ALKHOBAR, 17 December 2002 — We’re back. Ramadan and the Eid holiday are past and the Kingdom is at work, full force, for 10 days only. Next week, the winter holidays will begin and many expatriates will go on vacation. This will disrupt the work routine, especially in private firms, because employees from secretaries to accountants to engineers will be unavailable. Many international companies will be functioning without support from Europe and North America, too. The situation is a problem not just here in Saudi Arabia, but throughout the Middle East. I have calculated that by the time all the vacations in the region are added up — Summer, Pilgrimage, Ramadan, Winter, etc. — that it is possible to get work done effectively here during just six months of the year.
This is crippling when it comes to high-level IT projects. For the past six weeks, Western IT consultants and technicians have made little headway with the Saudi firms they are supposed to be serving. It has been practically impossible to get an entire team in one room at one time since the beginning of November. This week all the Western IT nerds are packing up their bags, handing in their current status reports and leaving the Kingdom for their holidays. Perhaps they’ll return in late January if Iraq isn’t blown away.
I don’t know who to point the finger at when it comes to fault finding in this messy business climate. There is plenty of blame to go around, though. The bottom line is that the Saudi economy continues to suffer from our inability to function smoothly within the dynamics of the 21st century.
Since we are working this week, I received an e-mail from HP with the following message:
“HP today announced that it intends to establish a plant for the assembly of PCs in Saudi Arabia. The company is currently in discussion with partners regarding the details of the project and expects to be able to provide further details on the project in the first half of 2003.
“The plant is the first such venture by the company in the Middle East and the third that it has opened in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. It is expected that the plant will supply up to 60,000 PCs per annum to the local and regional market.
“This represents a huge endorsement for the PC market in the Middle East,” said Antoine Maury, general manager of PSG in Central, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa. “Our single largest competitor in the PC market in the Middle East is the combined force of manufacturers of the so-called ‘white box’ or locally assembled PCs. We believe that by establishing such a facility in Saudi Arabia we can compete much more effectively with these manufacturers. We see enormous potential for growth in the PC market in the region and the new facility will complement our existing, extensive portfolio of products.
“The decision to establish the plant was taken, according to HP, following extensive study of the potential of the PC market region as well as in response to existing customer demand.
“We will be targeting the small to medium business in particular with this facility,” added Christoph Schell, regional manager, HP PSG in the Middle East. The location and date for the operation of the new facility will be announced in the near future.”
I must admit that this is one of the weirdest communications I have received from any IT company, ever. Just for the information of all, HP PSG stands for HP Personal Systems Group. HP assumed we’d know that. I don’t know why we should.
According to the information provided to the media by HP, where will this new plant be? Somewhere in Saudi Arabia. When will it open? Someday. What will it assemble? Some type of PCs. Who will be HP’s partner in the venture? Somebody. I wish this communication from HP told me something of use. Instead, we now have a company putting out “official” market rumors, somehow.
Onto a better subject, as most everyone knows, in the Kingdom we hire a huge number of women from the developing world to come here and work as housemaids. Saudi females are extremely intelligent and a long time ago we came to the conclusion that ironing thobes and washing dishes are not as much fun to do as TV commercials would have us imagine. Many women also have five children or a full time job. Since we realized from statistics published about families in the US that our husbands were never going to help out at home, if we ever hoped to have any “quality time” in our lives something must be done. Housemaids were the answer.
Housemaids come into the Kingdom on two-year work contracts. They are from such nations as the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Many of these women speak only their native languages and this can cause terrible problems because it is very hard for Saudi employers to communicate with the maids.
A new Indonesian maid came to my home immediately before Ramadan. We muddled through somehow. She seemed unhappy though and sure enough at the worst possible moment disaster struck. During the Eid holiday, with the manpower agency closed and no translators available, the maid started crying. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong and my family was miserable with this weeping woman in our midst. As usual, I turned to technology for help.
Surfing the Net, it took me a while to make progress on the communication problem. There were some sites offering human translators, but they required a day to translate a page. I found a site that had an English-Indonesian auto dictionary but it was very frustrating trying to communicate a word at a time. Finally, I struck gold. Searching through automated translators I came across a site called EWGate, which featured a demo of machine translation for several Asian languages including Indonesian. EWGate is a technology business venture from Kent Ridge Digital Labs, Singapore. It was created with the vision of bridging the communication and information gap between the East and West in cyberspace. At that moment I didn’t care if it worked in cyberspace. I needed real world assistance.
