One Geek

I found some really interesting short films from a film festival focusing on HIV/AIDS. Take a look at them here

I am feeling rather passionate about Aid and Development again today. It’s been a while since I’ve kind of felt the level of passion that is just fun. Today I went to the launch of a voice mail and call back service called Soochna Se Samadhan designed to enable farmers to get advice on their crops through simply calling a number, leaving a message and then calling back the following day for the recorded answer. I found the presentations of which there were half a dozen a little lack luster, but I could get the passion for using Information and Communications Technology appropriately.

During the question time a women pointed out something that I had noticed, that in the pictures and all the slides they only showed men interacting with the project. She questioned the gender equality of the project, the two female leads of the project said they had noticed the mistake. It was fun because all the people involved were really passionate about the gender equality issue. It’s great that gender equality is accepted as something any development project requires. Another interesting thing about the project was the low tech nature of it from an end user point of view, they are even hiring locals to help farmers dial in.

A big issue with this project though is the cost to the farmer for this advice. They haven’t work out a model yet but it’s not going to be a free service. One of the partners is called TARAhaat who are basically a group all about making money in socially responsible ways.

Other thoughts to come out of the morning for me, was getting expert advice vs leveraging community based knowledge. Data vs Information vs Knowledge, which is too big a topic for this blog post. It was a good reminder to me of the human nature of development work and how it is OK to make mistakes. The ethics of having a posh launch for an NGO based project, the morning was at a convention centre place and a large buffet lunch was provided, as well as a conference gift. Which also raised the question for me of what is acceptable administration cost and what is waste. It was a good reminder that their are other people working on different problems in India and it also reminded me of why I like EHA and TEAR so much.

Work is gaining momentum finally as well which is good. I now have a vendor working at a pace I am happy with to sell me my servers for the hospital. Those who have talked to me lately may have heard how frustrated I was getting so it is a big relief.

Tonight I went out with Rob and Nicole both from St Stephen’s Belrose for dinner which was nice. I got in to two big passionate social justice rants, it had been too long a time since I have done a good just rant so I was happy. One was about the injustice both perpetrated and perpetuated by Australia, and the second was that India’s problems are not unsolvable and that the main real problems are silver bullet attitudes by government and some NGO’s, and a lack of transparency in many projects. It was such good fun.

Now I really should head off to bed as I have a meeting in the morning.

Today Wes, myself and Brian came up with a great idea for an Indian matrimonials website. It would be called Marry an Orphan a site for people who don’t want to marry the whole country. Any takers?

How good are Tim Tams?

I brought over 2 kgs of them at Sydney airport on my way out, and I am really enjoying them.

Last night Wes and I went bowling with some people from church. Rob(from Australia) organised it. It was good fun. I enjoy just getting a bit violent throwing the ball. I never score very well, but I really never care that much.

I have been back in Delhi now for a week now. It’s odd I think I make 80% of the transition to life in Delhi the minute I step of the plane, the next 10% in the following day but the rest of it takes a long time. I don’t know whether in my time in India I’ll ever truly adjust to life in India.

My time in Australia seems to have made my accent stronger and now I have more trouble then ever getting auto-rickshaw drivers to understand where I want to go. There is a new guy in the EHA office who I’ve been doing a little training of which has been nice. He is so keen to learn and asks questions. It is strange when you realise that you have all this information stored in your head which can be useful to others. Shame when you get to doing some of your own work that you realise it is insufficient. Guess at least it keeps one humble.

Breaking news this hour is that there has been a possible coup in Thailand. That’s so weird as I thought Thailand had a fairly stable government. Glad my friends who were there are pretty much all back by now.

Well I’ve been back in Delhi for a few days now. I think yesterday I may of clocked up almost as much computer time as I did in my entire time in Sydney. My Delhi jetlag is rather civilised I guess, waking up at 6 or 7am and feeling very tired by 10 or 11pm. I’m getting back into my work, so much to do. Also been re-reading some of The Road Less Travelled, which has been good. Delhi is still in the mid-30’s.

I saw yesterday “The First Female Condom in India” on sale in a local shop. Don’t know much about them but hopefuly this is a step forward for the empowerment of some women in India.

“It is unacceptable to think that any kind of comparison (exists) between the behaviour of the United States of America and the Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve their objective,” he said.
The Age

The Qantas Love Song dedications program is so so much better. It’s got written dedication from 2 months before a couple travel. It’s filled with dedications to my new husband and the like. So good, and the songs are pretty tragic too!!

Having been back in India for a bit over 14 hours now, I am reminded of the things I like about India. Which has been nice. It’s also fun being overly polite.

I am now at Mumbai Domestic Airport, it is orders of magnitude nicer then Delhi Domestic Airport.

I’d like to actually see some of Mumbai and other places in India. However I am kind of over solo travel at the moment. I realised on the plane I have probably travelled over 100,000km by myself.

Seriously the level of service at this hotel is almost embaracing..

Well after a long flight from Sydney via Darwin to Mumbai I am now relaxing in my hotel room in Mumbai. I have a buttler who comes to bring tea to me when I call up for it, which is fun.

There are bits of India that I really just love, and made me smile on arriving. One is the smell, another is the “Indian way” of doing things.

Anyway I am very tired so I am going to go sleep now.

Good night blogverse.

Sitting here at Sydney Airport my flight is going to board now so I should go.  Good bye everyone.