One Geek

The floods in North India and South Asia seem to be getting very little media attention. Maybe we are over floods here in Australia or maybe I don’t read the papers. 1,550 people have died from the floods in India, over 2,000 if you include Nepal and Bangladesh.

Read more here.

My friends in Raxaul are requesting prayer, as the rain has started up again there. It is pretty bad. They are keeping fighting the good fight though. They now have thousands of emergency rations to hand out. I am pretty inspired by how well they seem to be doing it. It stated raining again two hours ago and if it keeps raining much of this work won’t help much. So please if you are the praying type take this next few seconds to send up a prayer.

Thanks.

India has a number of major floods going on at the moment.

One of which is in Raxaul where I spent some time in 2004. One of my friends from there sent me some photos of the damage and the work. Duncan Hospital where I stayed in 2004 has been damaged by the floods and currently surgeries are continuing knee deep in water according to one of the reports I have received. The hospital staff despite the inconvenience they are facing with leaking roofs and water damage are reaching out to the local community.

The photos below give you some idea of the level of flooding.

If you are the praying type then please send up a prayer or two for those in the floods in Bihar and Assam.

I was quite sad to leave Duncan hospital but it was the right time to go. On my last evening there we(the volunteer workers) had “snackets” at the another foreigners house. It was good fun. I brought more chocolate then people managed to eat finishing of my surplus supply.

It was so nice to spend time sitting and chatting. I loved the conversations I’ve had at Duncan Hospital. There’s something about being in a place like Duncan to make discussions about the world less pretentious. I also worked the room pretty well for laughter. There were two Americian’s visiting too do some photography. One of them looked a bit like Jason Smith which made me laugh. He didn’t act like him though.

It was kind of fun leaving. I left at about 11pm for my room. Finished packing and then after a while someone came to my door and took me to the jeep. Living In the dark is fun because it’s nice and annonymous almost like sneaking away. It was good not too many people were around because I might of got emotional. Malyadri came to the station with me and the driver.

By the time I got on the train I was about ready to go to sleep. I had to wait though to get my ticket checked and get my sheets. The train left a bit before 1am. My berth was extremely uncomfortable but that’s another story.

Two Australian’s arived last night. It’s fun to have other Aussie’s around. Today is my last day in Raxaul. I leave tonight.

It’s been fun living here. There are some great people I am surely going to miss. But it’s also nice to move onto the next stage in my trip. I would like to achieve more before I go home.

Lot’s of travel coming up. I have five train tickets in my room worth about $100 Australian in total. Should be fun.

I think it’s time to catch up on some stuff that’s happened to me lately. Last Monday I went and got a hair cut. Now this is something I had been fearing for some time. I am in India and I don’t know how they do hair cuts except it involves those straight razors. I was very scared of getting a dirty razor. I don’t really like the idea of getting AIDS.

In the end though I decided I must go for it. I took the British Pharmacist who is always up for a walk. So we found a hair dresser which one of the Indian guys recommended. I sat in the chair and got my hair cut. I didn’t have any say in what I got. I just sat there and got it cut. He used a fresh razor blade too!

I was woken up at 4.30am by music from a Hindu temple outside. I have had enough of these stupid Hindu festivals. Why do they have to blare out music at 4.30am.

Anyway went back to sleep eventually. Done my first day of presentations. I talk way to quickly when doing presentations but I find it hard to go slow. I don’t think people understood me. But they laughed at my solitare jokes.

The labs went pretty well. People spontaneously decided to install windows 2000 3 or 4 times for practice. CRAZY!!!!

I have runaway for now.

I have to run a four day workshop on Tuesday. I am so not ready. It could be quite interesting. Let’s hope I am good at making up stuff on the spot. On the plus side I do have Lidnt chocolate to help me through the pain of it all.

I am back at Duncan hospital now. Coming back here originally felt like coming home. After about an hour I changed that to comming to stay with good friends. The place isn’t comfortable enough to be home. Plus key people aren’t around.

Anyway it’s nice to be back here. Though Raxaul really does smell very foul at times. Stupid open gutters.

Today it’s raining and a bit cooler.

Last night I went to the Nursing School Talent show. Most of it was in Hindi. There were a few good acts. The sound was horible. Some of the comedies made me laugh. Unfortunately I missed all the dialog but there was some good physical comedy. The dancing was good. Some singing was good too.

