Being born into the 20th century has given us myriad advantages, like penicillin, cars and aircraft, radio and television, development, third world debt and two world wars. Even Stalin, because he at least provided a framework that everyone understood. You had the advantage of knowing you were always wrong, just like when you tried claiming money from UNICEF.
Having been asked to come to Albania in the second half of 1999 to help in providing some urgently needed services, it was natural that there should be a base of operations waiting for me. Indeed there was, except that in this twentieth century world of instant communications, somehow, somewhere, someone had forgotten to tell someone else that I was coming and would need some support. Like a desk, pencil, paper, transport and, on odd occasions, help with translations.
No matter, I had been able to parlay my way into town by courtesy of the FAO minibus, and then phoned my office to announce my arrival - they would be so happy that I had arrived at last!
"You are who ? When did you arrive ? What are you supposed to be doing here ?" A series of questions came back like machine-gun fire down the borrowed telephone and I assumed that I was speaking to a recent recruit. No matter.
"Could you send a car for me, please?" With obvious reluctance, a car was despatched. The driver, also a recent recruit, was delighted to meet me and drove me to the office. His name was Dashi, and given the speed with which we drove to the office, he seemed appropriately named.
"May I see the Chief ?" I asked the receptionist.
This appeared not to be possible. He was out. So was his deputy. Evidently, this emergency demanded a lot of staff presence elsewhere and I had visions of running non-stop for the next few months. "Is there anyone to whom I can speak so I can start without having to wait for the Chief to return ?" Yes there was.
I was told how to get to the Administrative Assistant who was available, efficient but rather busy.
She asked me to wait for a moment while she dealt with a telephone - another of those marvels of the twentieth century - which never seemed to stop ringing. No sooner had she settled one crisis than another phoned her for advice. Was this office full of crises - or was I just imagining things ?
It seems that the office ran best on crises. Orders were given, questions asked and staff reprimanded at a pitch which had me wanting to run for cover. She apologised and said she'd be back with me in a moment. After almost an hour of this, I indicated that perhaps I'd take lunch and return when the office might be quieter.
I did, and found an office past its crises, quiet and peaceful. In fact, as quiet as the grave. It was the lunch hour - that generous time between about 13:30 and 15:00 by the digital, twentieth century clock. A time when one can think and when crises also take a break.
The Chief was affable, welcoming and rather confused about what I was supposed to be doing, but gave instructions that 'something should be done'. It was. I was given a desk.
The fact that it didn't have a computer - that miracle of the twentieth century office - really didn't concern me. After all, twentieth century consultants come equipped with their own, didn't they, and I had a laptop which worked just fine. Only I wasn't connected into the network which is where I am told you have to be, to be able to receive messages by e-mail, that recent wonder of the information highway, and which would be essential to my ability to function at all.
Nevertheless, I immediately started work to overcome the crisis which had brought me here.
A colleague noticed that I was new and invited me to lunch next day. The lunch was quick, simple and adequate. He indicated that I should come and share his office, which had a vacant desk - with computer - until someone was appointed to fill the staff position which would occupy the desk. I thanked him and accepted. A desk and a computer ! I could now really start in earnest.
That I should be so optimistic ! The computer which is supposedly connected to the network, must actually work. This one didn't. I tried every trick in the book, but the computer was stubborn. It had the mother of all problems - its mother-board had decided that it had had enough. So, back to the laptop and e-mail must wait but the company was great, and - best of all - he had a wonderful sense of humour. He had an unpronounceable name that comes with the gene-pool that is America today, and an accent to match.
While all this was progressing, news had somehow spread that my computer required hospital treatment and the requisite staff member arrived, and went through all the routines I had tried earlier - coming to the same conclusion. She went away again.
Next day she arrived with a different and slightly care-worn computer that wasn't actually dented but looked in serious need of a bath. "What matter if it actually works ?" I asked myself. It was efficiently set-up, connected to a mass of wires that could easily have doubled as a plate of spaghetti, and then switched on.
"Mmmm !" she said, "It shouldn't do that." And then to me, "Could you tell me what the lights are doing at the back of the CPU ?"
Since she was looking directly at that dirty box that held the mysteries of circuitry and into which the plate of spaghetti was plugged in parts, I felt this is what I should examine. The fact that it was on the floor, under the desk and hard against the wall called for some ingenuity and considerable dexterity. Such agility one can produce during one's youth, but at my age ? Obediently, I went on hands and knees and slid through the dust to crane my neck around the back of the dirty box.
"What lights ?" I asked.
"There should be two below the parallel cable. Green and blinking."
Apart from the fleeting thought that 'blinking' was not nearly strong enough for what I felt about the twisted position I had been obliged to adopt, I noted that I could only see a green blur. Ah, I had forgotten my glasses. There was a pause as I extricated myself, dusted myself down, added spectacles and became a contortionist again. Ah, ha ! There were two lights and they were not blinking. I said as much.
"Damn !" she said, "It must be the cable connection. Just wait there a moment, please." I was so severely knotted into position at this stage that it would have been impossible to do otherwise. She selected bits of the spaghetti and wiggled them. Quite how one knows which bits to choose to wiggle must be one of the secrets of a good technical training, but she did this as if to the manner born, returning to the keyboard.
"Now what's happening ?"
Well, what was actually happening was that some dust had disappeared up my nose and started a process over which I had less than total control. An explosive sneeze followed, clearing my head of the tickle, the back of the dirty box of cobwebs, and much of the nearby floor of accumulated dust. I paused while the dust settled and saw the same two lights staring back at me, accusingly, unblinkingly. I told her.
"Then it has to be the hub."
