Decades: Chunks of Time

 A puzzle kept me awake most of the night and its still boggling my mind. Backstory: I belong to many WhatsApp groups, one of which is a group for the members of my predegree class of 2001 (yeah I know what you're thinking. Dont say it out loud though). Someone posted this puzzle on the group yesterday: Some birds were flying and met a bird in their way. The bird greeted them, hello hundred! They said we are not hundred, we need half of us plus you to make us hundred. Question - how many birds were flying? Possible answers are - A. 198 B. 49 C. 66 D. 51 E. 101 F. 199 I copied the script verbatim for a reason. My default answer was 199: (x/2) + 1 = 100 (x/2) = 100 - 1 = 99. x/2 = 99 x = 99*2 = 198. Total number of birds flying = 198 + 1 bird they met = 199. But the poster said it's wrong. I wasn't the only one who derived this answer, but the poster kept insisting that we got it wrong. The other posted answers are 198 and 66. The person who supplied the 66 answer used the fo

 I know its been a minute I posted to this blog... make that ten minutes. Several times I have reached for my phone to type my thoughts, but the drive to actually post isn't there. Today that ends. Happy New Year x how many years? 6? 12? 2024 finds me rounding up my master's degree program in Rwanda, and let me tell you, the feeling is way different from when I was in my undergraduate degree program 18 years ago. Wait... if I'd had a kid back then, s/he would be a full-grown adult this year... wooow. I actually don't find the fact that I'm older than most of the lecturers odd - I try not to think about the time lost while getting into and trying to rise above the 'presents' Life gave me since 2009. I focus on learning a lot from my peers and the teachers. I'm trying to soak up as much as I can and to catch up you see. Today I want to share what I learned about Africans, but let me first give you context. Our lecturer had schooled in South Korea, and we a