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Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Settling in in Tirupati

I was met at the airport in Tirupati by two of the

professors from the Division of Education at Sri

Padmavati Mahila Visvavidyalayam (Women’s

University), henceforth to be referred to as SPMVV. Both

professors have the same first name, and that’s how they

like to be addressed, so I’ll refer to them as Professors

Vijayalakshmi.

They couldn’t have been more welcoming. Nor could

they have been more solicitous that I had everything I

needed. We arranged that I’d go with them next day to

the university in

order to meet with the Vice Chancellor (President), Rector

(Provost), and the heads of various schools and

departments who might be interested in using my services

as a lecturer.

I spent my

first night in

Tirupati

(Dec. 7) at

the Bliss

Hotel,

which was as blissful as its name suggests. The

coolest thing was the “musak” in the elevator,

which consisted simply of the repetitive chant of

the soothing, sacred, meditative Sanskrit mantra

“Ommm...”, the “m” sound lingering like the

soft, muted reverberations of a temple bell.

Welcome to India.

Looking out the window of my hotel room, I saw

for the first time what became an accustomed

sight: cows wandering free on the open road. It

was not unusual for a cow to flop down on the asphalt in the middle of the road; and traffic

invariably gave way to such large beasts. The cow is protected in Hindu India, not sacred as

Professor D. Vijayalakshmi

Professor G. Vijayalakshmi

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such, but revered and treated with great respect. Hindus do not eat beef. Most rural Indian

families have at least one dairy cow, a gentle spirit who is often treated as a member of the

family. Dogs, on the other hand, are lucky if they’re not knocked for six if they linger too long in

the road.

I’d decided ahead of time that I’d play safe food-wise and go vegetarian for the duration of my

stay in India. I also quickly discovered that, in more traditional southern India at least, alcohol

was frowned upon and in any case not easily available, so right away I decided to do without it.

So far the food has been, without exception, delicious and, more to the point, free of adverse

gastronomical repercussions. I had already spent two days in Delhi without even a hint of the

dreaded “Delhi Belly,” and the same continues to be the case after almost a week in country.

You’ll recall, perhaps, that before I left the States, at a sendoff dinner with the UPJ Division of

Education faculty, my good colleague Bob Swanson had thoughtfully given me the gift of a

couple of boxes of Pepto Bismol and Immodium-ID. Needless to say, I brought them with me

and carried them everywhere in one of the pockets of my safari jacket. Now that I’m settled

into what I expect to be my permanent residence in Tirupati, the pills are in a cabinet in the

bathroom. I know where they are; I fully expect to have to use them; it’s just a matter of time…

Talking about time, three days’ parked downtown in Hotel Bliss has helped me to more or less

recover from the jet lag resulting from India being 10 ½ hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time

in the States. Interestingly, when India was still ruled by the British, someone or other in the

government decided that it would be convenient if the whole of the sub-continent (along with

Sri Lanka) ran on the same clock, even though the country is, in fact, two time zones wide (what

were called Bombay Time and Calcutta Time). So the decision to set the clock at Greenwich

Mean Time (GMT) + 5 ½ hours, discussed in India and disputed ever since, has stuck.

My accom-

modations in

the university

guest-house

far exceed my

expectations.

Boy, did I luck

out! Prior to

coming to

India, I had prepared for the worst.

I didn’t expect to find a fan in my “digs,” for a start—and I seriously considered bringing a fan

with me. But then I knew there’d be frequent power cuts, so I figured I’d not be able to count

on using even a fan, let alone A/C. I also figured I’d not be able to count on the use of

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technology at home or at school, whether for lesson planning or for in-class use. I expected to

have to fend for myself for food and other necessary supplies. I also assumed I’d be bathing out

of a bucket—if I was lucky. I doubted I’d have the use of a western-style commode; that I’d

have to get used to squatting over a hole in the ground (as some of my fellow Fulbrighters are

having to do!). Above all, I doubted I’d have the luxury of hot and cold water for a shower.

None of these fears has materialized. My 'umble abode

is an upstairs apartment in the university guest house.

