, and was able to recall them, without studying, during the test. Now this leaves me at a disadvantage in college. I never had to work hard in high school, so now in college I have to learn how to put distractions aside and stay focused. If I had learned to properly study in high school, I wouldn’t be up at 5 am writing blogs to fill in time, between figuring out how study and then actually trying to retain a semester’s worth of information for 3 classes in one night. Maybe that also feeds in with procrastination. I’ve put these blogs off till almost the last minute, just as I put off studying for the finals I have today, back to back to back. We will see how that goes.

Marketing (Product Catagories)

So I was studying for my Marketing final, and though I should blog this for some odd reason. Products can be categorized in four categories. Those categories include: Convenience products, Shopping products, Specialty products, and Unsought products. Convenience products are products that are relatively inexpensive items that merit little shopping efforts. These would include candy, soft drinks and car washes. Shopping products are products that require comparison shopping because it is usually more expensive than a convenience product is found in fewer stores. Such items are washers and dryers, furniture, and clothing. A specialty product is a particular item that consumers search extensively for and are very reluctant to accept substitutes. These are items like Rolex Watches, Bose Speakers and Rolls Royce automobiles. Unsought products are products unknown to the potential buyer or a known product that the buyer does not actively seek, such as insurance, encyclopedias and burial plots.

Camp Shetek

Two summers ago, I was invited by my youth pastor to help be a counselor at Camp Shetek in Minnesota. We were taking a group of middle school kids up there from our church, and he needed another set of eyes. Most of the other counselors were around my age, and since there were only two people from my graduating class from our church, he didn’t have much to choose from for counselors. Camp Shetek is a beautiful camp located on the south side of Lake Shetek. During the week, we got a chance to share our testimonials with the kids, as well as play games, like basketball and hoccer, a mix of handball and soccer. Then we got the just to get in smaller groups and learn more about certain topics the camp felt necessary to go over. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was playing war games at the boy scout camp. About 300 kids and counselors each with a team color flag on their back raced around, trying to find certain objects while protecting their own flag, and trying to eliminate the other team by grabbing their flag.

Soccer (3)

Last summer was pretty uneventful for me. The being of the summer started off, pretty good. My sister plays on the high school soccer team, and her coach was my coach in high school. So, I volunteer to help the girls out and work with them so they become better players and teammates. I’m not the only person from my class to return and help out. One of my best friends, from high school, who happens to also be an ex girlfriend, comes and we use our collective knowledge, to not only help the girls we teach, but each other also. The main reason we go back is to give back to the program that helped us, but we also have a special task to help the coach get a different perspective on players. The players open up more to us, because we are closer to their age, and have been teammates or helpers for the past 5 or so years, so we get some insight that the coach might not, and splitting up practices is easier with more authority figures.

Soccer (2)

So, I started out a little shaky, as I got use to the indoor rules, and my goalie box. The first shot took at me squeaked by. Getting the worst out of the way I was able to settle down and play decent soccer. After two or three times playing, I was given a complement, as being one of the best goalies, that plays on Friday nights. Over the 6 weeks I’ve played with them on Friday I’ve probably played close to thirty or thirty five games. While I have played that much, I have still yet to break ten goals given up. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to play the past couple of weeks due to various issues, including a broken thumb from playing intramural flag football with a bunch of buddies from my freshman year. Being the only member of the team allowed to use your hands, a broken thumbs doesn’t work well with being goalie.