Take this job and ... oh, wait, can I have some more, please?

Hey, I'm alive!

If a blogger posts a message and no one is there to read it, does it make a difference? I suspect I'll find out soon enough, because chances are that noone's checking this site any more. Hm... perhaps that means I can post freely, without censorship! That's a liberating thought, actually.

Well, let's see. Two weeks ago was one of the busiest, most stressful weeks of my time here. I was trying to meet a deadline to get this report completed for UNICEF by the end of the week. Pretty much everything was done when Mike critiqued it and ordered a ton of revisions. That put is up against a tight deadline and I and the new fellow (Vicky) worked late all week to make it happen. We made the deadline, mostly due to my insistence. Vicky was pretty relaxed the whole time, once asking me if I had ever missed a deadline. No, I haven't. For someone as laid back and disorganized as me, it's amazing that I have that little hangup. But I do... if I commit to do something by a specific date, unless my dog dies I figure I have no excuse not to produce by that time.

Anyway, that was 2 weeks ago and last week I began to design the database for the Bangladesh Injury Surveillance system. The backend is the easy part, I know how to do that. The tricky part for me will be the UI, as I've never done that before. I'm learning VB.Net; I figure that's the quickest way to get something usable produced. Still, it'll probably take me a couple of months to get version 1 complete... and then I'll still have to add reporting functions and make it customizable. So lots of work there to be done. And, given that I've worked for two companies that basically made these kinds of systems for profit, I know that the value I'm adding to TASC by doing this is huge. They are getting a steal by paying me what they are. But I'm glad to finally do something that isn't too far afield of my strengths. All this epidemiology was making me feel inadequate!

As far as personal matters go, I've been seeing someone here - off and on - for about 3 months now. It's starting to turn into something. What, exactly, remains to be seen :) But it's gone on long enough that it seems to be more than a passing fancy, so I'll share with everyone. Her name is Jah. She lives and works outside of Bangkok in Ayutaya, which used to be the capital of Thailand long ago. She comes to BKK Saturday nights and leaves again on Sunday. She's in this management development program in a jewelry factory, which keeps her busy 6 days a week. It's not unusual for her to work 68 hours a week... so needless to say she likes to relax on her one day off!

She's very charismatic and likable, gets along with everyone. She's smart and organized (which I need) and fairly liberal minded for a Thai woman. She likes to try just about any kind of food, which, as some of you know, is one of my indicators of compatibility. And she has a great family that has really sacrificed to give her opportunity and freedom.

On the downside, she tends to worry even more than I do about relationships and gets herself worked up very easily. She's walked on me three times already because she convinced herself of some fiction, only to come back later after a few days of thinking. We'll have to solve that problem if this is to continue - but we've talked about it and are trying to keep the lines of communication as open as possible so that we can nip future problems in the bud.

OK, that's about it I suppose. I've got to get back to work.

Thupt!

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