If you ever happens to travel in the temple state of Tamil Nadu, you won't come back empty handed, but with a bucket full of incredible images from the temples and palaces.
Let me share a few images taken during our visit to Thanjavur palace and museum.
Seeing the theme for this week's photo challenge, the first thing that came to my mind was the flight journey we had with our infant daughter.
The trip from Bangalore to Mumbai was like a breeze and the cloud formations were really a treat to the eyes.
If you visit Bangalore in Spring, you will fall in love with this City. No wonder, why it is called the "garden city".
Let me share some random snaps from Bangalore and Kerala during spring time.
Have you ever imagined, how it feels like, standing right under a river which is coming down from the heavens?
You could feel it, if you come down to Jog Falls, the second highest plunge waterfall in India.
Our much awaited tour to Jog got a bumpy start as a train got derailed just in front of ours and we had to take a much longer detour.
It was a six hour overnight journey to Shimoga from Bangalore, which became a sixteen hour endeavor.
But it provided us with a great opportunity to see the beautiful country side.
We reached Shimoga (which is the nearest rail head for those who visit Jog Falls) by 5 pm.
There we found the famous toy train, which used to take people pretty near to Jog Falls.
To compensate for the lost day, we quickly moved to the Bhadra Dam site where a light drizzle and a refreshing breeze washed away all the tiredness.
Next day early morning we were off to Jog, through the lush green Malanadu or the Rain Country, and it really was a roller coaster ride through the winding roads.
Once we reached Jog falls, we were treated with the amazing view of the Sharavathi river valley.
Enjoying the view of the valley and the falls from the edge of the falls we moved to the observation deck.
The observation deck is the best place to get the complete picture of the water fall, where you could see all four different falls (Raja, Rani, Rocket and Roarer) forming the mighty Jog.
From here we can go down to the river bed through bushes and steep steps cut in rocks( around 1400 in number).
The view kept changing and the whole ambiance became so dramatic and refreshing with a drizzle created by the falls.
And finally we had to turn off our cameras and just feel the ambiance. Looking up, I felt, streams were descending from clouds and meeting the river silently.
No one felt like coming back from this extravagant show of nature, but with limited time we had to explore a few more places before catching our train back to Bangalore.
Ikkeri temple: The old temple of Ikkeri is a less known place and worth exploring.
Sringeri: We managed to explore the Vidyashankara temple and the matha of Adi shankara. The stone carvings of the temple were mighty impressive and show cases the development of the craft some 700 years ago.
Best time to visit: Jog changes from a mighty intimidating falls to a narrow stream from time to time.
To me, the best time to visit Jog would be just after the monsoon(September and October).
Places to stay: Even though Sagara is the nearest town to Jog falls, more options for accommodation would be available in Shimoga.


text:
import Data.List

import Graphics.Proc

main = runProc $ def { procSetup = setup, procDraw = draw, procUpdate = update }

width  = 640
height = 360

xspacing = 8   -- How far apart should each horizontal location be spaced
w = width + 16 -- Width of entire wave
maxwaves = 4   -- total # of waves to add together
npoints = int $ w / xspacing

theta = 0.0

--  amplitudes  -- Height of wave
--  dxs         -- Value for incrementing X, to be calculated as a function of period and xspacing

setup = do
  size (P2 width height)
  frameRate 30
  -- colorMode(RGB, 255, 255, 255, 100)
  (amplitudes, periods) <- fmap unzip $ forM [0 .. maxwaves] $ \i -> do
    amplitude <- random2 (10, 30)
    period    <- random2 (100, 300)
    return (amplitude, period)
  let dxs = fmap (\period -> (2 * pi / period) * xspacing) periods
  return (theta, amplitudes, dxs)
  where theta = 0

draw (theta, amplitudes, dxs) = do
  background (grey 0)
  renderWave (calcWave theta amplitudes dxs)

-- Increment theta (try different values for 'angular velocity' here
update (theta, amplitudes, dxs) =
  return (theta + 0.012, amplitudes, dxs)

calcWave theta amplitudes dxs =
  fmap sum $ transpose $ zipWith3 (wave1 theta) amplitudes dxs [0 .. maxwaves]

wave1 theta amplitude dx n = take npoints $ fmap (\x -> dx + amplitude * func (x + theta)) [0, dx .. ]
  where
    func
      | n `mod` 2 == 0 = sin
      | otherwise      = cos

renderWave ys = do
  -- A simple way to draw the wave with an ellipse at each location
  noStroke
  fill (greya 255 78)
  ellipseMode Center
  forM_ (zip [0 .. npoints] ys) $ \(x, y) -> do
    ellipse (P2 (float x * xspacing) (height/2+y)) 16

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Making Solar-Powered Music — The Reykjavik Grapevine
Making Solar-Powered Music
grapevine-admin
As his Iceland Airwaves performance of Solaris with Ben Frost nears, Daníel Bjarnason walks us through the process of recording the piece
By Thomas L. Moir
A tall and dapper gent strolls into the café, pauses and scans the room with a concerned expression. He's waiting for one of us to make eye contact with him to indicate we're the one he's meeting. I wait until his eyes wander downwards to me. He stares at me inquisitively, but doesn't speak.
I stand up and say 'Daníel?' His face relaxes. 'I am sooo sorry,' he says.
He is apologising for being late. It's not a big deal; in fact I couldn't care less. I've been looking forward to meeting him. He tells me he's been at home painting his windows in preparation for the incoming winter. "There aren't many days left, before it gets too cold to do it," he advises.
The Daníel in question is Daníel Bjarnason: Icelandic classical musician, conductor and member of the highly revered, rather select Bedroom Community roster of artists which he shares with the likes of Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurðsson.
He is also a co-pilot on 'Solaris,' an album of music inspired by the 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky sci-fi classic of the same name. Together with Bedroom Community stablemate Ben Frost, he has been working on the project for the last two years alongside the Sinfonietta Cracovia.
"We were thinking about doing a new soundtrack with the film. But we would always have to show it with the film, and it just didn't feel as interesting," Daníel says of the collaboration. "So we decided pretty early on to do music based on the film or inspired by the film that would be like a new soundtrack. But it wouldn't be a soundtrack that would fit on certain scenes. It would just be music inspired by the film."
RE-SCORING A CLASSIC
Solaris was recorded over a two-day recording session where the duo sat down in front of the film and improvised along to it. "We had never talked about what we wanted to do or anything. We just met in the studio, I prepared the piano, Ben had some guitar processing going on, and we did that twice," Daníel recalls of the process.
"It was just those two sessions. It was just like day one, we put the film on, we started playing. Day two, same process," he explains. "After that, we never watched the film again."
It wasn't until 6 months after those initial recording sessions that the two reconvened to arrange Solaris into a piece of music. Daníel took the material from the initial improvised sessions and transcribed it into sheet music for a string orchestra. What followed was two days of workshopping with the Sinfonietta Cracovia to flesh out the material proper.
"Originally there was actually also some brass, but they didn't turn up for the rehearsals. So we ended up just not using them," he laughs to himself. "It was such a great coincidence; it became this music that was missing a part. At the same time it was complete, really sparse."
UNLEARNING THE PIANO
For the recordings, Daníel elected to play a prepared piano. He took a regular piano and fitted it with screws, wooden pegs and assorted rubber bits and pieces, skewing the sound of each note. "It becomes sort of a thing in between playing percussion and playing piano," he explains.
While recording, the composer underwent a process of 'unlearning' his classical music education in order to play the instrument. "You sort of have to figure out, ok that note sounds like that, that one has that sound, and these ones sound nice together. I just love playing the prepared piano," he enthuses. "I like it more than playing normal piano."
Given the imperfect nature of the sounds produced by the instrument, recreating the piece live can make for diverse outcomes from show to show. The duo, who will be performing Solaris at Iceland Airwaves, have been touring the piece around Europe, and noticing considerable differences between performances. "Everything me and Ben do is improvised within a structure, but inside of that structure it's all free. It can be quite different," he says of the live shows.
DISPUTES OVER ART
It all sounds like it was a very smooth process, I comment. Were there any real obstacles or disagreements? "It was actually incredibly smooth," he says. "The one thing that was the most complicated part of the process was actually the artwork for the album."
The contentious cover art in question sees Daníel and Ben recreating a scene from the film, one where the protagonist Kelvin is seated on his bed, being caressed by a regeneration of his dead wife. "It was kind of a joke to begin with," says Daníel, who plays Kelvin in the image.
I confess to Daníel that when I first saw the image I thought, 'oh someone is re-making Solaris, great. But I guess a bearded guy is playing Kelvin's wife.' I realised my mistake when a closer look revealed said bearded guy to be Ben Frost playing the part of Kelvin's wife.
"Yeah, Ben was walking around in a dress for a while, but that didn't work out too well," Daníel recalls, staring into the middle distance, reflecting on the photoshoot. "It was terrifying actually" he laughs. "But I think the picture's good," he pauses, his mind still ticking over, "in a really weird way."
Daníel Bjarnason
Thomas L. Moir
Next: In With The New: Þoka play their first Airwaves ever!
Previous: Old Band On The Dock: GusGus are the champions of Airwaves!
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Download Morðingjarnir's "Þú komst með jólin til mín" (feat. Thorunn Antónía)
by grapevine-admin 8:21 am
Vacationer VS. Blouse: WHICH CONTEST WINNER HAD A BETTER TIME AT AIRWAVES 2K12?
by grapevine-admin 5:05 pm
The Wayward Wanderings Of A Confused Expat – Iceland Airwaves Edition
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Instrumetal And Experimetal // And With A Growl, It Was Over…

