Sylvia's Journal

Things are speeding up and slowing down at the same time. Something interfered with our internet connection and I was told it has something to do with the weather in Hong Kong. Somehow our computers at the office think we are in Hong Kong (our Google homepage is in Chinese) while our computers when plugged in at home think they are in Germany. There is something to this notion of butterflies flapping their wings in one place of the world and storms raging in another.

Thus, the internet problems are slowing us down, albeit it only for awhile. As soon as the internet was repaired, at the end of the day, we were all inundated by a tsunami of emails. Things are coming over the transom so fast that I am having to abandon my discipline of ending the day with an empty inbox. The price for this is working at my computer until far into the evening.

The pace is picking up for an official event in Hirat. I am spelling the name of the city and province with the letter ‘i’ since the computer otherwise keeps changing the spelling to Heart; very annoying. A whole slew of very high level notables will open a new provincial health office in that city, a photo-op/ribbon cutting event that takes lots of time of many very senior people to organize. Since provincial health is part of my portfolio, Steve happily ceded his place to me for this outing.

There is an immutable core to the event, the official opening, which is highly orchestrated and requires endless briefing papers from us. Despite the internet problems all these have been delivered, except for one which I need to chase after tomorrow. Steve and I had to go to one of the guesthouses to send all these documents to the people who requested them.

In the meantime there is also a pedagogical event planned before and after the ceremonies that I have chosen to design, in order to stave off the ubiquitous power point presentation. I want to develop a cadre of people who can design events in more imaginative ways. I have my work cut out.

Greg, our hospital consultant who also knows about building houses that are save to live in (i.e, no electrical outlets in the shower stall, etc.) offered to do a safety audit of my new house. We visited the house and I noticed much progress on the rehabilitation. The grass has been cut, the rose bushes are in, the safe haven installed and a transparent film placed on all the windows in case they shatter. Greg pointed out things that need to be checked (like the septic system!), replacement of water heaters and the ungrounded electrical work. The latter cannot be changed because that is how all of Kabul is wired.