White Tiger’s Lair

I have decided to start a second blog called Efficiency Innovations where I will post my Clean, Green and Water musings, including the day by day of my upcoming India trip.  I have decided to do this mostly as a way for me to separate and organize personal from professional.  In the near future, I hope to build a resource page with information about various green tech fields.  While I am trying to figure out the hosting and design of the web page and trying to make all that work (Flo, my best buddy, my best pal…) there will be the blog here on wordpress.

So, random musings, life in Germany, and life in general stay tuned here.

Clean tech, Green tech, Water, desalination, systems thinking, anything remotely business or professional related (and updates from India) tune to http://efficiencyinnovations.wordpress.com/

Count-down to India checklist:

4 weeks before departure — get visa (using the Indian consulate in Munich this turned out to be an incredibly easy and pain free process)

3 weeks before departure – Sprain right ankle sledding in the Austrian Alps

12 days before departure – get monster cold

10 days before departure – get massive eye infection where can not open eyes which of course spreads to both eyes

8 days before departure – cold is better, I can see again, hobbling around with only a soft brace on the ankle. 

6 days before departure – major change in itinerary, I have the opportunity to see an additional rural renewable energy powered desalination system, as well as one animal powered system.  It will mean traveling to a town on the southern edge of India by Sri Lanka.  This is going to be a very interesting trip!

5 days before departure… well, we will just have to see what the world has in store for me next…

9 days and counting before I begin another new adventure… 1 full month in India, March 11^th-April 11^th.

In the course of researching the solar thermal desalination market for my job, I started to become aware of the water issues and the major disconnect between business and engineering in coming up with solutions and business and humanitarian efforts in implementing them.   So I decided to volunteer so that I could learn more and maybe bring the different worlds together a bit. 

I am a volunteer with a NGO called Water For People, (http://www.waterforpeople.org/site/PageServer) which works to which works to bring sustainable clean drinking water and sanitation facilities the people in rural areas developing nations.  As part of their World Water Corps I will be heading to India for a monitoring project in rural West Bengal for the last two weeks in March two weeks.   

While I am there, I am going to take the opportunity to learn as much as possible about the various water situations in India during the second half of the trip.  This means I will be spending 2.5 weeks traveling all over the country alone.  It should be quite the adventure.

The second half of this trip will be spent traveling to different areas to interview people who are working to make a difference and getting first hand view of the results.  The specific water issues vary in place to place, (not enough water, dirty water – brackish water, water that has natural arsenic or fluoride) but the main theme is always the same not enough potable water.  The goal is to learn what solutions are being implemented what is working and what is not and see what lessons can be learned from how businesses are dealing with the water situation and applied to humanitarian efforts.

In an effort to keep everyone posted on my progress (and yes the let family and friends know I am alright) on the trip, I will be posting updates as often as I can.

With any luck I will have my itinerary set and ready to post in the next few days…