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Chennai Port, formerly known as Madras Port, is the second largest container port of India, behind Mumbai's Nhava Sheva. The port is the largest one in the Bay of Bengal. It is the third-oldest port among the 13 major ports of India with official port operations beginning in 1881, although maritime trade started much earlier in 1639 on the undeveloped shore. It is an artificial and all-weather port with wet docks. Once a major travel port, it became a major container port in the post-Independence era. An established port of trade of British India since the 1600s, the port remains a primary reason for the economic growth of Tamil Nadu, especially for the manufacturing boom in South India, and has contributed greatly to the development of the city of Chennai. It is due to the existence of the port that the city of Chennai eventually became known as the Gateway of South India.

The port has become a hub port for containers, cars and project cargo in the east coast of India. From handling a meagre volume of cargo in the early years of its existence, consisting chiefly of imports of oil and motors and the export of groundnuts, granite and ores, the port has started handling more than 60 million tonnes of cargo in recent years. In 2008, the port's container traffic crossed 1 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). As of 2011, the Chennai Port was ranked the 86th largest container port in the world and there were plans to expand the capacity to about 140 million tonnes per annum. It is an ISO 14001:2004 and ISPS-certified port and has become a main line port having direct connectivity to more than 50 ports around the world.

History

Before the 1800s

Although the settlement of Madras did not form until after the mid-17th century, the region surrounding the present-day port remained an important center for military, administrative, and economic activities since the 1st century CE under various South Indian dynasties, namely, the Pallava, the Pandya, the Chola and the Vijayanagara empires. Chief among them was the Pallava dynasty, which reigned from the 6th to 9th centuries CE. The ancient town of Mylapore, known to Roman traders as "Meliapor", was an important port of the Pallavas and is now part of Chennai.

The region also attracted many distant civilisations, with the Christian apostle St. Thomas believed to have preached in the area between 52 and 70 CE. In 1522, the Portuguese built the São Tomé harbour, named after St. Thomas, on the site of today's port and the São Tomé church on the grave of Saint Thomas. The following years saw the arrival of other Europeans, namely, the Dutch arriving at Pulicat in 1613 and the British arriving in 1639. In 1639, the British East India Company bought a three-mile long strip of land lying along the coast between the Cooum delta and the Egmore River encompassing an area of about five square kilometres from the Vijayanagara King Peda Venkata Rayalu. Soon obtaining permission from the regional ruler, Damarla Venkatadri Nayakudu, the British built a warehouse and factory on the site, and in 1640, the British expanded the occupation by building the Fort St. George and establishing a colony on the site of the future port of Madras.

In 1746, under the leadership of Admiral La Bourdonnais, French forces captured and plundered Madras, the fort and surrounding villages. However, they returned the town along with the port to the British under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. The British then strengthened the fort to defend the port not only from the French but also from the increasingly powerful Sultan of Mysore and other regional rulers.

Colonial era

By the late 18th century, most of the southern region of India had been conquered by the British and Madras was established as the capital of the Madras Presidency. During this period, the port flourished under the British rule, becoming an important naval base and urban center. A port at Madras was first suggested by Warren Hastings in 1770 when he was posted here, who later became the first Governor General of India. However, it was not until the 1850s that work began on a pier to berth vessels following suggestions from the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Till 1815, it was an open roadstead and exposed sandy coast, swept by occasional storms and monsoons. At the time, the natural harbour was so shallow that ships had to anchor over  offshore, and cargo was delivered to and from the shore in masula boats and catamarans. Cargo losses were high, close to 90 percent, in addition to pilfering with several goods from the ships often taken to the nearby evening bazaar. A  iron-screw pile pier capable of berthing larger vessels was built perpendicular to the shore in 1861. However, the storms of 1868 and 1872 made the initial piers inoperative. In 1875, Edward VII laid the foundation stone for a new port, and the masonry work for L-shaped breakwaters was started in 1876. The northern and southern groynes of the harbour were constructed, to create a still water enclosure that would be unaffected by storm and surf water. However, the groynes collapsed in 1877. The same year, construction of the south pier was commenced with concrete blocks weighing 33 tonnes each brought from Pallavaram, and the port started handling ships inside the harbour from 1881. However, again the storm of 12 November 1881 completely washed the almost-completed harbour, breaching over half a mile of breakwater. An artificial harbour was then built and the operations were started in 1881, and the pier was rebuilt in 1885, although there was a demand for relocating the entrance. Work on the harbour was completed in 1911. The Chennai Port Trust has taken the year 1881, the year of rebuilding, as the starting year. The cargo operations were carried out on the northern pier, located on the northeastern side of Fort St. George in Chennai. In the first couple of years the port registered traffic of 300,000 tonnes of cargo handling 600 ships. The first railway line in South India was laid between Madras and Arcot which started operating in 1856. By the late 19th century, the port was well connected to the other two important cities in the British colony, viz. Bombay (Mumbai) and Calcutta (Kolkata). In 1904, a new northeastern entrance was added to control siltation in the basin, after closing the original eastern entrance. The port's quays (berths) were constructed at different periods—the South Quay I in 1913, the five west quay berths between 1916 and 1920, the north quay in 1931 and the South Quay II in 1936, in the Inner Harbour, later christened Dr. Ambedkar Dock. Chennai was the only Indian city to be attacked by the Central Powers during World War I when a German cruiser, , shelled the oil depot within the port belonging to the Burmah Oil Company and raided vessels in 1914 disrupting trade, resulting in the death of at least 5 sailors. Other than Calcutta, which was practically taken over by the American army, Chennai port was the only other operational one in eastern waters during the Second World War. In 1911, the Royal Madras Yacht Club (RMYC), which is based within the Chennai Port premises, was founded by Sir Francis Joseph Edward Spring, the first chairman on the Madras Port Trust who was responsible for Chennai becoming a trading hub, especially during World War II. In 1916, the harbour office building was constructed.

From 1905 to 1919, major improvements took place in the port under the stewardship of the visionary Sir Francis Spring. Being an artificial harbour, the port was vulnerable to cyclones and accretion of sand inside the basin due to underwater currents, which reduced the draft. To charter the course of the port development, Spring, who assumed charge as the chief engineer of the port in 1906, drew a long-term plan in a scientific manner to overcome challenges, both artificial and natural. The shifting of the entrance of the port from eastern side to the northeastern side protected the port to a large extent from the natural vulnerabilities. By this time, the port covered an area of 400 acres. By the end of 1920, the port had a dock consisting of four berths in the west quays, one each in the east and south quay along with the transit sheds, warehouses and a marshalling yard to facilitate the transfer of cargo from land to sea and vice versa. In 1929, the Mercantile Marine Department, which was working directly under the Ministry of Shipping till the establishment of the Directorate General of Shipping at Mumbai in 1949, was established to implement the first SOLAS and Load Line conventions. Additional berths were added in the 1940s with a berth at south quay and another between WQ2 and WQ3. The year 1946 saw the establishment of the Port Health Organisation. In 1947, when India gained independence, Chennai became the capital of the Madras State, renamed as Tamil Nadu in 1969.