The

entrance

hall has a

marble

floor and

a marble

staircase

which curves up to the bedrooms on the second

floor. There’s a dining table and chairs downstairs

and a kitchen. There’s also another three-bed

apartment for university guests.

My apartment has a living

room/bedroom with an ensuite

bathroom and, in between, a

dressing room with a closet

large enough for the modicum

of clothes I brought with me.

The living room/area is

reasonably spacious. Normally

the apartment would

accommodate two or three

other guests, but I’m lucky

enough to have it all to myself.

So it has three single beds in it,

two of which I use for counter

space and shelving and where I spread out stuff like hat and books and so forth that I use on a

regular basis.

There’s an AC unit, which works beautifully (wow!). There are also two ceiling-mounted fans.

It’s a reasonably new house, so it has electrical outlets all over the place. I immediately put

three of them to use—one for my electric razor, another for my cell phone, and a third for my

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laptop. Power cuts, though almost daily, last for only short periods of time—never (yet) for

more than an hour, except one time, more of which anon.

I’ve set up the living area/bedroom with a wicker

chair and a desk and office chair I scavenged from

other rooms in the house. Even though the windows

of the apartment are screened against mosquitoes

and other insects, I’ve rigged up a bed net that I had

brought with me from the States. In the 1970s, I’d

lived in

Nigeria,

West

Africa,

for two years and knew full well the importance of

protection against malaria. Back then, even

though I took anti-malaria pills every day, I still

somehow managed to come down with malaria

three or four times. So I took no chances in India. I

had my mosquito net and a six-month supply of

chloroquine. I escaped unscathed.

The

best news of all was that I have a European style

toilet and clean, hot-and-cold running water! The

hot water is supplied by a “geezer”—an electric-

powered

water

heater—

installed in

the

bathroom.

This took

me back to my childhood in England where the hot water

in our house was similarly generated. Before coming

here, I’d told my wife that I’d be ecstatic if, when I turned

on a faucet, any kind of water came out. But I wouldn’t

have wanted a repeat of what I experienced in Nigeria

the first time I took a bath in a hotel. This in Lagos, the

then capital. When I turned on the faucet to fill the tub,

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the water came out orange, tinted by the rust deposits in the iron pipes. The water in my rooms

in Tirupati was at least crystal clear.

I might just as well have been in a hotel in the US, except that this was a whole lot cheaper. My

rental cost was about $2.50 a day and my meals, which were provided by the staff of four or

five who took care of the guest house, cost me about $1.50 a day. That’s $4 a day for room and

board.

The $4 view is of the surrounding garden, which

is cared for by an entourage of staff. When

there’s a breeze, the fronds of a palm tree softly

caress my window. This is winter in South India,

but I’m only about 13 degrees north of the

Equator, several degrees od latitude further

south than Florida, so the climate is really quite

pleasant just now. Come April and May, things

will start to heat up apparently. But I don’t have

to worry about that since I’ll be preparing to

travel back States-side by then.

There’s also a cleaning lady named Mabjaan who sweeps

out my rooms every day, and a dhobi (laundry man) who

takes care of my washing whenever necessary. I’d give the

dhobi my bundle of clothing at the beginning of the day

and it would be returned to me clean, pressed, and folded

(including socks!),

by the end of the

day. I paid him

cash on delivery.

We always dicker

about that, but for

sure he gets more from me than he could expect from

one of the Indian guests. More about the dhobi anon.

Four bucks a day for a well-appointed room with a

view. Not bad. When I described my living

circumstances to my wife, all she could say was: “Yeesh. You’re living like a maharajah!”

The past couple of days I’ve been reminded of the fact that I’m not here for a vacation. I’m

already lined up to address a class of Education majors at 10:00 am this coming Monday. Then,

immediately following that, I’ll be giving a presentation at a seminar for in-service faculty from

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nearby universities who are new PhDs looking for ways to “update their knowledge on

pedagogy,” especially as it relates to the discipline of Business Management. Not quite my area,

though my background in Information Science will help, and I do have 41 years of teaching

experience to draw on! So “no worries,” as they say in Australia.

