WE CHANGED THE WORLD

I was going over some of my things and ran across this photo of me in Nairobi Kenya 1989.

At that time I had participated in a seminar with CNN International's President Sidney Pike to promote CNN International news feeds to African TV stations. My role was to explain technically how this could be done through a satellite down link system which my company STT was promoting.

I was curious to see what had happened to Sidney so I did a google search. I found him and he wrote back to me. Below is our correspondence. I was amazed that he mentioned me in his book "WE CHANGED THE WORLD". I guess I have to get a copy and read it.

On my google search I found out he was working at a radio station where he had his own program. I sent a letter to the station manager with the above photo.

MY FIRST EMAIL:

Sydney Pike and Christopher Richardson (myself) conducted a seminar in Nairobi
Kenya for the television managers of several African States. My
company STT and CNN
were promoting CNN International. My role was technical as we sold,
installed and
maintained the ground based electronics.

I remember that Sydney was quite a poet and a statesman at that. He
may not remember
me. Recently I went back to Nairobi and visited some of the places
where we had been.
Everything changes, even us.

It would be nice if I could get in touch just to say hi...."


Sidney Pike wrote back to me:

Hi Christopher:

How did you find me? Were you tuned in to Radiosandysprings.com? Where are you located now? I mention you in my book WE CHANGED THE WORLD--Memoirs of a CNN Satellite Pioneer, and the seminar in Nairobi.
I still live in Atlanta, but have a number of global projects. Let me hear from you.


Sidney Pike

And I responded....

Dear Sidney,

How I found you....mmm? I was unpacking a box and found a folder with our picture (the one I sent you). I thought, it would be nice to hear from Sidney and to send him this photo, wondering how I would find you. Then I remembered your name being mentioned in a blog somewhere and about your book. What I did was to GOOGLE you: Sidney Pike CNN and bam...you were all over the place. But that was not enough...I had to find you so I started reading and found that as I suspected you are a very active person. Then again boom.... http://www.radiosandysprings.com/sidney.php...there you were just like you were so many years ago.... There was still no email or anything to get in contact with you so I sent an email to the station manager with the photo... and I guess he forwarded it to you.

A lot has happened from those far away days..... I did a number of satellite installations in Africa and the Middle East but also built two shopping malls, an amusement park, residential complex and now I am finishing the first phase of Dubai Marine World, a project that I created from scratch do a google "christopher richardson dubai". This project is a real wopper of an experience. Would you have ever guessed that a guy doing satellite systems would create sort of a Sea World in Dubai?

I lived in Qatar for 16 years, Bahrain for 1 year and Dubai for the past 3 years. I travel extensively throughout the Middle East, Africa and CIS countries and have dabbled in many kinds of projects. It has been boom and bust for me. As fate would have it I have been cheated, robbed and swindled, however it has been an exhilarating experience and I would do it all over again.

I have my personal web site (always work in progress) http://www.christopher-richardson.com.

What kind of projects do you have on the burners? I'm so curious....

You might check out some of my poems... http://www.christopher-richardson.com/poems.html If you have any of your poems I wouldn't mind reading them...do you have a web link?

Hope to hear from you soon.......

Thanks for writing back....

P.S. I'll get a copy of our book ....

I wonder where this will go? MMmmm who knows?

Kritter