I will work on a slightly curved stitch line to demonstrate this stitch to you. You need to know the stem stitch to be able to do this stitch.

Fig 1: We start with a single stem stitch. Bring the needle out through A, take it in through B and out through C.		Fig 2: Now, take the needle under the stitch A-B without pluckign the fabric beneath. Make sure the needle comes out from the left side of the point C, as shown. This makes a loop around the stitch A-B.
Fig 3: Make another similar loop around the stitch A-B, keeping it towards the left of the previous loop. So, we get two loops.		Fig 4: Now, make the next stem stitch. After making both loops, continue to take the needle in through D and bring it out through E. Then, make the two loops. Make sure the loops encircle both A-B and C-D.
Fig 5: Half way through, our portugese stem stitch would look like this. It gives out a complicated look.		Fig 6: A full curved stitch line woud look like this. Observe how the stitch shows up at the two curves.

You need to know the back stitch to be able to do this stitch. The knowledge of the split stitch will be an advantage.

Fig 1: We start normally like a back stitch. Make a stitch A-B. Bring the needle out from C.		Fig 2: Now, like a normal back stitch, take the needle towards B and, splitting through the stitch A-B, put in the needle near B or B itself.
		Fig 3: The stitch would look like this. It looks similar to the split stitch with a slight chain like effect.
Fig 4: A finished row of split back stitch would show up like this.

I will use a curved stitch line to do this stitch.

Fig 1: Bring the needle out through A which lies slightly above the stitch line. Then, take the needle in through B which lies on the stitch line, right below A. Bring the needle out through C which lies on the left of B and on the stitch line.		Fig 2: Take the needle under the stitch A-B without plucking the fabric beneath. Note that the needle is angled below the point C.
Fig 3: Now, bring the needle from under A-B, but this time from above the point C. Loop the thread around the needle as shown.		Fig 4: Pull the needle out to form the knot. Continue the procedure to form more knots on the stitch line.
		Fig 5: A finished line of reversed palestrina stitch would look like this

my great grandma used to call me bosky. she could never twist her tongue for roxy. roxy comes from persian roxanne meaning dawn. pals used to call me all sorts, roskie, sexy, foxy, rocky whatever mutations and i lent my ear to all of them. so this rocksea came in between like a brand name, suited my profession and sounded like my name as well. once, i remember when i was 14, i cried cuz i didnt like my name and demanded it shud be changed. now itz fun playing with it.

sarah

On what we can do. The idea is still in its preliminary stages.

Excerpt from the first email.

Talking more about the group, let me tell some feasible and beneficial ideas. Most of us are in touch or in reach by an email or phone call. We’re a previleged group in such a developing country like India. Why don’t we collect a small fund or smtg from among those who’ve settled with some jobs? Shouldn’t be a compulsory one. With such a fund we can do smtg like adopt (not techinically) a child, i.e. we provide a 100Rs per month (itz low but easy for start) towards education/dress/books for a child. If just 12 people put a 100 Rs per year such a thing is possible. May be it looks an ugly idea (is it so ) now but it would be worthy in the long run, as we grow. Other benefits are: satisfaction of doing something, to have a child of our own, bettering the world, some use of the money we consume every month, future investment, etc etc

Supporters so far: (Physically / Intellectualy / Financially or in whatever ways one can help it)

Anoop John
Charlie Malkachan

Do you support? If so please mail to saps or comment here or email me.

• Herez how we can do the financial part:
  1.make a paypal account for those who can put anything thru credit 
  2.open a bank account in Kerala (litty ) for others.
• For the working out part we have to do detailed study on how we should utilize it and where when etc. may be this should be done before collecting any funds and the plan laid out.

We’re still studying on the idea and it may take time. Meanwhile, here is a wonderful documentation/statistics on the state of the world’s children 2006 by UNICEF to chew on. Excluded and Invisible, State of the World’s Children 2006 (pdf, 3 mb)

Data Recovery

At hokudai we students are handling a lot of data, notes, thesis, materials. It may happen that one friday your computer stops responding or you lost some precious files. Can something be done? Yes!

