February 18, 2008
Things are well in Delhi. I arrived the day before yesterday and relaxed with Osama, his wife, and two kids. Osama is a software guru by training and now runs the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), his own brainchild. DEF helps rural Indians generate relevant e-content for them --> e-content by the people, for the people. DEF also runs the Manthan Award for best e-content and Osama spends most of his time generating publications for policy development, visiting villages, using reason (a much-needed trait in this world), and joining authors around the world to create ground breaking literature in the field.
Yesterday, Osama, the family, a family friend, and I went to Jamali Kamali mosque and tomb - some beautiful ruins (and not so beautiful surroundings, which are covered in layer upon layer of plastic bags and trash). We finished off the afternoon with a visit to the race course (which is no longer a real race course since the military took over part of it as training grounds, the bit that is left is a tiny straight-away + a bit of a curve). Horses are rarely raced there, but there were hundreds of people crowded around televisions betting on horse races going on in Mumbai, Chennai, etc. A hilarious site! Tons of spectators with every imaginable expression, gazing at televisions, now and again walking over the the bookie stands which lie in a circle around them. In the evening, we played around in the park outside Osama's house and Abeni (his little girl) and Abner (his not as little boy) had a grand time as we played monkey in the middle, with many modified rules!
Today, I went with Osama to drop the kids off at school - an interesting alternative school, where they learn everything by doing: Aurobindo Ashram and School. This week, Abeni is learning about bikes and they get to take bikes apart from handle bar to rear splash guard, design their own bikes (on paper), and learn how to ride them.
Then I went with Osama and Shaifali (his wife) to the Digital Empowerment Foundation and saw their office, which was buzzing with activity.
At 11, I had a meeting with Hanumant at AIF (American Indian Foundation) and had a crash course in where the project stands. In an hour, we're meeting with Pradip, who is the project founder to talk about the best method of scaling up and developing the project. There are many exciting threads that are converging and the project sounds like more than just "let's give the rickshaw drivers a slightly better income".
I'm wary in projects like this of giving them a rickshaw job for life, but AIF recognizes the dangers. Irfan, who works on the business side of one subsection of the project has really gotten a lot of corporate support for advertisements (on the rickshaws) and is helping the rickshaw drivers develop simultaneous businesses: selling cold water, providing self-selected radio, and newspapers to passengers. The rickshaw drivers also get to design their own uniforms and have higher respect than other rickshaw drivers. From the project impact analysis, they have found that their rickshaw drivers drink less, beat there wives less, and are earning more, which are some great achievements.
Now it's time to iron out the manufacturing chain -- centralized / decentralized - which parts to standardize. I'm going to find out this afternoon whether or not they have mechanical drawings of all the parts.
It sounds like they're going through all the growing pains we were experiencing in Sri Lanka. Their manufacturers are small, do everything by hand, and there aren't too many standard parts. Sound familiar? :-)
I'm ready to get down to business and see what solutions we can cook up in the next month and a half!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Friday, December 14, 2007
Getting into the Colombo Groove
If you add up all the miles we’ve driven in a three-wheeler in the past two and a half months, it comes to about 750 kilometers. That is seventy times the length of the tallest redwood tree and one-tenth the length of the Great Wall of China. It is the equivalent distance of nearly two trips to Pokunatenna (the village headquarters for the project) and enough experience to know that I would never actually want to take a three-wheeler to Pokunatenna. In short, it is 750 kilometers of authentic three-wheeler lifestyle:
- gliding between lories and buses or finding yourself wedged between three and debating if this or second hand smoking is worse
- coming head to head with another three-wheeler and wondering who forgot about Colombo’s one-way street system (which is subject to change according to the whims of security check point officers)
- talking with your neighbor at the security check points to avoid digging out your passport (when was the last time a young white girl carried an LTTE bomb into Colombo?)
