28 · 03

Toilets of India

Ok, this week's set of photos from my time in India are themed, and not for the faint hearted (seriously, just skip this if you are easy offended). Here are the toilets of India:

Actually, this one was in Abu Dhabi Airport, but it was my first sight of a non-western toilet in real life. This one was quite fancy, with an auto-flush facility.

I was very pleased when we went to a particular cafe to find they had toilet paper. It isn't used everywhere. It's funny how the "small" things in life become such big deals when they aren't available to you!

I found this fella hanging around in the toilet (bathroom for you Americans), in the house we were staying at first. Our hosts had some very foot related ways of getting rid of them.

A classic Indian toilet. Thinking about it, I guess the squatting position does make quite a bit of sense. Magazine publishers might not like it if we moved to that in the west  though.

This great urinal was found in Arignar Anna Zoological Park. Not sure what the difference between using this and just peeing on the wall would have been, given the lack of tube on the bottom.

Outside of the toilet block shown above, was this pool, which I avoided falling in to.

Another classic. Again, the comfort level of us westerners is just ridiculous sometimes.

This was the toilet in the house we stayed in the longest. Given some of the others I'd seen, I knew we were very privileged to have paper, a western unit, and running water for a flush!

This is from one of the train trips: you could actually see down to the tracks through the hole!

Once we got up north, we staying in hotels, which provided a few comforts.

On one road trip, we were presented with these outside cubicles.

Some toilets combined the western style, with wings the Indian's could use to squat on, if they wanted to. Genius.

Don't you just want to go use that toilet someone that cool uses?

In a coffee shop in Delhi: the light was off, so I had to use the flash on the camera to see the toilet. I'm glad I did before I actually tried to use the thing!

I'd not seen this before: in a restaurant, the urinals had ice in them. I'm guessing it was something to do with stopping the smell.

One of the last toilets I used in India: very modern looking.

On the way home, we had these plain toilets to "enjoy".

I can't really complain about the oddness of some Indian toilets - not when the UK airport we came back to has one of these. Whoever heard of a "Family Toilet" before?!

That should be the last of these. In future weeks, I'll be highlighting some of the really hard hitting parts of India, so please stay subscribed for what's next!
21 · 03

The continuing photo and video journey: my time in India

More photos and videos from my time in India this week:

One day, we went to Marina Beach, the world's second longest beach. There were a lot of things going on that wouldn't happen on more British beaches, such as fortune tellers using pet animals to select cards to help tell the future, and this man who had chained and trained this monkey to dance.

Everyone getting in to a very small taxi was always such fun! I was just glad there were bars to hold on to (tightly!)

Two things that are everywhere is India: cows and Tata. Tata have taken "diversification" to the next level in India: they make everything from Cars to cooking products, financial services to Hotels! Quite an amazing breadth of products.

Not quite extinct!

Apollo Computer Education were one of the major advertisers of computer education courses. At some points, I was even tempted to say "let me stay here - I'm going to try one of these courses!".

Here I am studying the culture through experiencing some very tasty food served on a banana leaf. This was after helping at a Sunday School, which was fun. I got to pretend to be a mosquito and the kids has to guess  what animal I was being.

This is one of the villages we stayed in. It was  a great place to spend the bulk of  our trip, and I'm glad that people from my group have been able to go back there since.
7 · 03

On to India - first few photos and videos

Well, it's about time I started highlighting some of the sights and sounds of India. There are quite a few photos in my India photos set, so I'll break this up over a series of posts, including a few of my videos on the way too.

This is the first church we were asked to speak at. It was funny: our guide had told us that we were going to a church meeting for "Seekers" - it turned out that they were five year olds, so we quickly had to re-plan our evening!

There are a lot of animals living wild all over India. It was sad to see so much rubbish strewn around, but to try to clear it up now would be a huge undertaking. It just goes as part of the different world-view of the people over there. I'm sure they'd be equally horrified by some of the things we do over here.

