Heading Home

Today is my last day in India and Auroville. I just got news that my dad was admitted to the hospital yesterday complaining of pain shooting up his neck and jaw. At first it was believed that he'd suffered a minor heart attack but after the doctors checked out his condition it turned out it was "just" a partially blocked artery. Actually, my dad is quite lucky. It COULD have lead to a heart attack if he hadn't gone in to the doctor and done something about it. (My dad is a hypochondriac, so that would have been highly unlikely... there are people that ignore that sort of thing, though) The doctors scheduled him for surgery and installed a stint to open up the artery. My dad is now stable and scheduled for release from the ICU today.

All I can think about now is how much it would have sucked if my dad had died while I was on the other side of the world... and only about two weeks from when I was to see him and most of the rest of my family at my brothers upcoming wedding. WOW. What a close call.

Future School

Today I did a presentation on feature animation to the students at the Future School. Future school? you say. What the heck is Future School? Well, here in Auroville, they have some specific ideas about education. "The Mother" was very clear about what she considered the ideal in education: No grades, no tests, etc. Many people here take that stuff very seriously. So, the Mothers Will, it was. As a result, the first school here is actually called Last School, as in, it is a last school you'll ever need. (You are then expected to teach yourself). The former school here for high school aged kids is called Transition School. It's a place where students can direct their own education. Things are not very structured there. Unfortunately, it also does not provide any kind of certification for students who want to go on to university, etc. As a result, many kids were leaving Auroville for private schooling around age 13. ( or just slacking at Transition school. ) A couple of Aurovillians recognized the need for something new since the Future School / Transition School experiment didn't seem to be working. Future School was born.

At Future School, students can earn "O" and "A" levels in what is a more structured environment compared to Transition School. Compared to any regular western school the environment is extremely flexible, though.

The first thing I learned about Future school that blew my mind was the teacher student ratio. There are 54 students and something like 32 teachers. As a result many courses are more like tutoring sessions than "classes". The school also promotes a mentoring program where students may pick a mentor to help guide them.

OK, enough about the school. How did the presentation go? I would say quite well. The students were attentive and thoughtful in their questions. I managed to cover the concepts of pre-production and the various steps of production in 3D animation. I even had time to talk about the steps of "traditional" (i.e. hand drawn 2D) animation for some students that showed interest. At the end I covered the various paths one could take to get into the business. (There are many!) I also made sure to tall the kids how lucky they are to have such an awesome school. I really wish I could have gone to a high school like Future School. It's more like having a team of personal tutors than a regular school. How could any even semi-motivated student go wrong in such an environment?

Bin-O-Media

I've been storing my movies at a site called Media Max. The idea was to link them directly from my blog posts, but out of sheer laziness, I haven't been keeping up. There are quite a few now.

If you want to see the movies you can go right to the bin-O-media:

http://www.mediamax.com/lordtangent/Hosted/

Also, don't forget that you can click on all the images on the blog to get a bigger view!

India: Phase 2

I was not able to change my flight (Damn Cheap Tickets!) So, no extended vacation for me. The good news is that all my tour bookings went off without a hitch. I start my South India tour tomorrow at 8am!

Even with out the extra time I think I'll be able to cram in all the stuff I want to get done.

My posts may get a little more sporadic at this point, but I'm sure to have many interesting photos for the posts I do make. Personally, I think some people might find the tour stuff boring. I'm worried I might get overwhelmed and then bored myself. (seeing so many sites back to back is really not my style)

I've set aside some time to visit Micheal's orphanage and perhaps even the site of his new facility. That should be an interesting change of pace after seeing so many temple ruins and stuff. When I get back to Auroville I'll be checking out some farms as well. (They are building a new chicken farm. Hmmm.... chicken.)

India Time

Since I'm not sure if I can change my flight or not, I decided to start my India tour ASAP. I spoke to the agent and they are making the bookings for my tour to start Thursday.

In the meantime I'm working on changing my ticket. But because of the holiday yesterday the British Airways office in Chennai is extra busy. My efforts today were again futile. I couldn't get though...

