The adventures of Vithlam

Rural schools

2005-03-21T06:24:00.000-08:00

Today was cool. I worked in the morning at the office. I'm working on a website for the education department. It used to be pretty bad. Granted nobody was really working on it full time. Some dudes just made it because they were interested in doing so. It wasn't part of their job. But right now I'm working on a site that I think is better.

I was really hungry this afternoon and decided to get a real lunch rather than the sandwich I usually get. So I went to a random restaurant around the corner. Boy was that a good meal for cheap. I paid about 75 cents for this:

After lunch was the interesting part of the day. There are four interns working at the foundation. They're MBA students at this school in Bombay (Mumbai if you prefer). They're working with the "Computer Assisted Learning Centers" (CALCs) and were going to go visit a few today. My work isn't exactly related so I hadn't been yet, but since they were going, I was invited along to have a look.

The foundation makes flash animations in local languages which are interactive games that help children learn. It helps teachers as a visual aid to reinforce what they're teaching. But there are a few other, perhaps more significant, benefits from these CALCs. There's been a noticeable relationship between attendance rates and these computer centers; dropout rates are much lower; and the community takes more interest in the school since it gives them a sense of pride to know that their village has computers in their school. The program is active in many of the Indian states now and they produce these animations in about a dozen different languages.

We visited three different schools and I talked to the teachers, the principals, and students. They all evenly show a sense of enthusiasm for using the computers. It is so wonderfully cute to watch those kids use computers and watch other students use them.

The schools have a few hundred students each and they have first through seventh grade. meaning roughly thirty students to a class. Most of them have about 2 to 3 computers, sometimes 4. Since most of the computers were bought on grants or donations made about three years ago, they're having issues with maintenance now, since the warranties have expired. Also, there aren't enough teachers to supervise the kids. Though its great watching the kids use the computers, there are generally about 20 kids watching as about 10 use them. There's a long ways to go, but its a start.

I took a few pictures.

This is Shiv Kumar. He's in the sixth grade. He was one of the kids waiting to use the computers. He didn't actually get a turn today so he was just sitting down and studying for his exams that are coming up.

These kids are playing a game called "the story of the bean" or something like that. The little girls are all waiting for their turn.

Some kids waiting for their turn. They were just goofing around, talking to the MBA kids and laughing. It's really fun talking to these kids since they're so excited to see us. They're just fascinated to talk to anyone from outside their village I guess. At one of the schools we were talking (well, I was talking since I was the only one who spoke the local language, the MBA kids spoke Hindi) to the kids and they were all so excited. They sang us songs, and showed us their history projects. It was great.

As I said, the waiting kids were supposed to be studying. Here's a picture of the kid sitting in front of me who was studying for his Kannada test.

The teacher was explaining stuff to the kids. Boy, I realized today how bad my Kannada reading skills are. These kids can read a lot faster than me... well, I guess thats expected.

Finally, as we were leaving, there were a bunch of kids who were sitting outside. I guess because it was a nice day, their teacher took them outside. They were all sitting in a circle studying for their exam. They waved good bye as we left.

Meeting with the commissioner

2005-03-19T06:22:00.000-08:00

The past few days I've mostly been doing work on my own. So there isn't a whole lot to say. Although I will say that it sucks to have 6 day work week.

I guess I should say a little bit about the meeting I had when we submitted our five year plan. It was actually rather anticlimactic. There were about 20 people at the meeting. 10 people from various schools, teachers, administrators and such. 2 people from UNICEF. They're working on a project to track kids who are out of school. To see what they're doing rather than school, if they're employed and if so what kind of work and so on. And there were a few other people from random departments and us.

The commissioner didn't show up for an hour. So he sent someone else after that. The meeting just involved us vaguely describing what the document was and why we were submitting it. We didn't actually go into the details of it.

But while we were waiting for the meeting to begin, it was interesting to hear some of the other people talk. Some of the people there were teachers at schools in really poor areas. And it was interesting hearing them talk about the problems they're having with computers, and how much they appreciate having computers despite those problems. One of the things that stuck out to me is that charity often is painful for those who receive it. Some of these people bought their computers a few years ago from money they got from donations. But those donations have dried up since. Now they don't have money to maintain them. Its rather sad. The government can't give them money to fix up the computers, and they are legally bound not to ask the parents for money. Apparently its a law that government schools cannot as parents for money. And so, they rely on charity. And that charity just doesn't come through consistently. Having computers for a few years and then not having them is painful, especially when you start using them regularly.

But it was nice to hear them talk. One guy was saying how he loves watching the third graders use computers with so much fascination. Thats what made him start using computers for administrative work. "When a 7 year old can use computers so well, I asked myself, 'why shouldn't I?'" One of the biggest problems is getting people to get over the intimidation of technology. And it's good that it is happening.