Now, I hadn't planned on learning Albanian in the few months I was scheduled to be in the country but here I was, and she seemed determined to teach me. What a time to start with me on the floor and all twisted ! "What's 'hub' in English ?" I asked from the floor. She told me. It remains an unknown, at least from me. I was beginning to understand my wife's complaints about computers.
I returned to the trusty laptop. At least it didn't have any blinking or flashing lights. It just crashed with absolutely predictable regularity.
The person for whom the desk was destined, arrived. I moved.
Finding someone to allocate a desk with all necessary equipment became increasingly difficult, so I started the office version of musical chairs. Wherever I could find a vacant desk that had some equipment on it, I would capture it until it was reclaimed. I began to understand the strategy employed by nineteenth century generals in their assaults to capture - or retreat from - the high ground.
Musical chairs may be a good name for this procedure in this particular office because every desk I visited had some music in the CD - that curious little Circular Drawer which most computers have today. Since staff seemed never to switch off their computers, and since they listened to music all day long, one only needed to touch the keyboard, or to tap the mouse, and the music would start. One was so sensitive that if I sneezed on the other side of the room, it would start playing.
I finally took over the highest position in the office - that of a desk situated immediately under the roof. It seemed that people were put off the final, tiny spiral staircase, the low roof on which one was liable to bang one's head, and the fact that the room only had one tiny window. This suited me fine for the times when I was in the office.A wonderful invention, e-mail. Send your message and immediately, the other side of the world, the recipient receives it - providing he or she is awake and connected. The problem comes when the recipient is in the office just down the road.
Because the organisation where I sit is big, all mail must be routed through head office that just happens to be two continents away. Quite why this should be necessary when the InterNet is available on one's front doorstep, needs some explanation which I may have been given but have singularly failed to understand. Perhaps it is to do with security or shares in the phone company.
I - and the computer that handles the e-mail (called the 'server' which is probably a misnomer since the peremptory questions the server asks me periodically imply its complete dominance over me) - both live upstairs. However, when I want to check that we have received all the messages which are in the head-quarters in-box, and that my messages for the office just down the road have gone, I have to make the phone connection manually.
Yes, manually. In this almost 21st century, to make an electronic connection, one has actually to perform the operation manually. Not quite to the level of winding the handle vigorously and then shouting, "Hello, operator?" - but pretty close to it. For this, we pay large sums of money for the equipment and employ highly skilled technicians.
The folk down the road eventually receive the message with its attachment that has travelled from my desk across two continents to allow it to pop out of the head quarter's electronic front door on to the InterNet. From there, it - and its attendant attachment - has had to travel back across the same two continents to the building which I can see from a window on the floor below me. What a marvel of twentieth century organisation !
The only problem appears to be the 'shape' of the electronic door those two continents away. It seems to steal something from the attachment so that a message needs to be sent back - again across four continents - to my desk - informing me that the attachment is unreadable.
It's time we brought back the cleft-stick runners.The twentieth century office has a number of customs which we will recollect in the years to come with the words, "Can you remember when we. . . . . " recalling the equivalent of the scratch of the Dickensian quill or the high stool and narrow desk under the domed skylight. Like how a stolen ballpoint used to cause an outcry. Today, it seems that we don't even use them except occasionally to sign something. Soon even that will disappear with electronic finger-printing or swiped bar-codes to do the job instead.
Files that used to occupy long stretches of shelves seem to be evaporating, and their place is being taken over by hard disks with terabytes of memory. Colleagues have been teaching me variations on my own language that are usually precipitated by an electronic malfunction of this wonderful equipment. Mr Gates would blush to hear some of the remarks I have heard recently made about him, and yet when we stand back and consider the importance of all those binary bits stored on that spinning disk, we may come to thank him for finding the ideal way of ridding ourselves of them.
Do you remember the days when we had books on our office shelves? Nice books with cloth covers; old books with leather covers; modern books with glossy paper covers; beloved books whose covers had fallen off; and even books that had survived the rainy season but still carried that musty, monsoon smell about them. Technical books to consult when we found that water curiously wouldn't flow uphill, or an encyclopaedia to settle the argument as to which number of Henry's many wives Anne Boleyn was.
In the twentieth century office, such a display may only be seen behind the academic or lawyer being interviewed for CNN, and even that may be hiding the wall-safe or the drinks cabinet. These days, the information originally held in those books is now found in the office software reference section or help menu, and one checks the InterNet rather than investing in Britannica. Soon, bookshelves will no longer be necessary.
I'll miss them.With all these wonders that we have brought in to the twentieth century office to simplify or speed up our operations, perhaps the most important is the office accounting system introduced to avoid the possibility of corruption.
Actually performing a double-entry in a ledger which can be bought at any normal stationery shop is said to be fraught with devious possibilities. Rather, a single keyboard entry into the computer is said to eliminate such problems. Gone are the days of writing and signing a cheque. Today we have to request the computer to print the cheque form for us, which it will only do:
- if the operator is authorised;
- if the payee is entitled;
- if there is money in the budget;
- if there is money in the bank; and
- if the previous payment has been 'resolved'.
Where we are at present, the electricity supply is occasionally a trifle variable, and 'surges' can have an interesting effect. Such fluctuations can change the data which, put simply, means that when the computer starts looking for names of payees who are entitled to receive money, for instance, if those names have been changed - even ever so slightly, like by a single letter - then the computer will refuse to recognise the payee, and will refuse to pay.
Computer experts refer to this distressing event as 'data corruption'.
And they say that this programme is supposed to avoid corruption?
Enjoyed the article full of humour as always- Ken, your writings about real life UNICEF not only makes good reading but also tell us about your acceptance of inevitable circumstances and adaptability to get on with your work. You make it sound easy but one can imagine the problematic situations for which you seem to have always found solutions- please keep sharing your interesting and informative stories. Thanks .
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It is always a pleasure to read any ofKen´s articles
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