*NOT A GREAT SUNDAY

Today happens to be one of those depression inducing days.  My VIEWERS gadget stopped working after surpassing 50,000 visitors and 153 nations last week, so I added a new one as VIEWERS X.  Well, later in the day, the original appeared, but the number of visitors was so low that I suspect future viewers will only be credited to the new site. I'll keep both for now.


Total visitors to blog site       50,059
Viewers this week                     608
Number of countries                 153


Countries today included the USA, Switzerland, India, Turkey, Bulgaria, Australia, Korea, Philippines, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Turkey and Czech Republic.

I've been wondering about abandoning this daily blogging effort to take on other challenges.  After three books, 80 or so Huffington Post articles and 30 months of daily blogging, my sense is that my time is being wasted.  No one comments and I'm not making any difference for Planet Earth and Humanity.   Is there something else I can do of greater value, or, at least, more rewarding.

But to continue, for now, some of you know I'm soon to initiate my next around the world odyssey, and I'm certainly no Sir Henry Stanley.  Now I know why I previously avoided safaris.  I just read the Tauck informational guide, where in an incredibly low-keyed manner (for good reason) it was noted that I need to take a Yellow Fever (a so-called re-emerging disease) shot and have with me a certificate of inoculation before being allowed into Tanzania.  I have all of tomorrow to do this.  As a worst case scenario, I can have this performed at the Mount Kilimanjaro International Airport before leaving customs.  But how safe is the sanitation there?  Tanzania is rated #151 in the United Nations Human Development Report, better than Nigeria, but worse than Haiti, Papua New Guinea (this was one of my repeating nightmares) and Kenya (a second country in the tour).  Plus, I guess I also need to round up some malaria pills, again.  Read that Papua New Guinea blog to get an appreciation of what this entails.  I furthermore need to bring a giant can of DEET spray.  It also says watch out for cholera and don't wear dark color clothing, for these attract tse-tse flies (no, that is not a giant mosquito above, that is a tse-tse fly).  How bad can this be?  They kill more than a quarter million people/year and give you the dreaded human sleeping sickness disease.  The camps might have spotty wireless internet, but don't have air-conditioning.  If I want to re-charge anything, I was advised to bring every possible adaptor I can find.  Yes, I know this is an African safari, but I'm getting too told for this.

-

There are four ocean storms, but nothing looks threatening.  Typhoon Malakas totally missed Japan and is in the vicinity of Alaska.

-