from the horizon

Two years ago I had my 24th birthday in Banda Aceh. It was a great day, with a trip to the beach with my Indonesian friends and party in the evening with my expat friends. And now, two years later, I’m back in Banda Aceh for my birthday - I would have never guessed.

Virtually all of my expat friends from when I was first here have moved on, however I planned to have another trip to the beach with the same Indonesian friends. Unfortunately the rainy season forced us to stay at home, but didn’t stop us for barbecuing a couple of fish at my house. It was great to see everyone from the NGO who I volunteered with when I first arrived in Aceh.

They had no problem getting the BBQ started - although I really don’t think it was necessary to drain the fuel pump to get the fire started - again! Read the rest of this entry �

I have definitely suffered from the blogger’s paradox – when times are interesting, there’s no time to blog. And times have been very interesting, which explains why this post is almost a month late.

It actually all started with this blog of mine, through which I managed to attract the attention of Paul Currion, someone who has been working in the field of humanitarian IT since before the field really existed, and writes a blog on the topic. Through this contact I found myself invited to the Global Symposium +5 ‘Information for Humanitarian Action’, which was being held by the UN in Geneva. (Obviously there aren’t so many computer programmers working in the humanitarian sector.)

Read the rest of this entry �

This Wednesday was the day before the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. This makes a huge difference in an Islamic area such as Banda Aceh. From the hours of sunrise to sunset, Muslims must abstain from food, drink, smoking and sex. Typically people will wake up around 4am, before the morning prayers, and take a large meal together as a family before sunrise, and then go back to bed. When the sunsets around 6.40pm, people will immediately have a drink (usually a cigarette too), take some small sweets, or sometimes dates, and then perform their evening prayers before having their Puasa Buka (Open Fast) meal with the family.

The atmosphere has totally changed around town during Ramadan.

The pace at work slows down, as people are having to go through the whole day without eating or drinking, plus they are getting less sleep (the mosque will often broadcast readings from their speakers all night, which also effects the amount of sleep I get).

Also, there are no food shops open during the day, which means that I sadly miss my breakfast of rice and coffee Aceh, and my lunch of Gado Gado. I need to be conscious about not eating or drinking in front of people during the day, and even when I do in private, it makes me feel like more of an “infidel” as usual (Which is silly of me, because the locals are actually really tolerant).

Toward the end of the day the streets come alive, with an assortment of stall selling sweets and drinks for people to break their fast with. The traffic is crazy until about 6.30pm, at which point the streets are empty, as everyone has gone indoors, awaiting the siren which indicates that they can end their fast.

I do admire the discipline, faith and tradition which is displayed during Ramadan. I can’t imagine it being the easiest thing to go all day without eating, and especially drinking. I have aspired to experiment with trying to fast myself, but unfortunately with everything else going on (especially work), I just haven’t had the spare energy.

Being the day before Ramadan, the office closed at midday, however being a consultant I only get paid for the days I work, so I was still stuck working in the deserted office (queue tumble weeds). At about 6pm my boss came into my office asking, “Did you feel that?”. I looked up puzzled, and then realized that I probably just missed another earthquake.

Read the rest of this entry �

Four different beds in four different days, but I’m finally back “home” in Banda Aceh. Changing countries has become a certain ritual. First I change the time zones in my watch, phone and computer (my body is still lagging a little this time). Then I change my SIM card. Then the cash in my wallet gets changed over. Finally I change over my power adapters and I’m ready to plug into a different country.

I’m pretty open minded when it comes to other cultures, and different values, but there is one thing which I just don’t get in Indonesia: what they do with their rubbish.

People seem to have a totally different attitudes toward a clean environment. Although the will keep the insides of their houses spotless, there is so much rubbish littered all over the place. Piles of rubbish collect in open spaces and the open sewer, people are quite happy to throw rubbish on the ground, or out of vehicles. It’s been said that in developing countries people are used to all the rubbish biodegrading, and the problem is with all the plastics and other such materials which have been introduced from the West. When I order food here, it is wrapped up in a banana leaf and paper, then put in a plastic bag (the sort they use for everything), which always makes me cringe.