Post-Independence
Post-Independence, the development of the port gained momentum. In 1959, a passenger station on the first floor of the transit shed at north quay was commissioned. In 1961, construction of signal station at north quay was completed. In the same year, the port's Jawahar Dock was inaugurated by the then prime minister of India, Lal Bahadur Shastri. In 1964, the Jawahar dock with capacity to berth 6 vessels to handle dry bulk cargoes such as coal, iron ore, fertiliser and non-hazardous liquid cargoes was created on the southern side changing the topography of the port. To handle vessels with as much as  draft, the port developed the outer harbour, named Bharathi Dock, for handling petroleum in 1972 and for mechanised handling of iron ore in 1974. In 1972, the first oil jetty was constructed at Bharathi Dock-I capable of handling tankers up to 100,000 DWT to handle imports of crude oil destined for the Manali Oil Refinery (later named the Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited). In 1974, the iron ore berth was added to the port for exports to Japan and other countries in the Far East. The second oil jetty was added at Bharathi Dock-III in 1986 capable of handling tankers up to 140,000 DWT to meet increasing demands for crude oil and petroleum products. The iron ore terminal is equipped with mechanised ore-handling plant commissioned in 1977 at Bharathi Dock-II capable of handling ore carriers of maximum size 1,45,000 DWT, one of the three such facility in the country, with a capacity of handling 8 million tonnes and a loading rate of 6,000 tonnes per hour. The port's share of iron ore export from India is 12 percent. The dedicated facility for oil led to the development of oil refinery in the hinterland. This oil terminal is capable of handling Suezmax vessels.

In the 1970s, containerisation started in India in a limited way with the creation of interim container handling facilities at Mumbai and Cochin ports in 1973. During the same period, Chennai Port began handling containerised cargoes. In 1983, a container terminal was built at the Bharathi Dock with a  quay, a  container yard, and a  container freight station, which was commissioned by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi on 18 December 1983 as the country's first dedicated container terminal facility. The terminal was provided with tow-shore cranes and other shore facilities. In 1991, the port's container terminal quay was lengthened by  with two additional tow shore cranes. In November 2001, the container terminal and back-up area was privatised through a 30-year concession with Chennai Container Terminal Private Limited. Continually increasing container traffic resulted in another  extension of the quay in 2002, bringing the total berth length to . During 2008–09, the port recorded a 17.2-percent share of container traffic in India. Having the capability of handling fourth-generation vessels, the terminal is ranked among the top 100 container ports in the world. To meet the demand in container handling, the port is added with the second container terminal with a capacity to handle 1.5 million TEUs. The port is also planning a mega container terminal, capable of handling 4 million TEUs per annum expected to be operational from 2013, when the first phase of the project will be completed. The full project will be completed by 2017.

When the city of Madras was renamed as Chennai in 1996, the Madras Port Trust followed suit and was renamed as Chennai Port Trust. In 2000, the port began to handle pure-car-carrier shipments of automobiles. In 2003, the 200 m naval berth was given for 30-year lease. The 2004 tsunami devastated the shores of the port, taking many lives and permanently altering the coastline.

Location and geography

Chennai Port lies on a flat coastal plain known as the Eastern Coastal Plains on the east coast of the Indian peninsula known as the Coromandel Coast in the Bay of Bengal. The bed slope is fairly flat. The port is situated on the thermal equator and is also coastal, which prevents extreme variation in seasonal temperature. The climate is tropical, specifically tropical wet and dry, and for most of the year, the weather is hot and humid, with temperatures ranging from a maximum of 42 °C in May to a minimum of 18 °C in January. The mean minimum temperature is 18 °C in January and 26.8 °C in May. The mean highest temperature is 29.3 °C in December and 39.6 °C in May. The port gets most of its seasonal rainfall from the northeast monsoon winds, from mid-September to mid-December. Occasionally, cyclones in the Bay of Bengal hit the coast. The average annual rainfall in the region is about 1298.11 mm, with 443.5 mm during southwest monsoon (June–September), 753.1 mm during northeast monsoon (October–December), 37.3 mm during winter season (January–February) and 64.2 mm during hot weather (March–May). The monthly average varies from 7 mm in April to 308 mm in November. Humidity ranges from 63 to 83 percent during January–March, from 57 to 72 percent during April–June and from 70 to 81 percent during October–December.

The tides in the port area are semi-diurnal in nature, that is, occurrence of two high and two low waters every day. The spring tides are up to . The mean tidal range varies from 0.914 m to 1.219 m at spring and from 0.805 m to 0.610 m at neap tides. The change in water levels combined due to astronomical tide, wind setup, wave setup, barometric pressure, seiches and global sea level rise are estimated as 1.57 m, 1.68 m and 1.8 m at 15 m, 10 m and 5 m depth contours, respectively. Waves ranging from 0.4 m to 2.0 m in the deep water around Chennai harbour have been experienced with the predominant being 0.4 m to 1.2 m with wave periods predominantly in the order of 4 to 10 seconds. During cyclone season, waves of height exceeding 2.5 m are common. The predominant wave directions during southwest and northeast monsoons are 145° from north and 65° from north, respectively.

The most prevailing winds in the region are the southwesterly between April and October and the northeasterly during the rest of the year. The predominant wind direction is mostly from W and SW direction during the rainy season and SW and NW during post-monsoon month. However, during January to March, winds from NE and E direction are predominant. During the northeast monsoon, that is, between October and January, the direction of wind is generally NE and NNE. During depressions in northeast monsoon, the wind velocity goes up to 50 km/h and up to 105 km/h during cyclones of duration 2 to 3 days. Gusts of 160 km/h have been occasionally experienced. During southwest monsoon between March and September, the wind blows predominantly from the south. During June, July and August, strong wind is experienced from southwest direction in mornings, from south during afternoons, and from southeast during nights. Wind direction is between 153° and 263° relative to the north, and the wind speed varies from 2 to 12 m/s.

Situated on a coast that constitutes chiefly of sandy shelving breaker-swept beaches, the region surrounding the port falls under Seismic Zone III indicating a moderate risk of earthquake. The port was developed into the sea by reclaiming land as there is no sheltered harbour. The depth of the draft is up to 17 m, and the soil in the entrance channel is predominantly sandy and silt. The port is bordered by the Cooum delta in the south and Royapuram fishing harbour in the north. Visibility in the harbour region is good throughout the year and low visibility is commonly associated with heavy rains during the northeast monsoon.

Historically, the port was responsible for the shoreline changes in the region, where the area south of the port has accreted significantly, resulting in the formation of the Marina Beach, whereas the coast in the northern region has undergone severe erosion. Ever since the harbour was constructed, the coast north of the harbour has been experiencing erosion at the rate of about 8 m annually. The shoreline has recessed by about 1,000 m with respect to the original shoreline in 1876. It is estimated that 500 m of beach has been lost between 1876 and 1975 and another 200 m between 1978 and 1995. About 350 ha land in the coast north of the port is lost into sea. On the other hand, the area south of the port is increasing 40 sq m every year due to the progradation.

Traffic growth

From 1881 to 1945, the cargo handled in Madras port varied from 0.5 million tonnes to 1 million tonnes. By 1979–80, the traffic touched 10 million tonnes and increased to 15 million tonnes in 1984–85. By 1991–92, the volume was 25 million tonnes, touching 41 million tonnes in 2000–01. Though there was a slump in the next three years, mainly due to the transfer of about 9 million tonnes of thermal coal to the Ennore Port, the port recovered to handle 47.25 million tonnes in 2005–06. In 2009–10, the port handled 61.06 million tonnes of cargo against 57.49 million tonnes in 2008–09 marking an increase of 6.20 percent and has set a target to handle 75 million tonnes in 2011–12 and 100 million tonnes in 2015–16. In 2010–11, the port handled 61.46 million tonnes, a 0.66 percent increase over the previous fiscal. The target set for the port for 2010–11 is 65.51 million tonnes against a target of 64.00 million tonnes during the previous fiscal. The terminal's throughput has increased from around 829,000 TEUs in 2006 to around 1.19 million TEUs in 2008. Crane productivity has been improved from 22 moves per hour per quay crane in 2006 to over 27 in 2009. The port annually handles nearly 20 million tonnes of both coal (8 million tonnes) and iron ore (12 million tonnes).

