Theresa

Well, (Home Secretary) Theresa May did as the Tories promised and went ahead to introduce an interim measure to curb the growing numbers of immigrants into the country. As a matter of fact, the government is planning to introduce a set number for non-EU immigrants in April 2011 and at the moment, they are working hard to ensure that there is no surge in numbers of immigrants who are alarmed by this news, at least until April 2011.

In the paper, those targeted are skilled and highly skilled workers whereas international students would also be affected come April 2011. Ministers of religion, sporty people et al are exempted.

The Background of All This

From an international student’s point of view, I duly understand the problem and respect the Briton for the love of his country and the safeguarding of the national interest by being conservative. I have come across people who after establishing that I study here go right ahead to ask whether I will be going back home after my studies. Others are constantly complaining about their next door neighbours whose kids are a handful whereas others are complaining that the lack of jobs (which you may think it’s due to the recession) is attributable to non-EU immigrants in the country. The government, on the other hand, thinks there is a strain on Public Services and therefore feels the need to ‘control’ the numbers of those coming into the country; after all, they have to act in keeping with the definition of the word ‘conservative’ from which they derive their title.

As an outsider, I am aware some people are waking up and finding my invasion not really concordant with their culture or natural being. There are lots of restaurants around  – and none of them seem to serve fish and chips! There are many football clubs in the country constituting to the best football league in the world. And on the contrary, the English team does not get that far in the world cup. In other words, there is a need for more ‘Home-grown players’ in the Premier league. In short, there is need for control of non-EU professional footballers in the country, Eastern Europeans and the rest of the non-EU contingent in the quest to free up resources for the native Briton.

Missed the Point

What Theresa May introduced on the 28th of June 2010 is a cap to reduce the number of those coming to live in the country by 1,300. As earlier stated, those targeted are Tier 1 (Highly Skilled Workers) and Tier 2 (Skilled Workers) and international students. In 2008, there was a total of 273,610 international students moving into the country. The British economy gets a total of £12bn a year generated from the fees paid by international students. The common man in the street does not know that non-EU international students don’t get loans and bursaries or what have you as do the home students. As such, there is not a justifiable amount of strain that these students cause on the economy nor the Public services. They in fact pay to the last penny of their every minute spent in the country. On the other hand, it is only an imbecile who would think that Highly Skilled workers are not needed in an economy. If one can justify that they possess skills that are on demand in an economy, there really should be no time wasted on drafting such ineffective (if not detrimental) recommendation as the Home Secretary office just did. It is shooting yourself in the foot and completely forgetting who to target.

Take it or Kick it, My Recommendations:

Going through the streets of London or any major city, I would not fail to notice loiters or people that the Briton may refer to as ‘a strain on the economy’. These are the unskilled, the unproductive and criminal minded individuals who are a threat not just to the natives, but also to those who have duly earned  the right to be in the country. And shortly put, the government should target such (work out how!). As for Eastern Europeans, these, like the Briton, have a freedom of movement and I don’t see the Tories doing much about that. It may be easier ditching fish and chips for the Kebab. And as for football, do what you may, but the local boys have not been prevented from playing football. They are some of the heavily-pocketed individuals in that sector. So, may be a matter of getting your act together.

These are modern days and the human race is interacting at a very fast pace that sooner or later, there will not be a divide in race. What will be will be.

Jamesy

                          

Some breathtaking videos to increase the hype of the 2010 world cup in South Africa:

Shakira’s Waka Waka (Official FIFA 2010 Anthem)

Nike – Write the Future (The Full Length Version)

FIFA World Cup 2010 K’naan & David Bisbal – Official Video

Akon – Oh Africa

Pepsi Advert

                          

Source: LocateTV

                          

I prefer writing in verse, but this time I keep it in prose.

What is in it for some of us is a difficult question. Everybody has their own view on life. I personally find it puzzling and one I only know so much about. Yet I choose to control mine the way I want, paying attention to the fact that I may make mistakes in the process. But one thing I know and would like to uphold is the fact that life is full of mistakes and if there be an equal number of mistakes as their is of getting things right, then the more the mistakes I make now, the better.

It is imperative to have an aim in life. This is the reason behind being a little person who can sleep like a baby and dream dreams. Personally speaking, I have been shaped by my past. I embrace every bit of the story of my past, because it is who I am. What I have seen as I grow up has moulded my dreams and made me into what I want to be in the near future.