- squishing three people into a seat that should only hold two; then adding metal poles, a chop saw, and other goodies from Panchikawadtha (the nearest Sri Lankan equivalent to Home Depot and the Mecca of auto parts, old and new)
- jumping out of the three wheeler because there’s been a short circuit underneath the driver’s seat (and waving away the ensuing cloud of smoke)
- reading news magazines to pass the time from Colombo to Padukka, where we manufacture our ceramic firebox
- practicing the days of the week in Sinhalese with the driver: I shout Monday and he shouts Tuesday, I shout Wednesday, he shouts Thursday, and we practice until the endless loop drives David mad
Each three-wheeler is different. For a Colombo driver, the way you decorate your three-wheeler is as much a reflection of your skills as a car mechanic as it is a reflection of your passion for the color green, Buddha statues, pretty girls, or (in the case of our favorite driver) really loud base. Our driver’s name is Kalu and in addition to retrofitting his vehicle with a really nice sound system, he has added an L.E.D.-lit phone stand, a digital clock, and various nameplates displaying the names of auto manufacturers.
In Sri Lanka, car cleanliness is next to Godliness. The best example is our Colombo-to-village transport: a man by the name of Mark. Before starting his van, he quickly meditates, gives blessings over the steering wheel, and looks regretfully at the gasifier gear that we have freshly loaded into his vehicle. For someone who takes his car in for a checkup after a mere afternoon outside Colombo, we are nothing short from a headache. All of our tools, not to mention the high quality welding machine, are back in Colombo so when it comes time for a system modification, we jump on any chance to bring gasifier parts back to Colombo. Leaving minimal space for human cargo, we load Mark’s van with tarry test probes, gliricidia wood, coolers, and piping. Nearly every part of the gasifier has seen the back of Mark’s car…not to mention the mouse that decided to come along the last time we drove back from Pokunatenna (sorry Mark!). I am impressed that he still offers to take us anywhere at all after we left his van in a paddy field overnight. But what can you do when the rainy season takes its toll on the dirt roads?
The trouble is that Pokunatenna is enchanting. The rainy season brings mud, but it also delivers a thousand white birds perched on half-submerged trees in reservoirs that reflect a thousand more birds in the symmetrical twilight. It brings water buffalo with heads that turn inquisitively to follow you as you walk along the water’s edge. It brings elephants in the night, snapping tree trunks like toothpicks and munching their way through the garden as you sleep. And beyond nature’s beauty, Pokunatenna brings Colombans back to their roots. As soon as we arrive, Mark disappears and soon emerges donning a sarong delivering a round of Sri Lankan-style tea. We quickly become a part of the village—at one in the morning we join in the Katina celebrations (a festival to commemorate the end of the rainy season and the monks’ decision to come out from isolation in the monastery); eat wood apple and wild cherries; and by moonlight, we learn to play cricket.
The surprising reality is that a Katina in one village may only be the start of the rainy season in another. In fact, a three-hour drive across Sri Lanka (either north towards the beaches, south towards the dry lands, or inland towards the mountains) can yield three different microclimates.
From an engineering perspective, this adds a spin bowl (not to bring up cricket again). The challenge is to finish manufacturing and delivering a system before the rains create treacherous rivers.
Village 7 lies beyond a large river—an unbridged river, at that. Anxious to install the gasifier before the rains set in, the villagers selected an auspicious date in early December for the gasifier inauguration. Their gasifier was sitting in the Colombo workshop—complete, tested, and ready to send. That is, until David and I decided to change the cooler design. Based on villager feedback, we designed an improved-flow cooler with larger tar traps. With all due respect for the challenges of carrying a gasifier across a roaring river, we knocked on wood and lit a fire under the manufacturing operation. If we just “shipped” the system (across the river) with the old cooler, chances of modifying it later would become infinitesimal (if you want to weld in the village, you need a welding machine, which requires power, but you can’t provide power with a gasifier that doesn’t have cooler…). One week later, fabrication and testing were complete and the system is now in the village and ready for delivering light.
