2015- the year in retrospect

It seems like only the other day that I wrote my piece on the year 2014 – the year 2015 simply flew past and here we are on the cusp of welcoming another year in our lives. For all the speed that 2015 breezed past us I must hasten to add that it was quite an eventful year.  We started the year planning for the next school reunion in July 2015 – we had just about recovered from the big one, the centenary year and we were already planning the next one in school.

On the work front we have made substantial strides in our efforts to teach the world how to grow our own fuel and our demonstration plant in Whyalla, South Australia went on stream and is now running 24x7, 365 days of the year. For the first time in the world we have been able to continuously produce crude oil from cultured marine algae grown in open ponds. While we are able to produce crude oil without difficulty we found that world crude oil prices were plummeting and it is well-nigh impossible to produce our green crude at prices as low as $40 per barrel. We soldiered on nonetheless and soon discovered that sewage treatment plants all over the world were faced with a huge problem of disposing off the bio-solids produced in their treatment plants – we collected the raw bio-solids and demonstrated that we could convert this nuisance product into valuable green crude just as we were able to do with algal biomass. What was interesting was that the sewage treatment plants were actually willing to pay to have their bio-solids taken away. Now that the feedstock for our bio-crude was cost negative to us, we are able to demonstrate that our bio-crude could actually be price-competitive with crude oil prices even when they hit rock bottom at $36 per barrel. We continue working on ways to grow our own fuel and reduce the carbon footprint of the world’s transportation sector.

Biosolids accumulate in the aeration pond of a Sewage Treatment Plant

 Sub-critical water reactor to convert carbonaceous biomass to bio-crude

 Our 5-step process to convert carbonaceous biomass to bio-crude

Our algal research has also yielded some other interesting results. We have found ways to grow an interesting marine alga that we discovered in a mangrove swamp this unique organism  is capable of producing very high quantities of Omega 3 fatty acids such as DHA and EPA. We have now standardised the culture protocol and are upscaling the production of this alga to produce these highly valuable neutraceuticals hitherto available only in fish oils. In yet another development we have been able to mass culture another alga that produces huge quantities of Beta glucans – this polysaccharide is critical in modulating the immune response of humans and animals and can double the capacity of an individual to resist infections especially in people whose immune systems are compromised (people with HIV, people who have had chemotherapy or radiotherapy etc) . We hope to be able to put these novel products in the market in the year 2016.

On the domestic front – the children and Sudha have kept good health and have been busy. Our son Ashwin formally qualified as a Nuclear Reactor Operator after being the only one among his peers to clear the Reactor Operator Qualifying Board of the Indian Navy. He is now certified to operate the nuclear reactor on board INS Chakra, India’s only operational nuclear submarine and is sailing somewhere at the bottom of the Andaman Sea as I write this. Our daughter has decided to join three of her former colleagues to set up a premium ladies fitness operation in Sarjapur , Bangalore, so we now have an entrepreneur in the family!

 Ashwin and Devika

 Ammu flanked by two of her former colleagues

 Back home in Kerala my mother was diagnosed with a malignancy of the uterus and had to undergo an open abdomen surgery which was painful. She has recovered well from the surgery and is now awaiting the results of the biopsy which will determine the future course of treatment she will have to undergo.

Our school reunion in July this year was great fun for me because I got around to meeting lots of folks as I did not have any official duties as I did in the previous year which was the centenary year. We had alumni come in from all over the world and the fun and fellowship never seemed to end.

Old Georgians from Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, Basingstoke, UK, Calcutta, Calicut and Gobichettipalayam in India gather at the School Fete.

In November this year a group of my university alumni worked out a plan to contact some of our Professors at university who were more than Professors to us – they were mentors. The plan was to get them and their spouses over to the university in the foothills of the Himalayas and honour them for their mentorship and achievements in research. Those selected readily agreed to do the difficult trip to the Himalayas in spite of being in their eighties and all of them got quite emotional about their time at the university and their students. It was such a gratifying few days with them.

Our mentors release the ‘Spirit of Pantnagar’ volume to commemorate the life time achievements of our mentors.

Barely had the reunion in school gotten over we were at the offsite reunion of our school alumni in Vythiri in Wynad in Kerala. It was a wonderful get together in a beautiful setting.