During 2009–10, the container traffic from the first terminal reached 1.216 million TEUs against 1.14 million TEUs in the previous fiscal. In 2010–11, this increased to 1.523 million TEUs, a 25 percent growth over the previous year. The second terminal handled over 300,000 TEUs during the calendar year 2010—up from 26,000 TEUs handled in the 3 months of operations since start up in 2009. The car exports from this port touched 273,917 units in 2009–10, 10.14 percent more than the previous year's 248,697 units, despite the recession.

The annual growth for container volumes handled by the Chennai port during the last 5 years till 2009–10 was 13 to 14 percent, while the average annual container growth in Indian ports is in the order of 8 percent. The growth increased to 25 percent during 2010–11, the largest growth rate among the top three container ports comprising JNPT, Chennai and Tuticorin. This is primarily due to capacity addition with the second terminal commencing operations coupled with new services starting to call the Chennai port.

The port currently has the capacity to handle 3,000,000 TEUs and with the commissioning of the third mega container terminal being planned, the capacity would go up to 8,000,000 TEUs.

Due to excessive pollution from coal dust, the port for a brief period of time suspended shipping food grain. However, following the transfer of coal shipments to the neighbouring Ennore Port since 2002, handling of food grain was resumed after about 9 years in 2003. The port hopes to handle 4 million tonnes of food grain annually over the next few years.

The following table lists the number of vessels handled in the past:

As of 2017, about 800 trailers entered the port on a daily basis.

Port layout and infrastructure

Chennai port is the second smallest in the country measured by surface area, encompassing only 274 hectares. Chennai port area is divided into north, central and south zones and fishing harbours. The port has 26 alongside berths, including 21 deep-drafted berths and 2 oil jetties, in the 3 docks, viz., Dr. Ambedkar Dock, Satabt Jawahar Dock, and Bharathi Dock along with the container terminal, and draft ranging from . Dr. Ambedkar Dock has 12 berths, Jawahar Dock has 6 berths, Bharathi Dock has 3 berths (for oil and iron ore), the container terminal has 3 berths and the moorings has 1 berth. The berths can handle containers as well as liquid and dry bulk and breakbulk cargoes. The approach channel to the port is  long, and the turning basin is  in length. A total of 9 channels marks buoys for the approach channel.

The Jawahar Dock has six berths with a total length of  and maximum permissible draft of  and . All berths are , and half of them have maximum draft of . The dock mainly handles coal, fertiliser, iron ore lumps, pellets, edible oil, and phosperic acid. The Dr. Ambedkar Dock has 13 berths with a total length of  and maximum permissible drafts from . The longest berth is  long with maximum draft of . Berth No. 7 is  long with maximum draft of , whereas Berths 8, through 12 are each  and have maximum draft of . Berth 14 is  long with maximum draft of . Berths 18 and 19 are naval berths. The dock has car and cruise terminals and chiefly handles general cargo, cars, granite steel, and food grains. The Bharathi Dock contains three berths with total quay length of , with berths ranging from  in length with maximum permissible draft of  in length with maximum draft of . The dock has three terminals, namely, container terminal, iron ore terminal, and oil terminal. It mainly handles containers, iron ore, and POL (petroleum, oil and lubricants).

The oil terminals at the port's Bharathi Dock (BD1 and BD3) can accommodate tankers to 100,000 dead weight tonnage (DWT), and a third berth can handle tankers up to  and 140,000 DWT. Berth BD1 can accommodate ships to  long. The oil terminals have capacity to handle 12 million tons of cargo per year and to pump 3,000 tons of crude oil and 1,000 tons of petroleum products per hour. Each berth is equipped with five marine loading arms, and the berths have pipelines to convey crude oil, white oil, and furnace oil.

The port handles Suezmax oil tankers (mid-sized cargo vessels) of up to a draft of 17 m at BD3 during day light, high tide as the per the present navigational practice and also during night hours subject to fulfilment of safety considerations on a ship-to-ship basis. As of 2018, the port can handle tankers with a capacity of 150,000 dead weight tonnage (DWT).

The iron ore terminal, which can handle 6 million tons per year and can load iron ore at a rate of 6,000 tons per hour, is also located at the Bharathi Dock. Berth BD2 can accommodate ore carriers up to  in length. The terminal's separate receiving and shipping lines can function as an interconnected system. The terminal is served by rail lines and includes an ore stock yard with capacity for 544,000 metric tons.

The container terminal has four berths with a total quay length of  and maximum permissible draft of . With capacity to handle fifth-generation container vessels, three of the four berths are  long, and one is  long. The berths are served by seven quay cranes, including five super-post-Panamax and two post-Panamax cranes, and 24 gantry cranes. Operated by Chennai Container Terminal Private Limited, the container terminal has capacity for 950,000 TEUs. The container yard has 3,960 ground slots and 240 reefer plug points. The terminal contains 24 container freight stations with warehouse storage and offers 24-hr customs inspection and clearance facilities. The container terminal has direct services to Europe, China, the United States, Korea, Thailand, the Mediterranean region, and West Africa.

The warehousing and storage capacity available at the port is as follows:

The port handles a variety of cargo including iron ore, coal, granite, fertilisers, petroleum products, containers, automobiles and several other types of general cargo items. Due to the increase in container traffic, a second container terminal was planned and tender works given to PSA Sical. It has asked for support for a mega container terminal. The terminal would be the first deep-water terminal of its kind in India and would be able to handle ultra-large container ships of 13,000–15,000 TEUs capacity and length exceeding . The management of the container terminal was taken over by P&O Ports of Australia. This has a volume growth of 20 percent per year and has 59 percent of the market share of South India. It has services to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Korea, China, Mediterranean, Europe, Australia and the United States.

The port has a current depth of  and is capable of handling fourth-generation vessels up to 150,000 DWT. It is going through an expansion and will have a depth of , a continuous quay length of  and back-up area of around . Two new breakwaters for a total length of  will be constructed – one as extension of the existing outer arm and the other extending from the fishing harbour breakwater. The consequent silting will reclaim about  of land. The mega terminal will be built on a  portion of this land. The terminal will have a continuous quay length of  with  side along draft, capable of handling ultra-large container ships carrying over 15,000 TEUs. This will help it handle the latest generation vessels. Though the port is largely a container port, it has strategic importance as 3 service berths are allotted to the Indian Navy.

The approach channel to the port has two sections—the entrance channel within the protection of outer arm and the outer channel beyond the protection of outer arm. The total length of the entrance channel is 7 km. The width of channel gradually increased from 244 m to 419 m at the bent portion, then maintains a constant width of 305 m. The depth of the inner and the outer channels are 18.6 m and 19.2 m, respectively, below chart datum, with a swell allowances of 3 m. The entrance is 350 m in Bharathi Dock and 125 m in Dr. Ambedkar Dock. The draught in the navigational channel is maintained by dredging approximately 1 million cubic metres annually.

Terminals

Container terminals

The port has two container terminals, run separately by DP World Pvt. Ltd and Singapore's PSA International Pte Ltd, with a combined capacity to handle 2.8 million standard containers a year. The two terminals loaded 1.11 million standard containers between April and December 2010, up from 886,000 containers a year earlier. Both the terminals have daily trains to Inland Container Depots (ICDs). There are plans to build a mega container terminal, the third one at the port, with private funds worth  36,860 million. The port is served by various container liner services, namely, APL, K Line, Maersk Line, MOL, NYK, PIL and several regional container lines.

