ROY X CONE contest, 1.1.11 - 2.1.12

[almostnice]

20 minutes from now on and the Round 2 is mine.

[rnrswitch]

Engineered Garments shirt?

[Maynard Friedman]

good idea,lets play.

round 2:

Gap

from ASOS

Do I win a prize?

[ThisSunday]

[robbie]

nice tough guy face!

[cander49]

The ROYs went to a Sundance Film Festival after party and drank a lot of Bob Redford's booze. Went home to find the wife sick. Spent the night taking care of her and pretending to be far less intoxicated than I was.

Haha, was that at the Salt Lake Art Center? I was also at that party and I saw what I thought looked like a pair of Roys. Guess I should've said something.

[rnrswitch]

Alright, I got this one folks.

MFx3

Lofgren Hat

Roy jeans,

Wolverine 1000 miles

[ranonranonarat]

a little late but heres what i carry in my pocket all the time. no wallet since its too huge for my backpocket.

[zissou]

Here's what's going into the hollow leg of my Roys.

[erk]

spring seems to have come a little early in NC

spent the evening on the roof drinking beer. oh yeah.

oh yeah.

[mikecch]

Gave my jeans a second machine wash yesterday...

Pics from this morning.

In shade:

In sunlight:

Went for a sip of diabetes (bubble tea):

Saw three dudes in make-up, not moving much:

$5 books from the local discount bookshop:

[Farhad]

The middle of nowhere? Man, that sure looks like SOMEwhere!

Let me make my self more clear, that pic was on the way to nowhere. And by that I mean there was nothing else to be found for miles. Unfortunately I can't post all the pics from my camera as of now cuz the story was for Inventory mag. Also, the location can't be disclosed for other reasons. All I can say is that we were in an abandoned place from long long ago and it was an awesome place to be.

meanwhile a few more iPhone pics from the trip....

Mike is as nice as can get

That's Mike's father in law who's a big part of his project. He's a great guy with an amazing amount of knowledge.

A man needs some refreshments when he's in the desert

eltopo was in tha house

Cheers & have a great weekend everyone

(this last photo credit goes to eltopo)

[beatle]

gorgeous ! Plus - you guys are getting them jawns dirty, thumbs up

[fardin]

awesome pics farhad. love the place and the denim is looking great. so whats the story going to be about for inventory? wish i could have been there too. is mikes father in law wearing some rising suns?

[mikecch]

@ farhad: What are you guys shooting at?

Nice pics, looks like lots of manly fun

[Paul T]

Farhad, those look awesome. Very jealous here - I have press coming up and all i get is a cab into the west end. I love how you've made Mike's dad look even cooler, too.

Can't wait to see the story.

[almostnice]

Gap

from ASOS

Do I win a prize?

bingo.76 rep points to you,Sir.

[crownzip]

Cool denim Mike's father-in-law is sporting.

[dkatz]

^ looks like it's going to be a great feature, farhad, sansome and eltopo!

Yesterday was voting-day for the Ugandan presidential elections. The last elections were widely known to be massively rigged in favor of (now 25-year) incumbent Yoweri Museveni, and were pretty violent. By comparison, at this point it seems like things were much calmer this time around.

I've only ever take one Ugandan or American public holiday off in the 1.5 years I've been here, so I was also thrilled to take my first ever Ugandan public holiday off!

Passed a polling place in Bukoto in the morning

Arrived at a friend's house for an all-day cook-and-eat-and-drink-athon

kitenge

ROYxCone

army boot-sneakers

In the midst of cooking, eating and drinking... an impromptu game session. Homegirl and I learned how to play (one of the apparently million varieties of) a popular East African game that resembles Mancala.

It probably took us 45 damn minutes to finish that game 'cause neither of us knew any strategy

FOOD. Everything turned out pretty damn phenomenal, despite most peoples' experimental bent

Grillin', chapatti-in' and beerin'

This was the one failure of the day, by my standards: supposed to be a "Breakfast White Russian" - milk infused with frosted flakes + chocolate milk + vodka + bacon for a swizzle stick

goat-cheese eggplant rolls

We then made the admittedly questionable decision to watch the votes be counted at a nearby polling station when polls closed at 5. Changed into a more neutral shirt

5pm on a Friday, and Kira road is EMPTY. Weird.

[dkatz]

Voting finishes up at a polling station in Kamwokya

Voters would register with the guys seated at the right, then take the three ballots (president, member of parliament and woman member of parliament) to be filled out in a bucket. Theoretically the bucket shields the voter's selection from on-lookers. A big problem, though: the ballot paper is pretty long and the incumbent is at the very bottom while the main opposition candidate is at the very top, so it's pretty easy to tell from the voter's body position who he or she is voting for. Slick.

At 5pm, the people with the voter registers count how many people came through. Each polling station was supposed to have 800 registered voters. Some, like this one, split those 800 into two sub-stations alphabetically.

This station wound up about 600 voters - pretty damn impressive turnout by American standards.

This was definitely a necessary expense by the Electoral Commission.

Thanks to the German government - among others - for the donation of 3m Euros for Uganda's elections.

The sorting begins. There is one plastic bin for each ballot. Sorting at this station began with the Woman MP. One official representative for each candidate stands by the Presiding Officer (see the few guys standing behind the dude with the ballot), who then holds up each ballot one-by-one for public viewing, and hands the ballot to a candidate-representative according to who the ballot is for. Before the sorting began, the Presiding Officer would pat down each of the representatives to ensure he didn't have any extra ballots tucked away anywhere to use for stuffing.

