India: Day 4 - Auditer
Penguin August 27th, 2007
Don’t Forget to Save
I didn’t get a chance to blog Day 3 last night because I wanted to make sure I got enough rest. It would totally suck if I got sick so early into the trip.
I woke up around 6:20. Although, I probably could’ve gone back to sleep, I figured it was a good chance to blog. I pounded away at the keyboard for a little more than an hour. Then, BAM! My laptop shuts down.
In order to keep from burning my lap, I had put the laptop on top of some pillows. Bad idea. All that info, gone.
No Scallion Pancakes
Our goal today was to cross the street to see what else was around our apartment. Since I lost everything I typed, I opted to rewrite everything.
Wenhai went to the market to grab breakfast and buy some more eggs. When he got back, he said that they didn’t have scallion pancakes. Instead, they had manto. I was excited. But when I went to try it, it turned out to be a little on the sour side. Normally, I’d eat it, but I wasn’t sure if the bread was supposed to be sour, or it had spoiled. In either case, neither of us wanted to eat it.
We did have the eggs, so we started to boil them. Just as they finished cooking, the driver had come. I hurried to pull them out of the pot and run them under some water. Dropped them into a bowl and ran for the van.
We went to the guesthouse to grab the girls. Too bad we didn’t have the scallion pancakes to share with them. We did have the eggs, which they were very happy for.
Who Gets Sanjaya?
We got to the office and almost immediately, the power went out. This was going to be a fun day, sitting in on the second floor with the gas fumes.
The auditor was going to come today. So Emmy and Wenhai needed Sanjaya to walk help walk them through the accounting. But if Karen and I were going to work on any of the reports or the software side, we would need Sanjaya to walk us through that. Meanwhile, the girls could work sorting pictures and figuring out how to sort the stories for the website.
Obviously, since we both needed Sanjaya, we needed a plan to best utilize his time. The auditor said that he would come after lunch, so we figured it would be good to sit with him in the morning. But he ended up sitting with Wenhai to do some Excel stuff. The girls also sat with some of the staff to teach them some Excel as well.
Meanwhile, I worked on the website. Not sure whether they had access to PHP, I decided to hedge my bets and just make the pages static.
Excel seemed like a really important application, so they typed up a quick lesson and a schedule of who would be going through it.
The best laid plans… Oh well, at least we managed to find stuff that we could work on. It seemed like Karen was just floating around, trying to figure out how she could best be utilized. I think it was really hard for her, because without Sanjaya, there was nothing she could do.
Yay, Spilled Soup!
We eventually got lunch, which consisted of soup, salad, and naan. Lunch was brought to us by motorcycle, so a lot of it had spilled into the plastic bags. None the less, we ate it anyway. It seems as we eat more and more, we end up eating less and less. I’m afraid that our nutrition won’t be sufficient and people will end up getting sick.
To Audit or Not to Audit
After lunch, we had the opportunity to sit with the auditor and Neil, the auditor’s computer cousin. Initially, I thought it would be a lot of accounting, so I wanted to go with the girls to the orphanage. But Emmy said there might be some stuff related to the software. So, I stayed.
We sat down and waited for everyone to get together for the meeting. It took awhile for it to get started, so Wenhai and I did our best to try and pass the time. We played tic-tac-toe, dots, and rock paper scissor. Then I started drawing pictures of him jump roping. I wanted to draw a flip book, but I was way too lazy for that.
Eventually everyone gathered. Since Neil had just gotten here, him and the auditor went into the computer room with Sanjaya to see how the system worked. Meanwhile, Emmy, Karen, Wenhai and I sat with Hamadri. We talked a little bit, mostly about some of the new developments of CSS.
Some really cool things that were happening were the new sources of funding they were finding. A pastor from New Zeland had found CSS through the internet and contacted Hamadri, interested in donating money. Another development was this Foundation in Ohio. Hamadri’s daughter applied for some funding and they received several thousand dollars, both in operations and loan capital.
We did talk a bit about Technosoft and the state of microfinance software in India. It seems that almost all of the companies developing software don’t know anything about the business side. With any software, if you don’t understand the problem, how can you write software to solve it? Some of this software is cheap, like Technosoft. Then there are expensive vendors, like Javasoft. In either case, they don’t really know what they’re doing.
Hamadri gave us a quick rundown on what Technosoft was bringing on Monday. They would bring SQL Server and a software upgrade. Whether this consisted of a patch to the existing software or an entirely new version was unclear. In either case, Technosoft claims that this would fix all their problems. I wasn’t inclined to believe them.
