from the horizon

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 �

When I initially left New Zealand, over 2 years ago, I had the vague plan of traveling around Asia a bit, before gradually making my way to the UK, to follow the path of most New Zealanders my age, and get a job in London. Needless to say, this didn’t quite happen (occupying myself instead with work in Indonesia, Pakistan and Uganda). However on my way to the UN Symposium in Geneva I managed to take some time off to spend some time in London, catching up with the friends of mine who actually made it there, and taking in the sights.

Read the rest of this entry �

For those of you who are interested, here’s a quick video tour of my house in Banda Aceh. This is actually my old house, as I have now moved into a (much) bigger house with some friends.

One of the perks of keeping a blog is the people I meet along the way. I’ve established a number of contacts through my rambling on here, some of whom I’ve actually had the chance to meeting in real life. I had one such opportunity on Monday night when I finally met up with Jakob, who’d contacted me through my blog to get some more information before coming to do some work here. The interesting thing is that his housemate, who came along too, turned out to be Asri, someone I’d already actually caught up having met through our mutual Banda Aceh Blogs.

I’m wondering if there’s actually a bigger community of Bloggers out there in Banda Aceh – maybe it’s time to organize a bit of a bigger meeting…

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 �

Finally here’s the last of the photos from Beijing. I’m glad that I’ve managed to finish this off before my next trip to Geneva!

I posted a note mentioning that I was going to China, ages ago on Facebook, and Tim, a friend of mine read it who turned out to be working there. It was good to catch up with him, and interesting to see a practical application of Facebook!

Forbidden City at night

Read the rest of this entry �

Beijing is the perfect city for biking - practically flat with bike lanes everywhere, so I decided to hire a bike and go for a ride. Once again, putting my viewer’s needs in front of my personal safety, I made a video, so you guys don’t feel like you’re missing out.

It’s worth noting that the original video was longer, but in efforts to fight copyright infringement, YouTube has limited videos to 10 minutes - which apparently is apparently enough, given the quantization of our generation. I tell you, YouTube totally cramps my artistic vision! I still have the “uncut” version, with extended scenes and bonus footage - maybe it will be on the DVD release.

There is some debate between the merits of Web based “Online” databases verse stand alone “Offline” databases for International NGOs. Online databases store all their information on a central server, while Offline databases store all of their information on the computer of the person using the database. I agree that online databases have a number of distinct advantages:

• They allow information to be much more easily shared.
• The information is easier to back up.
• They don’t require any software to be installed in the user’s computer.
• They are much easier to upgrade (Only the software on the server needs to be upgraded).
• There are no conflicts from people editing the same records at different time.

As a colleague of mine pointed out, Online databases are the “Future”. However they also have one very major constraint – they rely on an Internet connection. Considering this constraint, in the developing world they are still “The Future” and not yet “The Present”.

Read the rest of this entry �

Feeling the draw of a new city to explore I embarked on an expedition to see as much of Harbin as possible in a day. I set off armed with only a map with no English, my Lonely Planet and three words in Chinese: ni hao - hello, xei xei - thank you and shaguar(sp?) - handsome young man (don’t ask). Here are the tales from my encounters…

I loved the juxtaposition of the Buddhist temple and ferris wheel.

Harbin is very far north, and has a considerable Russian influence, such as this church (St Sophia) and the copious amounts of vodka for sale. Read the rest of this entry �

I’ve been struggling to find time to update my blog in the aftermath of my trip to China, but I’ve finally got a spare moment. This will be the first post of hopefully many.

The main reason/excuse for this trip was to attend the ISCRAM (Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management) – China Workshop, where I was presenting my paper in Developing Databases for Disasters in Developing Countries. The workshop was held the in Harbin Engineering University. Unfortunately I suffered from the same communication difficulties at the conference as I found during the rest of my time in China (despite the language of the conference being English). This meant I didn’t have many good conversations with the (majority) Chinese attendants. However this did give me the chance to talk to some of the foreign keynote speakers, which was very interesting and useful.

One person I met was Chamindra de Silva, who works on Sahana, an Open-Source Disaster Management Software system. Although I’ve been aware of this project for some time, it was good to finally met him in person, and have him show me through the software. Although I think that there are a number of usability features which they need to address (the Online vs Offline issue for example), I believe that open source-software is a very good approach in this field, and hope to get involved in the project – I’ve just got to find the time!

Other points of note include the Chinese keynote speakers, who were translated into English. The non-Chinese attendees received the translation from an earpiece via a radio broadcast. Unfortunately during the first half of one of these speeches, the broadcast didn’t work. I found this a slightly amusing example of how we can’t afford to be too over-reliant on technology, let alone during a crisis!

I had some more conversations about what technology is appropriate in emergency response. Nuwan, one of the attendees working for LIRNEasia in Sri Lanka, told a story about a woman in Sri Lanka who just used a whiteboard to coordinate the relief effort to the 2004 Tsunami. I pointed out that a whiteboard is still technology (high tech when compared with stone tablets), and that in emergencies people will tend to just use the technology which they are familiar with.

I also found myself chairing a session on Mathematical Modeling. The presentations discussed predicting financial crisis’s, which was a slight change from my perception of crises as tsunamis and earthquakes. I did point out to the session that the same techniques might be able to be used for predicting complex emergencies too. It was interesting to be the only non-Chinese in the session, yet have the speakers deliver their presentation in English. After all, it was the language of the conference. Never-the-less when it came time for questions a few people did slip back into Chinese.