Kussmauls in Asia

Everywhere we go in Trivandrum, we see construction.Trenches are dug alone some of the roads for various utilities;in Karyavattom, both sides of the road were dug up at the same time;one for water, the other for electricity, I'm told.Construction in India is quite different than in the US.A key factor seems to be that compared to machines, people are less expensive  in India than in the US, so that many things that in the US would be done by machines or otherwise mass produced,

From Munnar we continued to Thekkady, where we rode an elephant, visited a spice garden, and watched a martial arts demonstration, among other activities.

After giving a talk in Cochin, we took several days to travel into the mountains. The first big stop was Munnar, which is full of tea and spice plantations. The roads are narrow and winding - we were very happy to have a talented driver. Temperatures were noticably cooler than Trivandrum, but still quite comfortable for us, although we saw Indians in jackets, scarves, and even earmuffs.

We passed a beautiful waterfall on the way to Munnar.

On Oct 7, 2009, I gave a talk at the SCMS School of Technology and Mangement, Cochin, as part of the Conference On Open Source Tools In Education : Benefits And Challenges.

It is a small world we live in. Here are some reasons: 1) (listen to this Benedicts) My new teacher from Switzerland not only knows the Steelers, but supports them! 2) my friends at school actually know some game sites that I know, such as Armorgames. 3) I know a girl in 8th grade that is from Florida.

We spent an afternoon and evening in Kovalam, a seaside resort area not far from Trivandrum, with our friends Manoj, Sani, and their two sons.

This week I gave two presentations at the College of Engineering, Trivandrum (CET). On Sept 22 I gave a talk on Free and Open Source Software to students in Computer Science, and on Sept 24 I gave the inaugural address (also on FOSS) at the National Level Workshop on Scilab.

Today, lunch at CNIS was strange. Wehad to eat on the roof. At the table I was sitting at were three friends I have. Here are our diverse lunches: I had a peanut butter sandwich, a carrot, and a green bell pepper; Adithya had reddish balls of food and I couldn't tell what they were; Hussain had a carrot (he has bad eyesight) and Ramen or Hakka noodles; Sojen had things that were similar to burritos with naan as the tortilla and curry as the filling. Hussain asked me if I had bad eyesight because I brought a carrot every day.

Thu evening there was a party at the CBI to celebrate Ramadan (among other things).

Ben looked up Ramadan on the web, and learned about the tradition of fasting during daylight hours. He had noticed that some of his school friends weren't eating lunch (or anything else) this week, and decided to see what fasting is like. So he woke up at 5:30am in the morning to have scrambled eggs and toast before sunrise:

Our internet was down for two days but we are finally reconnected.  Our account was set up initially in the name of the company where Clif has done consulting the past 10 years or so.  Somehow it didn't transfer to our name, and after a month we owed 185 rupees ($3.84 by today's exchange rate) so they shut off our connection.  Clif phoned to straighten it out, and the internet company sent an employee to our apartment to collect the 185 rupees, and within a few hours we were connected again.  Can you imagine a US company sending anyone out to collect four dollars?