Pictures from work

2005-03-16T06:10:00.000-08:00

I took some pictures at work. There wasn't anything particularly notable about today. So, I'll just put some pictures up. I do have a big meeting tomorrow where we present the "five-year plan" (which is just stuff we pulled out of our asses) to the commissioner. Should be fun. I think I'll have some good stuff for you tomorrow.

Although the guy I had to give the document to, the guy I work under, said, "Yeah, looks good. But I'll have to work on making the English less intimidating." I thought that was funny. My writing isn't exactly ... you know? But I guess most of these people don't really read much English.

Anyway, here are the picture.

This is my desk in the office. I like the random lights on the ceiling. And the room is circular, which is kinda weird.

This is the view from my window. I'm not sure why it has that metal mesh on it. Its on the fourth floor. But I guess I should remember the monkeys that would jump into the fourth storey classroom when I was in highschool.

This one is a picture of a "milk parlor" where people stand around and drink milk! I find it funny to watch grown Indian men with their mustaches stand around and drink flavored milk out of little cups.

Driver

2005-03-15T10:48:00.000-08:00

I'm still in the car. I'm not driving today because my parents heard from one of their friends that they had an accident and someone died. The person driving the car was charged with negligent driving, though it wasn't her fault and now has her passport confiscated and such until the investigation is over and she is found innocent. So my parents want me to be driving as infrequently as possible.
That means I have a driver driving me to work and back.
He's really funny. He started asking me about America. About how much it would cost to get some coffee. He asked if there are beggars in America. I told him that there were and how the government was anti-welfare. That Americans don't like welfare. That a lot of people don't like welfare in America because they don't want to pay more taxes. "Sons of bitches!" was his answer.

Anyways, he told me how someone he knew married a white lady. I thought he was probably going to say something negative about that. But I was surprised. He said, "I think it’s really cool that this guy went over there and married someone from there. A guy from here went there. That’s really good". I asked him if he didn't think there was anything wrong with it and he said, "we're all people. I don't really think it matters where you're from". I thought that was pretty cool. I generally thought that the view on this would be more xenophobic. This is an uneducated, illiterate guy. He really has no exposure to anything. And its nice that he has such an open mind about things.

Writing a five-year plan in just one day

2005-03-15T10:41:00.000-08:00

OK so I show up at work today at 10am. The guy I work under was the only one there. I start reading more material to write the plan. I forgot to read some stuff last night.
The girl who was supposed to help me showed up around 1030. She walked around talking to people for a while and then had a chat with my boss. Not sure what she told him but he called me over and said, "she's not feeling well and is going to be taking the next few days off. The plan is now entirely on your shoulders". So that’s what I did today. I, who have never been involved with any government planning in my life, was in charge of drafting a five-year plan in one day. That’s all I did today. From 11am to 5pm I sat at my computer writing a five-year plan. I gave he boss a draft at the end of the day. He's going to comment and I'm going to revise tomorrow.

There's just something ridiculous about this though. First of all, I’m not sure you should have a five-year plan for technology. Second, you'd think a five-year plan would take at least five weeks to write. It’s just a bit silly.

The plan I wrote is pretty general. It’s really more of an inventory of current projects.

Anyways, that was tiring.

I’m in a car right now. Some lady with a baby walked by the car asking for money. Its really sad. People rent out babies from the slums and they're used to get sympathy. Sad.

Black and White

2005-03-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

My cousins stopped by today to get some advice from my dad. They're buying a new house. This brought up the question of finances and that of "black" and "white" money. I'm not sure if you are familiar with this terminology but white money is money on the books. Black is money that the government doesn't know about, usually hard cash. When one does any large transaction here, there is a certain ration of black to white. This is of course so that you don't pay taxes. So if you buy a house, for say Rs. 2 million (Rs is or rupees) then you pay about Rs. 0.8 million in white. You register the house for that amount. You pay taxes on your property for that amount. You then take cash. Bundles and bundles of cash to the guy you're buying from to pay the remaining 1.2 mil. It’s not uncommon to find vast sums of money in people's houses because of this.
My cousins had to pay Rs. 1.7 mil in white but they took a loan from the bank for 2.2 mil. I guess they're just going to give back 0.5 mil.
Well, there isn't a real point to this story. I just find the notion of black and white money peculiar.
If you look at the latest Indian budget, they introduced a nominal tax of 0.1% on cash withdrawals from banks that exceed a million rupees. The reasoning that the finance minister gave was that it is a measure to try to keep money in the official system. I'm not sure it’s going to work. But we'll see.

Back in the office

2005-03-14T10:29:00.000-08:00

I started coming in to work regularly this week. After working at home last week, this is really different. I think this is going to give me more insight into what its like working in the government. The few hours that I would go in the past few weeks were highly amusing but didn't really show me how slow things really are. Or how nobody really wants to do work.

