I know you’re suffering from an overdose of Obama news capsules, but believe you me - You really don’t want to miss this. Somaliland Press has an article about the world’s first Obama hotel. As in a hotel named Obama in Somaliland’s capital Hargeisa.

The chairman of Obama Hotel, Dr Abdirahman Ahmed Shunuf, was educated in the United States at the University of California-Berkeley and returned to Somaliland after three decades of civil rights activism in America — Shunuuf and one his brothers are building a public university in Hargeisa.

The Minister of Youth and Sports, Mr. Mohamed Said Mahamoud was on hand for the grand opening and ribbon cutting. Also present was Hussein Mahamoud Bisad, the world’s second tallest man, and also a Somaliland native.

I don’t think there’s any other hotels named Obama as yet, but if you know of any, please let us know in the comments.

Moving from Somaliland to the Australian outback, here’s an amazing story about a Romanian hiker who got lost in the desert on a 45km trek from Yulara near Uluru, to Lake Amadeus last week. Three days into the trek, he ran out of food and water, got dehydrated and disoriented. So he turns back to Yulara.

After another 3 days without water in the desert, he wanders into an outlyer patch of cell phone coverage 22 km from Yulara and calls - here’s the kicker - his family in Romania and tells them he’s lost in the desert. He was rescued after he gave coordinates of his location from his GPS device.

The odds of his survival become even more astonishing when you consider that A) cellphone coverage extends to only about 20 km from Yulara’s town centre, and B) the man walked into the only spot with cell phone coverage within an area of 350 km.

Posted on January 24th, 2009 by Thomas
Filed under: Hotels, News