Even work in Colombo is not without its trials. Our official uniform is tar and if you don’t find us at the drawing board, we’re up on the hopper loading wood. Our biggest nemesis (barring Tar and his evil brother Dust) is wet wood. Luckily, the solution is right across the road at the local bakery. Before running tests, we riddle the wood, load it into bags, and carry it through a small patch of jungle to the baker’s, where we load it on trays and voila…the new special for the day: baked wood. We can’t let the wood go above 200 degrees Celsius for fear of changing its structure, but the ambient heat of the oven is enough to bring the moisture content down to fifteen percent.
As always, engineering is a battle and there are days when David says we may have done the world a service by not getting out of bed. These are the days when the test probes go haywire (and need calibrating) or the temperatures never rise in the firebox or Andi burns her leg on a cyclone or David chops his finger on our new Gliricidia chopper.
Fortunately, these moments are juxtaposed to moments of enlightenment that keep us all sane. This week’s epiphany was brought in the form of a Prakash engineer. His name is Rajesh and he is none other than the managing director and son of the founder of the Prakash company. He also happens to be a brilliant mechanical engineer who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. Prakash is one of India’s largest engine manufacturers and one of the few producer genset manufacturers in the world and we have selected their 15KVA Prakash Biomass Generator as our standard genset—it is essentially a modified diesel engine (but with lots of gasifier-relevant bells and whistles—the main one being a gas/air mixture governor).
Biomass generators are Rajesh’s hobby and he has been our primary contact for issues of engine wear and tear since our first purchase. In a world wear everything seems to take twice as long as it should (because this or that machine is broken, or this or that worker went home), Rajesh’s operation is refreshing. Up to now, our requests for engine modifications have always been nearly instantaneously satisfied and Rajesh is already sending us a newly designed silencer, a longer-lasting ignition switch (with solenoid), metal valve seals, and a new frame configuration (with wheels for extra mobility). From implementing “bush engineering” (aka simple but effective plastic tube u-tube manometers) to giving the village operators a workshop on proper governor set-up and maintenance, Rajesh pushed our operation miles forward.
As a result, David and I are busy churning out lots of drawings before we dash away to spend the New Year with our families. Instead of a gift wish list, Ariyasenna’s Christmas present is a long list of parts to manufacture before we return. It includes a tar trap, modifications to the wood chopper, cooler version 2.0, and couplings for the newest castable firebox.
Friday, it's off to Los Gatos for two days before fleeing the harsh California winters for the familiarly tropical Hawaii.
Until then, the Christmas trees, fake icicles, and shimmering holiday lights continue to multiply all over Colombo, while Sri Lanka maintains a humid 30 degrees and the Buddhist trash men ask for a Christmas bonus on December 1st.
- gliding between lories and buses or finding yourself wedged between three and debating if this or second hand smoking is worse
- coming head to head with another three-wheeler and wondering who forgot about Colombo’s one-way street system (which is subject to change according to the whims of security check point officers)
- talking with your neighbor at the security check points to avoid digging out your passport (when was the last time a young white girl carried an LTTE bomb into Colombo?)
- squishing three people into a seat that should only hold two; then adding metal poles, a chop saw, and other goodies from Panchikawadtha (the nearest Sri Lankan equivalent to Home Depot and the Mecca of auto parts, old and new)
- jumping out of the three wheeler because there’s been a short circuit underneath the driver’s seat (and waving away the ensuing cloud of smoke)
- reading news magazines to pass the time from Colombo to Padukka, where we manufacture our ceramic firebox
- practicing the days of the week in Sinhalese with the driver: I shout Monday and he shouts Tuesday, I shout Wednesday, he shouts Thursday, and we practice until the endless loop drives David mad
Each three-wheeler is different. For a Colombo driver, the way you decorate your three-wheeler is as much a reflection of your skills as a car mechanic as it is a reflection of your passion for the color green, Buddha statues, pretty girls, or (in the case of our favorite driver) really loud base. Our driver’s name is Kalu and in addition to retrofitting his vehicle with a really nice sound system, he has added an L.E.D.-lit phone stand, a digital clock, and various nameplates displaying the names of auto manufacturers.