Mobile phone shops are everywhere - even just sitting on the street. 

There are also a lot of posters for programming courses. Programming is a big deal in India.

People drive motorbikes in a very different way to here too.

Fortunately I only really suffered from mosquito bites in the first few days, but boy, did I suffer!

I guess I'm probably one of the only DTS team members to have brought an extension cable on a trip with them, but it seemed like a good idea to me. It turned out to be so, when we needed to power a speaker system to practise a skit. Having to use a combination of UK to Europe to Indian plug converters was not ideal, but it did work! (Those were provided by the other guy on the team though).

A few videos of the roads on India (which are quite hectic and a lot louder than UK roads as everyone is actually encouraged to sound their horn all the time!):

In other news: the first of the new episodes of the Geeks and God podcast came out this week: Geeks and God Episode 128: Reboot, so it would be great to hear your feedback on that.

Have a great week.
1 · 03

More pre-India photos and videos

Continuing the photo/video roundup of my DTS time, here are a few more from the pre-India set:

Here I am doing some work duty. I'd volunteered for the toilet duty, so I got used to pulling hair out of showers, and scrubbing the undersides of toilets. I'm glad I had some spare old clothes for that!

I kept on trying to shoot the ducks, but they kept on running away from me!

When I was on Breakfast setup duty, I'd like to set up the breakfast in fun ways - like this cross pattern. Not sure if anyone actually noticed.

After my injection for India, I was a bit sick! I almost got to the toilet in time, but not quite. I didn't go back to that surgery!

Holmstead Manor has some great views!

And in other news: This week I took part in the recording of the next episode of the Geeks and God podcast. All going well, it should be released on March 1st, so watch out for Episode 128 and beyond. It's really an honor to be part of the team taking on the role of presenter on the show now that Matt Farina and Rob Feature have decided not to carry on presenting. Hopefully the new guys can continue the high standard of show Rob and Matt generated.

Have a great week!
21 · 02

The DTS course in pictures and video

Well, it's been a year since the DTS course finished, so really about time I start talking about some of the photos/videos that I took during that time.

Here is the first of my media updates, from the Pre India set:

The view of the manor on the day I arrived. I'd been there once before to check it out, so it wasn't entirely new. Although the journey from my parent's house only took about 20 minutes, I think the emotional journey from my old life to the DTS life had taken may twists and turns in the proceeding few weeks. Getting together with my now wife being top of the list.
14 · 02

A Year in Review (Already!)

Exactly 1 year and a day ago, I arrived home from my two month trip to India.

A day later, I proposed to my then girlfriend, on the glass floor of Portsmouth's Spinnaker Tower.

We'd already booked the church and reception venue, and she'd bought her dress, so I was pretty sure that she would accept my proposal. I was very happy that she did.

Then for the next week, I went back to Holmsted Manor to complete the final week of my YWAM DTS course.

I'd loved being on the course, and you can read my past blog entries which talk more about what I did day by day - however, by then I was really feeling ready to move on to the next stage of my life.

I graduated from the course, had a short stay back with my parents, and moved back to Portsmouth, uncertain about what job I would find, and how I would find life as an engaged man.

Fortunately housing wasn't an issue, as some very kind friends let me rent a room in their house. Applying for jobs wasn't too hard either (finding one that I was accepted for was harder though). After a few interviews, eventually a job pretty much fell in to my lap, when I was asked to start working to see if I would be any good at the job, and they saw that I was.

With my job now sorted, the majority of my time was used being with my fiancé. When I started this blog before the DTS course, we weren't even together: she asked me out on the day that I left Portsmouth (actually in the car driving back home!). I'd liked her for quite a few years, but she always said she didn't see us getting together. Then when she understood that I was leaving Portsmouth for good, she had a change of heart, and realised that actually, she liked me too. And boy, did she leave it late to tell me!

Being away for the first 5 months, and being out of the country for 2 of those months was not how anyone would probably choose to start a relationship, but that's what happened, and I'm sure it was all in God's timing. Me getting back to Portsmouth was a bit of an odd time for both of us though, and we both had to adapt again to the new life we were living together.