Old Georgians at the Offsite Reunion in Dec 2015 at Vythiri Village, Wynad, Kerala

Over the year we did have to deal with death and its consequences – we lost some very good friends and teachers. Worst of all some of our friends lost children in the prime of their youth - we wish them and all their families the strength to take their loss in their stride and move on in life.

Then there were the huge floods that ravaged our city in November and December. Luckily for us we were not affected in the area where we lived in the city but it was heart breaking to see the death and destruction that the floods brought to our city. Sudha and I were away in Kerala when the flooding happened so we really did not experience the extended loss of electrical power, the food shortages, the breakdown of the mobile telephony system in the city and other such issues.

Here’s wishing all of you my friends a merry Christmas and a very happy 2016. May the year ahead be all you would want it to be and may you all stay well and healthy through the coming year.

2014, the year of the horse gallops away into our memories

2014 is done and dusted before we could even realise it! Every year it seems the years go by faster than the year before - is it because I'm on the wrong side of the fifties that I feel its galloping by? Not so say my younger friends who all think 2014 went by faster than any year before!
The year began with some of us from my old school feeling the heat of the upcoming Centenary of our alma mater! There was so much to do before the big day in July and there were so many folks from so many countries planning to be there in that beautiful old valley in the hills of south India. During a business trip down under in March an alumnae in Melbourne asked me 'how are you guys going to manage the hundreds of alumni who are going to be there in school for the big one?' That was when it hit home that there was so much organising to do inspite of us having started preparations for the centenary three years ago!!

As with most things this year the centenary was upon us before we knew it. We had to get our Centenary Coffee Table Book out in time for the arrival of the masses in the valley! We had to get the Centenary walkway complete with granite wall tiles featuring names of those who wanted their names on the walkway. Then there was the bronze bust of the Founder-Principal of the school, Rev John Breeden, to be put in place for unveiling on the big day! There was also the Centenary memorabilia to be put up for sale! Thanks to the humongous support of so many Old Georgians all of that and more were in place for the big event! But the weather Gods did not play along with us - it rained for all four of the Centenary celebration days! But then again the weather did not seem to bother a single one of the 600+ Georgians that descended on the campus! They were all about the campus, taking in the beautiful surroundings and reminiscing with friends they had not seen for 20, 30 or even 40 years! It was a sight to behold - it was most satisfying to see that everybody who travelled from 13 countries across the globe enjoyed every moment of the centenary celebrations. The emails and letters we received after the centenary from so many Georgians were such a treat to read. Then after it was all over and done with somebody asked me ' What are you and Sudha going to do with your time now that the centenary is over?' Indeed, for a while there was this feeling that there was so much time hanging heavy on my hands! But then work has this amazing way of filling up all available time!

The bronze bust of Rev J Breeden is unvieled

 Henry Marriott releasing the Centenary Coffee Table Book with Nimmi

On the family front life has treated us well. Our son Ashwin is now a qualified Nuclear Reactor Specialist and has joined the crew of India's only operational nuclear submarine, INS Chakra. That is both good and bad news for his mother and wife! It means that while he is among the handful of people in India with that qualification it also means that when he does set sail in INS Chakra he will do so for very long periods - nuclear submarines don't need to surface for months together! Ashwin's wife Devika is slowly getting the hang of being a Navy wife! She has adjusted well to the new life in the Navy. It certainly helps that she has a job that allows her to work out of home. Our daughter Ammu in Bangalore is busier than the Prime Minister of the country - she has a job she loves but keeps rather long hours! Even so she manages to keep home, hearth, in-laws and dog going! Arun, Ammu's husband, is doing good and inspite of their busy schedules the two of them manage to travel a bit with dog and all!

 Ammu and Arun in Bangalore

Mousse all grown up!

Ashwin and Devika at home in Vizag

Sudha too had her hands full in the first half of the year with all the Centenary stuff that was hers to do. The highlight of the centenary celebrations for her and some of her OG friends was the Lungi dance that they put up on the Mega night. It was certainly very well appreciated even though her own kids were most embarrassed to hear that their 50+ mum was going on stage to do a dance performance! But post-centenary she has been traveling a fair bit to Kerala to catch up with her Mum and to some other parts to catch up with old friends! Back in Chennai she has this bunch of OG and non-OG friends that keep her busy as ever.