I went to ewgate.com/ewtranslite.html and figured out how to use the machine translator. In English, I typed what I wanted to tell the maid, Dharma, into the top box on the page. Then I clicked translate. The translated text appeared in Indonesian in the page’s bottom box. The system accepted 50 words at a time, which was fine.
There was one big difficulty in that Dharma was unfamiliar with computers and was initially afraid of the machine. At first, it took me about five minutes to get her to read the Indonesian translation appearing on the screen. I quickly learned that it was better to type and translate one sentence at a time to make sure Dharma understood one idea before moving to the next. Machine translation is far from perfect. I kept my sentences simple and used vocabulary with very clear meanings. If Dharma looked at all bewildered after reading the machine’s translation, I expressed my point in other words, until I was sure she understood my thoughts.
The system was easy to use, once I recognized and worked within its limitations. Eventually, Dharma got the idea and was able to type a message back to me, albeit using one finger and picking out the letters. It turned out that Dharma was upset because she had not received any reply from her family to the letter she sent when she arrived in Saudi Arabia. I could not give her a letter. I didn’t have one. But I did explain the difficulties with international mail using the machine translator.
In two hours on the Internet I managed to know everything that was bothering Dharma. For some things I had solutions. For others I explained that this was just the way life in the Kingdom was and that she would get used to it with time. The best news is that Dharma stopped crying and she seems much happier. EWTranslite is not perfect but I would recommend it to anyone and I am sure I will use it again.
Some of you might think that using machine translators is something out of the Twilight Zone. You’d be wrong. The real Twilight Zone came back to the airways in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province yesterday. Fans of the program know that the Twilight Zone was a sci-fi series that was first run on American television from 1959-64. It has continued to be broadcast, either in syndication or on cable TV, ever since.
The show was created by a talented writer named Rod Serling. The Twilight Zone was a huge hit and won Serling several awards. Serling wrote more than half of the 151 episodes produced, and also hosted and narrated the program.
Using science fiction and fantasy, the Twilight Zone addressed the moral and political questions of its day. The Twilight Zone showed us a world where not everything was normal and under control. Its rejuvenation at this time seems especially opportune.
On Monday, US Armed Forces Radio, 107.9 FM in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province broadcast the first of the Twilight Zone audio episodes, “A Hundred Yards over the Rim.” The productions are very well done featuring the actor Stacey Keach in the role of narrator. The Twilight Zone is enjoyable and thought provoking for everyone, but it makes for an especially good family experience. Most of our children have been so fascinated by television that they have never known the pleasure of listening to a dramatic presentation on radio. Family discussion during the show’s commercials can be quite enlightening. If you are outside the Eastern Province, obtain information on which radio stations are broadcasting the program in your area through the e-mail contacts available at twilightzoneradio.com.
Now, let me leave you today with something a bit less amusing, but important. The USA has announced that it will begin administering smallpox vaccinations to all its front-line troops. Since the entire population in the Kingdom could be very front-line in the event of some sort of military action with Iraq, I wondered just exactly what sort of inoculations the US government might be providing to troops coming to the Middle East.
The “Military Vaccines Web Site” (vaccines.army.mil) gives full details on vaccines of all types. Much of the information at the site makes for interesting reading. For example, the site explains that smallpox has been a concern of the American military ever since there was an American military:
“George Washington protected his troops from smallpox in 1777 using a forerunner of vaccination called “variolation.” We lost the Battle of Quebec in 1776, because our troops weren’t protected against smallpox. Americans suffered 5,500 smallpox casualties among 10,000 colonial troops. The task force commander, Maj. Gen. John Thomas, died of smallpox.”
The Military Vaccine site gives knowledge on vaccines and diseases from anthrax to yellow fever. Excellent links are provided to global authorities on infectious diseases. Certain areas of the site are for general readers, but there are detailed clinician sections, too. Families in the Middle East should pay particular attention to the section titled, “Summary.” A table in the Summary details which vaccines should be given and when, from infancy through adulthood. Most vaccines have a limited period of protection and so they must be updated regularly. For good health, the site should be used in consultation with a primary care physician to make sure that every member of your family has met the recommended vaccine requirements.
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