India Archives - Sky's Blog

On the road(s) in northern India

7 October, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

You can learn a lot about a place if you sit for a while and observe the types of vehicles passing by on the road. During one of my trips to India I sat at lunch and watched the traffic on the busy highway. Upon finishing, I stepped outside and snapped photos of some of the traffic on a busy highway over the course of about five minutes. You can look at my photos and read my observations below the fold…

The snapshot to the left is of the rear of a (big) truck. Big TATA and Mahindra trucks do the heavy lifting in India, carrying huge cargoes everywhere. They are brightly painted—each one different from all the others—and on the back of every one is the legend “Blow Horn — Use Dipper at Night.”^[1] When passing one of these behemoths, every driver honks, and sometimes the honking continues the entire time you’re passing. The honk is both a request to pass and a warning that I’m passing. Unlike the US, the honk is a courtesy, not an annoyance (in California it is illegal to honk except to warn other drivers in case of danger).

Lest you think otherwise, the photos I’m showing you express my admiration for a country where everything is used that possibly can be, and is re-used when it breaks. Very few things go to waste here.

And here are my photos: [Read more…]

Airjaldi surfaces again

20 August, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

Well, they haven’t been dormant at all — they’ve been very active — but as you might guess, when you’re workin’ hard you don’t have much time to write in your blog. Or even keep your web site up to date. Mikey Ginguld updates us on Airjaldi.

Airjaldi and the Tibetan Technology Center are headquartered in Dharamsala, India, up in the foothills of the Himalayas. Read all about what’s going on now. They’ve done a lot – including getting noticed by Cisco and starting a Cisco training academy.

In other news, one of the senior high school students who participated in Project Happiness in 2006-2007 just arrived at Emory University (in Atlanta) where he starts class next week. I’ve particularly been in touch with two of the guys who got into the computer and video technologies, both of whom are in college now. These kids are doing well. They really sweated it out over the examinations and college admissions, and it’s good to see how they are progressing. Although it probably seemed like a lot to him when he left India, he arrived in Atlanta with $1,000 in his pocket to start school. Once he starts buying his books for class, that won’t go far…

Chatting our way to World Peace

16 March, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

When I made my first trip to Dharamsala, India, in 2005, to see this hub of activity of the Tibetan exile community and the home of the Dalai Lama, I was hosted by Thubten Samdup. “Sam” is founder of the Canada Tibet Committee and an activist in the exile community. He lives in Montréal. When he’s not traveling, that is.

One of Sam’s recent projects (it’s a couple of years old now) involves a group of Chinese-speaking (reading and writing as well) Tibetans who live in Dharamsala and spend their time chatting with people inside China. About what it is to be a part of the Tibetan culture and how it relates to the rest of China. It’s an actual project with financial supporters and employees, and you can contact me if you’re interested in helping support it. Sam also spends a lot of time in the Tibetan exile settlements in the rest of India, but that’s another story.

Looking back at video and ICT4D

23 December, 2007 by sky Leave a Comment

Every once in a while I look back at resources that I’ve created and/or blogged, and suggest that you take a look at them.

The AirJaldi 2006 Summit, held in Dharamsala, India, was a several-day sequence of presentations, panels and then a week of workshops, dealing with Wireless infrastructure and how these can be used to further the development of the world into a place where veryone can live a healthy, happy life. The meeting was attended by social activists of many sorts, all of whom had an interest in using communications technologies.

Here’s your action item for today: The Video page for Airjaldi I would recommend that you take a look at what’s available there.Here are two of my favorites:

Dr. Rodger Downer, keynote speaker, and President Emeritus of the University of Limerick (Ireland), A Global Perspective on Sustainability {28 minutes running time}

Dr. Richard Stallman, keynote speaker, On free software, human rights, development and GNU. {52 minutes running time IMPORTANT NOTE: the camera was not rolling until shortly after the talk was underway}

Everything else on that page is worth viewing! Just a reminder.

You can find all of my articles on AirJaldi here in my blog. I tried to blog the conference in real-time, since we had wi-fi available in the hall, but it was really a challenge. It’s hard to estimate how much bandwidth, and how many routers, to provide for so many tech-literate participants. So I ended up writing blog entries each evening, and then posting them during the day. This set off an inquiry into offline blogging tools (like MarsEdit and Ecto) which I use to this day. And an overview of blogging tools. And it continued my series I’m a Turtle about how I carry my “home” (computer) on my back(pack) everywhere I go (cyber-nomadics).