A day in the Life.....

Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head.  Found my way up to my office, 150 yards away, and drank a cup.  From the window I looked north towards Tibet, maybe 50 miles away, and fell into a dream….  I can see peaks about 16,000 feet high (hardly worth looking at!) and today there is snow on them.  Is winter starting already?  When was summer?  The peaks near the border are 24,000 feet, permanently snowcapped of course, but they’re not out today.  Looking down from there is the big Buddha that looks over Thimphu, which is itself out of sight behind a ridge.  Further down is a sleeping black dog.  On other days this dog has accompanied me on hikes.  Last hike was to a monastery, where this dog was treated pretty badly by the other dogs.  You think junkyard dogs are tough?  You should see Bhutanese monastery dogs.  They are getting all their aggression out before becoming humans in their next lives.  Not petting these dogs is the hardest thing Phyllis and I have to do on campus.  If you pet them they wind up sleeping with their backs on your front door, protecting you from evil spirits, and gifting you with fleas.

At 8:30 my intern, Yeshi, arrives.  She just graduated in computer applications and she is very conservative (this does not mean right wing, it means she’s religious, dresses in traditional clothing, is very soft spoken, in general, holds classical Bhutanese values).  She’s also very nice, has a good sense of humor (a Bhutanese trait), and most important to me, she’s very smart and can work independently.  She sees a moribund insect on the floor and carefully picks it up and puts it out on the window sill.  People here are not big on hellos and goodbyes – in general, if they have nothing to say, they don’t say it.  She gets guidance for me, and at the end of the day, produces something worthwhile.  Already she’s written software to keep track of applicants for faculty positions, and has almost finished a web site students can use to see how they’re doing in current classes, as well as a history of their grades in past classes.  You can see a link to what she's written at http://results.rtc.bt  You can login as Yeshi (enrollment number is 100728 and date of birth 010191.)  Note the date of birth?  That's a story in itself -- half of all Bhutanese are born on 1/1.

from left to right me; Tshering Wangchuk,  head of IT; and Yeshi

But this is about what I do, apart from supervising my intern.  I write software, teach faculty members how to use it, and very importantly, train my colleagues in the skills required to maintain it after I’ve gone.  That has the great side effect of making them more employable at more interesting jobs.  There are not that many people who who can train them, and they soak it up like sponges.  They’re always asking me to teach more advanced stuff.   I also gave a lecture on database design to computer students, and I’m going to do one on the art of  statistics (I know most of you think that’s a contradiction in terms.)  It’s easy to make a difference here – before I came everything was done manually, big errors were made, and things that took weeks now take minutes.  Not that anyone is in a big hurry, of course. Phyllis and I love it here, and my bosses seems to like us, so we just decided to stay for another 6 months, through next July.

In the old days everyone knew what a blacksmith did, what a farmer did, what a miller did.  What does a systems analyst do?  What does a software developer do?  It’s alienating, I think, when you don’t understand what others do for a living, or how everyday gadgets work.  My work involves long interviews with people asking what they want my software to do.  This gives me a great opportunity to meet them, which along with the great views, is why we’re here.  It’s fun to contribute to Gross National Happiness by making the drudge part of their work (entering students’ grades) a little less burdensome. 

So here in a nutshell is what I do when I’m not looking out the window at the Himalayas -- I’m looking at one of  2 monitors.  On one I look at a design interface and get to make it pretty.  Such an interface is below (you can see why I flunked art).  The teachers enter the marks for each student and the software calculates the percentages, which is something few of the faculty can do accurately on their own.

Great names, eh?

On the other monitor I write the computer code that makes this work.  It looks like this:

    'make sure all dates are entered

    If DoesUndatedAssessmentExist(.ClassNum) = True Then

        MessageBox "You can't finalize this module because there are assessments without dates!"

        Exit Sub

    End If

    If MsgBox("Are you sure you want to finalize this module (" & .txtSubjectName & ") ?  All     your assessments must be complete.  You will not " & _

            "be able to change anything about the module, including grades, once it is finalized!", _

            vbOKCancel + vbQuestion + vbDefaultButton2)  <>  vbOK Then Exit Sub

    'got to here, so

    sql = "exec procFinalizeClass " & .ClassNum

    CurrentProject.Connection.Execute sql, lngRecords, adCmdText

This is very standard stuff – verifying the teacher entered the data as she should, and if so, changing data.  But I love it!  The one line  "exec procFinalizeClass " & .ClassNum, runs code which takes a millisecond and which if done manually would take the better part of a day.

All in all it’s a nice combination of the graphical/artsy and analytical.  And then it all fits in with leisure time and going for walks.  I chat with students, with Bhutanese, Indian, and Western faculty and staff, and come home to Phyllis.  Who could complain?