Sometimes I write my thoughts down.

Well, quite a big one actually. Because early next Tuesday morning, I’m off to India for just over 2 weeks for my work! No, really. I thought I would make it a surprise! My place of work, the MRC, has various long-standing associations with hospitals and research facilities in India, and a lot of my statistical work is on studies of groups of Indian people. I’ll arrive in Mumbai (Bombay) on Tuesday night, and then spend a few days in 5 different towns with different groups of colleagues. In one of these places, Mahabaleshwar, I’ll be attending a conference and giving a 10min presentation. Here’s a map showing all the places I’ll be going:
The tsunami disaster shouldn’t affect anything – India is a huge and immensely populous place and even Vellore and Pune in the southeast are well inland. My boss reckons that there won’t even be that many people I’ll meet who would have lost friends or family. I suppose it’s as if a catastrophe occurred on the other side of Europe – in the Balkans, say. Its proximity would shake you up, but it’d be unlikely to directly affect you. It’ll be interesting to see, anyway.
I’m still not quite got my head round it all... I’m being far too matter-of-fact about it, and I probably won’t quite believe I’m going until I’m there! I’ll almost certainly be pretty under-prepared, but hopefully after a few days I’ll have gotten used to it enough to start enjoying myself. I’ll be in fairly large towns and staying in fairly good hotels (not brilliant, though – it’s the public sector after all! I doubt I’ll be flying business class, either!), so I’m going to try and maintain a blog – I’ll try and write most days but maybe post a lot all at once when I get the chance.

Oh, and by the way - it's my birthday today! Woooo!