The interesting thing about traveling in India as a westerner is the amazing range of options available. Because there is such a huge spread in the relative wealth of the native population (favoring the "poor" end of the spectrum) there are myriad choices for inexpensive travel and rooming. Buses, dorms and staying with friends. The South African in the earth architecture course usually goes this route to stretch his travel budget as far as possible. (he tours for 6+ months at a time...) Then there is the sort of middle of the spectrum, where one rents a motor bike and just drives. There are many choices for room and board at this level. It's still very cheap from a westerners perspective. $10-30 a day, total. I recently spoke to a German fellow who went this route. It sounded like good adventure. But maybe a bit more adventure than I'd like.

I'm somewhat adventurous, but I don't like being lost. Not that it's really very easy to get genuinely "lost" in India, there are so many people. What I guess I mean is, I don't like FEELING lost. (Which is easy...for me at least...)

Being the chicken I am, and not being able to find a travel companion at the last minute, (In which case I might have gone the motorcycle route, or at least shared a tour) I chose to go with a very tame, personalized taxi driven tour. Here we come to one of the advantages of touring as a westerner in India. I will have my own personal driver and taxi for about half a month and it will cost me roughly what a nice rental car would cost for the same period of time in the USA. That's right, my own personal driver/tour guide. Part of my room cost will go toward putting him up each night at the hotel. (The hotels have "special" accommodations for drivers... I hope they aren't too bad.) Of course, the cost of the hotel room is separate from the cost of the driver. I'll be staying in three star hotels, which lowers the price. Considering how rustically I've been living the last month, as long as there aren't bed-bugs and scabies, anything will be an upgrade. Overall, I don't consider the price of the total 16 days overly expensive. Considering that the tour is completely personalized... I was actually surprised how "reasonably" it is priced. Of course, that's from a westerners perspective. It costs what most villagers make in a year. (And it would probably still be pretty steep for many middle class Indians)

While wandering around Auroville today doing errands, like shipping home some of the stuff I've purchased, I ran across Simplicity Farms. Simplicity is the unit responsible for producing the spirulina I mentioned in an earlier post. While I was there I spoke to the main steward whose name, I'm sorry, I've forgotten. He described the process they use to grow and sun-dry spirulina. He also offered me a pinch of dry spirulina "crumbles", the raw product of the operation. I have to say, eating it in the crumble form is not nearly as nasty as drinking it in juice. Spirulina is pretty salty, so mixed with juice it's nasty. But dry it's almost like eating chips... green chips.

In Simplicity Farms we see again the interesting economy of India at work. i.e., the way everything is is done is too labor intensive to ever have any chance of working in a developed country. But here it works fine. (provided the spirulina is sold to westerners / well-to-do Indians!) The farm only makes about 5 kilos of dry spirulina a day yet it employs 7 workers full time. They are all part of the Auroville pension/social security - like system so they aren't being exploited.

Here is a video of the women setting out the spirulina to dry.
[Video once technical issues permit]

Every step up to this point has also been carried out manually.

The ladies seem to be used to guests and being photographed. As I've found many times so far on my visit, people are happy to have me take photos... in exchange for simply seeing them on my digital camera.

This past weekend is the holiday where Indians clean and bless their tools. As a result all the cars, trucks and motorcycles also had pujas performed on them. (they are tools, after all) Here we see the owner of a bicycle shop breaking a melon, which is part of the ritual near the end. The stuff on the ground burning is camphor, which was just on top of the melon (burning). I haven't bothered to ask anyone what any of it means because it seems pretty complicated and I doubt I'll understand it anyway.


[Video once technical issues permit]

Performing a Puja on a van at CSR:


Puja "goodie bag". I felt bad for taking the bag because I only showed up at the very end of the puja and took some photos. The owner of the van seemed happy to give it to me though. (This is the first apple I've seen in a month!):


South Indian buffet in Pondicherry. Yummy! (I hadn't gotten my rice before taking the photo):
Indian Super Market. Villagers don't shop here (just yet), only middle class Indians or richer and westerners. Hopefully the villagers wont ever develop a taste western junk food:

My freshly Puja-ized motorbike laden with bootie for shipping. I'm still an amateur at piling stuff on my bike. But I'm learning. (this was the first time I carried two bags. Next time I'll go for three!)
Orchids in the Botanical Garden:

More Auroville dwellings. The fancy Japanese Garden style house is Upsana Guest House, reputedly the most expensive building/compound in Auroville. It looks like wood but really the entire building is made from concrete! (Wooden buildings don't last long here against the termites) Upsana fills the roll of "Five Star Hotel" in Auroville. The last day of the intro to Auroville workshop we had lunch here. Very Nice...