Under Indira Gandhi, India, like Russia, started using five-year plans. And that legacy is yet to go. Government departments love writing five-year plans. Sadly none of them actually get carried out. So I'm working with a "Policy Planning Unit". The responsibility of writing the technology five-year plan for the department is ours. The guy I work under has been telling me about this thing for a while. But said that I didn’t have to be part of it since I just got here and don't know about any of the stuff they’re writing about. Today as soon as I showed up he told me that what I was working on is now on hold. The plan hasn't been completed yet and the draft is due on Thursday. I was supposed to work on it with this girl who has theoretically been working on it for weeks. I'm supposed to have a draft by the end of tomorrow.
Well, we walked over to her computer and took a look. She had titles for each section but no text. She had a bunch of documents with information we could use. But she had read none. And she was working on it for weeks. Oh and all this time, we couldn't find the mouse to her computer. Someone had taken it. And she couldn't use the computer without a mouse.

Anyways, so we start reading some stuff and she said she had to go get some stuff done. Then she moves to another table and starts filling her tax forms. When she finished that "Ok, so I have to go in an hour. We can talk about some of this stuff 'til then". And I ended up coming home after that. Got nothing done, except that I have a bunch of documents to read and write a five-year plan tomorrow. I doubt that she's going to be much help.

Some people...

2005-03-10T06:06:00.000-08:00

We have new neighbors. They're assholes.

When you build a house, you're supposed to have your blue prints sanctioned by the government. This is just to make sure that people don't violate regulations, obviously. In our neighborhood, there;s a bylaw that says that you cannot build more than one unit per plot of land. But the people who just built a house across the street from our house built 6! They paid off the officials who were supposed to have stopped them.

These people aside from building a huge ugly thing across the street and offending our aesthetic, are also really obnoxious. They're loud and really fucking annoying. They've also paid off the cops. One of our neighbors tried calling the cops at 3am once but the cops just didn't show and they later found out that they had already been paid off.

My latest beef is that they wake me up at 630am every day. Since so many people live there, they have a lot of cars. They pull them out of the driveway every morning, in reverse. These ass munchers have really annoying beepers and tunes play when they're in reverse. Its not uncommon in this country to have those, but for so many cars to have that one after another at 6:30 in the morning is just ridiculous.

We've asked them plenty of times to turn it down, and they say "well, we don't ask you to make your dogs stop barking do we?" What's most annoying is that I can't even call the police.

Third world Indian goodness: corrupt cops and public officials, inconsiderate people.

Cricket

2005-03-09T22:16:00.000-08:00

This week, I'm working from home. I think this is going to be the case mostly. I haven't had much to say for the past few days since I'm just sitting at home.

But I have a few comments to make about life here, now.

We have a cricket series going on right now between India and Pakistan. Its a pretty big deal in this neck of the woods.

Lately cricket has been a source of reconciliation between India and Pakistan. People have been showing huge amounts of good will. India toured Pakistan last year and they were treated very well, as were the fans who went to Pakistan. One thing people were worried about was whether India would be able to reciprocate the hospitality. And I think that despite the few groups that have been retarded about it, things are going well right now. A few Hindu fanatic groups like the "shiv sena" have threatened to disrupt any cricket between India and Pakistan. Fortunately nothing like that has happened. On the contrary, Indians have been very warm to the Pakistanis.

Thousands of Pakistanis have come to India on special cricket visas. Right now they're in Mohali, a North Indian city, which is about 3 hours from Lahore in Pakistan. Apparently there just aren't enough hotel rooms there. So Indian families have volunteered to host Pakistanis. They're cooking for them, letting them stay in their homes, and just chilling with them too. I think its great that people are showing that the hostility between the two countries is really cosmetic and political.

Apparently India has also invited Musharraf to come visit India just to watch cricket and not for any official purpose. I think this is great and hopefully things will continue in this cooperative vein.

In the jungle

2005-03-08T01:41:00.000-08:00

I went to the jungle with my father this weekend. We stayed at a jungle "resort" which is a few rooms and a kitchen. This was the view from the room:

Its about a five hour drive from Bangalore because of all the construction going on on the road. Its really only about 150 miles. But they're still building the big highway going that way. Its fun driving since the parts that are done are really nice and you can really go quite fast. And most places they have only one side of the highway done. You have one lane going each way. Every time you need to pass a big truck that isn't really making it up a hill you have to go into opposing traffic. Its generally stressful and pulls your heart rate up every time you miss crashing into a bus. But it is entertaining. A lot like a video game.

Anyways, the place where we stayed was really nice and pretty much in the jungle, but on the fringe of course. The actual jungle isn't accessible to the public, fortunately.