The bigest problem with the evening was that people spent to long winding up and too much time spent on thanking individuals. It really needed the Oscar music policy where after a minute or two they drown out the speaker.

All in all though it was a bit of alright. Nice to go to a show.

Oh another thing. It’s very hard to work out who’s married. Most couples don’t sit together at social events. Some have different last names. It’s all quite confusing.

My week up until Sunday had been pretty poor quality. Work had been giving me the urge to hit something. Then Sunday came around. Sunday is the one day off I get each week.

We get picklets for breakfast in the morning which was good. Then I went to Hindi church which was quite unpleasant. I get a bit bored with someone talking loudly for 40minutes in a language I don’t understand. Is that strange. It doesn’t help if they speak at 200 words per minute.

Then back to the lair(home) where me and Pete(flat mate) had a good old complaining session. We got called to ask if we wanted to go to Nepal with Precila and her mother(who is visiting for a week). We said no. Then I went to find lunch at the Western Guest House mess there was no food there. I went to the doctors mess where Precila and Pete were. Pete suggest I should go and go I did.

Some people don’t realise how committed I can be to my impulse decisions. I ran home grabbed passport and cash. Ran out the door to meet them. We decided to meet at a hotel one of the doc’s recommended. I decided to take a rickshaw so I could get started on immigration.

Indian Immigration took a long time. The guy couldn’t quite work out what I wanted to do. Then I went across to Nepali immigration on the rickshaw again. When I got in my heart sank. I had the same guys who wanted a bribe last time. Sure enough they wanted a 100Rs. I wasn’t going to pay and made it quite clear. I think they wanted a bribe to change the date on my old visa. I said just give me a new visa. This time though they gave me the free 3 day visa. I paid no bribe either. Praise the Lord.

Back on the rickshaw and into Nepal proper. It takes a while to get to Birganj on rickshaw. One of the things about rickshaws is you see so much more then when in a car. So eventually we get to the markets. I ask for the hotel where I am meeting Precila and her mum. He couldn’t understand me. I had no idea how much money I should pay. I gave 60Rs at first. He wanted more. I had no idea how much it should be. I made it 100Rs and he wanted more. At this stage I just walked away from him.

A few minutes later I got on another rickshaw which took me to where I wanted to go. I paid this one 10Rs for a few minutes ride. I was pretty low on change. I arrived at the hotel for lunch at 2pm. I left at 12.45pm so it wasn’t to bad. I ordered a spring roll, sweat and sour sauce and fried rice. It was enough food for two. The meal and two drinks cost 200Rs ($AU6). Not bad. Then we went back. Precila negotiated 15Rs for my trip to Nepali immigration. My rickshaw driver was a little boy. He was very into racing. Which on a bike(rickshaws are basically bikes) is okay. He’d do some very fast sprinting. In the end he wasn’t much quicker then the rickshaw the other two were in. They left me at the border. Indians don’t go through immigration.

No problems leaving Nepal. Countries love you to leave. Then I decided to walk to India. Indian Immigration was tedious but otherwise fine. I did do drip sweat onto the form. Ops. Then I brought a Coke of a cute little girl who was playing some game rolling little objects. I hope she got some of the money. Then back to the hospital.

English church was good as usual. I really like getting to sing English songs and hear sermons in English. Dinner was good too.

I could go on but I should get back to work.

Until next time.

We now have a dedicated dedicated server. How fun is that. We got our new server today and now its been prayed over it’s ready for the switchover. It’s quite a nice server. Bit expensive for my tastes, but should last for quite a while.

http://coca-cola.com

The shops near the hospital appear to be out of all small varieties of Coke. I would of thought with the English guys gone I thought they might of had a chance to restock. But no they are all out. Well shop no 1 is anyway. They only have the 1.5L bottles. It is a travesty. I was planing on grabing two 300ml Coke’s with my post lunch snack. My stockpile of Coke ran out yesterday and I thought oh well I’ll go on Wednesday. So I think I am going to the markets to stock up big!!

Why can’t Coke supply more regularly to Raxaul?
Why did Coke ever make ThumbsUP? It is half way between Pepsi and Coke. Stupid, stupid stupid.