I need to buy a parrot.

The highlight of my day today was when I wrote a nested foreach loop in Stata on some cleaning code. (Once the data entry firm gives us the data I write code that flags possible logical/skip pattern mistakes, then the data analysts check the hard copies against the soft copy on the stuff I flagged.) It was wicked awesome. Yesterday at lunch I had some errands to do in town so I rode my bike in. Instead of my usual trying to get bodas to race me, I ended up in next to a bike with a kid with his brother on the back.  They asked me for some money, and the kid wasn't shy at all and was way good at English, so we had a funny conversation about whether he had asked me for money just because I was white, how he had managed to get the sugar cane in his hand if he didn't have any money, and what he needed the 10 shillings for.  He said he wanted to buy a parrot. Then I went shopping at the market and got unnecessarily ticked off that the store actually has bulk-buying penalties (2 kg of laundry soap was 295 shillings, 1 kg was 142 shillings, and 500 g was 70 shillings). I was (jokingly) thinking: how the hell is this country going to develop unless they encourage big-box Walmart-style consumerism? Sheesh.

I'm headed to Nairobi tonight to run the marathon on Sunday. I'm not in any kind of marathon shape, so I'm expecting to finish in about 4 hours.  Should be good times.

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