As soon as we got there, we decided to have lunch and the lady who runs the place joined us. She heard me speak and started apologizing pre-emptively for her dislike for Americans. She went on to explain how she hated American tourists who are always so demanding and never know what they are doing. She said she much preferred Europeans who always read up before they got there and were much better to deal with. I thought that was something y'all would find amusing.

After lunch we ended up taking a walk for a few hours up a nearby hill. We were going up into an area inhabited by wild animals, though most of them had migrated at this time. They usually come back around the Monsoons in August. No less, we went with a couple of guys who knew the area. They asked us to change our shirts since I was wearing a bright blue shirt and my dad was wearing white. Apparently elephants are generally irritated by those colors and tend to charge when it happens. Going into the jungle where you'd see elephants, tigers, leopards, and we had this machete to protect us. I'm sure we would be eaten easily even with it if something had happened!

After hiking for a few hours and seeing no animals whatsoever, we ended up at the top of a hill. Despite the lack of animals, the place was quite beautiful. Here I am atop the hill:

We got back from our hike and went over to the kitchen for some dinner.

With Bangalore growing so quickly we have a lot people who have become wealthy and can afford to go do things. But that they are obnoxious hasn't changed. I almost think that India needs some sort of a cultural revolution. Modern culture in India just hasn't evolved much. A lot of things that were alright when you didn't interact with so many people of so many different backgrounds are just not alright anymore. People generally dislike talking about culture as needing improvement but I really think there's a need here. I'm not suggesting for a minute that Indian culture is inferior or anything like that as compared to say Western cultures (most Indians would read what I just said and automatically draw that conclusion). But I definitely think that Indian values and culture are in need of some evolution. An example is what we saw at dinner.

There was a group of about 4 Indian guys. They sat around a bonfire, got drunk and started yelling and shouting. These were all software dudes (I despise software folk;)). The place where we were had a policy that you can't have loud music. But these guys pulled their car up to the bonfire and started playing random annoying music really loud. You're in the freakin' jungle! Stop playing the backstreet boys so loud with the bass turned up!

Anyways, yeah after asking them to turn in down about 4-5 times, they did and we could finally get some sleep since we were going on a long hike at 6am.

We walked through the jungle for about 3 hours in the morning looking for a tiger. But we didn't see it. We saw signs of it and heard it, but couldn't see it. In fact we heard it from very close up, but the bastard just wouldn't come out. We saw its territorial markings in the form of urine:

We also saw what it had eaten recently:

The forest in this part of the world isn't much like what you've seen in the jungle book. The tiger's habitat in India is not really much of a tropical rain forest. Its much drier, and has a lot more shrubs like this picture here:

Our guide took us around looking for the tiger, but because the tiger had been on the prowl all night, it looked like most of the other animals had been frightened off as well. So we barely saw any animals. We saw a few deer at a distance, but that was about it. I thought we might at least see some elephants, but we didn't. All I saw was elephant dookie:

Despite the lack of animals, it was fun. Hearing a tiger close by was pretty exhilarating. I recommend trying that if you ever get a chance!
I'm going back to this place in August and hopefully I'll catch a glimpse of one of these magnificent beasts then.

I guess I'll be back in the states this fall

2005-03-04T05:24:00.000-08:00

I got news from the University of Rochester. So I guess I'll be going there. Thought I'd let y'all know.

Another day at the department

2005-03-04T05:04:00.000-08:00

I went back to the department on today. I think this is where I will be working mostly. I took a couple of pictures when nobody was watching. Here's the sign outside of the commissioner's office.

This is the hallway that I work in:

I forgot to include an exchange I had with the guy before I left on Tuesday. We talked about how I wouldn't be there for more than 5 months and he said that I would have to teach him enough about programming to be able to maintain things once I left. So I asked him why the department wouldn't just hire someone there. Apparently, the mentality is that they don't need outsiders to do their work. Basically, everybody can do anything there. So they don't really seem to hire specialized workers with specialized skills. I found this so very odd. But he said that it was a matter of pride for the department that they couldn't accept that they needed someone from the outside to do their work of maintaining their site.

When I left on Tuesday, the guy asked me to come in Thursday morning. He was supposed to call me when he got there. He said, "don't worry sir, I'll be here by 10:00. 10:15 at the latest." I heard nothing from him. So I called around 10:30. Nope not there. I called at 10:45. Still not there. Finally a little past 11 0'clock I reached him. I asked him if I could come in that morning as we had discussed. "Well, you could come in now. But we're going to go to lunch soon, so I'm not sure if we'll have enough time. How about you come in the afternoon." OK, so I'd go in later. But what time? "Well, there's this other officer who we should include in our discussions. I think he's going to be the next commissioner so we should talk to him. Since we're going to lunch soon, how about you just come in after lunch? That should be done around 2:00." I thought I was a slacker when I worked at Microsoft. These folks are just something else. I must say that this conversation was a lot funnier in Kannada.