On Wednesday I’m scheduled to meet again with the SPMVV

Vice-Chancellor and the Dean of the School of Education to

plan my teaching schedule for the rest of my stay.

Meanwhile, I’m getting to know Dr. D. Jamuna, Professor of

Psychology at Sri Venkateswara University (SVU), also in

Tirupati, just down the road from SPMVV. Dr. Jamuna is my

Fulbright facilitator, charged with helping me get settled in

Tirupati. She’s a former Fulbrighter herself, having spent a

year doing research in the United States at Penn State

University in Pennsylvania. Jamuna took her facilitator role

seriously, watching over me like a guardian angel for the full

six months of my stay in India.

Dr. Jamuna has invited me to accompany her, along with some of her SVU Psychology

department colleagues and students, to a conference on Gerontology, which is to be held at the

Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) in Bubaneshwar, Orissa State, some 630 miles

from Tirupati. She wants me to give a presentation while we’re there and she’s left it up to me

as to what I want to talk about. I figure I can tell the attendees how it feels to be growing old….

Whoops! Power cut. We have one or two a day; no biggie. My laptop here switched to battery

power without a hitch. I might as well go back to bed.

‘Night all :)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

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Sunday, December 17, 2006

Tech in India ain’t what it’s cracked up to be

Sorry for the delay in posting to the blog, folks. I've been somewhat inundated with teaching,

socializing, getting things sorted out in my apartment, discovering what I can and can't do

technology-wise, and generally doing a whole lot of low-level problem-solving. But things are

coming together nicely :)

I bought a cell phone the day after arriving in Tirupati. I soon dialed Marilyn’s land line phone

number (including the international code for the United States) and, to both our utter

amazement, got straight through clear as a bell! Then I called our son, Zsolt’s, cell phone (he

lives in Pittsburgh) just to see what would happen. No problem; connected clear as a bell once

again. Unlike in the US, incoming calls are not charged to my cell phone, so Marilyn calls me

every day—and what a lifeline that is proving to be.

In correspondence with my hosts at SPMVV, I’d been assured that I would be able to use

internet-ready computers at the university, and that I’d be able to project from my laptop to a

display in front of a class. But I wasn’t taking any chances, so I brought along my own projector,

just in case. Turns out that was a great move on my part. I’ve used the laptop and projector

constantly in class and for other ad hoc lectures.

It’s made a huge difference in helping me prepare for, and deliver, presentations using

PowerPoint as my tool of choice. I include a minimum of words on my slides and a maximum of

images. “A picture is worth a thousand words.” It’s really not difficult at all to engage my

audiences when I can look out at them the whole time and address them without a script. All

the guidance I need is a prompt here and there based on the content of each slide.

I believe in using as

few slides as

possible in my

presentations.

There’s a well-

known rule of

thumb coined by a

psychologist named

George Miller who

wrote a paper

titled: “The Magical

Number Seven, Plus

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or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.”

Miller’s thesis is that we’re well capable of holding 7 ± 2 items in our short term memory

without loss. Then we can hold a lot more in our short term memory if we “chunk” data into

groups. So it’s easy for us to remember, say, 10 digits of a telephone number as long as there’s

chunking of the area code + local code + number. Indeed, that’s how we prefer to list a

telephone number on paper or on a computer screen. If we run the numbers together without

a break we quickly lose track of where we are in the sequence as we dial the number. Most of

us find it necessary to write the number out with spaces or hyphens to “chunk” the data.

Well, it occurred to me that the same could apply to a set of slides prepared for a presentation,

except that I go one step further. I tighten Miller’s Magical Number to 5 ± 2 for the content

slides. I bookend a presentation with a title slide and an acknowledgements slide, and in

between I have no more than 5 content slides, if I can help it. I also limit the content on each

slide to a minimum of words and use images—diagrams, photos, cartoons, even video clips—

whenever appropriate.

I figure an audience can hold in mind most

if not all the content covered in a

presentation if the verbiage is kept to a

minimum and the visual content, including

me, to a maximum. The lecturer has to be

engaging, of course, and I always work

hard on that. I hate being bored and I

equally hate to inflict boredom on anyone

else. Having said that, I must admit I’ve

bored the socks off a few students in my

time. Hopefully that’s been the exception

that proves the rule!