Read the rest of this entry �

Arriving in Singapore was easy. It just works: the subway, using my credit card, people speaking English, my hotel reservation.
I had to get my Indonesian visa here, and although I found it a little unusual to hand my passport complete with $160 over to a complete stranger, who I met outside a McDonalds, everything worked smoothly, and I had my visa on the same day.

In my quest to buy a laptop in Singapore, I found myself at the Comex computer and electronic expo. I found the 4 massive halls filled with electronics slightly overwhelming. The amount of money that was being spent; the cost of some of the products there. I ogled the plasma screens, with their screens which were so life like, showing the same unbelievable Hollywood movies. But I couldn’t help thinking: where are the donkeys?

Read the rest of this entry �

On my last weekend in Peshawar my friend Bakht, took me around the Old City in Peshawar. We walked around the narrow streets, past the stores selling gold, spices, tea, leather, metalwork, meat and a variety of plastic goods imported from China. The streets were filling with people, autorickshaws, donkeys, horse and carts, cars and a fragrance that told me where I was.

Read the rest of this entry �

I’ve had a difficult time deciding whether to put the following stories together in a single post, or in separate posts.
Initially I was going to put all of them jumbled all together, because that’s how it felt for me, I was traveling fast and and doing a lot. It was stressful. All these different experiences and places, with no connection to each other, except through me.

But for the sake of my viewers, I’ve decided to separate the stories into nice post sized samples. I figure that’s how a blog works: nice small pieces of text, nothing to heavy to digest. Small sample size, high sample frequency. I should have them updated over the next couple of days. I hope you can piece it all together (or not, and appreciate it).
Personally, writing this post helped me link the samples to together and get my signal tuned back in.

This post is slight branch from my typical journal entries, but it’s some thinking I’ve been doing, and I think it may give some reference for the next post (and possibly more). For those of who don’t know, I’m a computer systems engineer by initial training, so apologies if this gets too technical. I’ll try and keep it as simple as possible. So if you’ll sit with me for the next five minutes, I’ll try to tell you about quantization loss and why I think it’s important.

I was first introduced to the theory of quantization loss in a course at university. Quantization is the process where an analog signal is converted into a digital signal. An analog signal is a continuous signal, varying continuously over time. A digital signal is sampled at discrete points in time, and each sample can only have a discrete value. An analog signal can contain an infinite amount of information, a digital signal cannot. Inherently, there is a loss of information in this process of converting analog to digital. Hopefully the following graph will make this clearer:

Read the rest of this entry �

Maybe I shouldn’t be putting this on my blog, there are much more interesting things I haven’t had the chance to write about yet, but I think that this is pretty interesting. I really don’t want to worry anyone, but I think that it adds a bit of insight into some opinions here.

Below is a translation from a local newspaper, which is fairly opposed to international NGOs. Before launching into it I would like to say a couple of things:

• I have not heard any confirmation of any of this.
• I have never felt that my security has ever been in danger here.
• There were similar sentiments in Banda Aceh, especially towards World Vision.
• Any organization which is preaching another religion has no business doing humanitarian work. They are missionaries and colonialist, not humanitarians. Faith based organizations can be ok, but they must respect the local religion/culture/traditions. Those who don’t are patronizing, destructive, and ultimately put my security in danger.

I hope that I don’t get in trouble for posting this. At the end of the day I think that security is tied very closely to information. The more information I have, the more secure I am. I think that this applies on a global, as well as a personal scale. I’m not talking about the CIA bugging your phone to catch terrorists, but I’m talking about people getting to know and understand people from all over the world. An ignorant person is a dangerous person. Although I was a little apprehensive about coming here, after meeting the people here, I feel safe.

Anyway … On with the show:

Read the rest of this entry �