Pune, India: June 7, 2000

Read all about it: Puente gets coverage in the Pune press

Judging by this morning's newspapers, our press conference yesterday was an absolute success. An article about the lab was written in three locally read papers. Pune Herald, Pune Mid-Day (a local section of the Bombay paper, The Mid-Day) and Pune Times (a local section of the national paper, Times of India). The article in Pune Mid-Day also featured a photo of the team and the article in Pune Times was placed on the front page. We are trying to find out if there are electronic copies available over the web, but at the moment, we don't know of any. If we find them, I will place the links on this page. In the mean time, we are collecting hard copies and plan to put together a book.

A PUENTE banner in Pune!

After the excitement of the morning we all settled down and worked on various tasks. I spent most of the morning working on the Puente site and started to lay out the Pune-Penn Bundhan site which we will create on the URL www.punepennbundhan.com. I will keep you posted as to when that gets on-line. Other members of the team worked on a grassroots marketing strategy where over the next couple of days we will visit local schools and Non-Government Organizations (NGO's) to let them know about our lab and mission.

Richard and Dr. Gangulee working on the website journal

Before lunch, a couple of us went to meet with Satish Deshbande, of the Department of Telecom about installing our ISDN line. He was incredibly helpful and if things go according to plan we should be having our line installed sometime tomorrow. This is great news for us, especially the tech team who have been trying to make sure their network is as bulletproof as we expect it to be.

Oliver, software master whipping up a database for the lab. Prashanth looking on.

For lunch we ate at a local Indian restaraunt to try more local specialities. Ok, ok, I am telling a little fib. We actually ate at Pizza Hut. I know, I know. Half way around the world and we end up eating lunch at Pizza Hut. Oh well, what can you do? Luckily the lunch was given a little extra local flair when Prashant and Niral joined the waiters in their "every half-hour danceathon". The concept confused us a little, but trust me, there is nothing like lunch with live entertainment starring dancing heroes Prashant and Niral.

Prashanth and Niral gettin' down at Pizza hut

The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping for technical equipment and various essentials for the lab. (we are trying to take every opportunity to see the streets of Pune). We finished off the day by preparing for tomorrow's trips to the NGO's and planning tonight's social outing. Thursdays are days off of work for many industries, which I think is because the electricity gets shut off in the region on most Thursdays. So tonight we are heading a local discoteca! Simply to appreciate and educate ourselves about what local youths do for fun. Purely educational, of course.

Richard Lindsay-Jones

Back to Menu

 

Site created by Marvin Li of CommuniTech.
Copyright © 2001 Puente, University of Pennsylvania.