In Sri Lanka, car cleanliness is next to Godliness. The best example is our Colombo-to-village transport: a man by the name of Mark. Before starting his van, he quickly meditates, gives blessings over the steering wheel, and looks regretfully at the gasifier gear that we have freshly loaded into his vehicle. For someone who takes his car in for a checkup after a mere afternoon outside Colombo, we are nothing short from a headache. All of our tools, not to mention the high quality welding machine, are back in Colombo so when it comes time for a system modification, we jump on any chance to bring gasifier parts back to Colombo. Leaving minimal space for human cargo, we load Mark’s van with tarry test probes, gliricidia wood, coolers, and piping. Nearly every part of the gasifier has seen the back of Mark’s car…not to mention the mouse that decided to come along the last time we drove back from Pokunatenna (sorry Mark!). I am impressed that he still offers to take us anywhere at all after we left his van in a paddy field overnight. But what can you do when the rainy season takes its toll on the dirt roads?
The trouble is that Pokunatenna is enchanting. The rainy season brings mud, but it also delivers a thousand white birds perched on half-submerged trees in reservoirs that reflect a thousand more birds in the symmetrical twilight. It brings water buffalo with heads that turn inquisitively to follow you as you walk along the water’s edge. It brings elephants in the night, snapping tree trunks like toothpicks and munching their way through the garden as you sleep. And beyond nature’s beauty, Pokunatenna brings Colombans back to their roots. As soon as we arrive, Mark disappears and soon emerges donning a sarong delivering a round of Sri Lankan-style tea. We quickly become a part of the village—at one in the morning we join in the Katina celebrations (a festival to commemorate the end of the rainy season and the monks’ decision to come out from isolation in the monastery); eat wood apple and wild cherries; and by moonlight, we learn to play cricket.
The surprising reality is that a Katina in one village may only be the start of the rainy season in another. In fact, a three-hour drive across Sri Lanka (either north towards the beaches, south towards the dry lands, or inland towards the mountains) can yield three different microclimates.
From an engineering perspective, this adds a spin bowl (not to bring up cricket again). The challenge is to finish manufacturing and delivering a system before the rains create treacherous rivers.
Village 7 lies beyond a large river—an unbridged river, at that. Anxious to install the gasifier before the rains set in, the villagers selected an auspicious date in early December for the gasifier inauguration. Their gasifier was sitting in the Colombo workshop—complete, tested, and ready to send. That is, until David and I decided to change the cooler design. Based on villager feedback, we designed an improved-flow cooler with larger tar traps. With all due respect for the challenges of carrying a gasifier across a roaring river, we knocked on wood and lit a fire under the manufacturing operation. If we just “shipped” the system (across the river) with the old cooler, chances of modifying it later would become infinitesimal (if you want to weld in the village, you need a welding machine, which requires power, but you can’t provide power with a gasifier that doesn’t have cooler…). One week later, fabrication and testing were complete and the system is now in the village and ready for delivering light.
Even work in Colombo is not without its trials. Our official uniform is tar and if you don’t find us at the drawing board, we’re up on the hopper loading wood. Our biggest nemesis (barring Tar and his evil brother Dust) is wet wood. Luckily, the solution is right across the road at the local bakery. Before running tests, we riddle the wood, load it into bags, and carry it through a small patch of jungle to the baker’s, where we load it on trays and voila…the new special for the day: baked wood. We can’t let the wood go above 200 degrees Celsius for fear of changing its structure, but the ambient heat of the oven is enough to bring the moisture content down to fifteen percent.
