tap water in Delhi - it looks the same as home but I get sick if I drink any of this. they have free bottles of water to drink & brush your teeth with at the hotels. the hotels have extra filtration systems, but I'd rather not risk it.
in Delhi water trucks drive around the streets and people take plastic bottles & buckets to fill up once a day. in some villages / hutments (slums) the communal tap only works for an hour or so twice a day - early in the morning or later at night. whilst India gets a lot of water in monsoon season - some cities flood - there's problems with the quality of water. in people's homes there's usually a water filter for a special drinking tap separate to the main water feed. so whilst at home we take it for granted that the water from the tap is safe to drink, in some places it's a luxury.
(trying out the zoom like in the other water tap videos - I don't seem to have a macro setting, or if I do I haven't found it yet)
actually I liked the sounds of the different streams of water as it went down the drain
VloMo08 : day12 - Palms Town & Country Club Gurgaon, near Delhi, India
a quick video of room 105 at The Palms Town & Country Club in Gurgaon, where I'm staying this week. off to Mumbai / Bombay next week for a couple of weeks.
I went to dinner tonight with Ricky from work - he took me to the Korean / Chinese restaurant K2 in Gurgaon. & he explained the dishes we had. I had battery problems so some of what he said wasn't saved. the food was very tasty! there's also a karoke room but we didn't do this! others had booked the room
driving home in Gurgaon - it's a 35km road leading up to a toll way and it takes about an hour to reach the toll in the evenings. even the motorbikes have problems getting through. maybe a 4wd would have better luck
VloMo08 - day 10
10/11/2008
Gurgaon, India
(I'm a couple of days late - was in transit and had missing luggage problems & conversions on pc haven't been going to plan)
- this one's shot using the sony hdr-cx12e (pal)
- converted to avi on windows xp using voltaic hd (win) -> the windows version converts to either avi or wmv but it fails wmv on my pc as something's missing
- then avi converted to mp4 in SUPER (erightsoft.com/SUPER.html)
- then selected 720 size in QT pro (windows) to scale screen display
I think the HD camera did well shooting at night through the car windscreen - this is using lights from the cars.
VloMo08 : day9 - off to the bookstore @ South Extension I & home again
went for a drive to South Extension I to find Midland Books to buy the Sarai Reader 07 (sarai.net). I ended up buying a few other books too. and some sights out the car window. it's amazing - I recognised many of the streets of Delhi, some things don't change
Delhi's much more smoggy than I remember from 2006 when I was last here. it's the start of winter so there's fog as well at times. but visibility is low.
this time I'm staying in Gurgaon - it's in the next state to Delhi called Haryana. it's where some of the high tech companies have setup offices, and home to many of the Delhi call centres. they're building the Delhi Metro - a modern, air conditioned electric train line that travels throughout the city. many buildings are being constructed. so the dusty streets have more dust than usual.
Gurgaon is a newer satellite city in the state of Haryana, seperated from Delhi by a toll booth where cars pay 21Rs. previously this was a rural area with lots of farming land and villages. this causes traffic jams as people try to find 1Rs or wait for change. trucks wait by the side of the road much of their time as they're not allowed to drive in delhi at certain times. there's an anecdote in the book "Globality" that I read on the plane on the way here (I'll find the quote tonight) (& I asked one of the guys here) that a trip that should take 8hours in a truck to deliver goods from one city to another can take up to 36 hours - much of the time the driver is parked by the side of the road. road conditions are also a factor too.
the city is less than 10years old - the architecture here is much more western and many of the buildings are modern highrises. there's new apartments too for IT workers though they are expensive to buy at 50lakh + (1lakh=100000 rupees). it's a 'cybercity'. there's not a lot of infrastructure for the people though eg you need a car to get to one of the new malls. there's less street stalls where most people in india buy their food & household items. the metro is planning to be ready to Gurgaon before Commonwealth Games in 2010, though it doesn't reach all areas in Gurgaon. the people like the metro as a 30km journey can take ~20mins as opposed to 1-2hours in a car/motorbike (depending on time of day/traffic/road conditions)
sarai members/fellows have done studies on (amongst a wide variety of other things!) the malls and people in india and relocation issues. their publications are available online free to read, though I like to buy a printed copy whenever I come to delhi.
(I'm on hotel internet which is very slow so have only uploaded these to vimeo so far. I'll try upload to blip -> mefeedia soon)
this is part2 of a quick video showing some of my favourite magazines from the early-mid 90s and now. I tried to save the first part (Mondo 2000, Boing Boing, Arthur) but it's taking over an hour to save and then crashes the conversion program - still ironing out best methods for my new HD camera. I'll try do it tomorrow but I've got to fly to Delhi so not sure if I'll have time (esp. if it keeps failing)
this is a video from a couple of clips taken in May 2008 when I was in Jerusalem. there's usually a break circle most Thursday nights and other nights in warmer months. usually there's quite a crowd. it's hard to get a good shot!
- extracted video .mts file (20.8Mb) from Sony HDR-CX12E camera using VoltaicHD (this made a 300Mb .mov file)
- opened in QT Pro - I changed the res to 800x640 here (so I could see it, for future reference I should change it to 1280x720 here as I think this is why it's not showing the HD logo) original file from camera is 1888x1062
- exported using Vimeo HD FAQ settings - h.264, 30fps, 3kbps (15Mb file!!! finally - great compression & it kept the quality)
- opened in QT Pro and changed resolution to 1280x720
(my camera does 1080i - PAL / Australian std - vimeo seems to want 720p)
earlier this year on 23rd May I went to Gallipoli & ANZAC Cove in Turkey, so this is a collage of some of the video clips taken that day. in Australia & other Commonwealth countries, Rememberance Day is on 11th November. as I'll probably be overseas for that day, I made this video in advance.
it was interesting to see Gallipoli and to hear and read the stories of the ANZAC battles from the Turkish perspectives, as I'd only heard the Australian stories previously. as the Turks won this battle, they celebrate the day as we remember ANZAC Day on 25th April each year. their battles were led by Mustafa Kemal who later went on to become Ataturk - "Father of the Turks" - founder of the Turkish Republic and its first President - the fall of the Ottoman Empire happened after this battle, and many of the famous quotes of his arose from this period also. so when I was there, I thought of the ANZACs who'd lost their lives - partly in the name of modern Turkey. amazing to think what could have happened if the tide hadn't washed their boats onto the wrong part of beach and they had been able to climb the hills over the gradual slope. also I noticed how many red poppies there are in the area! I'm not sure if they were there back in WWI too or if they've been planted in the peninsular by the various commemorative groups.
the song is "Ever so lonely / Eyes / Ocean" by Sheila Chandra on her "Moonsung: A Real World Retrospective" album - I thought this song was apt as perhaps the soldiers felt lonely fighting by the ocean/sea in a far away country. plus it's a beautiful song, and once again it was exactly the right duration (strangely this happens often)
the video is made using Isadora - using multiple players and an image tile - .izz file attached
this is a short video taken out the window on the train last night. the people are reflections of themselves as seen from my side of the train, and they become combined with the lights and suburbs outside the train as we move past the stations.
I made the patch for the effects on the lights & speed of the video in Isadora (attached)
the song is "In Reverse Order" by Neotropic from her "La Prochaine Fois" album - it was exactly the right duration and the name of the song matches the video as the people and lights are in reverse
jugglers in jerusalem's ben yehuda mall. my friend darren & late friend angus are both jugglers so I took this to show them. my timing was out a bit as I watched the guys juggle for a while then remembered to start filming.
