--Thursday, 13 July 00--
I was a work at 7:40. There was a very light rain while I walked to work
and later a real downpour developed, for a while. The temperature stayed
quite cool and was enjoyable as a relief from the recent heat.
For lunch Phil, Thuy and I took Luan out to lunch on his last day. Luan
is a talented young man with a bright future and it was a pleasure to
spend some time with him. We went to the restaurant on the second floor
of the Centrum and were able to order pizza because the electricity has
been good for the last few days. They have a quite good, very thin crust
pepperoni pizza which I will have to have again.
A busy day. The Department of Sports came by with 80 CPOs in mostly small
amounts and I called to try to get them to use one CPO. We finally agreed
that this would be the last time that they too this approach.
I realized that I had no crisis on my plate so I decided to take on the
nettlesome problem of determining the current balance of the Contingency
account. I did this because I had tried and failed before and had a chance
to consider some new approaches to the problem. I had already established
a folder into which I put what bits and pieces of information I came across
accidentally so I decided to relate that to the work that David Gentry
had done. I got the Budget folder on Contingency and cross-referenced
the two. From this I prepared a spreadsheet based on David's manual control
list. I added what I knew and gave the information to Tony.
I also decided that a third search of the complete CPO files was needed.
I sorted my EV-R crosswalk into EV order and printed it out as a guide
to Hanifa and asked her to go through every page in the files and look
for either of the two samples of the Request for Contingency Form that
I gave her. She was also to verify Registration numbers with EV numbers.
We will see how it goes.
I went to the UN clinic and got the name of an elastic bandage spelled
out (fasher elastike), bought one and gave it to Smile at work. He had
the ordinary bandage I had previously given him on his ankle already.
It took some explaining to describe the differences.
Smile was still worried ("nervous" is the word he uses) about
a place to live. Mostly he talked to Sahdik, Halil, and Adam in Albanian.
He wasn't being rude, he was being worried about where he and Kimeta would
live.
Smile walked me part way home and told me that he may have to go to his
village tomorrow if his brother and father don't come to Prishtina. He
talked about how he needed to build a house or to buy an apartment. "Albanian
people don't understand contract. In West, you sign contract for one,
two years. No problem. Here they say 'stay here for a year' and then they
say 'I never said that'. I must solve this problem."
--Friday, 14 July 00--
Last night I fell asleep reading. In my dreams I was floating in a white
space suit in a very large, fancy office. In the background I cold hear
the strains of the Blue Danube Waltz. Below me was a meeting to discuss
an important issue but the people on one side of the table didn't want
to talk about that, they just seemed to want to talk. While they were
talking the air conditioner on the wall noisily leaked water down the
paneling but no one seemed to notice.
The department's reports were discussed. Someone told the department head
that the reports they produced were not correct and had big problems.
The department head hardly noticed and seemed to be attending a meeting
with some other group -- at least his answers seemed to be to questions
that had not been asked. Sometimes the department head wouldn't answer
a question at all and sometimes he would mutter gibberish and order coffee
for his guests.
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It seemed to me that the air conditioner was spewing all the foul fumes
from both the KEK plants directly into the room. I had trouble seeing
fact from fiction. No one noticed the near miracle of both KEK plants
being online simultaneously and the meeting went on.
At times the department head would say a sentence that would contradict
a preceding sentence. I wondered, "Does he know what he is talking
about?" But then he would say something that seemed to make sense
and I felt better but then that would be contradicted by something else.
It was very confusing; I began to get a sort of meeting vertigo where
I was floating in circles and different people were shouting different
things and it was impossible to know what anything meant.
The department head told us that the had had prepared a set of procurement
guidelines that he would adopt for his department. I couldn't believe
it. We already had a government wide set of procurement regulations. Didn't
he know this? If every department had its own procurement guidelines,
purchasing anything would be more chaotic than in a dream world.
Then the department head said he had referred his guidelines to Legal.
I relaxed. One would have to be dreaming to believe that you would get
anything back from legal!
The meeting got back to the need for accurate data from the department.
At least half the meeting did, since I heard several questions about accuracy
and when it would be achieved. The answers were about the need for department
to be independent and the transcendental importance of the department's
activities. The spinning increased only this time it was the department
staff who were spinning and making promises in vague mumbles. Then the
meeting room collapsed from an implosion, as if the sheer emptiness of
meaning had caused the outside world to crash in, willy-nilly.
Sudden I awoke in a cold sweat, breathing heavily. That settles it. No
more reading Kafka at night!
The weather today was interesting. There were many clouds, puffy with
different shades of gray and white. Patches of blue were visible here
and there; not the faded, pale blue that is the standard around here but
a strong, rich blue that I have rarely seen recently. The clouds seemed
to move quickly, creating new panoramas. Visually very pleasant.
--Saturday, 15 July 00--
The sky was a flat gray today and it rained periodically sometimes so
lightly you could ignore it and sometimes so heavily you had to take cover.
The grayness was so uniform that there was no sense of movement in the
cloud cover. Change, much less progress here, can be hard to detect.
Joe
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