Chennai Container Terminal
Chennai Container Terminal (CCT) is the first container terminal in Chennai port built in 1983. The container terminal was privatised in 2001 and is operated by DP World since 30 November 2001 with a capacity of 1.2 million TEUs. CCT is managed under a 30-year build-operate-transfer agreement set up with the Chennai Port Trust of the Government of India. The terminal is capable of handling fifth-generation vessels up to 6,400 TEU and has direct services to China, West Africa, Europe and the United States. The terminal crossed the "one million TEU" mark in 2007. In 2011, it handled 1.12 million TEUs. It has a quay length of  and has 4 berths with an alongside depth of , height (ISLW to Top of Cope) of , channel length of  and channel depth of . The total terminal area covers 21.1 hectares, and yard stacking area covers . The terminal has an on-site rail track. It has a berth productivity of 22 moves per hour and an average turnaround of 26 hours. The operator has invested around US$128 million to get new equipment at the terminal. At present, 7 quay cranes with Super Post Panamax handling capacity and 24 rubber-tyred gantry cranes (RTGs) form part of the inventory. The operator has also taken over from Chennai Port 4 quay cranes, 10 RTGs, 3 reach stackers, 240 reefer plugs, and 2 top lifters and one empty container handler. CCT is ranked at the 79th position among the top 100 container terminals in the world. It is one of the fastest growing terminals in India with a CAGR of 20 percent. It presently has four mainline services with direct connectivity to Mediterranean, Europe, Thailand, Vietnam, China and Korea. The mainline services are complemented by seven weekly feeder services and one coastal service to Colombo, Vizag, Penang, Port Klang, Singapore, Yangon and Port Blair, respectively. Presently, CCT is connected to 50+ ports worldwide. A container freight station, with a covered area of , operates within the port offering such services as inspection, LCL de-stuffing and delivery of import cargo. CCT has plans to invest  1 billion to install two quay cranes.

Chennai International Terminal

Chennai International Terminal Pvt Ltd (CITPL) is the second container terminal that started operations from 22 June 2009 with berths SCB1, SCB2 and SCB3. The build-operate-transfer facility, built at a cost of about US$110 million, is a joint venture between PSA International and Chennai-based Sical Logistics Ltd. With  of yard space and three berths with a total quay length of , the terminal offers an annual capacity of 1.5 million TEUs. With the addition of 4 post-Panamax quay cranes, capable of lifting two 20-ft containers per move, and 8 RTGs, it now has 7 rail-mounted quay crane (RMQC), 18 RTGs, 6 reach stacker and 120 reefer plugs. Once fully commissioned, CITPL would be able to accommodate 8,000-TEU vessels with drafts up to .

Ro-ro car terminal
Often called the Detroit of Asia, Chennai is base to several international car makers, namely, Ford Motor Co., Hyundai Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co., Renault SA, Daimler AG and BMW AG. Car export (mainly Hyundai) increased by 80.25 percent to touch  during 2008–09 as against  in the previous year. The port handled 65 car carriers compared with 40 in the previous year. In 2009, the port shipped nearly 274,000 cars, 10 percent more than the previous year. The port is now the number one ro-ro car terminal in the country. After Hyundai, the port have started attracting global manufacturers like Mahindra, Toyota, and Ford. Ford has decided to move exports to Chennai Port by 2010.

Hyundai Motor India is coming up with a first-of-its-kind dedicated automobile terminal at the Chennai port. The Chennai port facility is expected to be on the lines of its Ulsan Port, from where it exports half of Korea's 1,500,000 vehicles annually. The export terminal at the Chennai port would cater to its total export target of 300,000 cars, which would be 50 percent of its total production by 2009–10. The company has plans to develop the land into a dedicated terminal to serve as an export base. It is believed that the terminal would basically cater to its export of compact cars from India. The new terminal, coming up at the southern end of the container terminal, would be spread over  of land and includes a 300 m long, 30 m wide, and 12 m deep ro-ro berth. It would have two six-storey multi-level dedicated parking yard for 6,000 cars each, estimated at a cost of  400 million, where one ship load of cars can be stacked. The terminal, being developed at a cost of  800 million, would cater to other car exporters also and is expected to be completed by the end of 2012.

By 2017, the port handled less than 150,000 cars, chiefly by Hyundai, with Nissan and Ford moving out to the neighbouring Ennore Port.

Cruise terminal
Chennai Port is the only port on the East Coast of India with a cruise terminal. Chennai Port is one of the five major ports in the country that have been identified by the Ministry of Shipping for development of cruise terminals, the other four being Goa, Kochi, Mumbai and Mangaluru. As of 2018, the port receives an average of 4 to 5 cruise ships annually. The port has had passenger and tourist services to Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Manila, London, Suez, Aden and Colombo for over 100 years. There was regular passenger traffic during the British rule. Per official records, the port had an annual passenger traffic of 60,000 in 1956. In 1959, the port built a dedicated passenger terminal for coastal and cruise vessels. The passenger cruise terminal is located in the West Quay. The Shipping Corporation of India operated regular Chennai–Singapore services till 1984. On an average, 10 international cruise vessels dock in the port each year. The number of tourists visiting the port in 2008–09 was 2,616, which rose to 3,401 in 2009–10. The country's first cruise ship, AMET Majesty, is registered in Chennai and started operations from Chennai on 8 June 2011.

The modernised cruise terminal at the port was inaugurated on 12 October 2018 at a cost of  172.4 million. Spread over 2,880 square meters with ground, mezzanine, and first floors, the terminal has 10 immigration counters, with plans to increasing it to 20. It is equipped with four escalators and a cafeteria on the mezzanine floor. It has a capacity to seat 168 passengers on the first floor and 132 on the ground floor, with three-seater airport chairs. The building is powered by a 250-kw solar power panel provided at the rooftop.

Operations

The port handles around 8 million tonnes of coal for clients such as the Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board, Karnataka Power Corporation, cement plants of Tamil Nadu and independent power producers in northern Tamil Nadu and southern Andhra Pradesh. The coal handling for the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board was transferred to the Ennore Port. In 2005, as part of pollution-control measure, the port has installed wind curtains made of ultraviolet resistant fabric along the harbour's beachfront for over 1.5 km to the east of the coal terminal to prevent wind carrying coal dust into the city at a cost of  3.7 million. In 2008, the port has also installed a semi-mechanised closed coal conveyor system comprising two streams with a capacity of 15 million metric tons/annum and a handling rated capacity of 1,500 metric tons/hour/stream and running for a length of 5 km at two berths, namely, Jawahar Dock IV and VI, at a cost of  430 million to transfer the coal to the individual coal plots at the southern end of the port, from where the cargo will be transported by rail to respective destinations, thus preventing pollution from coal dust and eliminating movement of coal-carrying trucks within the port. The conveyor runs at an elevation of 10–13 m and has provision for longitudinal movement along the road to the plots and transverse movement for stacking coal at individual plots. Coal discharged into the hoppers located at the two docks is conveyed to coal plots through conveyors or tripper cars and is equipped with belt weigher. The conveyor system is expected to remain functional for about 5 years, till Ennore Port is ready to handle coal for all the clients.

Bunkering at the port is currently carried out through the barge jetty in the extreme northern end of the Bharathi Dock. This is a 30 m temporary facility with a draft of 2.5 to 3.0 m. This jetty is used exclusively by Indian Oil Corporation for bunkering of Navy, Coast Guard, bulk carriers and container ships—both coastal and foreign ships. However, the demand for bunker has outpaced the supply of infrastructure needed for bunkering in recent years.

In 2007, a fully automated, round-the-clock helpline for providing information on the ships berthed and waiting, the scale of rates and facilities available at the port, the first of its kind in the country, was established. In the same year, the Indian government agreed to lift restrictions on concessionary Sri Lankan tea and apparel exports at the port.

On 11 May 2011, the Madras High Court directed the Shipping Secretary that only clean cargo such as containers and cars be allotted to the port for handling from 1 October 2011. All dusty cargo such as coal and iron ore will be allotted to the Ennore Port.

The port is one of the six ports in India through which drugs are permitted to be imported, which is handled by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), the other ports being Kolkata, Mumbai, Nhava Sheva, Kochi and Kandla ports.

As of 2011, cargo movement to the port is increasing by 21 percent. Over 5,000 container trucks move through the port every day. However, the number of containers coming into the port has dropped by 30 percent in the same year.

In July 2012, a vessel traffic management system was installed at the port to track vessel movements for nearly 2 km, which can be extended to 48 nautical miles.