• One day you restart the computer and you see a blank screen staring at you! You’re not able to boot your PC. Such a situation is not so rare. Most likely the failure is due to the MBR (a record having the basic structure of ur pc) getting corrupted. In most of the cases, it is possible to recover your system to its previous stage.
• One of your drives/partitions just disappeared and you don’t know what to do. Or you got some data deleted accidently. It is possible to retrieve this data from your pc. Just make sure that you don’t do anything on the pc after you deleted it as that may erase the traces forever.

Operating System Management

• Partitioning. You have only a C drive. You want to make D, E, F, G, .. drives.
• Dual boot system. You want to install Windows and Linux both on the same system. You need to transfer files between both these operating systems.
• You want to run certain windows applications in Linux.

Email

• Backup/Restore email. Your studies are over and you’re leaving but you want to take the emails saved in your Outlook. Or you are changing your pc and your want to transfer the mails
• You’re using windows and linux in the same system and you want to access your Outlook mails in windows when you are booted in linux.

Website

• Launch a website for yourself? Not a bad idea! Could be done at nominal costs. Anyways, can’t teach you on how to make website, html etc. Only installation related services.

Classes

• Sorry, no classes due to lack of time. Yet if so necessary a few tips can be given if you have some basic idea on things.

Fee: Low cost. From 500 yen onwards (Even that bicycle repair shop facing my lab asks 1000 yen for a puncture sticker), depending on the technical info involved + time. You can bring the laptop to my lab. If you want me to come to your lab, 500 yen extra. Of course if you are short of money, services will be free.

Time: Any time other than when I’m sleeping (now thatz difficult to tell!)

Other:
All these services for windows english versions. Can try for japanese/chinese versions but not guaranteed.

Contact: rocksea-at-gmail.com or 090 2053 2979. Email preferred.

Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change
viale Aldo Moro, 44, Bologna 40127, Italy
Off: +39 0513782629 Cell: +39 3663497627 

www.rocksea.org 

Kollamparambil, Edamattom P.O.
Kottayam (dt), Kerala 686588, India
Tel: +91 (0) 4822 237646 Cell: +91 9495684297 

Objective
Life: Seek thine own truth. Live life.
Career: To understand how the oceans and the atmosphere work together 

Work/Education
Work/Research Experience
Working as Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change, Italy, on the climate variability and change in the Euro-Mediterranean region using coupled GCM (INGV-SXG). Feb 2008 – 

Worked as Research Assistant (Japanese Govt. Center of Excellence Research Assistantship) at Hokkaido University, on Asian Monsoon and its relationship with SST over Indian/Pacific Oceans on intraseasonal timescales. Apr 2004 – Jul 2007 (3+ years). 

Worked as Junior Research Fellow at National Institute of Oceanography, India, on the coastal oceanographic processes, dynamics and influencing factors along the west coast of India. Feb 2003- Feb 2004 (1 year).

Academic Qualifications
PhD in Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan (June 2007) 

Junior Research Fellowship (CSIR), National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, India (2003 - ’04) 

Master of Science in Physical Oceanography
Cochin University of Science & Technology, Kochi, India (Feb 2003) with second rank 

Publications
Mathew Roxy, Hae-Kyung Lee Drbohlav, Silvio Gualdi and Antonio Navarra, 2010: Seasonality in the Relationship between El Nino and Indian Ocean Dipole Mode. under review at Climate Dynamics. 

Mathew Roxy, Silvio Gualdi and Enrico Scoccimarro, 2010: The influence of the Indian Ocean Dipole Mode on the Eastern Mediterranean climate variability, as simulated by a coupled general circulation model. under preparation. 

Mathew Roxy and Youichi Tanimoto, 2010: Role of SST in influencing the intraseasonal variability of the South China Sea summer monsoon. under revision at Climate Dynamics. 

