How do they get tech support?

This is something I've been giving some thought to for some time and I don't think I'm any clearer about it now than I was when I started. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program.

It's an idea started by a computer geek based on concepts and ideas that have been around for some time, according to their website. Make a cheap, robust and reliable computer that you can distribute to the children of the developing world in an effort to improve their overall educational standards and thus their lot in life. Nice idea. Laudable. Education as a potential solution to a large number of the world's problems is something that I've believed in for as long as I can remember thinking about those problems. So why does it feel slightly off to me?

When you read about the difficulties that a huge proportion of the world's population have in getting, say, clean water, the idea of giving children in these conditions a computer seems a little bit like offering the child with his finger in the dyke wall a coat 'in case it gets cold tonight'. He'll probably appreciate it, but he has more fundumental problems to worry about. What is the point of providing these children with a more sophisticated education if before they reach puberty, they're pressed into manual labour making bricks or begging on the street?

I don't want to sound like a pessimist, far from it, and I understand that these people are trying to offer help to the world's most vulnerable people in the best way they know how, with the skills that they have to offer. It just seems like they're aim is a little off. I think the love affair that the West has with computing and digital technology (and I won't even start with my distaste for the use of the word 'technology' to exclusively refer to the computing and communication industries, as if nothing technical had existed before the advent of the silicon age) has skewed perspectives a little when it comes to trying to aid the less fortunate. The explosive rise of mobile telephony in India, for example, has not helped the millions of poor children in Kerala state alone who never recieve a secondary education.

Maybe I missing some vital part of the overall picture here, I freely admit that I haven't had time yet to read the full website. And if the title of this post is a little flippant, is mostly because the plight of these kids seems so terrible that I have a tough time dealing with it head on. I have friends who have done just that and their stories fill me with a kind of crawling horror at the privations of real poverty (as opposed to relative kind that most people complain about in Australia) that it makes me slightly distainful of the the whole idea of OLPC.

Or perhaps I just need to be thankful that there are some people out there who are willing to do something, anything to improve the lot of those who cannot help themselves.

It's festival season again

Nothing makes me realise how long I've been here like the return of annual events that I experienced last year. The festival season is back in India. And I don't mean a couple of weeks of the Adelaide Fringe, no, no. Were taking the next three months. Holi was just celebrated up North (it doesn't have much currency down here), which is where sane people spend too much money buying brightly coloured powders, which they then throw at anyone in range, more or less all day. Last year I was in Bangalore for Holi and got to see the madness first-hand. I naively wondered out camera in hand wearing a white tee-shirt. Not advised.

If three months sounds like a long time (and it is), it's simply because every temple in the country has is own festival, and in the Land Of A Million Gods, that translated into lots and lots of temple festivals. I didn't go to the festival for the nearest temple, because I was completely exhausted that night, but there are about a dozen temples within ten minutes walk, so I might get a chance to see one before the season ends.

The thing that makes it most apparent is the prevalence of elephants. Elephants are quite common here, I would normally see a few a week, but at the moment they seem to pop up everywhere. (If the visual image of elephants popping up all over the place has you questioning my drinking habits, let me assure you that the here beer isn't good enough). We were driving back from a place down the road from Kollam a week of so back and we came across a procession of elephants, all tricked out for some nearby festival or other. And let me tell you, elephants are one thing thing that never lose there impact. There is something about being close to something alive of that size; it reminds me how much I want to go swimming with whales one day.


One of the monks spots me snapping shots (I was a bit hard to miss, standing in the middle of the road, although not for this shot)


You don't often see the younger elephants and certainly not all dressed up for festivals, but this 'little' guy seemed to be enjoying himself.


A bit of assistance proves that they're not just show-ponies, a young tusker helps with the parade float.


And since the traffic didn't stop (it never does in this country), the local constabulary were out to protect the pachyderms from injury (and the cars from damage too I guess)

Why so quiet?

Now some of you, those of you who are still reading given my irregular updates (and bless your cotton socks for doing so), might be wondering why I don't update more often than I do. The short answer is that I don't always have a lot to say, since my life is basically my job at the moment. I know you might think that your life is your job too, but you have weekends off, friends to see movies with, bookstores, restaurants, and access to good quality salad, beer and chocolate. (You never really appreciate just how good as salad is until you live in a country without lettuce.)

Anyway, I say this not as a plea for sympathy, I don't want any, I choose to remain here at this job, I could always quit and look for work elsewhere. It just the fact of life; seven days a week, 10-12 hours a day, I'm working. And since I know full well that there is only so much: "Job slow, Indians annoying, weather humid, beer crap" commentary that anyone would care to read, I chose to write nothing in most cases. That, and I'm buggered most nights.

But after reading a few other blogs that I visit regularly, I realised that this is part of my life, not just the thing I'm doing while I get ready to go back to it (which it sometimes feels like). I'm going to look back on this one day and say, "Well I lived and worked in India for 18 months, it was something of an eye-opener and despite the trials, I don't regret going." And I don't. Its been hard, yes. I have been through all of the emotions that you might expect in this kind of situation, but recently I've come to see what I have drawn from being here, both professionally and personally. So I decided not to narrow my view of this experience so much. It not a trip, it not a job, it not a vacation, it's the part of my life that I spent in Kerala. I guess I trying to broaden my perspective as a remedy against the tunnel vision that can become a little suffocating when you get bogged down in the day to day.

So a few things; I started exercising again, I had been working out on the roof of the hotel, so I'm doing that again. I don't know how much weight I've lost, but I certainly feel better. I bought a digital SLR camera so that I can push myself a little creatively. I've started to notice things that I would have liked to capture in my photos that I can't with the very handy but limited point and shoot that I have at the moment. Unfortunately, the camera appears to have suffered some damage at some point (prior to my buying it), so I'm taking it back for a new one. And I going to try and write at least 4 post a week to the blog, a little enforced discipline to match the exercise to hopefully open up the writer in me a bit more. We'll see if there's one in there at all.

Also, I'm going to be going back to Oz for a week of R&R, which I very much anticipating. One of the main reasons is to see Weird Al in concert with some mates of mine. Last time Al came to town, Shane and I had a ball, so this promises to be an excellent time, although I have no idea if Shane will be going (Duz you want to fill me in there?)

In other news, I am addicts to Heroes (the TV show, not the David Bowie song, although I did buy the three disc Best Of David Bowie, which is brilliant), I'm planning a trip to the U.S. of A. in June and I am ever so close to having my house deposit together. Life is... confusing, as ever.