I have seen and experienced neglect in the society. I have seen motherless children, fatherless children, families without a parental figure – all due to neglect. I have seen lack of responsibility in those that claim to be societal leaders. I have seen hatred, abuse, death of innocent people. I have seen society rotting away to modern ills, corruption, nepotism and enmity. I have grown up seeing and experiencing things I don’t want my young one to see or experience. There are many people out there living miserable lives. And I relate with them because the tear they cry, I have cried and the sorrow they have, I have had. As Morgan Freeman says in the film Bruce Almighty, when we encounter problems, we look up to the sky expecting miracles. We don’t realize that we are the miracles we wanna see. I write this knowing crystal clear the miracles I want.  I want these people to laugh the laugh I have laughed and have the smile I have had. I want to be the reason for that. And I want my young ones to see different things, experience a complete life and learn to appreciate everyone the way they are. Whether different in gender or race, physical orientation or beauty, the person one may hate may be the sunshine in another’s eyes, or the moonlight of a little person somewhere.

I want my breath to sustain me until I have seen my miracle happen. And I do not ask much of the world. Just the strength to build and climb the ladder that I may be the one someone looks up to. Whatever happens, I know how to be happy. And I will be.

                          

I flip the page onto that which contains
the picture of a little me, cute, lovable,
playful and if observable in a picture, funny.
I cannot help but grimace, a tale of days past
populates my mind amidst my current scare,
a present nervous state of the mind and a
feeling of resentment towards more than one
of those I once considered my cronies.
So what has changed?

I have had to explain every single one
of those jokes I was born with,
sometimes it goes wrong and am in trouble;
paying the price of misunderstanding to a world
too gloomy and sad to process fun has been
the daily norm. Or perhaps those I was designed for
have not been around any more. And I have ricocheted
into my own cocoon, a comfort zone, a darkness of quiet
but for the sound of a scribbling pen.

From the pictures of a vibrant, dynamic dreamer
to the mirror images of a scared thoughtful femur,
I have known not where to be, what time to be,
and who to be with! Whatever I have trusted
with the childish faith I was taught to have,
has baffled and scared me out of my own skin;
they have all attempted to draw a sketch of a beast
out of a humility that I see in these pictures,
scaring a good childhood away from its owner,
in the end, imprisoning me to my own corner.

Nostalgia preserved by the Old Album
invokes a tear or two, a visible revolution
towards the expectations of a modern materialistic
world, requiring too much more from me than I am
naturally adapted to offer. Seeing in me what
can never be in me. Hearing from me what
I can never say. Yet ignoring the songs I sing
and believe in. Refusing to dance to the rhythms
produced by the dreams I dream. Belittling the
little guy. And I see no audience out there!

So I grew big. But I still talk. The truth.
A rat in the kitchen isn’t more confused
than what has become of me with age.
So I talk confused truth; I get into more
trouble, and the cycle is endless. But these
pictures reveal the corner stone with which
I was designed. Deep inside I am still the playful
baby, the funny kid if not the cute and lovable one,
and I still sleep like a baby, and dream dreams
even when the world is not dancing to my rhythms.

©J.Kisiah 28/05/10

                          

I see pictures of her but I don’t look,
I stare right into her eyes and
see the moonlight of good days shining
invitingly and nagging me to rekindle
something. Something that back in the day,
I did not have words for. Just emotions;
or may be one of those things whose name
is overused. Something right there. I can feel.

I was once a little being. Innocent and novice
in knowing how to think or what to think.
She was just part of me, I could not tell;
her face meant the world to me and my dreams
either started or ended with her angel face.
Perhaps I did not have any emotions,
it could have been a wave sweeping me aside
tearing and turning me inside out.

I was wallowing in unknown territories but
all I could muster was the courage to give a
thumbs up. I said nothing.
But I look at these pictures and feel what she
meant to me in the good old days. A comfort
deep inside pushes me back to my seat,
I feel a completeness, a happiness, an excitement
that speaks a million more words now than then.

From these pictures it seems
I have never paid much attention to the
tricks of the game. The fancy hair, the walking,
the unnecessarily big words in conversations,
the expensive, expansive and unfathomable fashion -
something that must have dug the grave
where I was to lay sadly ever after.
But I knew what I felt, and nothing else
could facilitate the respect – shall we call it -
with which her name vibrated inside my mind.

It was a small world that I owned,
deep inside of which there was something great,
the juice that kept me running day after day -
a sight that was enough for my eyes
whose ears I could not revoke.
Something in her triggered another in me
and now perusing through my old album,
I see LOVE written all over it,
from the start until age made ‘us’ part.

©J.Kisiah 25/05/10

                          

When I look at those pictures,
I feel something tantamount to
a forgotten dream, a lemon freshness
that seems to evict me from a dreamland
and cast me into another. I cherish my childhood
and anything good and tricky that came with it;
my first love, but before that, me.