Mathew Roxy and Youichi Tanimoto, 2007: Role of SST over the Indian Ocean in influencing the intraseasonal variability of the Indian summer monsoon. Journal of Meteorological Society of Japan, 85(3) [pdf]. 

S.S.C. Shenoi, Mathew Roxy, and co-authors, 2005: Hydrography and water masses in the southeastern Arabian Sea during March-June 2003, Journal of Earth System Science, 114(5), 475-491 [pdf]. 

Mathew Roxy and S. R. Shetye, 2003: Evolution of thermocline off Kochi: a test of the role of local wind-forcing in driving of the coastal circulation. ARMEX Workshop on Data Analysis and Initial Scientific Results. NIOT, India, 2003. 

S.S.C. Shenoi, Mathew Roxy, and co-authors, 2003: Temperature-salinity structure in the southeastern Arabian Sea during ARMEX Phase II. ARMEX Workshop on Data Analysis and Initial Scientific Results. NIOT, India, 2003. 

Conference Presentations
Mathew Roxy and Silvio Gualdi, 2009: The influence of the Indian Ocean Dipole Mode on the Eastern Mediterranean climate variability, as simulated by a coupled general circulation model. Paper presented at the Alpine Workshop on Monsoon Variability, Vale D’Aosta, Italy, June 2009. 

Mathew Roxy and Silvio Gualdi, 2008: Teleconnections between the Indian Monsoon and the Mediterranean Sea as simulated by a coupled General Circulation Model (INGV–SXG). Paper presented at the European Conference on Applied Climatology, EMS, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Oct 2008. 

Mathew Roxy and Silvio Gualdi, 2008: Teleconnections affecting the Mediterranean Sea, as observed in a coupled General Circulation Model. Paper presented at the MedCLIVAR-ESF Workshop on “Climate variability over the Mediterranean area: atmospheric and oceanic components”, Rhodes, Greece, Sep 2008. 

Mathew Roxy and Youichi Tanimoto, 2006: Intraseasonal variability of air sea interaction over the Indian Ocean and its influence on regional and intraseasonal variability of the Indian monsoon. Paper presented at the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society Conference (AOGS 2006), Singapore, July 2006. 

Mathew Roxy and S. R. Shetye, 2003: Evolution of thermocline off Kochi: a test of the role of local wind-forcing in driving of the coastal circulation. ARMEX Workshop on Data Analysis and Initial Scientific Results. NIOT, India, 2003. 

Research Interests
Ocean atmospheric dynamics and interaction, tropical intraseasonal variability, Indian Ocean, Asian monsoon, SST – convection feedback, coupled general circulation modeling for climate variability predictions – on global and regional scales. 

Responsibilities
Reviewer of scientific journals (Climate Dynamics, J. Met. Soc. Japan, Atmopheric Research, Int. J. Climatology). 

Administrator and cofounder, Oceanographers Net, largest online oceanographic community, www.oceanographers.net 

Editor, Ocean Section, Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) Newsletter, 2006-’07. 

Cruise/Observational Experience
Kuroshio Extension System Study (KESS) cruise, 15 June – 18 July, 2005 on US R/V Roger Revelle. 

Arabian Sea Monsoon Experiment (ARMEX) cruise, March 13 – April 10, 2003 on R/V Sagar Kanya. 

On board Oceanographic skills: Radio Sonde, SODAR, CTD operation, LADP.  

Numerical Modeling
Experience in the compilation, running, post-processing of INGV-SXG (SINTEX), a coupled atmosphere ocean sea-ice general circulation model.
Details: The atmosphere component is ECHAM 5 and the ocean component is OPA 9, coupled through OASIS 2.4. 

Experience in using NEC SX-8 supercomputers for climate modeling. 