These two cute little houses were tucked away in Discipline Farm. Discipline Farm... That sounds like a prison or something... but it's actually quite nice (excluding the mosquitoes)

Extending stay in India?

After some consideration I decided to extend my stay in India for one additional week. I contacted my employer and asked for another week off. (unpaid) Lucky me, they said yes. Now the problem is changing my flight. I attempted to do it today via the Internet with no luck. I think I may have booked one of those non-refundable, immutable tickets. I'm not sure. My attempt to call the airline today was futile as it's a national holiday today in India.

Update: You can see the brick testing video here: http://www.mediamax.com/lordtangent/Hosted/brick_test.MP4

Or you can jump down and see it in the earlier post where I first mentioned it: Making Bricks

More wild architecture in Auroville.

Aspiration dining room:
One of the schools:
The "Pyramid Building" which is now an art school:


The Solar Kitchen cooking up tasty lunches:

These huts are typically called "Capsules" They are the most basic accommodation that can reasonably be called a "home":

The lovely Mira explains the complexities of living in Auroville during the three day Intro to Auroville workshop.

More Sight Seeing

This weeks course at the Earth Unit has quite a bit of stuff I'm either not interested in or feel is just review. As a result, I decided to skip a few days of class and take the Three Day Introduction to Auroville workshop. I'm glad I did. Until this point, I knew that I hadn't seen much of Auroville. But I had no idea how little I'd seen. Even though most of the today seemed to be filled with exposition regarding Sri Aurobindos "Integral Yoga" and other stuff I don't really care about, once the site seeing portion of the tour started I got to see way more than I expected. One place that I didn't even know existed was the American Pavilion. It's a nice eco-conscience office/dorm with rain water harvesting, photo-voltaic (solar) electric generation and composting toilets. The buildings are made of rammed earth with compressed block in-fill.

We also saw Baraht Nivas, which was once a restaurant, but it now an art gallery. The building is pretty neat. I didn't get too many photos but you should get a good impression of what it looks like from this photo.

Crazy rainbow cloud:

Spirulina. It tastes as bad as it looks.

Ayyappam shows us how to use a water level:

Practicing bond patterns in masonry.

A few days ago I burned myself pretty badly on the tailpipe of my motorcycle. I'm pretty sure this one is going to leave a scar. My souvenir from India:

Over the last several weeks I've taken a few lunches at The Solar Kitchen.
Solar Lunch:
While in an outdoor restaurant a goose walked though the dining area, took a nice fat dump on the floor and then wandered around for a while.

Making Bricks

We completed site management and production know-how this week. The system that Satprem has created focuses on the use of compressed earth blocks. As the blocks are meant to be used mostly in developing countries the machine is totally manual. It requires a crew of seven to run the machine at full speed. ( 2 people for mixing earth and 5 to operate the machine) It might seem a little crazy at first. But when you take into account the actual situation in many developing and the cost of labor in those countries, the numbers work out. The machine can make about 1000 bricks in one day when running non-stop. Check out the video:

http://www.mediamax.com/lordtangent/Hosted/auram.MP4

The process can be automated for use in industrialized countries. But that isn't the focus of the work being done at the Earth Institute.

We also spent one day doing a rammed earth wall.

Completed rammed earth wall.



In the first video Omar is horsing around and breaking one of the unstabilized, incorrectly produced, inferior quality bricks we made in the first section of this weeks course. Ayapam then fetches him another brick to break. ( It's one of the REAL bricks ) Check out the second movie to get an idea of just how strong "mud bricks" can be. Please observe that there is a 4:1 lever applying the pressure to the top of the brick being tested. ( Omar decided not to test a real brick with his fist, BTW )

http://www.mediamax.com/lordtangent/Hosted/brick_break.MP4

Testing the brick (Skip to the end if you want to see it actually break)
http://www.mediamax.com/lordtangent/Hosted/brick_test.MP4

After class we've taken the opportunity to poke around Auroville and look at some of the buildings. People have done some very creative stuff:

Auto-rickshaws and their drivers at the Pondicherry central bus station.


Class will be over this week and I'm finalising my travel plans for after the workshop. I'm using a travel agency to help me book everything. So far my plan is to only travel for about 16 days to leave a buffer for staying in places I find interesting for a little longer.