My university has a Public Service Center offering fellowships for students wishing to use skills and knowledge to build grassroots community capacity and engineering solutions to real world problems. This all a part of the University's mission to use science and technology to bring about change in the world. The Center encourages people and organizations from all over the world to submit pressing problems "to address the needs of underserved communities". Essentially students have to initiate contact with local sponsors for projects that interest them or projects that match the students skills. Project proposals are then developed and students have to submit them to get the fellowships. It is quite competitive and a very tight schedule and requires recommendations, documentation etc.

I have always believed in the power of technology and engineering to bring about positive change and was immediately fascinated by the program. So over the last couple of weeks (months?), as a part of this program I spent a lot of time working with Dr. Bokhoree (Sanjeev as I know him) of the University of Technology, Mauritius. Sanjeev is Senior Lecturer in the University and is trying to design a sustainable living framework for Mauritius. Part of this work involves investigations in eco-friendly housing, environmental awareness and waste management strategy. As a part of this effort and subsequent conversations with him, we decided that my skills would be best utilized if I helped him design and implement part of the overall a e-waste collection program. This was mostly because of my Mechanical Engineering background and working with Honda. So after spending a couple of sleepless nights we developed a proposal that he was happy with and I submitted it to the PSC.

Today as a part of this program, I was offered a fellowship to work with Sanjeev and The University of Mauritius to design and implement e-waste storage centers in Port Lewis, Mauritius in particular and hopefully all over the island in the long term. Part of this work is to construct build a robust scalable system that enables rapid deployment of cheap, low footprint e-waste storage facilities. This private-public partnership fits in well with my work and interests and will be carried out in Mauritius. My experience with UNESCO here proved invaluable here and during the interviews. The results of this work will also be used for the development of eco-friendly housing there. Needless to say I am very excited about this.

While I still am looking at the agreements, my schedule and most importantly my personal commitments, this is a tremendous opportunity. This is a massive logistical nightmare also and it may not work out afterall because of my circumstance but I am happy to give it a shot. There were a few people that came to my mind immidiately after the email.. the people sending good vibes, prayers and luck, reviewing my proposal and giving feedback, wishing me good dreams. Obviously, none of this would be possible without Sanjeev and his commitment, exictement with the work and belief in me. I am truly humbled by it. My appeal with education, universities in general is because they enable me to be better a human being. You don’t need to be in a university to be a better person but for me it acts as a way to channel my mental energies. I am realizing that I can use it to build lasting relationships also. Watch this space for more.

If this works out, I am hoping that it will be just the beginning of my long term involvement with the University and Mauritius. I am already taking to my employer about this so it can go on after MIT and explore opportunities. Most importantly, I am hoping to build lasting relationships with the people and just have some fun with this. As I get older, I realize I get more pleasure not so much out of achieving my own dreams but enabling other people to achieve theirs.

In other news, work is in over drive. Planning, designing, influencing and having a bit of a laugh in the process. The bits I don’t enjoy, the school work compensates for it. Also, I desperately need a new lunch table, like Oscar Wilde said: "True friends stab you in the front" .. but keeping it real takes a whole new meaning on our table and I am at the receiving end of it.

I did manage to have some truly fantastic Serbian food and watch Death Proof.. there are a few signature Tarantino shots but it is quite a good movie. It has been a while since I saw a Tarantino movie and they are always good fun to watch with friends.

The last couple of weeks we had two fascinating lectures as a part of a course. We were introduced to the work of Prof. Joel Schindall who used to be the CTO of GlobalStar and it was awesome experience to listen to his talk about problems with GlobalStar and what they were trying to do as a business. We also had Dan Braha on talking about the structure of dynamics and visualizing networks. It is a art. Some of these classes are like therapy, they make you think, feel inspired and get a view of what other people are doing which is quite refreshing for someone as self absorbed as I am.

I need to clean my place.

I need to finish Freakonomics and return it back :P to the person who lent it to me.

I need to brush up on music theory.

I need to catch up on my emails. There is no way I can answer all the emails I get.

IronPython rocks my socks.

I need to finish up some of the unfilled application forms.

I have so many other things to put down here but "The most important things in life aren't things" and those are the bits that brought a smile to my face.