End of the academic year and looking forward to going home

Salary symphony, music to my ears. Each end-of-the-month, some 30 or so people who sit around my area on the fourth floor of Building 14 on campus receives a text message at just about the same time as we are notified that our salary has arrived in each of our bank accounts. We all bank at the same bank which has set up office here on campus and has some sort of special agreement with the university. Definitely a sound we all look forward to with anticipation.

A large group of us went out to one of the fish restaurants in the small town right next to the campus (Thewal). It was an Arabic meal all spread out on a low table with us kneeling or sitting cross-legged on the floor. The fish are mainly grilled. Interestingly, they slice the fish to make large squares of meat and then grill the fish. When presented at the table, we reach out and grasp one of the cubes of meat and pull them away to set them on our plate. Put some tabuli (chopped parsley and onions) and hummus beside that with some salad and a few other things and you have a good feed. Drinks were 'Saudi Campaign' (apple juice and pop) and a glass of water.  I found the meal to be good but for the price, I think I could find something else of better value. The gathering of like-minded folk was sure worth it though.

Shopping for a new computer. Well, our 'old' Dell laptop purchased before we left for Dubai in 2003, has finally been retired. I blew the sound card when we were setting up our first rental place in Dubai and the thing has had sound issues since. Lately, it was taking over 15 minutes to start up -- and this was after I formatted it and installed the operating system again before I came here. I now have a Dell desktop computer in a smallish box. I have moved from 40 Gig HD in the laptop to 325 with an additional 1000 Gig in this new one! 8-)    Arindam and I purchased the same machines but I got additional memory. I am really happy with the speed I now have.

Of royal account. Each year at this time of year, the whole Saudi government moves from the center of the country, where the capital city is located, out to the cooler climate of Jeddah.  Recently we have had a number of VIP visits including one from the King and then shortly after, from his brother the Crown Prince. The highway between Jeddah and the university was closed as well as the roads inside the campus and people are notified shortly before the road closure to leave campus early if they need to go to Jeddah. We, who live on campus were also told to vacate our office buildings or be prepared to stay till the visit was over which could be 7 pm or much later.

Talking about royal activities around Jeddah, Arindam and I were down in Jeddah and as we drove around we saw many military helicopters with scanning devices attached and open side door with people looking out. As we had arrived at an electronics store, we watched the road as it was shut down with blockades and police driving back and forth. Shortly, about 20 black vehicles drove past at high speed flanked by police cars. Included in the convoy were a black flatbed tow truck, two ambulances that I could count, a few Hummers, a fire truck, a bus, and some other large vehicles. Most of the extra vehicles were probably along 'just in case'. Definitely, it is a major undertaking to move royalty around by vehicle.

World cup fever is definitely present and accounted for here. There are a number of public locations on campus where large screen TV or large theatre-sized outdoor screens are set up to show the matches. You really have to be out of Canada or the States to grasp the fervor surrounding these competitions. One good thing here, is that the games start in South Africa at about 2 pm our time so most people can get in almost all of a regular day's work before their attention is pulled away by the matches.

I have given the house a cleaning, especially the second bedroom in preparation for Garnet to arrive. I pulled up the duvet and discovered that there was only a single sheet under it -- no mattress cover and no fitted sheet. So I put in a call to 959 and I have some being delivered tonight at 8 pm. I sent a text to Donna asking for another set as well. I did not know I could ask for things like this when I first arrived. I have even found that I can call 959 and ask for them to come and replace burnt out light bulbs! Hmmm, probably making a call about being low on milk would not cut it though.

It was HOT today! I looked at my iPhone around 2 pm and it said that the temperature in Jeddah was 47C. Someone in the office said that at 12 it was 51C! One great thing about being right on the coast is that there is usually a breeze and oddly enough, it is mainly dry, so the heat is not too bad -- definitely not as oppressive as Dubai was most of the time.   This was the first time that it has been anywhere close to this temperature since I have been here and might even have been a record.  Actually, we are often rather cool in the AC of the buildings so a 5 minute walk around the campus at noon is a nice opportunity to warm up. I would not enjoy the heat as much if I had to work outside though.