 Sudha at the Sigiriya Rock Fort in Dambulla, Sri Lanka

 Sudha with friends from Chennai

Sudha with childhood friends from Bombay in Coorg

In October this year Sudha and I got around to travel a bit in Sri Lanka. It was a great trip for all the sights we saw and the experiences we had. I actually climbed to the top of the Sigiriya Fort while a lot of folks around me gave up on the effort! Then there was the Horton Plains National Park that we trekked through - it was really a tough one - we both lost our soles to the National Park! Yes, our shoe soles gave up on us because of the rocky terrain we had to trek through!

                                        World's End in the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka                                     

 

Panoramic view of Adam's Peak from the Horton Plains National Park, Sri Lanka

Professionally, 2014 has been very good for me and the team I work with out of India and Australia. We were able to demonstrate to the world that it is possible to grow our algae in hyper-saline conditions, harvest the algae in our patented harvester then process the algae in our patented sub-critical water reactor to produce crude oil that is identical to the crude oil that people drill below the ocean floor for. This is a world first and our project is now entering the pre-commercial stage down under in the town of Whyalla in South Australia. It’s been almost 10 years in the making and I feel vindicated that what we set out to do has been achieved and the BioFuel Digest rates our project as one among the top 40 Agrobioeconomy projects in the world. For me this project gets me closer to a personal goal that I have set, to contribute in some small way to making this world a better place than I found it.

 Thats a bird's eye view of our Whyalla Algal Biofuels facility

Biocrude oil produced from processing harvested hyper-saline algae grown in Whyalla

That hundred year old school of mine 

I am back at my office desk after a stupendous 4 days in my old boarding school up in the mountains of South India. Something that we have been planning for for the last so many months is now history - as Chairman of the Centenary Committee I'm relieved that it is all done and dusted! It was dank and wet weather but that did not succeed in dampening the centenary spirit of the attendees who came from 11 countries - on the last day, at the fete it alternated between raining and drizzling and yet there was not a square-inch of space on School flat while that fete went on! 

               Nestled in a beautiful valley in the Nilgiri Hills, Laidlaw School turned 100 years old this year - photo courtesy Nitin Dani

The Centenary Reunion was indeed such an amazing event simply for the number of people who attended - I stopped counting after we crossed the 650 attendees mark! We're still trying to get a grip on the actual numbers that showed up! It was just so awesome to watch people go into raptures as they caught sight of friends from school who they hadn't seen in ages! For four days the school had to deal with a population that was more than twice the number that normally inhabit the campus! They outdid themselves in feeding us all for the four days and making sure our every need was met.

The bronze bust of Rev John Breeden, the founder Principal of our school was finally unveiled by the Collector of the Nilgiris and I must say it was a special moment for all of us. The good Reverend now stands witness to the next hundred years of the schools progress.

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We alumni also built a centenary walkway on the campus to replace an old mud path from the school flat to the dining hall - it was funded by getting people to pay for a granite tile bearing their name, batch and country of residence. 
 

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We also came out with a Centenary Coffee Table Book which visually traced the 100 year journey of the school - its a beautiful keep sake that anybody who was a student in our boarding school would cherish. 

There were also cricket, hockey and football matches between Alumni and Present students which went on inspite of the weather and water logged pitches! That really says something about the spirit of those participants. 

It was certainly a great culmination to months of preparation by so many alumni and it was just so fulfilling to see so many come to the campus and catch up with long lost friends and classmates.

Long live Laidlaw Memorial School!

2013 - another year gone by!

It never ceases to amaze me how fast the year 2013 went by - it seems like just the other day that we were ushering in the year 2013 and here I am writing about the year in retrospect!