As of 2012, the port consumed 38 MW of power every year, spending about  290 million per annum on electricity charges.

In November 2019, a  540-million paved storage area for handling export cargoes was opened covering 11.32 hectares. A coastal berth covering 260 meters was also opened at a cost of  800 million.

Auxiliary functions

Meteorological functions

The cyclone detection radar station of the Southern Regional Meteorological Centre is located at the Centenary Building, the administrative building of the port. It is located atop the building at a height of about 53 m above sea level in a dome weighing 18 tonnes. The radar scans the atmosphere within a radius of 500 km. The Port Meteorological Office also functions from the same building.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) maintains Voluntary Observing Fleet (VOF) through the Port Meteorological Office comprising ships of Merchant Navy, Indian Navy and foreign agencies through which meteorological observations from the ocean area are collected on real-time basis for operational forecasting and climatological purpose.

Disease control
The Port Health Organisation, Chennai, functioning under the Director General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, was established in 1946 with an objective of preventing entry of yellow fever and other quarantinable and communicable diseases from abroad. Mosquito control in the port area is being undertaken by two agencies, namely, the Chennai Port Trust and the Port Health Organisation. Anti-mosquito measures are undertaken by the Port Trust while the issuance of yellow fever certificates, ship deratting and overall supervision of mosquito control is undertaken by the Port Health Organisation.

Connectivity

Extra-port connectivity
The foundation stone for the  6,000-million Chennai Port-Ennore road connectivity project was laid in January 2011. The Ennore Manali Road Improvement Project (EMRIP) is expected to be completed in 2 years. Of the total cost of  6,000 million,  2,500 million would be contributed each by the National Highways Authority of India and the Chennai Port Trust while  582 million would come from the Tamil Nadu government and rest by Ennore Port Ltd. EMRIP, which was conceived in 1998, has been under implementation for the past 10 years. The project envisages improvement of a  road network in north Chennai that connects all the container freight station handling containers for Chennai port. This includes  of Ennore Expressway,  of Thiruvotriyur–Ponneri–Pancheti Road,  of Manali Oil Refinery Road,  of the northern segment of Inner Ring Road, and  of Chennai Port Trust Fishing Harbour Road, in addition to shore protection measures comprising 13 groins along the Ennore coast. The original cost of the project was  1,500 million but was revised due to addition of service road to the four lanes of Thiruvotriyur–Ponneri–Pancheti road, provision of underpass on Ennore Expressway Road and drainage on Manali Oil Refinery Road besides escalation of cost during the intervening period. The project completion is expected by June 2013.

An  long,  wide elevated road project connecting the port with Maduravoyal is under construction at a cost of  16,550 million. Upon completion, this will be the country's longest four-way elevated expressway. The project was sanctioned in June 2007, and the foundation stone was laid in January 2009. The expressway starts from Gate No. 10 of the Chennai Port near the War Memorial and ends before Maduravoyal Interchange. It would run along the banks of the Cooum up to Koyambedu and would end along the Cooum near the Koyambedu grade separator. From there for a distance of three km up to Maduravoyal the elevated expressway would come up on Poonamallee High Road. There would be a total of four entry and exit ramps as part of the project. While the entry ramps would come up on Sivananda Salai and College Road, the exit points would be provided on Spurtank Road and Kamaraj Salai. The work at the Maduravoyal end began in December 2010. The project was initially expected to be completed by end of 2013. However, the project had been put on hold for years. In February 2014, the Madras High Court quashed the stop-work order of the state PWD and ordered the completion of the project.

Intra-port connectivity
The total port roads run to a length of 27.5 km with a minimum width of 6 m and a maximum width of 26 m.

The port is served by the Chennai Beach railway terminus in the Chennai Suburban Railway Network of the Southern Railway, chiefly handling suburban trains on the Chennai Beach-Tambaram section of the Chennai Suburban Railway Network. The port is one among the major ports having terminal shunting yard and running its own railway operations inside the harbour. There are two lines at the port. The port has broad gauge railway lines running up to  and handled 25 percent of the total volume of the cargo, 4,360 rakes (239,412 wagons) during 2009–10.

As part of the port development, internal railway lines are being augmented for the evacuation of containers from the port. Third and fourth railway lines are being developed by the Southern Railway to improve connectivity to the port and the rail share of container movement to 30 percent from the current 7 percent. The rest will be moved by road.

Per the 2004 statistics, 11 percent of the containers arrived by train and the rest by road.

Every month, nearly 150,000 container-laden vehicles (both import and export) transit through the port's only available gate (Zero Gate) at Royapuram, north of the port.

Pipelines
Crude is transported from oil tankers berthed at the port through a pipeline and then by road or rail. Since 1969, the port is connected to the Chennai Petroleum Corporation's (CPCL) refinery in Manali via a 30-inch-diameter pipeline running for a length of 17 km. CPCL is planning to replace this with 42-inch-diameter pipeline at a cost of  1,260 million along the proposed Quadrilateral Road Network from Chennai Port to Ennore-Manali Highway. However, citing threats to habitation, the government has refused clearance to the project.

In September 2018, the port completed work on the 42-inch-diameter crude pipeline with a length of 17 km and a carrying capacity of around 5,000 KL per hour (against 2,600 KL of the old pipeline) at a cost of  2,500 million.

Natural disasters
The Indian Ocean Tsunami of 26 December 2004, one of the deadliest in the recorded history, had a devastating effect all over the region and, of course, damaged the port's infrastructure, including cranes, wharfs, moorings and some part of the ship channel and hindered the operations of the port for a brief period. Some of the ships hit the wharves close to where they were berthed. Other damages at the port include collision of three ships while being towed to deep sea resulting in the loss of about 1,500 tonnes of sugar and damages to some of the cars that awaited export. The port suspended operations for two days. The total damage to property, infrastructure and equipment at the port due to the tsunami stood at  129.6 million. Rebuilding the entry channels and affected areas incurred another  100 million. The port suffered a loss of  30 million due to operational halt on 26 and 27 December 2004, during which around 250,000 tonnes of container could not be serviced, with trade of 15 vessels on sail and 10 vessels at berth affected. This was in addition to the loss due to waiving of marine charges owing to the disaster.

As a consequence of the tsunami, the port trust is planning to create an artificial beach from left of the Cooum river (next to the Napier bridge) right up to fishing harbour in North Chennai covering about 10 km to protect the port from seaside from similar natural calamities. The beach is planned within the port's territory before the east breakwater on the seaside and would not be accessible to the public. In addition, the port is also planning to reclaim the land adjacent to the Cooum during the Tenth Plan.

On the flip side, the disaster has made the port the deepest on the east coast. A bathymetry survey conducted by the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) to measure the depth of the sea has revealed the entry channel to the port has deepened enabling the berthing of vessels of deeper drafts. The high current generated by the tsunami waves dredged about 0.4 to 0.5 million cubic metres of sediments, which has deepened the 17.4 m-deep harbour by 1 to 2 m more, especially along the Dr. Ambedkar Dock and the Barathi Dock. Similarly, the depth of the entry channel, which was 18.6 m, has deepened by a metre.

Lights and lighthouses

There are both historic and modern lighthouses in and around the port, some of which have been decommissioned. The port is the location of one of Chennai's earliest lighthouses—the entrance channel tower. The 24 m (79 ft) tall tower with a focal plane of 26 m (85 ft), flashing white, red and green lights, is located north of the port. It is visible only from around the entrance channel. This tower is still active. However, the first lighthouse of the city is located just outside the port, in Fort St. George campus. It was active from 1796 till 1844. The second and third lighthouses are located in the Madras High Court campus near the port.

The present lighthouse is located about 6 km south of the port on the Marina Beach. It is a 46 m (151 ft) tall, 11-storied triangular cylindrical concrete tower with lantern and double gallery, attached to a 3-story circular harbour-control building, emitting light from a height of 57 m (187 ft) from the mean sea level. This lighthouse, which is active since 1977, is powered by a 440V, 50 Hz main supply.

