Sunday 19 January 2014

At last! A breakthrough worth talking about



After enduring a headache that lasted about three days last week caused by (the metaphoric) banging my head on a wall, I have finally cracked the surveying puzzle!  I won’t bore you all of the details, but needless to say, it seemed every piece of progress was slowly gained (estimated speed: five miles a fortnight) but today it all came together – woohoo!  So much so I spent about one hour processing the other three survey jobs that I have sweated out in the TL sun for in 2013.

Who would have thought I would weep tears of joy?!?  Well not quite but I was close.

The picture above shows the different values from the orthographic elevation (bold numbers) and ellipsoid height.  Most people are familiar with using orthographic elevation which is used in most maps with contours.  This particular problem has puzzled me for ages to resolve and of course, the solution is tucked away in a series of menus and drop-down choices that are not intuitive, well to me anyway.  I will leave it to Mark Silver to explain the differences range between the orthographic elevations to ellipsoid heights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX6a6kCk3Po&feature=youtu.be, warning he does talk in feet not metres.

And to add a little more colour to this post, I thought I would show the Tapo survey too:

So what’s next?  Some would say that this work is only the part of the iceberg you can see, personally I don’t care about the bit under water as that is the easy part but it just takes time.  So basically I can now train my counterparts in how to transfer the data on their computer and process the data.  Easy!  The rough plan is as follows:

  • Train the Timorese engineers in the correct use of the survey equipment
  • Once they are trained, go berserk with two or three rover units where ever a survey is required across the whole East Timor
  • Start surveying existing water supply systems as most systems do not have as constructed plans for these systems – local knowledge of these systems is great but how do you pass on this information to others?

This is a job that will take longer than my placement and that is what really motivating me, the Timorese need to be able to do this work, not me.

Another highlight this week has been seeing Devil the Brain Damaged Dog strutting around as he has found a girl dog.  So there is hope for the less fortunate dogs out there…  To be honest I thought there was something going on as he has become less afraid of me to the point that he wags his tail whenever I get home from work and doesn’t scurry away at the sight of me.  At least there is someone happy to see me when I get home, the walls at home have little new conversation material these days.  

Talking of walls, back when I was learning Tetun soon after arriving here, I had to make up a sentence in Tetun that in English was “I will go home after work and talk with my gecko”.  Little did I know that gecko is a term for girlfriend, well that did make the teacher and classmates giggle and me blush.  I only have the cold-blooded variety of gecko in my house, there is about six geckos of various sizes that scurry around on the walls keeping the bugs to a minimum.

Not that I am counting, it is nearly five months here in TL and I am still going strong.  I will be heading back to Oz for a two week break at the beginning of February, before Christmas that seemed so long ago but now it is not far away at all.  I just hope I get a window seat on the plane…

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