Okay, I'm punting for now on all the big questions I brought up in the previous post. I'm just going to post for a while and see how it goes. I *would* prefer that the blog is at despoki.net, but currently I'm too tempted by the simplicity of custom blog sites like this one.

Okay here's some of the threads of my thinking. There are many ideas crowding my mind, and not much clarity about what's the right thing to do.
-- Srikanth (http://www.egovernments.org/) thinks I would work for a role in his group. The job is based in Delhi.
--Paul (http://www.rinovations.org/) invited me to go to Chennai for a couple of days and check them out.
--I want to visit Timbuktu (http://www.timbuktu.org/), but I don't think I will get any specific ideas about what to do from that trip.
--I have been in contact with an old IIT acquaintance who went off the beaten path a while back and will visit soon. It should be very interesting seeing someone from my background doing stuff like organic farming. I may post our mail thread .. (privacy invasion question).
--I was reading a magazine article on rationing, PDS (public distribution system) etc. and it struck me like a ton of bricks, which it does from time to time: shouldn't the basic immediate focus simply be to *provide enough food for everyone who needs it by any means possible*. It is such a huge failing of society that this doesn't happen.
-- Pratham (http://www.pratham.org/) and their Bangalore chapter Akshara (http://www.akshara.org/) do very good work. Pratham is notable as they have managed to scale significantly. They also seem to have another strength of innovation, they say that they have evolved a methodology to get children reading in about 6 weeks. And do that at a cost of Rs 100/- per child (this is important because the learning levels in government and possibly even private schools is pretty bad). Its pretty exciting
--Priya is interested in getting into the animation industry and in doing some background reading, its seems to be an area that is poised to take off. There is some temptation for me to ride that wave myself :-). There are other things that I can do in software that would be quite interesting. I'm of course looking to do something alternative, but once you decide to do that, the advantages of staying mainstream start showing up very clearly :-)

--Biodiesel. Less said the better. But one comment is the divergence between doing something nice like biodiesel that could also pay off significantly monetarily, versus doing something in NGO space where money won't be there. Its a difficult choice. Not that there are opportunities and people queing up for me in either area, but nonetheless. I am in 'first principles' mode right now and want to pretend that anything is possible.

I'm stabilizing a bit at work, earlier in the year, I was spending upto 90% of the workday brooding about these things :-).

I've agreed in principle to have a baby :-) Less said the better.