I got there and we went to the "Ganaka Yantra Kendra." Which is Kannada for "computer room." People here love to have "meeting" that involve as many people as possible. All we did for the 5 hours that I was there was discuss what the potential needs of rural schools might be. For this we needed to have 5 people sitting in front of one excel spreadsheet. It was hilarious watching these guys go off track every time they started talking about anything. There was one person of these that I was supposed to be talking to. But he went ahead and invited anyone that he wanted to suck up to. Sitting in front of the computer made them feel big.

We had the deputy director come over too. The pretext was that he had been a block officer in the field before and would be able to tell us a lot about these things. But we didn't really get much out of him other than the same things that he told us on Tuesday. In fact, he used a lot of the same examples but nobody wanted to say anything so they just nodded again. One of the tangets that the coversation went off on was about a program where ISKCON (its a religious organization... A cult of strange Hindus) gives free lunches to needy kids at school. The deputy director is a Muslim. The dude who was sucking up really took this opportunity. He's the one who brought up ISKCON. He said, "have you heard of what ISKCON does?" That was the DD's cue. He went on a rant about how it wasn't charity at all. These people were given grants by the government to provide food for the kids. Well, they got two grants. One grant from the education department and another from elsewhere. To feed the same kids. Moreover they raised funds from members of their cult and others too. So they took money three times to do one job. "They get away with it because that's an international Krishna, they wouldn't if it were a local Krishna", he said (ISKCON is International Society for Krishna consciousness). The railing on ISKCON continued for a little longer. Once it was done, mister sucker upper started talking about some guy who did some charitable work to feed kids in one of the more Muslim parts of town. "He's one of your people" he said to the DD. "He's a Muslim. Does such good work!" I was amused listening.

Another funny point was where the DD who couldn't stop spewing nonsense started talking about someone in a village where he once worked wanting to give all the kids buttons, needles, and thread so that they could mend their own clothes. Because as he claims, in a village if one has "a button, he has no thread. If he has thread, he has no needle" and so on. He added that is what "reaches the kids." Of course, all the other guys sitting there have to show how much they agree with him. So one of them starts, "oh yes. That's very important! It may sound funny to you and I, but it happens in villages where a kid would have a button fall off from his shirt but it would hurt his pride to have his shirt unbuttoned. So he'd spend the whole day with one hand holding his shirt closed and only one hand to do whatever he needed. Its like he only had one hand! He would be handicapped! It happens. Its very unfortunate." While I was trying hard not to crack up, the DD nods his head. Of course, he has to show that he's the one who knows the most about things. And so he repeats the story. Except this time its a kid with the buttons on his shorts gone who has to keep his shorts from falling off.

Well, once we got back to the list, the DD asked me, and I guess fairly appropriately, how would we include this into the list? There could be any number of particular things that a particular school wants that not all of the schools want. So I suggested that the data collection form could have a "custom field" in it. Someone behind me asks "what do you mean by custom?" They had never heard the word "custom" in this context. Before I could explain, he said "oh is it like, these are our customs and we need to have those in the form." And before I could say "not quite..." the DD starts explaining "yes, it is our custom to be neat and wear tidy clothes. So we must put this field there." It was so unbelievably difficult to hold back my laughter.

Well, my few hours at work were more productive than I guess. I kind of fleshed out what I want things to be like and realized what the real challenge is going to be. Its clearer than ever that the actual technology to make things happen is going to be very easy compared to the effort it is going to take to get officers to do their parts. The bureaucracy is very very sticky. Its going to be interesting.

Second day... Sorry I've been tardy. This should have gone up Tuesday.

2005-03-01T23:15:00.000-08:00

My second day of work was at the Government of Karnataka Department of Public Instruction. This is what the place looks like.

It wasn't easy finding my way around a complex of government offices. Most of the offices were empty making it hard to find anyone to ask where I'm supposed to go to find the commissioner of education's office. I guess its not so surprising that most bureaucrats don't really do much work.

Once I finally found the guy I was supposed to meet, he took me into the computer room where they had five P2s. Oh, I forgot to mention how yesterday at the other place, they had these nice machines with half a gig of RAM and a 2.8 GHz proc. But they had these little 13 inch fishbowl monitors. Anyways, we go into this air conditioned room and sit down and start talking. He keeps calling me sir which made me feel kind of weird since that's something that you call people of a higher rank (so to speak). He introduces me to another guy who is an assistant director of some sort. He starts asking me all kinds of questions. He was so incredibly confused why I would quit working for a company like Microsoft, especially after he asked me how much they paid. He also asked me what my parents thought of this.