As always, engineering is a battle and there are days when David says we may have done the world a service by not getting out of bed. These are the days when the test probes go haywire (and need calibrating) or the temperatures never rise in the firebox or Andi burns her leg on a cyclone or David chops his finger on our new Gliricidia chopper.
Fortunately, these moments are juxtaposed to moments of enlightenment that keep us all sane. This week’s epiphany was brought in the form of a Prakash engineer. His name is Rajesh and he is none other than the managing director and son of the founder of the Prakash company. He also happens to be a brilliant mechanical engineer who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. Prakash is one of India’s largest engine manufacturers and one of the few producer genset manufacturers in the world and we have selected their 15KVA Prakash Biomass Generator as our standard genset—it is essentially a modified diesel engine (but with lots of gasifier-relevant bells and whistles—the main one being a gas/air mixture governor).
Biomass generators are Rajesh’s hobby and he has been our primary contact for issues of engine wear and tear since our first purchase. In a world wear everything seems to take twice as long as it should (because this or that machine is broken, or this or that worker went home), Rajesh’s operation is refreshing. Up to now, our requests for engine modifications have always been nearly instantaneously satisfied and Rajesh is already sending us a newly designed silencer, a longer-lasting ignition switch (with solenoid), metal valve seals, and a new frame configuration (with wheels for extra mobility). From implementing “bush engineering” (aka simple but effective plastic tube u-tube manometers) to giving the village operators a workshop on proper governor set-up and maintenance, Rajesh pushed our operation miles forward.
As a result, David and I are busy churning out lots of drawings before we dash away to spend the New Year with our families. Instead of a gift wish list, Ariyasenna’s Christmas present is a long list of parts to manufacture before we return. It includes a tar trap, modifications to the wood chopper, cooler version 2.0, and couplings for the newest castable firebox.
Friday, it's off to Los Gatos for two days before fleeing the harsh California winters for the familiarly tropical Hawaii.
Until then, the Christmas trees, fake icicles, and shimmering holiday lights continue to multiply all over Colombo, while Sri Lanka maintains a humid 30 degrees and the Buddhist trash men ask for a Christmas bonus on December 1st.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
News from Sri Lanka
The good news is that I haven’t been kidnapped by the LTTE, nor have I been mauled by a tusker (one of the large, vagrant male elephants that roam the Sri Lankan wilderness). The bad news is that I need to catch you up on nearly a month of Sri Lankan happenings.
Why the delinquency? I confess that during my spare, non-gasifier moments, reading Harry Potter VII has taken priority over writing. As has learning Sinhalese, cooking Sri Lankan food, and practicing piano (which I am relishing every minute of).
Okay, okay…enough with the excuses. What about biomass gasification? What progress have we made? What are the plans for gasifier R&D?
Most days in the workshop, I feel like we’re being pulled on ten different tangential paths – ten things need to be pushed forward in a world where it’s hard enough to follow one path from beginning to end. If you like to plan your day out minute by minute, it’s an environment that might drive you insane… most of the time, you’re ridiculously busy but at the same time, if you haven’t prioritized, you can end up sitting idle while you wait for someone to finish manufacturing a part and then find out that the welding machine needs more carbide. [Quick side note: at the workshop, they make acetylene straight from carbide and water! Just the way they used to make car head lamps in the olden days].
David and I try to stick to a two-tiered To-Do List to keep on top of everything: we keep one list of major to-do’s and then a list of “filler items.” The list of major to-do’s makes up the backbone of the day – for example, testing the governor system and seeing if it readjusts the gas/air mixture under varying loads. Then we have a list of smaller items that fill in the lulls – say, installing an air filter before the engine inlet or adding a four-way pipe before the blower.
Upon David’s arrival in Sri Lanka (one week after mine), we hit the ground running. We began by combing the local car and electronics markets for prototyping materials: ceramic tubes, air filters, and nicrome wire. Two weeks in Bhutan gave us lots of time to bounce ideas around and Greg, David, and I came up with a long list of design ideas and testing goals. Now we’re scrambling to implement them.
