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:

	Huge cab on the front – small tank on the back. You’ll see another of these a few minutes later, with a completely different paint scheme. The tank is heavily loaded, however, because the back of the truck is weighted way down!
	You’ll seldom see a scooter carrying only one passenger. And side-saddle at that.
	Does anyone know why they always travel with the front door open?
	This is about as close to a single-passenger vehicle as you’ll see. This one is probably carrying several people.
	Ahem, that front door is open.
	The donkey cart and the other traffic are on the same road. Yes, they stay left (the “slow lane” and I don’t know why the donkey isn’t spooked every time a bus goes by—maybe he’s deaf?
	The three-wheeled vehicle is everywhere. In Delhi these three-wheelers are used as taxis and are CNG-powered.
	Here’s the “seldom.” A single rider on this motorcycle. The tank truck’s design is like that of old English colonial buildings, with the solid look and the arched windows. Everything is squared off and utilitarian. A rolling palace.
	The feeling you get is that nothing is wasted. If there’s a place to perch, someone is perched there.
	The front of this bus looks like it’s about to leave the ground. And it’s probably moving 60kph or better.
	It”s like the ant is carrying the grasshopper on its back.
	Look at the angle and you’ll guess this truck is carrying some serious weight.
	Cozy!
	A small passenger car at last. In the US the ratio would be the reverse of what I saw here. This is literally the only small car I saw while I was shooting these photos.
	Passengers and cargo mix it up.
	You count ’em…
	I don’t know anything about this type of truck. Three wheels, and yet big enough to carry a serious load.
	Somehow they got the whole family into this one.
	Military transport. Of a sort.
	The tractor is hauling a pretty big trailer but – see what goes by later on…
	“Nice carrier” (painted on the side). This is the type of truck that is commonly painted up with Blow Horn… on its tail.
	Now the tractors are being hauled. Five of them on one flatbed trailer.
	And this is a serious mix. The load of corded wood that you see in the background was being loaded or unloaded the entire time I was having lunch. Ta-ta for now…

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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…

The post Airjaldi surfaces again appeared first on Sky's Blog.

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.

The post Chatting our way to World Peace appeared first on Sky's Blog.

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).

The post Looking back at video and ICT4D appeared first on Sky's Blog.