Thy will be done

The Lord's Prayer

 

Our father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name,

thy kingdom come,

thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our trespassess

as we forgive those who trespass against us,

and lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil. Amen

The Lord had different will, I have surrendered my life to his hands since I got Psalm 91 sometime ago, but not too long ago, and a flash light in my memory reminded me while reading it for the first time, of instances in my life when the Lord really protected me!

Deep inside me I did not want to Travel!

True first when I found out my travel date contradicts due voting date, and I was told as an Egyptian abroad I could still vote in our Embassy but in United Kingdom Egyptian Embassy is in London; that is six hours travelling time by car from where I live and I do not have a car, neither a car is available to me to take me to London, so it seemed to me an impossible mission!

Then with all recent events since the Russian airliner that fall in Sharm El Sheikh followed by all other events ending up with Europe almost in Red Alert and undeclared third world war, I had the feeling my travelling time was not right! But as I said the Lord’s will was different, and He had always protected me on the right time.

Well, I was not allowed to travel for very stupid reasons that gives me the opportunity to talk and criticise the retarded way our computerised information system is handled!

Old memories

My uncle, was an Engineer graduated from the faculty on Engineering long time ago but life forced him to work as a teacher in some school and I got to know him as a teacher until my beloved Christmas present -a train- was broken, but thanks God, it happened my uncle was visiting us to wish us a Merry Christmas, and saw how sad I was for my broken toy and laughed taking the broken pieces from my hands, and magically he handled them putting them back together, in no time my broken train was one piece once again!

I was watching amused, and then for the first time I got to know that teacher uncle was in fact an engineer, since then engineering become the dream of my life! Every day life over the years and good observations, taught me to repair lot of things without the need to learn engineering but it remained a dream to join Engineering Faculty even though I almost fail to join it due to short degrees that gave me two choices, either I join the Faculty of Engineering far away from Cairo, or the Faculty in Science in Cairo! I was still willing to travel to south of Egypt until I found out I would have the chance still to join Cairo University Engineering Faculty if I finish the 1st year in the Science faculty with very good grades, moreover, I will not loose any learning years as first year in both faculties teaches some courses, and my grades allowed me to join an Engineering faculty somewhere far from my residence!

What a disappointment passing to second year with just Good grade, that will not authorise me to ask the transfer from the faculty of science to engineering, so my second year in that faculty was a pass time cause deep inside me I had made the decision to start over again going back to school passing tests again and get the right marks and degrees to join the desired faculty in Cairo University!

My last exam day of second year, I was looking around like saying Good Bye to that place I was planning to send my father the receive the bad news of my failure to be my excuse for my decision to go back to school loosing 3 years of my working future, mean time on my short vacation following the exams I got to see two movies about computers, old huge computers that used to occupy more than a room after successfully bringing down its size from a whole building to just some rooms in a building! The look of the the computer programmer in his white coat like a medical doctor made me think it over and I start dropping down the dream of my life so far towards a new dream in the world of computers, then the surprise of my life come with my father when he returned smiling happy from the collage bringing me the unbelievable news I had passed successfully my second year with just a PASS grade! So now as a third year in collage I had the choice to go Chemical, Physical or Mathematical which opens the doors towards the computer world! In fact the only real relation was Numerical Analysis that depended on fast computing of complexed formulas over computers to make comparisons and analyse results! 

To make the long story short I graduated testing all grades from Good, to pass then Very Good and finally Excellent that authorised to become a demonstrator and continue my studies for higher degrees -Master and Ph. D.- that were closed to public due to shortage in teachers! Resuming my studies did not still fulfil my dream of computers and becoming a programmer until I discovered the next door Institute of Statistical Studies and Research! Joining this Institute required a university degree and was considered as higher education, but still you had to get a 2 years study for a diploma that your final grade in it will qualify you for master and Ph. D. degrees once you graduate with good or above, or obtain 2 diplomas was equal to a master degree! But still I did not really feel I learn computers until I joined some computer courses in the American University and life goes on I become officially a programmer and developed a computerised system for the exams to issue alphabetically Sit Numbers, print them and print exam schedules and once results were entered would print the final results, it was supposed to give access to each teacher to enter the result of his tests but obviously professors time was too precious to waist entering the results if he had no time to correct the his exams but will pass the correction to his assistance and the results to the data entry people!

By 1979 I had to leave Egypt and interrupt my studies I took a private non paid vacation lasted over 20 years but still closely related to computers, however only the 5 years prior to the 9/11 famous WTC attack I was totally involved in the information technology field!

Being close to the date revolution from 19XX to 20XX the Y2K problem popped up many old system computers would go from 31/12/1999 to 01/01/1000 or 01/01/1900 not 01/01/2000 and many solutions were offered from changing the processor to upgrading operating systems or patches to show the 1900 as 2000. But many companies decided to upgrade their computers and give away -donate- their old systems to be used as training unites to learn Cobol or Fortran Java or any computer language that having a wrong date displayed would not affect learning the procedure and working on that problem was a wealth of knowledge that can not be described, moreover some companies donated their computer systems that were sophisticated enough not to have that Y2K problem! And all those donated systems were given to schools for teaching purposes and this imposed an additional load of keeping track which schools got systems so we did develop a database to keep track of the schools that still need to be provided with those systems and those that got a system and its type!   

The 9/11 attack caused a huge financial drop in general mostly the place I used to live in because its main activity depended on tourism that almost stopped, many places had to reduce liabilities and lay off people, I was working in developing a new to the region institute that would become over time the main learning centre for the Caribbean not just information technology, the region would include all surrounding Islands on the Caribbean and affect the financial situation plus give a push to the tourism so as a solution for that unexpected financial crisis I thought as a way out to visit my beloved country and negotiate some cultural exchange educational trips exchange between Cairo University and Antigua & Barbuda International Institute -ABII for short- but visiting the Institute of Statistical Studies & Researches -ISSR for short- were I had my 1st steps in this Information Technology world was a deep disappointment!

My 1st chock was finding back the same old computer systems I was using during my training but this time distributed in the different departments one per department mostly not working and a technician trying to put it back to work!

My second set back was seeing systems I used to donate to schools upon the Y2K problem more sophisticated than the main ones used in the computer lab!

After almost 20 years I expected to see the top of the art in ISSR in computer world I found it a real rubbish! ISSR died to become just nothing how could I dare to propose any educational and cultural exchanges? Moreover my dream to help improving tourism dead on the spot, foreign students visiting a new place either in Egypt or the Caribbean would push them at least out of curiosity to visit and explore around the Universities and give a slight push to tourism either place as both depend a lot on tourism! Bottom line is after this failure I faced another bad surprise of being laid off my salary was a big overhead on a financially suffering institution and country! And in an attempt no to remain unemployed I decided to go back to my old job in ISSR and I was asked for a proposal to Improve the services offered by ISSR, but this will be my next week’s article explaining mean time the reasons I could not leave Egypt so until then may God Keep blessing and protecting Egypt from all conspiracies going around that conspirators failed to realise Egypt and Egypt alone was Blessed by God ... May the peace of the lord be upon you all!