System testing is on the top of our list. How can you ensure happy customers when your product has not yet been thoroughly endurance tested? You can’t....So… While Lalith and Greg designed a variable load board (which is currently under construction), David and I worked with Ariyasenna (the main workshop and manufacturing manager) to create gas-tight pipe attachments for the temperature probes. Now, after three successful tests and three sets of data, the gasifier is looking less and less like a black box and we can start to understand why the engine reacts in certain ways under certain conditions.
The latest tests revealed shortcomings in the governor system and we’re due for a conference call with Prakash in the next few days to get more information about how to troubleshoot the system.
Aside from testing, David and I have been working on several new designs. Last weekend, we met with the village gasifier operators who gave us an update about which components were beginning to wear out and what parts of the system could use a redesign. Based on their input, we are designing a new hopper lid that includes a safety valve to make sure that the springs don’t wear out so quickly; we’re adding a T-bar to the end of the stirrer for easier access; and a new glass fiber filter inside the second filter for more efficient cleaning.
One of the most exciting design challenges has been developing a new firebox that is less expensive and more durable. The current design consists mostly of stainless steel, but stainless steel prices have been skyrocketing, and the high temperatures inside the firebox cause the stainless steel to warp. The week before David arrived, I made a visit to Mr. Parakrama Jayasinghe (also known as Para, for short), the director of the Biomass Energy Association and part of HayCarb, a huge Sri Lankan company that produces activated carbon. He gave me a few contacts, but it wasn’t until David arrived that we started following up on them. One that caught my attention was Lanka Refractories. Parakrama had mentioned that they make high temperature resistant materials. On our way back from the villages last weekend we stopped by the Lanka Refractories Office and were soon taking a tour of the whole plant with Mr. Pliyasiri. It turns out that Lanka Refractories makes ceramic castable parts that are less expensive and potentially more durable than stainless steel! Now, David and I are busy finishing up the drawings for the first prototype…
Days are hot and humid as the monsoons set in, but our greatest foe is the mosquito (or the mozzies, as David calls them). Even the trishaws we ride to the workshop every day can’t out-race these little blood-sucking fiends. Our morning ritual is to lather on as much anti-mozzy cream as possible (preferably right after stepping out of the shower). As soon as we reach the workshop, we burn an anti-mozzy coil in the corner of the office and turn on a fan to evenly distribute the anti-mozzy perfume of death around the room. Anti-mozzy wall plugs are a definite must but nothing is better than 98.11% DEET repellent. David and I have officially declared war against them and I hope they’re scared.
There is never a dull moment here. Maheeka and Hiranya are the most awesome younger sisters I could ever ask for :-) and I have already had a Stanford visitor – Kimber is a super star! Unfortunately, our weekend visit to Pokunatenna and the other villages was overshadowed by an icky bug that kept Kimber in bed for most of the weekend (though we did go out chasing after an elephant in the back yard one night…).
Still, I miss everyone at school and hope you’re all blowing Stanford away with your spaz and spunk, rip-roaring into the new school year.
Love from Sri Lanka,
Andi
Why the delinquency? I confess that during my spare, non-gasifier moments, reading Harry Potter VII has taken priority over writing. As has learning Sinhalese, cooking Sri Lankan food, and practicing piano (which I am relishing every minute of).
Okay, okay…enough with the excuses. What about biomass gasification? What progress have we made? What are the plans for gasifier R&D?
Most days in the workshop, I feel like we’re being pulled on ten different tangential paths – ten things need to be pushed forward in a world where it’s hard enough to follow one path from beginning to end. If you like to plan your day out minute by minute, it’s an environment that might drive you insane… most of the time, you’re ridiculously busy but at the same time, if you haven’t prioritized, you can end up sitting idle while you wait for someone to finish manufacturing a part and then find out that the welding machine needs more carbide. [Quick side note: at the workshop, they make acetylene straight from carbide and water! Just the way they used to make car head lamps in the olden days].