When the first dude came back the other guy was like "I had NO idea he was so young! From what you told me I thought we were getting someone who was a lot older. (turns to me) How old are you anyway?" They were pretty surprised that I was only 23. So, this guy went on to complain to me about the whole "transfer" system in the government here. The way it works is that officials are regularly transferred from place to place. Some places or departments are obviously preferable to others and, from what I hear, the main factor is the potential for large bribes. People apparently pay members of the Legislative Assembly to send orders to have them transferred to places more to their liking. My friend was apparently a victim of that. He was in the Pre-University board until he was prematurely transferred to where he is now. He hates it because he has an MA in English (but his English is really...) but spends his time editing his boss's horrendous writing, or translating random documents between Kannada and English.

I was later taken to meet the DDPI (Deputy Director of Public Instruction). Now officials who have any authority love to give speeches. The three of us sat in front of his desk like obedient little kids, nodding at everything he says. Three wasn't a large enough audience for a man of his stature and so he called up some other people who had nothing to do with anything we were talking about. They just sat there. They were introduced to me though. Everyone was so respectful that I was some outside specialist who was going to teach them so much about technology. It was so weird.

Our orator here was very amusing. He revealed what the challenge was going to be. People are so incredibly resistant to change. He wasn't really willing to acknowledge anything we said. We were trying to get him to see the possibility of people donating to schools monetarily, online. Currently the "adopt a school" program requires anyone interested in donating to a school to go to the school (however remote a place it may be in), talk to the principal, find out what he needs, then talk to the "Block Educational Officer" to see whether he approves, then fill out a particular notarized statement and then have the DDPI sign it to approve. He insisted that all donations must be in kind. He gave us the example of some guy who wanted to give all the little kids haircuts in his village every month. Now that was a donation that reached the kids. Someone else had a bathroom built in 23 schools. That reached the kids. Yet another donor gave a pressure cooker for the schools kitchen. That reached the kids too. He gave us about 15 or 20 more examples and added that it reached the children, each time.

We were trying to get the guy to acknowledge the idea of streamlining the process a little bit and enable monetary donations since that would lift the burden a little from the donors. But he wouldn't hear it. "No you can't just send something. If you're so interested in donating, then you should go there and do it yourself. If you're donating something, you have to have a function and make sure everyone knows that you did it so that it isn't misappropriated. Nothing else is feasible. There isn't enough accountability to give money to the school." He wouldn't hear any talk of having the department take the responsibility. Plus, he said that there were too many schools, 53,000 of them. It wouldn't be possible to collect and enter their bank account information.

Well, it was time for coffee so, our meeting was therefore done. And that was my first day at the department of public instruction.

A couple of pictures from today

2005-03-01T17:41:00.000-08:00

First is a some guys wearing rather ugly shirts, riding motorbikes:

The second is a dude driving a chicken taxi:

First day on the job

2005-02-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

I went into the department of secondary education today. It was, well, interesting to say the least. I work with someone who works for both the department and the Azim Premji Foundation (from now on the APF). The first thing he told me was not to talk to anyone in English. He said that there would be bias against cooperating with me if people heard me speak. So I spent the rest of the day speaking in nothing but Kannada, a few English words thrown in but with a heavy local accent.

I was introduced to two guys who worked on their site. Its not their job, but they like working on it so they do. They're the only two who work on it. They started showing me around the site, which involved them clicking on each link and reading from it. It was pretty amusing though. This lasted about 30 minutes. After that we started talking about procedures that they have to go through work on the site. Check this, they don't have permissions to access their web space to publish anything. What they have to do is to make changes, copy it onto a CD, drive over to the "National Informatics Center" (NIC) and ask them to change it. They in turn take up to two weeks to do it! So, if you misspelled something, you have to wait two weeks to update it! Its crazy. And because of bureaucratic troubles, they can't get permission to move to a private provider to host their stuff. That's one of the first things I'm supposed to work on, convincing the higher ups that they should move to a private provider for a fraction of the cost.

After that the two dudes I was talking to started getting a little distracted and kind of wandered off. When they came back, they wanted me to help them set up their outlook express. I tried doing it only to realize that they have to access the internet through a proxy which blocks pretty much everything. So that didn't work.

Anyways yeah, its going to be interesting working with the government. I don't really think I'm going to be able to implement anything or bring about any changes. But I'm going to get a taste of what its like working with the governments like these. I don't mind. I think its going to be quite interesting still.

New Picture

2005-02-25T01:58:00.000-08:00

I got a lot of complaints about the picture. I thought it was funny, but apparently other people didn't. So I've switched it to a picture of my new 'stache.

Sadly the 'stache had to go... it was too hideous. But I'm going too put this picture here.