So far I've addressed student groups in Business Management (a group of professors who are

meeting to discuss pedagogy issues), Biotechnology Engineering (environmental engineering

and population studies), Computer Science (I talked about Software Design in Software

Engineering), and Education (Instructional Technology). Everyone wants a piece of me, and

that's OK with me, since that's why I'm here.

The university is preparing an office for me, in which I’ll apparently have an internet-ready

computer. Watch out once I’m established there, folks. I’ll finally be able to be in regular touch.

But once again, I'm not taking any chances.1 The internet connections I've found elsewhere in

1 I never did get my own office

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the university are exceedingly slow, so I've arranged to have “ubiquitous” wireless access on my

laptop with a company called Reliance Web World. This allows me to access the Web anywhere

in India--including during class, which is sure to be a hit with my students.

So no worries. I couldn’t be more blessed. I wish Marilyn were with me, of course, but under

these circumstances I can easily survive until we meet up in February, when I’m entitled to a

vacation outside of India. We’ll be rendezvous-ing in England around the time of my mom’s

98th birthday. What a celebration that will be!

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Thursday, December 21, 2006

Of tamarind trees and butterflies and other wondrous things

This morning (Dec. 18) I was walking towards

one of the buildings on the campus of the

university and noticed some students

reaching up and pulling something off a tree.

I wondered if it might be one of those trees

the twigs of which people in Africa and

China, and maybe India, too, use to clean

their teeth. But it turns out this was a

tamarind tree and the girls were plucking

the fruit.

When I asked what they were doing, I was offered

some of the fruit. I took it (it looked like a pea pod)

and I held it in my hand, wondering what I was

supposed to do with it. I asked, and the girl bit into

it and invited me to do the same, which I did. It had

a sweetly bitter taste and was deliciously refreshing.

Later, I looked up tamarind in the dictionary and

learned that it’s a fruit used to flavor drinks, apart

from other things.

Talking about drinks, I haven’t touched one—alcoholic, that is—since I arrived in India.

According to what I have read prior to coming here, public consumption of alcohol is frowned

on most everywhere. But when the Indian is at home, apparently anything goes. So I’m

awaiting my first invitation to a soiree. Meanwhile, I have absolutely no idea where to buy

alcohol other than in a hotel bar and, quite frankly, that’s just not my scene. But I wouldn’t

mind a G&T right now. It’s nearly 5:00 in the evening; the sun’s soon to set over the yard arm;

it’s about that time….

Six mornings a week, on my way to teach at 10:00 am in

the School of Education, I take a shortcut through the bush.

At a certain point along the way, I daily disturb a posey of

pretty butterflies, which flutter up like a gossamer cloud

from their butterfly garden and show off their finery—light

blues and black and orange and white and cream. I hope

they never go away, though I fear their life cycle may soon

leave me bereft of their company.

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On the other hand, like humans, one

butterfly’s life cycle is independent of

another’s, so there’s no reason why they

should all disappear at once. The only

reason that might happen would be if the

butterflies lost their habitat. Sadly, the

shortcut through the bush already threatens

that as we humans, in our haste to get from

place to place, heedlessly cut swaths

through their territory. It’s not enough that

we’ve carved asphalt roads through the

bush to create the university campus; we

have to carve out shortcuts, too?

In an earlier, pre-industrial age, Shakespeare’s Hamlet exclaims:

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!

how infinite in faculty! in form and moving

how express and admirable!

in action how like an angel!

in apprehension how like a god!

the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!

I wonder if he would say the same today.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that

power cuts are not uncommon in this

part of the world. We’ve had fewer

than one a day since I arrived, and

they’re always of short duration. But

today was an exception. It seemed that

the power was popping on and off all

morning and all afternoon long.

The first power cut this morning was

particularly ill-timed. I was in a

computer lab with 50 students. I’d

given them each a blank CD-RW to use

to store their files when they work their way through my tutorials. As Murphy’s Law would have

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it, half way through explaining to them how to save files on a CD, and about 15 minutes before

the end of the session, we had a power cut.

