Tamil Nadu 2006 |
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Week 2Feb 14, 15 & 16 2006 |
I finally caught up with Miss Gnanapagiham, who runs the GIS lab here and spent most of the morning there. She has run it since she qualified in 1994, the lab having been established in the previous year. There are only 2 qualified staff and what they have achieved is remarkable. GIS is very firmly linked to remote sensing here (satellite imagery). They have been primarily involved in developing atlases of biodiversity, mangrove monitoring and food security. The mangrove work is focussed on the East Coast of India, but much of the other work is national and they have also developed a food security atlas of Cambodia.
GIS is taught here at two universities, Madras and Anna, as part of a full geo-informatics course. She says she will arrange for me to visit the campuses. I will put more detail of all this on the research section of this web as it is all a bit esoteric.
The staff here want me to eat more, and they said they would do me an omelette for lunch, which they did and it was excellent. Came with chapatti, three curries and a yoghurt riata. The food here is really very good.
In the afternoon I walked down MG Road (Mahatma Ghandi Road, there is at least one in every Indian town, there are several in Chennai) to Elliott Beach. This is recommended for swimming, but I don't think I'll be going in. I love swimming in the sea and try to swim in any new sea I come to, but I don't fancy sharing it with an amazing amount of excrement and one very large, very dead turtle. There were a lot of men swimming in the waves, many in all of their clothes.
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There is a lot of wildlife around. This little chap (or lady?) was just sitting on the pavement and scuttled off. There are many striped ground squirrels, like hamsters with long bushy tails. They squeak loudly and incessantly. A small spotted dove laid two eggs on my window cill and was incubating them in a fairly desultory way. Then there was only one egg. Then none. But the squirrels were around all the time, so I think they probably had them. Many, many tiny frogs which start to peep after dark, and gangly Indian crows, but very few kites, which surprises me. |
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Jack fruit cut open for sale on the side of the road. I quite like it but haven't had any from the road side here because it is usually covered in flies. The closed fruit is meant to be the largest in the world and grows on stalks from the trunk of the tree and not from the branches. The timber is quite valuable for furniture making as well. (As is rubber wood, and no, it doesn't go boing when you sit on it.) |
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A fishing boat just coming in on Elliott beach. Most of the boats are fibre glass and many have "World Vision Indian Tsunami Relief" painted on the side. The "long tailed" outboards are common through south and south east Asia. They are extremely versatile and can use just about any sort of motor. When the boat drives up the beach, the whole engine unit is just lifted of and carried ashore. In Vietnam we saw them being used off the boats to pump irrigation water up from the river to the paddy fields. You can't do that with an Evinrude. |
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These little boys were practicing with a small fishing net and seemed to have even less idea than me. I think they are city types. |
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These are the traditional raft type boats, which seem to
have survived. Most I have seen only have only three logs, this is quite
big. Confusingly they call them catamarans. Guess what all the dark lumps
are... At the village we visited four years ago they told us they only used them for inshore fishing "How far out is that?" "Oh, only about 50km." !! About six fishermen drowned every year until it became one of the Information Villages. Then with advanced knowledge of wave height they knew when not to go to sea, and no one drowned for six or seven years. Then the tsunami came and wiped out the village, but fortunately with very little loss of life. |
Not an interesting day diary-wise as I have spent the whole day writing up initial discussions with Ms. Gnanappazham of the GIS lab. This text is online and I would welcome comments and discussion about it via the research forum.
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This daft bird, an Indian spotted dove, is making a second attempt at raising a family on my window ledge. The first time was a disaster, with only the squirrels benefiting from a free egg lunch. I think she may well have knocked the eggs off the ledge herself because they were rolling round all over the ledge. |
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This is the completed nest! its a disgrace, I could do better than that. |
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Mr Dove coming to say "Hello..." Talk about billing and
cooing, they are really quite noisy.
I need to get out more. |
Spent morning writing up notes on Village Knowledge Centres for German book.
Afternoon criss-crossed the town on the buses, trying to establish how to get
about. I have figured out some important destinations which are written in
English, but I have no idea what route a bus will take to get there. I have been
walking nearly two miles to Adyar bus station to get the bus into Chennai, and
today I found that there is one that does that almost from my doorstep. One
problem is that there are so many buses and the numbers are complex, e.g. 16,
16L, 16LL, PP16L 16Lext, 16
and these are all completely different bus routes. I managed to get to the
Central bus station, which is in the suburbs illogically, and found where the
bus to Mamalluporum runs from. I hope to go there for the weekend, but haven't
heard if my hotel room has been confirmed yet or not. Will see in the morning.
Coming back I waited over an hour for a bus. Very frustrating as there were hundreds of others and I'm sure that some of them would take me home, but which ones? I cracked in the end and hailed an auto rickshaw. He quoted me Rs80 for the journey. Last week I was charged Rs250 for exactly the same trip! I'm beginning to get a measure on costs. The bus in (about half an hour, 15km) is Rs4, which is about 5p.
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On board a bus before it got crowded. There are two open
doorways and when it is full, people hang out of them. There is NO personal
space, people sit on you quite happily. The conductor has a fist full of tickets and rips the edge to show what time you got on. He then records every ticket sale in a ledger, which no doubt is checked against the number of tickets left at the end. This is a bean counter's heaven. I saw a whole warehouse just full of Victorian marble edged ledgers. I might buy one for a souvenir. |
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A political "poster", actually a wall painting showing the prime minister of Tamil Nadu. These are everywhere and are hand painted in household gloss paints. The quality is quite remarkable. I saw two men on a huge, boardless scaffold, painting a billboard measuring about 30ft by 50ft plain white. It will take them days. Then they will paint a movie star on it, with double chins, huge sunglasses, a startling hairstyle and at least one gun, possibly two. |
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There are cows and bullocks everywhere. The bullocks are
either tethered and resting, like here, or pulling carts and wagons around
the town at quite high speeds. The cows are usually tethered with a calf, but often are just wandering freely about in the traffic. They never seem to get hit, so I have some hope that I won't be either... |
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I have no idea what these represent, winged cows with peacocks tails and women's heads. They were on carts just outside a temple. Waiting to come out or go in I suppose. |