After about an hour and a half, Neil and the auditor joined us. The auditor was hilarious. He was so dramatic with his phrases, such as, “A known enemy is better than an unknown enemy”, “If a baby has digestive problems, you don’t tell him to become a man” and so on.
Neil made some really good assessments. I don’t know much about Access, but I knew a bit. Some of the new revalations was the ability for Access to do connection pooling. This would alleviate the issue of having mutiple people performing data entry. But this would increase the problem of cuncurrency.
When we first got put on this project, we were kind of pidgeon holed into thinking that we had to solve the problems. Essentially, we needed to try and make this work within the boundaries. We knew that we were moving to SQL Server (even though I didn’t know why), and that we would be getting a new version of the software or something.
Part of it was that we didn’t really get a lot of time to sit down and experience the software. We were thrown into debugging right away. As such, we weren’t familiar with what the software could or couldn’t do. Had I known that the software was in this state, I would have urged that technosoft first fix the known problems, before developing new software.
Hamadri had sent us a requirements document and agreement between CSS and Technosoft. Andy and Ken had reveiwed it and both gave their approval. The problem was, Hamadri didn’t ask if he should even do this in the first place. The fundamental problem wasn’t being addressed. Instead, we were blindly accepting Technosoft’s panacea as true. I’m not saying that Technosoft wasn’t trying to solve the problem, but I don’t think they fully understood the needs of CSS. Even after 3 years, they still didn’t know anything about microfinance.
Now What?
So, where are we now? In odd similarities to the Honduras trip, there wasn’t much we could do. My assessment of the situation is:
CSS probably won’t support the first version of the software anymore. After CSS paid all this money for SQL Server and the new software, I think they should see if it can work with Access and get connection pool working. If they have to use the new software, they need to QA it, thoroughly. Something they didn’t do with the first iteration of the software. And only once they have a working application, not one without bugs, but one that’s accurate, then should CSS pay for the software.
As for the rest of the team? There’s not much else we can do to support CSS. We can look at the Crystal Reports that they have created and see if the reason why the reports aren’t accurate is because the data is wrong, or because the reports aren’t built correctly.
I’m working on a website that will showcase some of the success stories of CSS’s microfinance operation with client biographies and statistics. With the help of the pictures the girls took and the information that they got from the interviews, CSS will be able to get more funding and better support for their operations.
We can still move forward with the Excel training. And if we need to, we can do some other office training. I took a look at their proposed course, and it’s extremely simple. Sure, most of them probably can’t do advanced Excel, but I think there are probably a few that will be able to handle it. It may be beneficial to go deeper with them.
<3 Intarweb
It was getting late, so we all headed back to the guesthouse. We’ve been deprived of internet for awhile, so we were eager to get online.
We stopped by the guesthouse to drop off Emmy, who was tired. Probably from a combination of jetlag, the heat, and lack of nutrition. She’s been skipping dinner and eating ramen instead. Sure, ramen will give you calories, but it won’t be enough to keep you healthy.
The rest of us went to the internet cafe by our apartment. When we got there, it was packed. So we showed the girls the rest of the market. The South Indian food place was open, and we saw that they had Scallion pancakes. We ordered and squated down at the side of the road to enjoy it. It was definitely a sight to see.
Then we went to the internet cafe and waited for a computer to open up. The cafe consisted of 6 computers packed tightly together. The only way of cooling the tiny room was a ceiling fan. The hallway that led to the cafe lacked any soft of air ciruclation or ventilation. Just standing there, we were all dripping with sweat.
Eventually, we all got online, I made the last 3 updates. And sent out some emails.
Another Penguin Place?
The driver came to pick us up at our apartment for dinner. We had asked Hamadri if there were any other places we could eat, other than Penguin. I think he misunderstood and said there was another Penguin between the guesthouse and our apartment. Same owner, same menu. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that we wanted something else.
We started to venture off our normal fair. We ordered this tandori chicken that was really tender and flavorful. Most of the tandori chicken I had in the states was really dry, even the dark meat. But this was moist and tasty.
We also ordered some kashmiri naan. We thought that it was garlic, but when we got it, it had nuts on it. It was actually a little sweet, which was a nice departure from the butter naan we had become so accustomed to.
All Aboard the D Train
Right after I ate the scallion pancakes, I felt my stomach starting to get a little unsettled. It didn’t hurt, but I knew that something would be coming down the pipe later on. I thought it was just me, but Wenhai had it too.
We got back to our apartment and proceeded to start dumping. After I went, I just had to lie down. Meanwhile, Wenhai jumped in the shower. I was planning to shower, but I ended up passing out.
-Penguin
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