Meeting at the foundation

2005-02-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

So my meeting was pretty good. It started out quite funny...
I started talking to the guy in my "thick American accent." He was noticeably skeptical of me. He started asking me what exactly I was interested in and about my background/goals. After I explained a little, he asked if I, by any chance, spoke any local languages. I said I can read and write Kannada and speak Telugu and proceeded to talk to him fluently in Kannada with no American accent. His expression completely changed. He seemed so much more comfortable with me and said,"oh ok, let me go get someone else to talk to you as well."

He explained later that they've been looking for someone who speaks, reads, and writes Kannada, who knows about software, and who would be willing to work in rural areas. They just haven't been able to find someone with all three. What they're doing is that they're trying to deploy an ERM (enterprise resource management) system for the state educational system here. And they think that that would be something good for me to work on. This would be with the educational policy and planning group at the foundation which is a collaboration between the government and the foundation.

I was later talking to the guy who was involved with this government project and we were talking about my site that I'm "working" on. He was like "I've been trying to get the Karnataka [that's the state I'm in] government to do something like that for its schools. It would be great for both administrative and informational purposes if you could do something like that for their site. They have all this great data but its completely inaccessible and useless. Plus a lot of people want to give money to the schools they went to since they have none and would like to track where that money goes. This would be great if you could do that. Plus, the time period you're here for is ideal for that. You would get to work with a team of ten people at the commissioner's office. You'd be employed by us, but working for them. That would be a good learning experience for you as well since you would get to see how the government works and the government is the biggest player in development. It would also let you build a platform here that you could generalize later for your other project."

That sounded really good to me since I feel like it would give me a lot of flexibility since I'd work on my own a good deal while also allowing me to experience what its like to work with the government and all.

Anyways, I thought I'd give you an update on that.

This is Vedanth

2005-02-21T00:02:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to posting a picture of Vedanth:

I'm getting a job soon

2005-02-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

In case you've been wondering if I've done anything productive since I got here, I thought I'd just write a quick update about my job search. I've been looking for jobs here in the non-profit sector and since I'm interested in education and also in the application of technology in development, I'm thinking of working on Technology Initiatives at the Azim Premji Foundation here in Bangalore.

Aside from that I'm working on getting a job as an "Accent trainer." This I hear is a highly amusing job. I met a guy this afternoon who helped set up the accent training shit for Dell when they first moved their call centers out here. He said he'd hook me up with a job.

I'll post more as I find out about these jobs. I've got a meeting with the foundation on Wednesday and am expecting an email from the call center dude soon.

People in Bangalore now pay sales tax

2005-02-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

I was talking to my cousins who run a jewelry store and they were explaining to me how they've finally started billing most transactions rather than just taking cash. The state recently dropped sales tax from 4% to 1% and so most people have finally started paying that tax.

Its not that these people feel an obligation to pay tax, but that business culture is changing a little bit. Traditionally, people don't take loans from banks to start businesses. Its usually either pooled family savings or money from "lenders" who charge crazy interest rates and use "alternative" collection methods. These means of gaining funds didn't require you to show income. But these days as taking loans from banks becomes more common, you need to be able to show income in your tax forms.

So, those are the two reasons (as far as I have gathered) that people in Bangalore have started to pay sales tax.

Indians love white people

2005-02-19T11:32:00.000-08:00

If its a white person doing it, it must be good. Haha.
I went to see this jazz concert last night. Uh, they weren't that good really. But they had one thing going for them: they were WHITE. You had all these fancy Indians sitting there bobbing their little heads and living it up!

Now, this was at a fancy hotel, one of the fanciest in town. Oh, before I forget, I went to an Irish pub at this hotel just before the concert. I was hoping to get some good Irish beer of some sort since I had forgotten about the beer situation in India. See here, we only have beer. There's no variety of beer. If you look at a menu, you see "Beer" under which you'll see "pint" and "pitcher." No choice of what you can have. So yeah, we ended up having a horse piss beer called "Kingfisher." Back to what I was saying...

Anyways, there was a lot of the Bangalore glitterati at this thing. Seriously, there was even a press section of 5 seats (there were only about 50 seats total). These people were wearing their fancy clothes and doing what fancy people do and enjoying the white people who were playing. It was hillarious to watch them as they enjoyed being photographed and video taped...

Exploding routers

2005-02-19T11:21:00.000-08:00

So, no more Vonage phone calls. My router exploded today! Electricity in India is 230V and in America its 120V. I plugged my router into a step-down transformer to get the right voltage. So I'm not sure why the thing exploded. It sucks.

I guess the message is that you can't call me at that number anymore. Sheeeeeeit.

Life is less enjoyable here

2005-02-17T22:23:00.000-08:00

Life in Bangalore just isn't the same anymore. Sure, some things like the bureaucracy, corruption, and such are still the same. But a lot of things have changed... For the worse.