All through 2013 the work-life balance has been fantastic and professionally much of has gone to plan. We have been successful in growing our algae in huge open ponds, been able to harvest them without spending too much money or energy and then the harvested wet algal biomass has been successfully processed into bio-crude - pretty much just as petroleum crude was made naturally below the earth's surface over millions of years, only we do it a lot faster and sustainably! We've even managed to take the renewable algal bio-crude and fractionate it into 12 different fractions of petro-products that include petrol, diesel, jet fuel, kerosene and naphtha. For us this was a vindication of our stand that we need only to find ways to maximise production of biomass in an energetically and economically sustainable way to be able to produce crude oil cost-competitively vis-a-vis petro-crude. Here in Chennai, India we have been working on ways to turn lowly algae into crude oil and much of our research work here has found application in our demonstration plant being built down under in Whyalla, South Australia. We are more than half way through building this demonstration facility that will go on-stream in January 2014. It will be the first facility in the world where it will be possible to go from algae grown in test-tubes to barrels of bio-crude and all this using sea-water and barren land by the sea thus avoiding any food vs. fuel competition.

 

Pictured above is our Demonstration Plant under-construction in Whyalla, South Australia

Hopefully it will all happen at a cost that is acceptable to the world. Fingers crossed!

 Fractionally distilled algal bio-crude converted to a range of petro-products

I have traveled a fair bit this year, starting with a trip in February to France where I caught up with Kenneth Birbeck and his family in Normandy. Ken's aunt was one of the first English-women to volunteer to travel to India to join the teaching staff of our fledgling school in the hills of Kodaikanal back in the early twenties. Thanks to Ken and his aunt's meticulously kept diaries we have a great idea of what it was like in the early years of our school which turns 100 years old in 2014.

With Ken and Claudie in Normandy, France

Sudha and I then traveled to Australia to join a few school buddies at their Australian Old Georgian Reunion in Inverloch in the State of Victoria where we had ourselves a great time catching up with friends from across Australia and a few from the UK.

                                                         With friends from school in Melbourne enroute to Australian Old Georgian Reunion

There were of course numerous trips up into the Blue Mountains of South India for planning our school's centenary activities and of course for the annual school reunion in July on the beautiful campus of our alma mater. We also had ourselves a terrific time in Bangalore at the offsite reunion of school friends organised by the Bangalore Old Georgians who did a terrific job of organising a fun time for so many of us.

On the family front it was the wedding of our Naval Officer son Ashwin that took up all our time and energy - yes, it all finally came together in a most enjoyable two- day celebration in early November and we had the honour of having some of our closest friends from school, my University and Sudha's childhood in attendance. Hats off to so many of our friends who travelled from the US, Europe, Australia, the UAE and Malaysia just to be there with us at the wedding.

                                                                                         We're six of us now that make up our family

We have been lucky to have a healthy year with nobody really having to undergo any significant health related issues. Our daughter, Ammu and husband Arun have been busy in Bangalore with work, their adorable Cocker Spaniel Mousse and also with a full house at home! 

                                                                             That's Mousse

The newlyweds, Ashwin and Devika are now back in Bombay where Ashwin is based aboard an Indian Navy submarine for now. Come January he will move to the School of Advanced Undersea Warfare (SAUW) at Vizag to undergo a one year conversion course that qualifies him to join the handful of Indian Naval officers who operate India’s only operational nuclear submarine.

For Sudha and me has suddenly dawned on us that with the marriage of the children out of the way there is a fair bit of time hanging on our hands especially when I get back from work in the evenings! We need to find ways to gainfully use the spare time. But then again there's the school centenary coming up and there's plenty to do on that front so that should keep me on my toes at least until July 2014!

Sudha and I would like to thank each and every one of you for the good times, friendship and fellowship you have shared with us over the year 2013. Here's wishing all of you, friends and family, a merry Christmas and a very happy 2014. We hope there will be at least a few occasions in 2014 when our paths will cross and we get to sit down somewhere in the world and catch up with all that's happening in your lives.

Warmest regards                                           

Sudha & Tusky

Down south in rural Tamilnadu

An old friend Oby (from my St Joseph's College, Trichy days) had a wedding reception for his daughter in a place called Ambilikkai in South Western Tamilnadu. Oby comes from an amazing family of Kerala Christian doctors who have settled in these parts for two generations and are doing yeoman service to the community there. They run the Christian Fellowship Community Hospital where thousands of people from a radius of over 50kms, go to get treated for Cancer, Gastro-intestinal disorders, Leprosy, Urological complaints and many more illnesses.