So me:
I mean, if I were wine, I probably would
get better with age but my looks? Nope!
Those pictures convey a beauty that
sometimes leaves me clutching my face,
looking in the mirror, thinking, wondering
then asking: what happened?
Whatever happened, I know I had my share
of the first half of the beauty and the beast.

Those days I dreamt of my nanny
going to heaven and returning to me
clad in white and giving me the purple bananas
she used to give me. And I would retell the story
to willing ears of my mama who would give me milk,
or anything I wanted, take very good care of me
when Malaria was chasing me like I robbed it,
and just sit there with me, praying;
and I would dream of one day becoming a doctor
learning to the highest levels achievable.

Aunt Kezia, with her remarkable cigar
taking care of little me when mama was at work,
feeding me and pointing at the passing aeroplanes
and saying ‘eat so that one day you become a pilot’
and I know she wanted me to soar above the clouds
and not resting until I reached my final destination.
As little as some things looked, they are there
part of me and ineradicable from my memories.

Memories of a village child attending
First Communion classes, then Confirmation -
White top, black shorts. Kneeling. Receiving.
Blessings from second nanny before the exam.
Ndururu my beloved pet cow, Sophia,
Ndururu’s daughter and Mrembo,
Sophia’s daughter.
Issa the old dog succumbing to cancer,
Then Simba, Issa’s son who inherited the estate.
Cats were a handful, so we did with none.

Some photos in my mind remind me of love.
Just love. The love that was there whether
or not I was there and the love that was not
always smooth but there nonetheless. The love
that didn’t shun me when I made mistakes,
the love that was rarely in words but always
in actions. The love that has lived as long as I have;
that from those that mean the world to me.

There are so many changes negative -
not limited to looks! But that childish,
playful, mischievous soft spot dies
only with the last breath
and these pictures tend to bring the spot
to new life and spring a new identity in me,
I sink back to my childhood days,
and I try to remember who I am.

©J.Kisiah 22/05/10

                          

I needed to normalize my data for the sake of machine learning – i.e. training a neural network for automatic classification of unseen data. The formula I used for the normalization is ((value – minimum value)/(maximum value – minimum value)). I then rounded this to 2 decimal places.

In order to actually round off, I did another JAVA class specifically for this and used it in the main class.

This is not the most elegant programs you will ever come across but at least it does the job for me and I am sure it will do the job for someone else. The argument needs to be a text file containing numbers that need to be normalized. The other argument is the name of the text file that you want the output to be written. When you run it, it does the job quietly and doesn’t notify you of success. (It may notify you of any errors!)

You can modify it to use a scanner to input the arguments or even develop it into an applet.

This is the main class then:

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.math.*;

public class InputNormalization
{

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
    {
        String originalFile = "numbers.txt"; //PUT THE NAME OF YOUR TEXT FILE HERE
        String endFile = "numbersnormalised.txt"; //AND THE TARGET TEXT FILE HERE
        int count = 0;
        int normalcount = 0;
        double num = 0;
        double min = 20;
        double max = -20;
    //    double calculatedValue = 0.00;

        Scanner fileScan = new Scanner (new File(originalFile));

        while (fileScan.hasNext())
        {
            num = fileScan.nextDouble();
            count++;
                if (min > num) //Find the minimum value
                {
                    min = num;
                }

                if (max < num)// Find the maximum value
                {
                    max = num;
                }
        }

        fileScan.close();
        fileScan = new Scanner (new File(originalFile));
// new scanner to "rewind" the file
                Writer output = null; //for writing to a text file
                File file = new File(endFile);
                output = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file));
                output.write("The number of values in "+originalFile+" is
"+count+"\r\n"); //Number of values in the text file
                output.write("The minimum value is "+min+"\r\n");
                output.write("The maximum value is "+max+"\r\n");
                output.write("The following are the normalized values: \r\n"); 

        double values[] = new double[count];
        for (int i = 0; i < values.length; i++)
        {
            if (fileScan.hasNext())
            {
                num = fileScan.nextDouble();
                if (num == min)
                {
                   output.write("0.00 \r\n");
                }
                else
                {
                    InputDecimalRounding normalisedValue =
new InputDecimalRounding((num - min)/(max - min));
//Normalize the Data and Round it to 2dp
                    output.write(normalisedValue+ "\r\n");
                }
            }
        } //END FOR
        fileScan.close();
        output.close();
    } //END MAIN
}//END CLASS

THE INPUTDECIMALROUNDING CLASS FOLLOWS:

import java.text.*;

public class InputDecimalRounding
{

    double conversion;

    public InputDecimalRounding (double conversion)
    {
        this.conversion = conversion;
    }

    public String toString()
    {
        DecimalFormat normalData = new DecimalFormat("#0.00");
        return normalData.format(conversion);
    }
}