Travel – Page 56 – David Kotz

Reva Institute of Technology

A day-long visit to a local university.

Today I visited the Reva Institute of Technology and Management, a new school on the outskirts of north Bangalore. Opened just five years ago, they offer undergraduate (and some graduate) programs in computer science and engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, as well as an MBA. Their brand-new campus is beautiful and architecturally interesting.

I was invited to open their day-long series of student research presentations with a keynote lecture. The event was very formal and I was treated like a VIP. The event was a day full of student research presentations, and I was the keynote speaker.

The event began with a school song, sung by one of the students. Then the event’s student MC introduced first a professor, then the department chair, then the principal, and then the chairman, who each made a few remarks. Then they presented each of us with a bouquet of flowers, and presented me with a memento – a basket of fruit and an elegant Reva desk clock.

Finally, we inaugurated the day with the lighting of the lamp, an ornate brass oil lamp with five wicks and wrapped in fresh flowers.

As the hour was late, the day was hot and the acoustics in the room poor, I moved quickly through my talk so the students could get on with their program. I enjoyed the rest of my visit, meeting with faculty and graduate students who were involved in interesting research related to portable healthcare sensors.

This post was transferred from MobileMe to WordPress in 2020, with an effort to retain the content as close to the original as possible; I recognize that some comments may now seem dated or some links may now be broken.

No pooja in the voting booth, please

It’s election season.

It is election season here in India – all of Parliament is up for re-election and the Congress-led government is hotly contested by the BJP. India conducts its voting in phases, shifting security personnel and electronic voting machines from state to state and district to district over the course of two months. This phased approach provides security that has dramatically reduced the violence that used to occur, and the electronic voting machines have dramatically reduced the ballot-box-stuffing and other fraud that used to occur.

I was tickled by the following article in the newspaper this week, in which the election officials declared that candidates, when they come to vote, cannot perform a pooja (religious blessing) on the electronic voting machine (EVM). A pooja usually involves incense, a diya (small oil lamp), bells, chants, and colored powder used to mark the person or object being blessed.

mHealth workshop

We hosted a scientific workshop at IISc.

I have recently become very interested in mHealth, that is, the application of mobile computing and communications technology to healthcare. Here in India, many believe that India’s pressing healthcare needs could benefit from judicious application of information technology. Mobile-computing technology may be particularly helpful, for example, by improving access to healthcare, by encouraging personal health management, and by enabling patient and provider mobility. Wearable medical devices are emerging, to measure pulse, respiration, ECG, blood glucose level, and patient mobility. Handheld devices support clinicians in urban hospitals, and portable diagnostic kits allow remote healthcare teams to more easily reach rural villages. The widespread availability of mobile phones, and recent experiments with low-cost, long-range broadband wireless networks, bring connectivity to all these opportunities. Read on.

A panel discussion at the IISc mHealth workshop.

Sun overhead

The sun was directly overhead Bangalore.

Thanks to Prof. John Thorstensen’s excellent JSkyCalc software, I was able to calculate that the sun was directly overhead Bangalore today.

I think this is really cool. As I live in the north, the sun is always to the south of us. Each year the sun processes further north in summer, and south in winter, but never passes overhead. Here in the tropics, by definition, the sun passes overhead Bangalore (13° 01′ 23″ north, which I can read from Google Maps) on its way northward to the Tropic of Cancer (23° 26′ 22″ north), and then again on its way southward to the Equator and then the Tropic of Capricorn. I missed the opportunity, unfortunately, to run outside at noon (local solar noon, of course, not noon IST) to see that my shadow was directly underneath me. But now it’s kinda cool to think that the sun is north of me!

IIT Guwahati

My sixth visit to an IIT campus.

IIT Guwahati was the sixth of the Indian Institutes of Technology, opened just in 1995 with a brand-new campus built from scratch on the banks of the Brahmaputra river in Assam, near Guwahati. I visited there this week to give a talk in the Computer Science & Engineering department. [Location] Read on.

Himalayan trek

Can you see Mount Everest in the photo below? Neither can I. We spent six days trekking along the Singalila ridge, the border between India and Nepal, but we were in the clouds the whole time. Nonetheless, it was a fantastic trip and a beautiful place. Read on, and check out the photo gallery!

Family photo at a sunny break during the day. On a clear day, one could see Everest in the background. Not today!

Darjeeling

Darjeeling is most famous for its tea.

We spent three nights in Darjeeling – two before and one after our 6-day trek in the nearby foothills of the Himalaya. Darjeeling is a “hill station”, created by the British as the summer location for the capital of colonial India (at the time, the capital was located in steamy Calcutta). We visited at the height of summer, in April, and yet Darjeeling was pleasant. This fast-growing city of 100,000 people clings to the hilltops at nearly 7,000’ and has stunning views north into Sikkim and the massive Kangchenjunga peak (8,586m or 28,169’) — the world’s third-highest peak. Read on!

Seen from Darjeeling, Kangchenjunga is the centerpiece, at 28,169 ft.

White in India

Lots of people ask to photograph our children.

When I came to India I was prepared for being the only white person in most situations. I was surprised, though, at just how rare white people are outside of the major tourist attractions. Even here in high-tech Bangalore, even here on the campus of IISc, one can go for days or even a couple weeks without seeing another white person. All that is fine with me. It’s harder for the children, though. Read on.

Taxi drivers

It is common to rent a car and driver.

Needless to say, it would be suicide for me to try to drive in India. Driving on the left, negotiating the game of chicken with oncoming trucks while both sides attempt to use the other side’s lane, and navigating a confusing array of streets and potholes while scooters and bicyclists and cows interrupt your path, is just not for me. So how do I travel? read on…

This is one of the larger taxi varieties, which we hire for longer trips. Ramesh, our driver for this trip to Mysore on Dasara, arrived early to decorate the car with garlands, banana leaves, flower petals on the hood, and temporary paint on the windows. This was a special treat1

Hijra

The third gender in India.

One of the most bizarre encounters I have had in India occurred while I was sitting in a car at a traffic light. It’s not uncommon to have beggars or street vendors weave through the cars, two-wheelers, and autorickshaws stopped at a light. The vendors sell fruit, newspapers, toys, cell-phone charger cables, even Q-tips. This time, I watched a sari-clad woman approach one driver after another. Each one seemed to give her money. She came to our taxi… and the driver fished around for some change. She smiled at me and brushed her hand along my cheek. “Daahling,” she purred, as she moved to the next car. Um, ok. Read on…