The reception was in the evening and I got there in the morning so I got around to doing a walkabout in the area. This is technically a very dry area and the dominant color is usually brown but this is the rainy season so the area goes very green, albeit for a very short time. Went around to a few of the farms there and learned a few things besides taking in the farming lifestyle of these simple rural folks. Here are some pictures some of you may enjoy:

A perfect heart-shaped abode of ants who stick the leaves of the sapota tree together with their saliva to build their home!

Clitoria ternatea - no money for guessing why that flower gets such an interesting name! It may soon turn out to be the source for unique cliotides that can cure some cancers!

I've seen the tamarind tree since I can remember but never noticed its flowers!

Maize fields in the foreground and the Pulney Hills in the background - typical rural scene in this part of Tamilnadu

 

Wild solanaceous flower - those golden yellow spots are to entice insects into the flower to pollinate the flower!

Yet another beautiful wild flower - not sure what its technical name is!

This is a first for me! Have seen this plant (Gloriosa superba - known in Tamil as Kannvalli) back home in Kerala and have admired its beauty but this is the first time I have seen it cultivated - it is grown for its seed and tuber. The seed has a high content of cholchicine and gloriosine both alkaloids are used to treat gout and rheumatism. Seeds sell for Rs 2000 a kilo.

Close up of the Gloriosa flower!

Those are the fruit of the plant that bear the seeds which are of commercial value.

Thats the farmer who grows those unique crops!

He also grows tobacco! With one crop he cures and with the other he kills!

A Suitable Girl

Its been over a year since we began looking out for a bride for our Naval Officer son. Like most folks these days we set out to put Ashwin's details on a popular matrimonial website in order to get us access to details of potential daughters-in-law. We did pretty much the same thing when it came to Ammu, our daughter, some four years earlier, but in her case we hit upon our potential son-in-law in as little as one week of posting her details on the site! And what was amazing was that we did not have her permission to put up her picture on the matrimonial website so only some textual detail was put up! We tried doing the same for our son but the fish were not biting! Which  meant we had to put up his pictures on the website along with a whole lot more details about him! 

Weeks went by with Sudha and I poring over hundreds of profiles and pictures of young things from all over the country and overseas but nothing was really clicking because even when we expressed interest the girls' folks seemed uninterested! With the few that did reciprocate interest there would be issues with the girl's looks, or the girl's family or the girl's educational background! But mostly the problem stemmed from the fact that most girls did not fancy marrying a Naval officer because they would be subject to frequent transfers (postings) which meant that they would not be able to keep their jobs. Then ofourse, there were those who felt that Ashwin's specialisation as a submariner meant he risked his life too often by spending too much of his working life at the bottom of some ocean somewhere! On occasion we would get to talk to potential brides' parents and try to set up initial contacts between Ashwin and the girl concerned but then something would give and the call between him and the girl would not materialise. Then it would back to the drawing board and poring over profiles and sending off details of more girls to Ashwin and getting him to shortlist a few who's parents Sudha and I would try and make contact with. Then one day we stumble across the details of a PYT who is based in Chennai but her parents were in Kerala - I manage to speak to the father of the PYT and was asked to send along Ashwin's horoscope and other details. Weeks go by and there is no come back from Kerala and then one day Sudha gets this call from a nephew's wife saying that they had a call from people they know, enquiring about the suitability of Ashwin as a bridegroom for their daughter. This nephew is also in the Navy and hence the referral by the PYT's parents to enquire about Ashwin. Ofcourse, Sudha's nephew assured the parents of the PYT that Ashwin was all of what his CV and matrimonial profile depicted him to be. 

I then get on to FaceBook to check out the girl and sure enough there she is - plenty of pictures of her there. Ashwin was asked to check the PYT out on FB and he comes back to his mother and wants to  know if we actually find the girl ok! He asks the question not once or twice but several times and wants to be assured that we were ok with the pictures of the girl! Its only then that we realise that he was asking because the PYT wore pretty modern outfits in the pictures, so the son was wondering why his parents were not scandalised by the pictures! Soon the parents of the girl and the girl herself paid us a visit at home and spent a little while with us over lunch and before long Ashwin and the PYT were on phone with each other. A week later we got the green signal from the son and then the marriage machinery begins to crank up. An engagement was in order, Ashwin and Devika (thats the name of the PYT!) were soon engaged and then they began their count down to November 3rd - the day they are to be married. 