It took a while for the implications to sink into my aging brain. We couldn’t continue with what

we were doing; however, that’s OK since I can always come up with Plan B, even if it means

yammering on about something vaguely intellectual for half an hour or so. But then one of the

students pointed out that they couldn’t retrieve their CDs from the drives…. I never did like CDs

for secondary storage; now I had another reason to hate the wretched things.

One of the students solved the problem by suggesting that each student write her name on her

CD case and leave it on the table next to her computer. Three of the students volunteered to

stay behind till the power came back on, at which point they'd gather up all the CDs and return

them to their fellow students later in the day. The power came back on a few minutes after the

scheduled end of class, so their vigil was not prolonged.

This afternoon, after I

finished guest lecturing to a

group of Electronic

Communications Engineers, I

was invited over for a cup of

tea in the Engineering office.

The man who takes care of

the building—a sort of

general Engineering

Department factotum—was

sent off to get tea. He’s the

gentleman on the left in this

photo. While he was away, I

was told that he had

typhoid…

Yikes!! What on earth was he doing at work, let alone getting me tea, if he’s been diagnosed

with typhoid? When he came back, I noticed for the first time that he did look a bit under the

weather, walking at a snail’s pace and weak at the knees. I wasn’t concerned on my own behalf,

mind, since I’ve recently been inoculated against typhoid, but what about everyone else in the

office, in the building, in the university? Isn’t typhoid contagious? I resolved to find out.

I did, and, well yes, typhoid is contagious, but not by contact with someone who has it. It’s a

water-borne disease, so no worries.

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Friday, December 22, 2006

Getting around in India

In the United States, if I want to travel by land, I have a reasonable choice of public

conveyance—transport that I pay for and that takes me places I want to go. I can take a train, a

taxi or a bus. In India, I have many more options.

So far—and I’ve only been

here a little over two weeks—

I’ve traveled by train, taxi,

auto rickshaw (which uses

calor gas for fuel), scooter

and motorcycle. I’ve also had

a ride on a camel, dreaming

of following in the footsteps

of Lawrence of Arabia. But

that was a jaunt for

amusement at Chandrabhaga

beach, near Konark, on the Bay of Bengal. More about Konark and its magnificent Sun temple in

my next blog.

I have other transportation options should the need arise. I

can take a bus, of course. Alternatively, there is quite a

range of transportation powered, like my camel, by animal

(including human) muscle.

I can ride a cycle

rickshaw, a small,

two-wheeled

covered carriage attached to the front end of a bicycle. I

can hitch a ride on a regular bicycle, too, either sitting on

a metal frame

behind the “driver,”

(ouch!) or

ensconcing myself

on the saddle while the driver peddles standing up.

Then I could hire a flatbed wooden cart, pulled either by a

bicycle or a bullock—or by a man…

Moving day

Not the best ride I’ve seen 5 people on one bike

Note the cow on the left, and the

bus is on the wrong side of the road!

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I have seen all these forms of transportation-for-hire over the past three weeks during my daily

trips from place to place. In some cities, one can go for a ride on an elephant, too, though I

suspect this alternative is offered, like my camel, for the primary purpose of extracting dollars

from tourists.

Muscle power has one decided advantage over automated alternatives: you can count on it to

get you where you want to go, even if it takes a bit longer to get there.

The other day,

I was in an

auto rickshaw

with my

Fulbrighter

colleague, Dr.

Jostnya,

travelling to

the university

here in Bhubaneswar, Orissa state, where our conference was being held. As luck would have it,

the auto rickshaw ran out of gas! The driver made various attempts to start the vehicle. These

attempts mostly consisted of rocking the

rickshaw violently from side to side to

redistribute whatever gas was left in the

tank.

No such luck. So I had the dubious pleasure

of helping the driver push the vehicle to a

nearby gas station! Fortunately, Dr. Jostnya

had her camera with her, so the whole thing

is documented for posterity in a sequence of

high definition color photographs.

