One Geek

Two interesting articles today that I’ve found on HIV/AIDS and TB. The first is about Asia, TB and HIV/AIDS. The second is about about the link between AIDS and TB.

Bluesfest is looking pretty cool, have a look at who’s playing. I am so excited.

I don’t like it.

It is so monumentally stupid. It seems to be based on fear and an unwillingness to understand a situation. One of the things that frustrates me the most is when people suggest that people of a particular race are lazy and don’t want to work. This perception seems pretty common in Australia where Indigenous Australian’s are often labelled as lazy doll bludgers and drunks. Asides from the gross generalisation of statements like this, there is also a failure to recognise why people no longer have the will to work.

The amount of issues caused when a largely tribal culture is forced to modernise and to at least partly assimilate with a dominate culture in a very short period of time are huge. In Richard Trudgen’s Why Warriors lie down and die he gives a very good history of a group of Aboriginal people from Arnhem Land exploring some of these issues. He shows how much damage can be caused by throwing money at the symptoms of problems which governments seem to love doing, rather then looking for the deeper root causes of problems. Frustratingly some people use the amount of money being thrown at a people group and the lack of results from it as an argument that a people group does not wish to address its major issues.

I don’t know exactly what I am trying to say here, I’m kind of getting stuck in rant mode.

I wish people would think more before making harsh judgements on an entire people group.

Oh and also, racism sucks bad!!!!

I’ve put up some more pictures in my gallery. Take a look a the here.

I am booked to arrive home 3 months from today. It doesn’t feel so far away now. Particularly because I leave India on the 14th of Feb for a fun little holiday in Malaysia and Singapore.

Time is moving pretty fast here in Dimapur. Things are going fine but work is a bit intense. They work a solid 6 day work week, and days on site start with us leaving at 7.30am and returning by about 7pm. That adds up to a lot of hours work. Yesterday I got to do a bit of exploring of the site and got to take some photos. However my GPRS connection is a bit slow for uploading photos so that will have to wait a while.

Most of my work from next week is going to be training Tushar(the IT Manager) to do stuff. The only problem is that I don’t actually know how to do all things I have to train him in. I am now feeling very glad that the hospitals opening date has been delayed by a few months.

I’m planning on going for a few days to a festival in Kohima in December. It should be good fun, and a chance to actually see some Naga culture.

I now have an inverter in my room which means in the rather frequent blackouts I can keep my light and laptop running. We get at most 21 hours of electricity where I am staying, so it does make a big difference. Not much excitement here to talk about at the moment. The group of people working on the project here all get along pretty well, and most time is spent working or sometimes chatting or watching TV. I have also found myself drinking a lot more tea here, as it gives me something to do for a break.

Last night the school choir down the road was practicing singing “lean on me.” I could just hear it from inside the kitchen but from outside I could hear it quite well. The kids seem to be doing a pretty good job singing. The free entertainment here is fun.

Last night the school choir down the road was practicing singing “lean on me.” I could hear it quite well when I went outside.

Today I played some frisbee with some of the project team. It was good fun.

Naga’s can sing really really well. Seriously they have pretty damn good voices, so much so that singing acapella was was not a painful experience but actually a real joy.

So it looks like the hospital will be opening with more beds then was planned but it will be delayed in opening after I am back home. That doesn’t really change my task that much. In less then 3 months here I will have the twin job of training my replacement and implementing the systems. This leaves me with the interesting challenge of training myself in some areas, training someone else in those same areas and more, and actually getting the things working. I have a feeling that these next few months I may work harder then I ever have in my life.

Did you know that Dimapur is on the same timezone as Delhi even though Bangladesh which is between them is 30 minutes ahead. This means that sunrise is at 4.30am and sunset at 4.30pm, which is just plain stupid in my books.

So no hospital until May. Fun.

Well I made it to Dimapur, and I am now in the off site accomodation. I’m feeling pretty tired after a long journey, but am quite glad to be finally here. From the station we had an armed escort all the way to the residence, which was fun.

The funiest thing once we had arrived here was Victor who travelled from Delhi with us looked up at the sky and said “wow stars!”. Delhi was so poluted nice to be in the fresh air. Anyway time for bed now. Good night.

Well I have made it through the first 23 hours of my train trip now. I have had the train dinner and lunch which were almost identical twice, it included a chicken curry, rice, roti, dahl and ice cream. Breakfast was an omelette and toast. I still have about another 10 hours of my train journey left. I am unsure what happens when I get to Dimapur, I have heard that we may have to wait the night out at the train station, and also that we might have a police escort. Anyway whatever happens it should be fun.