The future
A third box terminal has been approved by the Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure. This will require investment of US$800 million and will be offered as a build-operate-transfer project, as part of a 30-year concession. Construction will take seven years to complete and the deep-water container terminal will have a capacity of 4 million TEU. The mega container terminal project, expected to be the single largest terminal ever built in India, is to be developed north of existing Bharathi Dock with two new breakwaters (total length of ), continuous quay length of  with  alongside depth (ultimate) and a basin area of 300 hectares and back up area of 100 hectares. The gigantic proportions will feature 2 km quay length in a straight line at the new outer harbour, with a 2.75 km extension of the existing outer arm breakwater and a new northern breakwater of 1.73 km emanating from the eastern breakwater of the fishing harbour. The project also involves converting waterfront into 225 acres of land. The other side of breakwater would be used by the port as a berth to handle oil vessels. The project will be the first deep-water terminal of its kind in India and can handle ultra-large container ships of capacity over 15,000 TEUs and length of . Overall project completion is expected by 2018. In September 2011, Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone Ltd (MPSEZ) emerged as the sole and lowest bidder for constructing the mega terminal. Based on earlier projections, Chennai is expected to handle 5 million TEUs by 2017.

Chennai Port Trust has plans to build a marina along a  stretch in the west quay to berth a dozen yachts. The marina will provide lockers, separate berths and other facilities to these sailors, who come in small boats. The sailors can then proceed inland for sightseeing. However, the plan still remains on paper. Although the plan to build a large-scale marina is at the proposal stage, the port cannot have a marina till the coal yard is vacated. After coal handling is moved out, the port will reclaim land by constructing groynes—rigid hydraulic structures built from an ocean shore that interrupt water flow and limit the movement of sediment.

The Rajiv Gandhi dry port (container freight station) and multi-modal logistics hub near Sriperumbudur special economic zone (SEZ) is under development at an estimated cost of  3,800 million, including land cost of  1,001.6 million. Proposed components include ICD/off-dock CFS, container yard, rail and road connectivity to national rail and road network, trade centre, warehouses for containerised cargos like leather garments, textiles, automotive components and electronic hardware. A total of 125 acres of land at Mappedu in the Sriperumbudur SEZ allotted by SIPCOT of the Government of Tamil Nadu is being acquired for the project on a 99-year lease basis. The first-of-its-kind project is expected to be completed by 2014. The distance between Chennai Port and the dry port is about . About  would be covered by the elevated corridor,  by National Highway 4 and balance by a single-line state highway that would be converted into two-lane soon. The dry port would consist of  of custom-bound area and  of non-custom bound area and would accommodate containers, hazardous and non-hazardous materials. A barge jetty-cum-liquid cargo terminal at an outlay of  250 million is also being proposed on PPP mode. This is one of the three container freight stations planned by Chennai Port Trust.

A barge handling facility at the Bharathi Dock is being developed at a cost of  250 million. The project is expected to be completed by 2013. The 200 m long barge jetty is being developed with a depth of 10 m and back area of 7,500 m. The jetty is proposed to be constructed between the iron ore berth and oil terminal so as to cater to barges and bunkers and similar vessels handling liquid cargo.

The port is planning to construct a parking facility on an 11-acre stretch in Thiruvottiyur for container trucks. The port is also investing  500 million to have more berths exclusively for bunkering.

The port has decided to have a 7.5 MW wind energy farm in Tirunelveli district at an outlay of  493.1 million.

To reduce congestion at the harbour, which has two bays (two each for entry and two for exit of containers), the port plans to modernise zero gate and open one more bay and widen the roads that lead to zero gate and to lay six to eight lanes from the zero gate to avoid stranding of vehicles.

In December 2011, as part of security measures, the Directorate of Logistics, Customs and Central Excise planned to get a fixed mega container scanner within the next few months at a location near the Zero Gate of the port at a cost of  600 million from a U.S.-based company.

The Chennai Port Trust plans to develop a barge handling facility inside the port at a cost of  260 million in Bharathi Dock through public-private partnership to meet the increase in demand for bunkering – fuel oil used aboard ships. The need for barge facility is also due to the increasing vessel movements and vessel size. The proposed length of the jetty will be three times the length of the present facility. The jetty could accommodate barges with carrying capacity of 1,000 tonne to 3,000 tonne. In addition to bunkering fuel and edible oil, other cargoes that are envisaged to be handled at the proposed facility include vegetable oil (crude and refined), furnace oil and molasses.

Records
On the night of 30 August 2018, vessel MT New Diamond, with 160,079 gross registered tonnage arrived at the port from the Basra oil terminal in Iraq, carrying 133,719 tonnes of light crude oil and was docked in the oil docks. This is the first time for an Indian port in an enclosed harbour to see berthing of a very large crude carrier (VLCC).

Sister ports
The port has sister port agreements with the following ports to co-operate in maritime transportation and port development. This also covers technical expertise, cruise knowledge, container terminal and tourism between the sister ports.

Notable employees
 Srinivasa Ramanujan, Indian mathematician (1912)

See also

 Ennore Port
 Kattupalli Shipyard
 Ports in India

References

External links
Official website
DP World Chennai
Chennai port makes it to top 100 ports
New container service at Chennai port

Ports and harbours of Tamil Nadu
Ports and harbours of the Indian Ocean
Buildings and structures in Chennai
Bay of Bengal
Economy of Chennai
Transport in Chennai

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


For My Sunday Song #107 is going to take us out into a world that is so strange and bizarre you might never want to return. We will explore the world of Rob Zombie and his song "Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown". The song is off his 2013 album 'Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor'. The song did chart at #15 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks, but that doesn't matter for Rob Zombie.
The song is in the normal Rob Zombie industrial style music. It is hard, heavy and slams a fist into your face. The main draw for me is his guitar player, the guitar god himself, John 5. John 5 is a beast of a guitarist. The sounds and his touch are always perfection and with this one there is at times a whole Sabbath vibe with some of his tone.
The song is about the state of rock radio today. What was once a flourishing hot bed of good music is dying off in droves. It changed the way we listened to music, but thanks to the internet and the digital download and streaming, the art of radio is dying off. I have to agree that radio seems to be a dying form. The problem with radio is no variety. They play the same songs and artists over and over and you don't really discover new music on the radio anymore. That is what Youtube and streaming is for now.
John 5 & the Creatures bring us a new album to start the year off and this time we get their first live album. 'It's Alive' was recorded live off the Season of the Witch Tour in 2017 at the Sellersville Theater in Sellersville, Pennsylvania in April 2017. The band consists of John 5 on lead guitar, Ian Ross on bass and Logan Miles Nix on drums. The amount of music that comes out of these there guys for this album is incredible.
In listening to an interview with John 5 on Talking Metal with Emily Strigl, I learned that album was recorded rather spontaneously. They arrived at the theater the day of the show and someone from the theater asked them if they wanted to record the show as they had a recording booth upstairs. The band joyfully said yes. And a little less than a year later, we have a live album released.
John 5 also stated in the interview that there are no overdubs or any re-recordings. What you hear is what you get. And what you hear is a live album that is near perfection which is also a little of the drawback. The album at times doesn't sound live as the musicianship is absolutely incredible. There are probably errors, but they are not noticeable (at least to my untrained ears).
"Rudebox" by Robbie Williams – Rudebox E.P.
When I gave this a listen the first time, this playlist put me in a great mood. I hope the new playlist coming up on Wednesday is as good as this one. Go to Apple Music and give it a listen at this link.


Listed with BEN SITU CalDRE: 01857207, ALLIANCE REALTY KINGDOM INC.
Fantastic location! In the center of Alhambra!. Fully remodeled Charming Spanish style single level home with front porch. This spacious home has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms (1,506 sq ft). A large open concept kitchen with island, a huge dining room and a Living room with high ceilings, a fireplace and a front arch window view. Brand new electrical and beautiful waterproof Vinyl flooring throughout the house. Another great feature is that a (753 sq ft) ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) is allowed to be built on this property. Close to Valley Blvd and public transportation, restaurants & supermarkets.