It was somewhere around here that I found it hard to carry on blogging, with the time taken up with other activities, such as wedding planning. I'm sure I did some planning somewhere, really - I must have done some of it , right?

Well, my Bride-to-be and her Mum did most of the hard work, but I did my share.

And so from coming back to England and getting engaged, the other major event of the year was my wedding, and subsequent honeymoon in Paris, in October.

I enjoyed the day a lot. It was a great relief to get out of the Engaged stage of life, in which we'd both found struggles that we had not anticipated, and on to the Married stage, which has already had struggles, but ones that we create ourselves, rather than being forced on to us. Being October, we were glad it didn't rain, but the cold was quite harsh (I'm told - both my wife and I didn't really notice it). I was pretty sure I'd picked the right honeymoon destination, and my Wife's reaction to the news that we would be spending a week in Paris confirmed my suspicion: she was very pleased, and we had a fun time: three course meals in the Eiffel Tower, and on a river tour on the Seine, as well as a Segway tour of Paris and a day trip to Disneyland Paris were particular highlights.

Then we got in to the hard work of starting to live together! And then November and December flew past, and we got to Christmas, New Year, a bout of snow covering the whole country in January, and that brings me up to where I re-started this blog. 2009 was a pretty unusual year, dominated by a couple of key events: finishing off the YWAM DTS course, and getting married. Hopefully things can settle down for a bit, but we are getting ready for the ride of our lives: together.
7 · 02

Tidy up!

It may seem like common sense to most people, but having a tidy, clean house, is quite a good thing! Shame it seems to get messy soon after you tidy it though. Our house hasn't quite settled down since I moved in after getting married on October, but we're getting there. Keeping the lounge nice and tidy and the kitchen clean are the most important. We're moving on to the spare room soon. Trouble is, we don't have much storage space left. Neither of us think we should pay to store things in one of those self-storage places, so we are really going to have to think hard about what else we will have to get rid of.

I'm still loosing weight on the diet, which is good!

Work is still very busy.

Have a great week.
31 · 01

Gone preachin'

Wow - the end of another week. Almost forgot about my blog post, but here it is:
This week's been another busy week at work.

Most interesting stuff happened today:
My wife and I went to a church in Essex (as we had been invited by a couple of friends) and gave our testimonies to the congregation. It was quite a good experience, and something I'd like to do again.
There was so much to say about God's goodness: how He is the one we were created to worship, how His Grace is the power for forgiveness, and for enabling us to do his work and to live day by day for Him. Quite a lot of stuff that came out of the DTS course really.

Then we went out for a meal: it is quite hard to keep to a diet in restaurants - even relatively liberal diets like the "Slimming World" one we are on. Anyway, I've lost a bit of weight in the last week, which is good to know (for me anyway)!  
24 · 01

Busy!

Well, this has been another incredibly busy week at work: I'm helping to get hundreds of users on a legacy system to migrate on to our latest system. It's slow going, but we'll get there eventually.

Weight wise, I've lost a few hundred grams, so at least it's a loss.

I've been trying to use Google Wave a bit. It'll take to work to make it a non-beta product, but it's interesting stuff.

This week I said goodbye to a friend who's leaving Portsmouth. Was sad, but encouraging to know he's going off to do good things elsewhere.

Have a great week.
17 · 01

4 point update

I have to keep this short this week, so here it goes:
  • Work was busy.
  • Having guests for dinner on Saturday night was good.
  • I didn't loose any weight on the diet, but I didn't gain any either. This week I should be able to make it the gym, so hopefully that will help too.
  • I'm enjoying being able to listen to podcasts at double speed on the iPod Nano I got for Christmas.
I see from my stats that people are reading my blog posts, so please if you are: what would you like to me talk about? What keeps you coming back here? What do you want to know? Please post a comment in the form below.

Have a great week.
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