My favorite form of transportation over the short haul (a couple of miles, say, which is all I need

in and around Tirupati), is most definitely the motorbike—driven by a competent, careful

driver, of course. While some taxis have air conditioning, you have to pay extra if you want it

turned on, and by the time you reach your destination, it’s barely begun to take effect. An auto

rickshaw can get crowded (my gerontology colleagues at the conference here somehow

managed to squeeze 9 passengers along with the driver into a space not much larger than a

sardine can). Another problem with the auto rickshaw is that it’s a three-wheeler which, like a

3-wheeler ATV, is notoriously unstable--or so I suspect.

Needless to say, they don't have air bags--or sides, for that matter.

33

On a motorbike, however, you have all the air conditioning you could desire—and more.

Though it’s not unusual to see as many as five riders on a single bike, I prefer to have the

passenger seat all to myself. Most significant of all, on a motorbike you can much more easily

negotiate the unbelievably chaotic traffic conditions.

Imagine a sidewalk in the most popular shopping precinct of any town or city. Crowds of people

jostle together, weaving in and out and around each other, every now and then clipping a too-

close passerby. Now put all those people in or on a vehicle, and you have some idea of what it’s

like to drive in downtown cities and towns in India.

It’d be scary if it weren’t for the fact that I’m kind of used to it—it wasn’t much different than

when I lived in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, and now in India. The traffic has to be seen to be

believed. If Marilyn were here with me in the passenger seat, she’d be having conniptions.

She’d be “eek-ing” and “shrieking” every few seconds as only Marilyn can. But her eeks and

shrieks would go unheard in India, drowned out by the incessant honking and hooting of horns.

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Thursday, December 28, 2006

Mozzies (aka Mosquitoes)!

Those pesky mozzies may not be females of the anopheles variety (the ones that carry malaria)

but they sure are pesky!

And you don’t need a lot of them to drive you crazy at night. I was right to bring a mosquito bed

net with me, but I learned very quickly that you have to take one with you everywhere you go.

I’m not long back from Bhubaneswar, in Orissa state, immediately north of Andhra Pradesh,

where I’d traveled for a conference. I didn’t take my mosquito net with me because I didn’t

think of it, and anyway it’s all strung up in my room over my bed and would have been a pain to

take down and put back up again.

So… The other night, in Bhubaneswar, at 4:00 in the morning, I wake up to this horrible

whining, like a kamikaze plane might sound when it homes in on its target. I’m very soon

reminded once again of just how unbelievably stupid I am when, as the mozzie lands to suck my

blood, I vainly—and violently—hit myself on various parts of my head, smacking my face and

boxing my ears, thinking that in this way I’ll somehow subdue the beast.

Seconds later the whine returns…

I cover my head with the blanket, but then it soon gets to be too hot under there, so I turn the

blanket back down and hope for the best.

Seconds later the whine returns…

It always seems to hover near one or other of my ears on its way into land, like it knows that

that’s where I’ll direct my attack. I wait till the whine stops and, as my pesky friend has

predicted, I smack myself hard over my left ear. Meanwhile the mozzie is sucking the blood out

of my neck.

I no more than momentarily disturb its meal, and the whine returns…

After half an hour of this ridiculous behavior on my part, I decide to get up, turn on the light,

and use my God-given vision to get the bloody thing. I prop myself up in a sitting position,

pillows stacked behind my back. I pretend to be reading a book to fool the mozzie into a false

sense of security.

There it is; now I welcome the whine. I’m alert, every sense strained in preparation for a

35

counter attack.

I see it now, dancing in the air nearby, but only briefly while it’s against a backcloth of white

sheet or pastel-colored wall. It disappears each time I grab for it, cleverly swooping into the

camouflage of some dark backdrop.

Then it lands on the sheet and, like lightning, I swoop down with my hand and gleefully smash

out its life.

I hate to kill anything; but I make an exception for mosquitoes.

I confirm my kill. There it is, squashed flat as a pancake in the palm of my hand. But there’s a

smear of fresh red blood on the sheet, and it’s mine, so the bloody mozzie got what it came for

in the end.