This weekend is my last dive before I leave. We are on a boat again. We are going out with a company called Desert Sea Divers. I am looking forward to sharing the magic of scuba diving with Garnet when he comes.

Which brings me to my final paragraph. I am leaving for Edmonton at 2:40 am on the 1st of July so not much sleep for me that night! I will arrive in Edmonton around noon the same day having being in transit for something like 20 hours... We will be heading directly to Mellowdale convention and then back home for a short retrofit of the trailer and then off to Vancouver Island where we will go on a 5 day sea kayak trip. This is from the website.  " The Islands and the surrounding crystal clear ocean are the home of Sea Lions, Seals, Pacific White Sided Dolphins, Otters, colorful birds and the largest starfish and clams of the world. Ancient trees along our shore provide nesting habitat for more than 200 Bald Eagles." I might not do a whole lot of swimming in the cold water, but will bring along my underwater box and lean over the side of the kayak and shoot a few photos of what drifts below us. 8-) Once the kayak trip is over it is back across the mountains with a stop each way at my Mom and Dad's place for a night stop before we need to get Donna back for work again. Donna tells me that I will only have ONE weekend at home! I am devastated. How can a month go by that fast? I sure hope I can cram in a visit with all those I want to see in that short a time. Oh, and I KNOW that Donna has the contents of the 'job jar' prioritized for me. I am ready, bring it on!

Panic and Relaxation at the End of the Semester

General panic ensued for our little team during the last few days of the semester. I am thankfully sheltered a little bit by my wonderful co-worker, Vanessa as she took the brunt of the data manipulations that had to happen. I played the part of data integrity checker and general assistant to her efforts. Everyone knows that this is a start-up university and as normal day to day events pass we are sometimes lulled into complacency thinking that everything is in place and then something comes up and slaps you awake and you realize again, that everything is not as it appears.

This past week was our most important week of the semester as our application, Blackboard, becomes the focus of every instructor to put their final grades into the grade books in each course. Theoretically, these data-sets are supposed to be compiled and then uploaded into the University’s student records that form their permanent performance matrix. We then become the nexus to ensure that this student data gets moved. Well, we had been waiting for something called a ‘Building Block’. for quite a while (since before I went to the conference in Swansea actually…). We finally got this component and I helped install it in our Test server. Everything went OK and then we installed it in our live server and it seemed OK. Luckily, we had spent a few days working with the existing building block for final grades before this event. To work with the data, Vanessa working her magic with Excel, goes through about 30 or more steps that she developed, to get the data into the format needed by the student services system – Course, Number, Student ID, and ultimately, the students’ final course grade. Well, when we installed the now component around 5 pm on the 31st of May, the next day we got an email from an instructor saying that their student’s final grades were changed and they could not alter it back! We found that all the B+ grades were changed to B and a few other things. We (Vanessa mainly) worked through the 1200 or more grades and compared the old data to the new and found that the new component had associated a new ‘reference table’ to compare % grades to, and displayed a changed set of Alphanumeric final grades. Oh, and the table it was drawing upon did not have a B+ in it so when an attempt at correction happened the B+ produced an error. Vanessa removed the new component and activated the old and ran the whole process again and compared, multiple times, ALL the grades and spot checked new changes – because faculty were actively still putting in grades and changing things on the fly… So, by Thursday afternoon this week, we were finally sure that everything was in place. The new component was sent back twice I think and it did not work as we expected it to either time… 8-/     So the plan now is to spend the summer testing and ensuring that our system will be more automated and less hands on for next semester. But then again, that was what our current plan and incidentally, last semester’s too!  In the end, not a single grades was lost, and for all intense and purposes, all of this activity went on behind the scenes and not a single student or faculty record was negatively impacted.  This reminds me of a saying I heard when I was running my own construction company:  The difference between an expert carpenter and a novice is that the expert knows how to fix his errors.

