I have finally finished two hectic weeks of travel through India for work and having worked every weekday and two weekends, a day off was in order.

Given my interest in China, I had a wonder through China Town. It was quite different to the last one I visited (in Liverpool) and seemed to reflect clearly both the length of time since the first Chinese settlers in the 17th century and integration with the local context.

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I didn’t, for example, notice the traditional gateway.

I did notice hints of Chinese culture about it (restaurants, some Chinese characters on signs and carved into buildings), but without these it might have been almost indistinguishable from neighbouring parts of Kolkata (it did, really have the feel of an immigrant community).

What was noticeable was the support for the local communist party, the signs and posters being a legacy, I presume, of the recent elections. West Bengal, though, I as communist state, so this is not necessarily different to other relatively poor neighbourhoods.

Saturday tomorrow and museums.

In my (precious little) spare time I have been experimenting with Google Maps and Google Earth.

Things have gone well, except for working out how to embed the maps into my blog posts.

Now, if you happen to be using Firefox (I’m not sure about Internet Explorer), below is a map I made using Google Earth of the trips I have taken this year.

Unfortunately, for some reason it doesn’t display in the shipping version of Safari 3, though does in the Safari 4 preview.

Note: You can drag the map around inside its frame and use the zoom tool to see city names.

An idea I had was to make a similar map to show where my students come from (since we have a very international cohort).

If you have Google Earth installed, then clicking on this link will show the same data but wrapped around the planet.

Special thanks to Ben for his tips and examples on his own site (growlingfish.com).

I thought it was time to try and add some features to better show off my odd interesting photograph. To that end I have been playing with a couple of WordPress plugins.

I rather like PicLens because it enables sidebar widgets to rotate photographs. Unfortunately, I could not work out why it would not pick up images I had already uploaded (or uploaded especially for it). I have settled instead for Nextgen Gallery to help display some photos.

As I noted before, the trip was rather rushed so I didn’t have time to take many photographs — and, to be honest, the ones I took were not very good. So, as much as a test of the new plugins, here are a few photographs that I took while there.

If I’ve got the settings right, a click on one of the thumbnails above should enter a slideshow mode where the images can be viewed at much larger size. There is also an option to show them as a smaller slideshow embedded in the post (click the link above the gallery).

Finally, I’ve left the PicLens plugin working (but not the sidebar widget). If you install the Firefox plugin, there are some very nifty ways to navigate the photographs [update: I've actually deactivated this, with the Nextgen Gallery features and the sidebar widget not working, there didn't seem much point in keeping it running].

Have fun.

I had written a longish post with my first thoughts on India and China here in the departure lounge of Hyderabad Airport. Alas, the mail applicaion on my iPod seems to have swallowed it and I must start again. Unfortunately, it does this occasionally, which, especially given that messages have to be tapped into life with only one finger, is a bit annoying.

I had two hours to wait between flights on my way to Vizag, where I’m headed for interviews with offer holders and potential students. It was a 430am start from Kolkata for the Hyderabad flight after quite a late night catching up with paper work with my colleague.

This will probable be a longish post as I have not much else to do–my phone is still not working (I don’t hold much hope for a recovery) and I’m low on cash (there don’t seem to be any ATMs in sight). The lack of a phone is frustrating, as well as making my slightly nervous in case there is an emergency. Luckily, the international office is ‘safety first’ and my schedules are known and I’m expected and tracked.

Hyderabad had the most modern of the airports have visited, though most of the others were undergoing renovations. I spent a few of my pennies on this week’s Economist and a decent coffee (Tea Leaf and Coffee Bean, my old friend from Malaysia and Singapore).

Someone noted to me that Indian airports are like Chinese railway stations, and this seems to be true (Hyderabad excepted). Only ticket holders are allowed entry, baggage is x-rayed on entry and queuing is less ordered than it might be. I guess the difference here stems from the longer history of publuc flying in India and the resulting age of the airports.

I note other differences in my glimpses of India, particularly with respect to poverty and the urban landscape, and to political and civil society.

In India, urban poverty is visible on an almost unimaginable scale. My early morning and late evening rides between airports and hotels passed countless people sleeping in the streets. Shanty towns are everywhere. Such poverty is not observed in Chinese cities. Moreover, the poverty is seen everywhere; side by side stand beggeds and the homeless with Benetton and Adidas stores. I have not in India seen the santitised shopping and hotel districts that characterise the first and second tier Chinese cities I’ve visited.

I suspect there are a number of reasons for this difference: the Chinese have used the Hukou system to control migration from rural areas to the cities and used centralised control to better effect in the construction of massive housing developments. Differences on religious underpinnings might also make the kind of differences noted in India less politically unstable than would have been the case in China.

The other key difference I have noted is political. Indian newspapers are very political and this seems to reflect a very politically engaged population. On the day of my arrival in New Delhi I wandered around the national parliament area observing the many protests and demonstrations. I arrived in Kolkata on the second day of a general strike and the roads were almost completely empty. Some newspapers seemed to take glee in reporting which leading supporters of the strike were spotted working.

I am now finishing this post in Vizag airport on the way back to Hyderabad after my Sunday afternoon of meetings.

The airport is a wonderful contrast to the one where I started writing the post. Vizag airport has one luggage belt for arriving passengers, no airconditioning and seems to cater more for helicopters than aeroplanes. It reminds me of regional Australian airports that I visited in my younger years in Australia. The 36 degree temperature, dust, flies and fans add to the nostalgia.
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Posted from my iPod

I’m in India at the moment (writing this in Kolkutta) for work. Its so far (and only half way through) been very, very busy. I’ve been lucky enough to meet dozens and dozens of ambitious young people hoping (or destined) to study in the UK. In addition to talking to them about business in India from them (and am looking forward to continuing some of these discussions in semiars next semester.

Unfortunately, its been too busy for me to see anything of India (literally wizzing from airport to hotel to meeting to hotel to airport, etc). I have seen enough to want to come back for a more leisurely visit.

The hectic schedule means that I’ve had no time to take photographs, despite much worth photographing.