Scientific/Computational Skills
Processing: MatLab 7, CDO (Climate Data Operators), NCL (NCAR) 
Visualization: Ferret, GRaDS, GMT
Shell scripting on Unix/Linux platforms.
Computational skills on using NETCDF and other formats, for large reanalysis and observational data sets (ERA40, JRA-25, NCEP, TRMM), processing, plotting and analyzing data using different statistical techniques. 

Other Computing Skills
Higher Diploma in Software Engineering (1998-2001), APTECH Computer Education (ISO), India.
Operating Systems: Unix/Linux/Solaris, Win9X, WinXP, Win Vista
Languages: C++, Visual Basic 6.0, FORTRAN 90/77, PHP, HTML, novice in PERL.
Database: SQL, MS Access, Oracle 9.0.
Office tools: MS Office (Word, Excel …), Website designing, Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator. 

Fellowship/Scholarship/Award  

• Best Poster Award (out of 48 scientific posters), International Symposium on “Sustainable Development”, Hokkaido University, August 2006
• Research Assistantship under 21st Century Center of Excellence (COE), Japanese Government, 2003 – ‘07
• JGC Corporation – Saneyoshi Scholarship, 2006 – ‘07
• Hokkaido University International Student Center Scholarship, 2006 – ‘07
• Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India – Junior Research Fellowship (National Level), 2002 – 04
• UGC – National Eligibility Test, 2002 (this qualifies candidate for the post of Science Lectureship in Universities and colleges across India.)
• Postgraduate merit scholarship for M.Sc Oceanography, Cochin University of Science & Technology, 2000 – ‘02
• TOEFL: Total score: 273/300 Essay: 6.0/6.0

• Age, date of birth : 30 years on terra firma, 29th March 1979
  (so ask me (i ask 2 much 2 myself) what i’ve done, what i’ve acquired, how i lived these 30 years??)
• Citizenship : Indian   born in Nigeria, brought up in Kerala, higher studies in Japan, now in Italy
• Religious beliefs : nothing as such, atheistically inclined agnostic, though Roman Catholic by birth. 
• The person : | simple = complicated | careful = careless | body = mind | revolutionary | universal love | oneness | restless | past = present = future | heart of a mallu but one world filosofy | fuel = knowledge | 
• The philosophy : i live as i please, i wander where i like; i go in and out each day according to my pleasure;i move where my inclination leads me; i assume all the forms which it pleases me to assume; i am flourishing; i am prosperous; i am a perennial youth in the garden of immortality.
• Languages Known : Malayalam (mother tongue), English (medium of instruction and communication in school & university), Hindi (national language), Japanese (hiragana, katakana), Italian (poco!) 
• Interests and activities : Nature (flows thru my blood) conservation, Oceanography (career n love), Astrophysics (childhood fascination, Stephen Hawkings), Ornithology (passion), Reading (i cant live without books), Poetry (feels better with it, letters, mostly) , Swimming (relaxing), Music (melodies n dance), Traveling (by foot or by heart , wherever my mind/ foot carries me), Metaphysics (retrieving/finding out the senses we lost/unaware of), Philosophy, Table Tennis (not much of a player), Photography (always carry my camera along; i donno when this butterfly will come along), Cooking (if am in the mood), Website designing, Reading minds..
• Hobbies : Philately (thematic collection, 15 albums, collecting from childhood), Numismatics, Feather collection 

Some other achievements (esp. in school/college) ;-)  

• Trekking along the foothills of the Himalayas  
• First Prize in English Essay (2000), CMS college, Kottayam
• First Prize in English Poetry (1999), CMS college
• Second Prize in English Poetry (2000), CMS college
• First Prize in Malayalam Poetry (1993), Girideepam Bethany High School , Kottayam
• Best actor and first prize in Drama
• Prizes in Long Race Competitions, First Prize in Caroms
• Gold Medal Award for Science at school level
• Prize in Mathematics Project, Prizes in Quiz competitions 

Note: This resume is often updated, except the personal part.