Bangalore has grown exponentially since I last lived here five years ago. But the infrastructure is almost as bad as it has always been. Traffic has gotten unbearable. What use to be a 15 minute drive is now at least an hour. The pollution is far worse that ever. You can see a layer of smog over the city at all times.

The city has also been the harbinger of modernity. This means that I get to see Pizza hut, KFC, and other such shit all over the place. I even get to see Subway cups littering the street.

Just a few minutes ago I also realized that there's another "modern" annoyance: telemarketers! I thought I'd get away from them if I were away from the states, but no.

Unbelievably unproductive

2005-02-16T18:31:00.000-08:00

I didn't really do much today, but I did set up my Vonage phone. So don't hesitate to call me!

So my day was pretty unproductive, but that’s not the un-productivity that I'm talking about. I'm talking about the un-productivity of people here.

Now, if you ordered DSL, you'd expect that they would send you a DSL modem and ask you to plug it in and use it, right? Well, not here. In India, you have an Engineer stop by. So, the "engineer" came by yesterday. He showed up with a sidekick. It apparently takes two people to plug in a modem, connect a cable, and enter a password. Not only did neither of these people know what they were doing, they wouldn't listen to me. They sat around making phone calls to find out what the hell they were supposed to do. They also kept restarting my computer every time they changed a setting on the modem.

The point is that this is very typical here. There are almost always more people than are necessary to do a given job. Everybody's got a sidekick or three. There's never a shortage of people milling around.

Definition of "Chicken Taxi"

2005-02-15T09:22:00.000-08:00

I forgot to add this to the last post.

In India, we have "taxis" that have a little scooter engine. They are most often referred to as "AutoRickshaws." They have three wheels and they look like this:

Bureaucracy out the ass

2005-02-15T08:53:00.000-08:00

We have broadband where I live. I was hoping to be able to use the vonage phone that I brought with me. The DSL modem that we have here is a USB modem. So all I have to do to be up and running is get them to change the modem so that it has ethernet output. Right? Wrong.

This would involve changing my "plan." OK, so that should be simple. It should be, but its not. It involves my dad going down to the office to fill out a form and sign some junk to make the change. Why does my dad have to go? Because he's the one who is in charge of that account. Nobody else can do it. So we drive down there and realize that there's no parking in this 15 storey building. We drive around, up and down the street. Not a single parking spot. Crap. So we give up and come home.

The next day my dad takes a "chicken taxi" (I'll explain what that is in a bit) from his workplace and picks up the form. Only problem is that these people only take cash. He didn't have enough cash. This means that I have to go down there when he gets back to pay them.

Fine, at least paying should be easy to do right? No that's where the bureaucracy goes on overdrive. First I have to go up and meet someone on the second floor. Oh, but Indians call that the first floor, on a side note, they call the actual first floor the "ground floor." The person there sends me to the 4th (Indian 3rd) floor. Here, I wait for 15 minutes while the security guard tries to call the lady I need to meet. Eventually when she comes out she takes my stuff and asks me to wait. So more waiting.

Now its time to go downstairs with her so that she can get someone's approval. We go back to the 2nd (normal 2nd, Indian 1st) floor. I wait for a while she gets approval. OK, so that's done. Now its time to go to the cashier. Oh damn. Cashier has gone out to coffee! We wait for 10 minutes and he comes back and finally I can go.

I never realized how bureaucratic everything is in this country. I knew that anything that involved the government was, but this was a private company - TATA. Nobody finds any of this absurd. Its normal. People here are just so accustomed to the hassle that they don't even realize it. Maybe if things become more streamlined productivity would be a lot higher.

Another side note is that while I was waiting on the 2nd floor (Indian 1st) there were a bunch of people/workers just milling around in the front room of the office. I noticed that they were speaking an amalgam of at least 5 languages. They were speaking Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, and English. Maybe some others too. It was interesting to watch them switch midsentence as if it were nothing. This is something that is exceptional about Bangalore. This is a city with people from all parts of India. India is so incredibly diverse that these points of convergence make for something particularly interesting.

Inaugural post

2005-02-15T08:44:00.000-08:00

Alright folks, this is a new blog that I'm starting to let you know what I'm up to since I'm taking the next six months off to work and travel in India and other parts of the world.

First, I'd like to just explain the name of this blog. My distinguished neighbour here in Bangalore, India cannot pronounce his "k" or "r" sounds. He replaces them with "th" and "l" sounds. Granted, he's only four years old. But I think he's cool so I decided to call myself "vithlam" and this is my "blod" (he says "d" rather than "g").

So, welcome. If you want to keep abreast of what I'm diong this is where you'll find that information.

Peace.