 

Its amazing how fast time went by - before we knew it the wedding was upon us - Ashwin had in the meantime been posted out to Mumbai on INS Sindhu Vijay. Now it was about making sure the Navy gave him his leave to get married! He shows up on 2nd Nov morning to get married on 3rd Nov giving the bride and her folks plenty of kittens in their tummies wondering if he would be there for the marriage!

Suffice it to say that the pre-wedding party and the wedding went very well and Ashwin and Devika are finally man and wife thus ending one whole year of searching for a suitable girl! 

2012 - the year in retrospect

Like most years in my fifty five years of existence 2012 too was good, bad and indifferent but what matters most is that the good was a whole lot more than the bad and the indifferent put together!

The year started with some interesting developments on the professional front because our company decided to put its money where its mouth is and invested heavily in a biotechnology led algal biofuels initiative in Australia. Parallely, we set up an Algal Research Facility in Chennai, India to validate some of the algal research results we have shown in Australia as well as to develop solutions for some seemingly intractable problems in the algal biofuels domain. Happily for me and for the company much of what we had set out to do we have been able to demonstrate ‘proof of concept’ and show that we could well be on the way to producing bio-crude from algae – stuff that can actually go into a regular oil refinery whence it can be turned into petrol, diesel, kerosene and other fuels as well as organic chemicals.

 

Open Algal ponds (left) from which algae are harvested and processed into algal bio-crude (right)

Our Indian Algal Research Facility has recently been accorded recognition by the Government of India’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) – the only algal lab in India to be so recognized.

Algal research ponds in India

And in Australia the Federal Government recognized us by conferring upon us a major $ 4.4 million dollar grant from the Australian Biofuel Investment Readiness (ABIR) fund. It’s another thing that the money hasn’t yet begun to flow from the Aussie government but we are hopeful that it will start soon and we will be able to show the world that it is possible to produce bio-crude sustainably from seawater fed ponds built on un-arable lands, at costs lower than current petro-crude cost.Enough of blowing my trumpet I would imagine!

On the personal front life has been good – Sudha and I have been around a fair bit this year, both in India and overseas. Most of our travel being to Kerala, Ketti, Bengaluru and a bit of it overseas. My school reunions are still the best – we had an awesome reunion in school in July and then again in Kodaikanal not so long ago. These school reunions and get-togethers have been happening so often that a lot of folks (including our kids!) wonder how Sudha and I manage to find the time to get around to all of those reunions, meetings and get-togethers! Sometimes, I wonder too!! The reunions in Bali and Kuala Lumpur in Oct-Nov this year were fantastic and it was wonderful catching up with so many Georgians who showed up from all over Australia, Malaysia and India.

Sudha and yours truly aboard the Bali Hai II (left) some of the school alumni who made it to Bali, Indonesia

Health has been fine for me and mine but some of my friends have had to deal with reverses, a good friend in Berlin, Germany was diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease which is progressively getting worse – he now needs 24x7 nursing care – he’s on a ventilator, has no control of his bowels and cannot find the strength to stand up and move about, ironically his mind remains as sharp as ever. Another friend from university lost a 25 year old daughter in a most heinous murder in Mumbai, India. And sadly two good friends in Australia lost their wives to the big ‘C’. We hope the families of these dear friends will find the strength of spirit to take them through these tough times.

Our children have been busy – Ammu and Arun moved from Mumbai to Bengaluru early in the year and that means we find ourselves heading off to Bengaluru at the drop of a hat. Their little doggy Mousse Nair is a major attractant for me to do that trip to the garden city! Ashwin also was posted out from the Indian Naval Submarine base in Vizag to the Indian Naval Academy in North Kerala where he is Divisional Officer in-charge of a Division of Naval Cadets and is mentor and tormentor to the bunch! We hope he will be able to nurture those young lads and lasses into the finest officers the Navy can possibly have.

Ammu, Ashwin & Mousse Nair

 

Ammu and Arun

We look forward to an eventful 2013 and hope that all of you, friends and family, have a healthy, happy, happening and joyful year ahead. May there be plenty of all the good things in life for all of you and very little of the niggles that life sometimes throws our way. It’s been an absolute treat to count you all among our friends  and family and we look forward  to    plenty of interactions with every one of you in the year ahead.