ORV Sagar Kanya, 29.03.03, Arabian Sea, beguiling facades: from cruise SK-190.
This I remember, I wrote sitting on a chair in the upper deck of R/V Sagar Kanya. It was night and it was my birthday. hmm.. celebrating one’s birthday on a ship with the endless sea around is something.. The photos are from the same cruise.

soft brushing of the breeze
waves splattering on and softly rocking the ship

the sea is seducing me
endless lifeless meaningless
                      it seems
but
never stops looking marvellous

the color
the blue blue color
enticing enthralling
I wish I had a shirt of that color

sometimes you wish
you say,
go, dive and float on the waves
but u don’t go
u don’t know
whether u cud get back
              into the ship

O’ sitting in this chair at nite,
u can make so many wishes

Somebody had told
Wish on a star

no roof over my head
only the sky
and
    lying on this chair
I cud see all those stars
let me wish
       on every star
for I have so many wishes
let me wish
on all the stars seen and unseen
I have heard stars are countless
so are my wishes

29 March 2003

Monsoon, oh how thy rule the daily life of petty Indians!!

The minds, the economy, the agriculture, the life and prosperity and happiness of Indian subcontinent heavily depend on the ups and downs of the monsoon. Those rains bring mixed feelings. Oh the picture of the students running with uniforms and school bags drenched in water, the rushing vehicles splashing muddy water on the pedestrians, tiny paper boats sailing thru, these are some of the daily shots from my part of the world in kerala. Everyone but are unanimous in heartily welcoming the first spell of rains, as they bring a relief from the hot summer days. When it rains every day and for long time but it used to give nightmares to daddy cuz if it rained too much, our rubber trees can’t be milked and poor me won’t be able to buy new pants n shirts n shoes hehe. That is how monsoon used to affect me other than the several nights when the power went off for days [when the winds n the rain throw the trees n branches over the electric lines or when the water level in the dams are low], several days when the thunderstorms warned me not to come out, several days when coming from school or college my shoes weighed a ton from the water soaked in. Ya it affected me too as a change of season and daily routine of taking umbrellas but not as much as some other small farmers whose daily bread depended on it. Our part of India was mostly blessed with plenty rain during the monsoons.

Rains all over India, dances in different proportions, giving variabilities in space and time. Some parts of India like western ghats[southwest India] and the ganges mahanadi basin [central east India] receives rain in plenitude while other parts like tamil nadu in the south east and the north western parts of India receive weak rainfall. Droughts, floods happen at the same time at different corners of the subcontinent. Agricultural sector, Indian economy, daily life all listen to the rhythm of rain. The peacock’s dance or the curves of the eyebrows of a farmer on his field used to give signals on the monsoon. Now here lying around on my desk are so many plots and charts and I’m trying to find out such signals and curves which can write out some of the short paragraphs out of the epic called monsoon.

To put it simply, I’m having a look at the subseasonal variability of air sea interaction over the Indian Ocean and how it influences the subseasonal and spatial variability of monsoon over India.

Thatz me at the ARMEX (ARabian sea Monsoon EXperiment) cruise on ORV Sagar Kanya, during Mar-Apr 2003. Instrument in view contains Nansen bottles [for water sampling at different depths], CTD [measures conductivity (salinity), temperature, pressure (depth)], ADCP [current profiler] etc. These are lowered to the deep ocean, collecting data all the way and sending it back to a computer terminal.

And we? We belong to the domain of physical oceanographers. To put it simple, we look on to such aspects like the how and why of the ocean currents, interaction of the atmosphere above and the ocean below [oh does it sound like the man-woman relationship?] and how the ocean talks to the atmosphere and how the atmosphere talks back to the ocean.. This explains only a part of the science of physical oceanography which includes other domains viz.coastal oceanography, ocean modeling, tropical oceanography, ocean circulation, ocean climate, remote sensing, fluid dynamics …

For more info on oceanography and related sciences, log on to the ocean community at Oceanographers Net