 During this time, I had been working on other projects as well. I have now got the Schools (K-12 schools) set up with a section of our Blackboard system so that they can manage their own users and courses (this was really fun to do and enjoyable to be involved with schools again). I have been building a course for the Dean of the Biosciences department here; working on a course for Occupational Health and Safety department related to Lab Safety practices at the University; and most recently have been working with the Human Resources department. This last project was fun because I found that the university does not have a hand-held video camera so I used Donna’s brand new camera that I purchased in London. I have found that the video quality is so spectacular, that it is better than any hand-held video camera I have seen so far – and it is a point and shoot camera! I purchased some software this week for editing because I did not have anything to edit High Definition video which this little camera produces. The software is simple, quick and produces exceptionally clear results for ANY kind of video file format. If you are interested, you can find it at: http://www.avs4you.com/video.aspx I am not selling this! The twist with this site is that you purchase use of ALL their software for either a year or forever – two prices. This is not ‘pay for one and then pay for the second’, it is ‘pay once and get all’ for the time period you chose. I have worked with probably a dozen different video editing programs and these produce seems to be about the best of the lot, so far.

Either side of the panic period, I have had two really nice scuba dives. We went north of the University to an area called Petro Rabigh which is the name of a Saudi petroleum company. Well actually sadly, there are three different industrial plants spewing gunk into the air along the coast in the same area which inevitably blows down towards where we live! One is this petroleum refinery, the second a power station (probably using fuel from the refinery), and the third, the second largest cement factory in the world (I have been told), no doubt using the near-by electricity source. Well, we boarded a small boat and went about 30 km further north to a reef called 5km reef. These areas see few people that one could consider it to be ‘near pristine’. We did two dives that first Thursday and between the two, a bit of fishing. I saw a barracuda over 6 feet long jump out of the water just before we left for home. We caught a yellow fin tuna that got away and a barracuda which I kept and brought home. I filleted the fish and ate ¼ that evening. I also I cut off its head and boiled it and then rebuilt it. Incredible! This thing is out of someone’s nightmare! The lower jaw is overshot and like a crocodile, only able to move up and down, not sideways. The upper jaw has a set of solid slicing (like knife tips) molars and then the teeth towards the front are on a separate set of two bones. Think of an old man who is able to take his upper set of dentures and move them forward with his tongue. This fish can push its front set of teeth forward about 1/3 the length of its lower jaw and then pull them back like a saw. If ‘grandpa’ had a set like this, no 15 oz steak would ever be a challenge!

The second Thursday took us to the same area and we saw a turtle resting on a slope of a coral wall that we were swimming alongside.  For perspective, this turtle had about a 30 inch shell.
During this same dive, we were surrounded by a very large school of young barracuda, each about 2 feet long. I enjoy looking up towards the surface as I swim along the coral wall, and at one place, I am sure I saw the same 6 foot barracuda that I saw jump the week before – the mother of all barracuda! I brought along my rod this second trip but was not lucky.

This Friday I went to the University pool for the first time and gave Kannan some pointers on swimming. He sits next to me and sees all the photos I take during my scuba diving and would really like to learn – but realizes that knowing how to swim first might come in handy.

And thinking of the future and what to do when Garnet gets here regarding transportation -- I finally got the lowdown! I now know that I do not need to consider the cost of fuel. I shot this image with my iPhone at the location where we met our dive boat. The small car is a Chevi and the truck, a Ford Explorer. The person renting the small car says it costs him SAR 13 to fill the tank; the owner of the Ford SUV, SAR 35 for his full tank. The exchange rate is 3.57 SAR to $1 CDN. You do the math! This is not an error either! This is from people who drive here and fill their tanks on a regular basis.