David and I try to stick to a two-tiered To-Do List to keep on top of everything: we keep one list of major to-do’s and then a list of “filler items.” The list of major to-do’s makes up the backbone of the day – for example, testing the governor system and seeing if it readjusts the gas/air mixture under varying loads. Then we have a list of smaller items that fill in the lulls – say, installing an air filter before the engine inlet or adding a four-way pipe before the blower.
Upon David’s arrival in Sri Lanka (one week after mine), we hit the ground running. We began by combing the local car and electronics markets for prototyping materials: ceramic tubes, air filters, and nicrome wire. Two weeks in Bhutan gave us lots of time to bounce ideas around and Greg, David, and I came up with a long list of design ideas and testing goals. Now we’re scrambling to implement them.
System testing is on the top of our list. How can you ensure happy customers when your product has not yet been thoroughly endurance tested? You can’t....So… While Lalith and Greg designed a variable load board (which is currently under construction), David and I worked with Ariyasenna (the main workshop and manufacturing manager) to create gas-tight pipe attachments for the temperature probes. Now, after three successful tests and three sets of data, the gasifier is looking less and less like a black box and we can start to understand why the engine reacts in certain ways under certain conditions.
The latest tests revealed shortcomings in the governor system and we’re due for a conference call with Prakash in the next few days to get more information about how to troubleshoot the system.
Aside from testing, David and I have been working on several new designs. Last weekend, we met with the village gasifier operators who gave us an update about which components were beginning to wear out and what parts of the system could use a redesign. Based on their input, we are designing a new hopper lid that includes a safety valve to make sure that the springs don’t wear out so quickly; we’re adding a T-bar to the end of the stirrer for easier access; and a new glass fiber filter inside the second filter for more efficient cleaning.
One of the most exciting design challenges has been developing a new firebox that is less expensive and more durable. The current design consists mostly of stainless steel, but stainless steel prices have been skyrocketing, and the high temperatures inside the firebox cause the stainless steel to warp. The week before David arrived, I made a visit to Mr. Parakrama Jayasinghe (also known as Para, for short), the director of the Biomass Energy Association and part of HayCarb, a huge Sri Lankan company that produces activated carbon. He gave me a few contacts, but it wasn’t until David arrived that we started following up on them. One that caught my attention was Lanka Refractories. Parakrama had mentioned that they make high temperature resistant materials. On our way back from the villages last weekend we stopped by the Lanka Refractories Office and were soon taking a tour of the whole plant with Mr. Pliyasiri. It turns out that Lanka Refractories makes ceramic castable parts that are less expensive and potentially more durable than stainless steel! Now, David and I are busy finishing up the drawings for the first prototype…
Days are hot and humid as the monsoons set in, but our greatest foe is the mosquito (or the mozzies, as David calls them). Even the trishaws we ride to the workshop every day can’t out-race these little blood-sucking fiends. Our morning ritual is to lather on as much anti-mozzy cream as possible (preferably right after stepping out of the shower). As soon as we reach the workshop, we burn an anti-mozzy coil in the corner of the office and turn on a fan to evenly distribute the anti-mozzy perfume of death around the room. Anti-mozzy wall plugs are a definite must but nothing is better than 98.11% DEET repellent. David and I have officially declared war against them and I hope they’re scared.
There is never a dull moment here. Maheeka and Hiranya are the most awesome younger sisters I could ever ask for :-) and I have already had a Stanford visitor – Kimber is a super star! Unfortunately, our weekend visit to Pokunatenna and the other villages was overshadowed by an icky bug that kept Kimber in bed for most of the weekend (though we did go out chasing after an elephant in the back yard one night…).
Still, I miss everyone at school and hope you’re all blowing Stanford away with your spaz and spunk, rip-roaring into the new school year.
Love from Sri Lanka,
Andi
Monday, September 17, 2007
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