Not a quick process, but remarkably transparent - notice how many onlookers are actively watching.

The other two bins to the right are for MP and President

Significant police presence. One cop is in the polling station, and one or two outside, the entire time. Other police passed by at different times, and at one point a truck carrying 20ish cops in full samurai-armor looking riot gear passed by. Gotta love intimidation!

The other half of the alphabet. I love how many people turn out just to watch the counting!

Also a good proportion of the onlookers were... hammered-ass drunk.

You know who would have won the presidential race here, no problem?

Once the ballots had been sorted, the Presiding Officer would go through the ballots held by each candidate's representative, one at a time, and hold each up as he counted aloud. The crowd counted along.

One man I stood next to for a period of time was very closely watching and counting. As soon as the counting finished, he noted the results on his hand and speed-walked away, immediately pulling out his phone. I'm thinking he was a representative for the opposition, submitting his report to the opposition's parallel counting-center

[dkatz]

Once counting for a box is completed, the ballots are put back in the box and the lid fastened with serial-numbered zip ties (but how easy would it be for duplicate zip ties to be made and a box still to be opened, emptied and re-filled with different ballots en route to the electoral commission?)

I'm always amused by random dudes (okay, "security guards") with large weapons cruising around in public - even at something as tense and sensitive as a polling post

Kids across the street while parents watch the counting...

Shoes that look better with age?

Another couple guys kept their own score - I love how many people took it upon themselves to do their own counting and reporting.

The polling station police officer shows that the box of clean ballots is empty - nothing around to stuff a box with!

The crowd. I was chatting with a Local Council Chairperson for a bit who told me that this has historically been a pretty violent polling place (I swallowed hard) - he was thrilled with how smoothly everything was going this time around.

Finally as it started getting dark, we headed back to my friend's place for the grand finale of food... LAMB.

My meat-inclined and epicurially-talented buddy marinated and skewered it, then hung it in the chimney of a clay oven

Eaten with tzatziki, it was terrific.

And the nigh ended with some clay-oven bread baking... and a lot of booze.

So far, with about 50% of polling stations reporting, preliminary results show Museveni with ~70% of the vote and Besigye (main opposition) has ~24%. There's only been one large incident of violence that I heard of - out in Sironko - and mild other cases of uncleanliness. One candidate - Otunno - refused to vote yesterday and has come out saying he will not accept the results of the election, calling it a "sham". Besigye has yet to make any comments, but is supposed to be holding a press conference momentarily.

I was overall impressed by the degree of transparency, but it was not hard to think of a number of ways to rig things, even in this system. More importantly - as a friend mentioned - it's clear that most of the "rigging" happened long before the ballots even landed in Uganda: ministers and voters being bought, mechanisms for opposition-oversight being prohibited and a massively partisan Electoral Commission refusing to be replaced.

Official results will be announced tomorrow, so we're not out of the woods yet. Besigye has stated that if the vote was (in his perception) in any way not perfectly clean & clear, he will not appeal to the Supreme Court - he will instead appeal to "the court of public opinion", intimating that he would do his best to start public upheaval or even start another bush war (as he and Museveni did to oust Obote 25 years ago). So we continue to wait and watch and listen.

[dkatz]

if anyone is particularly interested in following the blow-by-blow, a couple sites I'm checking obsessively:

http://www.monitor.co.ug/SpecialReports/Elections/-/859108/1110656/-/k2ytte/-/index.html

and an Ushahidi-style site for SMS-reporting of incidents (most recent one is about rioting in Kapchorwa, which I've visited for work multiple times - and recently for Sipi Falls): http://www.ugandawatch2011.org/

[fardin]

great post katz, just great. thanks for the interesting link. !!!!!! sorry cant rep you at the moment

oh and the side burns look killer

[eltopo]

DKatz great post! Farhad great stuff, incredible images that captured the moment and feel of the desert!

Let me make my self more clear, that pic was on the way to nowhere. And by that I mean there was nothing else to be found for miles. Unfortunately I can't post all the pics from my camera as of now cuz the story was for Inventory mag. Also, the location can't be disclosed for other reasons. All I can say is that we were in an abandoned place from long long ago and it was an awesome place to be.

meanwhile a few more iPhone pics from the trip....

Mike is as nice as can get

That's Mike's father in law who's a big part of his project. He's a great guy with an amazing amount of knowledge.

A man needs some refreshments when he's in the desert

eltopo was in tha house

Cheers & have a great weekend everyone

(this last photo credit goes to eltopo)

[tg76]

i wore my ROY boxers to the mayors cycle challenge... we won a new bike

[mikecch]

^ Pics? (10char)

[tg76]

^ on monday when i get my new lap top (hopefully)

three weeks since my old ones hard drive shat itself and im almost cured of my internet addiction

[attackwithstones]

Eltopo,

I think I like the MF hat wayyyyyy more with the bill flipped up! I was never a big fan of that hat until now. I kinda want one now!

[eltopo]

Yeah my favorite hat. I was at the store yesterday, they have lots of color options. Mine is made from waxed canvas.

[zissou]

Congrats, TG!

Wonderful photos, dkatz and Farhad. Extra points for the Fat Tire and Winter Welcome. Ince it warms up here, I'm planning on visiting a couple local ghost towns in my spare time...