HAWSER, our selection for Volume 3 of the Indie Author Book Selection & Review (IABS&R), is a finely weaved, fascinating tale of Hawser (don't ask him his real name) as he recounts his time as a B-17 bombardier during the Allies's bombing campaign against the Germans.
We meet Hawser in a prisoner of war camp and it is from there he recounts for us all that has happened to him in the war before that point. We learn how he washed out as a pilot to become a bombardier, how he had to abandon his unit because of a murder, how he was abandoned as a child, how he met his arch nemesis, how he became trained in subversive warfare, how he became an expert bombardier, and how he became burnt out and disillusioned by the war, and finally, how he finally became a Nazi prisoner. From there we pick things back up from the present time in the story and we go along with him until the book's conclusion.
Within that very rough sketch that I just laid out of the novel, there are so many – too many some may argue – different plot twists and sub plots filled with suspense and murder and love and passion and discovery and deceit along the way that several times throughout the course of my reading the book I had to stop to marvel at Carroll's ability to manage it all so seamlessly and with such intrigue, all the while bringing out some of the larger and more poignant lessons learned from the war: mainly of the incalculable death and psychological and material devastation that the war wrought across the entire globe; however, it also teaches us – or reminds us – that war isn't always honorable and that not all people go to war to be heroes…some go to war simply because they want to kill.
And I was equally impressed with all the military and war jargon with which Carroll was able to flavor the story. It was his description of the B-17s and all their guns and ammunition and flight formations, and his knowledge of England during the war and its pastoral settings and its pubs and its quirky dialects that truly bring the story to life. Now I don't know how much research Carroll had to do – my guess is a lot – and I don't know how much of the detail he writes in the story is accurate – my guess is all of it – but I don't really care. I don't care because it all seems so real and so accurate that it significantly enhanced the story's ability to pull me into that zen-like space of blissful verisimilitude.
In the end, the only flaws to be found with the book are in its ambition and achievement. At times the sub plots pull back the tempo of the story and I never really felt that there was that one thing, that one element of the story that had enough heft to bring an immediacy, an urgency of discovery, from the beginning to the end of the tale. But I see that more as a good problem for an Indie Author to have.
So I say congratulations and thank you to J Hardy Carroll for writing such a powerful story that both entertains and reminds us just how much effort and expense throughout history we silly humans have invested in attempting to kill and conquer each other.
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Active Duty Soldier Sues U.S. Military For Medical Malpractice
During the Trump administration, a loophole that allowed the U.S. government to avoid liability in medical malpractice lawsuits was closed. As a result, active-duty military and veterans can now file lawsuits alleging medical malpractice against the VA. While the new law was meant to prevent an accountability black hole from forming around medical services provided to veterans, the problem still persists. VA doctors are still not required to carry medical malpractice insurance, but soldiers are still being injured. As such, public funds are being used to pay damages in these lawsuits.
In one case, an active-duty soldier who was giving birth to her daughter via Cesarean section had a medical device left inside her body. The device was not discovered until three months later. According to the lawsuit, doctors left a 2.8 inch Alexis retractor in the soldier's body after she delivered her baby.
Post-operatively, the patient appeared to be healing well, but she reported pain on her side and could not lay on that side comfortably while sleeping. During a 6-week postpartum checkup, the patient appeared to be improving, but over the next few months, her condition would begin to decline. It started with swelling in her legs. She went to the emergency room, but a doppler ultrasound failed to reveal the presence of the Alexis retractor. Despite ongoing pain, no images of the abdomen were ordered. She returned to the hospital 12 days later and the doctors still did not conduct imaging of the abdomen.
Over the next three months, the soldier's symptoms would worsen. Her legs continued to swell and the incision on her belly began to show signs of distress. 109 days after the original surgery, doctors finally found that the Alexis retractor had been left in her body after her C-section. Eventually, she was flown from her naval base in Guam back to Florida where she continued to rehab. Over the next four months, she would endure considerable pain and be unable to eat food.
Settlement offers
The plaintiffs say that the U.S. military has offered them at least two settlement offers, but they have rejected both. The first settlement offer was $150,000 which was kicked up to $200,000 shortly thereafter. The family is seeking $19.5 million for the level of negligence committed by the naval hospital in Guam.
In cases where a medical device is left inside of a patient's body, the doctor really has no defense to the allegations. When you leave a medical device inside someone's body, you have committed a surgical mistake that should have been corrected. The defense's next move will be to limit damages to the extent possible. However, the woman suffered considerable pain as a result of the mistake and will likely never be the same again, so her damages are substantial.
Since the U.S. government is now paying out massive claims related to uninsured doctors, it is now probably time to begin requiring VA and U.S. military doctors to carry medical malpractice insurance so that the public doesn't have to pay for their mistakes.
Talk to a Tampa Medical Malpractice Lawyer Today
If you have been injured by a medical doctor, call the Tampa medical malpractice attorneys at Palmer | Lopez today to schedule a free consultation and learn more about how we can help.
postguam.com/news/local/family-seeks-19-5m-for-alleged-medical-malpractice/article_97139d28-3aee-11ec-a985-47dcd0e686e0.html
By Palmer | Lopez | Posted on January 5, 2022


Time: it's a wonderful thing that nobody has these days. Too many meetings and appointments and happy hours and Instagram photos to get everything done. But stress no more! With a few downloads, you can possess the apps that'll make you more productive by saving minutes and hours you would otherwise waste away. Ready to check them out?
Calling itself a "personal buying assistant," Fetch makes shopping so much faster. Tell the app what you want to buy by uploading a picture, writing a message, or speaking to it, and then real people research the best prices and applicable coupon codes. Plus, they place the order for you using the billing and shopping info from your account. Easy, right?
If you hate traffic (aka if you are a normal human), download Waze now. The app not only tracks traffic, but uses real-time traffic conditions as reported by users able to see the most current road conditions, construction delays, and accidents. It doesn't get much more accurate than this, and that's all you can hope for when you need to get somewhere without any hassle.
Planning a get-together with friends or meetings with co-workers can be such a pain. How many emails do you send back and forth trying to figure out a day and time that works for everyone? With Doodle, you choose a few date options, send out a poll to the group, and quickly see what works with everyone's schedules. Your work and social life just got upgraded.
Great for families or friends, Cabin is a quick, effortless way to communicate and plan with groups. Aside from messaging and photo sharing, you can assign tasks (like pick up dinner) or get reminders to check something off your own list. There's also location tracking to see where people are if you're expecting them, so you can cut out all the back and forth texting.
If you only use one app to kick up your productivity levels, make it Evernote. The app is a streamlined place to take notes, store articles, record memos, snap pictures, organize receipts, and so much more. The best part is it makes it supereasy to search this data, so you can find all your essentials in a jiffy. Oh, and it runs off cloud storage, which means you can access all this precious info from nearly any device.
Ugh to waiting on a customer service call. If you've ever spent part of your day listening to an automated voice or pressing "0" to talk to someone, then you'll appreciate this app. Just enter which company and which department you'd like to talk to, and your phone will ring once a real, live agent is able to talk to you over the line. It's so simple, it's genius.
Which apps do you use to save time?


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Home / Book / The Secrets of Buddhist Meditation: Visionary Meditation Texts from Early Medieval China
The Secrets of Buddhist Meditation: Visionary Meditation Texts from Early Medieval China
Eric M. Greene
Series: Kuroda Classics in East Asian Buddhism
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The Secrets of Buddhist Meditation: Visionary Meditation Texts from Early Medieval China quantity
Hardback: $72.00
Paperback: $20.00
University of Hawaii Press
384 pages | 4 b&w illustrations
In the early 400s, numerous Indian and Central Asian Buddhist "meditation masters" (chanshi) traveled to China, where they established the first enduring traditions of Buddhist meditation practice in East Asia. The forms of contemplative practice that these missionaries brought with them, and which their Chinese students further developed, remained for several centuries the basic understanding of "meditation" (chan) in China. Although modern scholars and readers have long been familiar with the approaches to meditation of the Chan (Zen) School that later became so popular throughout East Asia, these earlier and in some ways more pervasive forms of practice have long been overlooked or ignored. This volume presents a comprehensive study of the content and historical formation, as well as complete English translations, of two of the most influential manuals in which these approaches to Buddhist meditation are discussed: the Scripture on the Secret Essential Methods of Chan (Chan Essentials) and the Secret Methods for Curing Chan Sickness (Methods for Curing).
Translated here into English for the first time, these documents reveal a distinctly visionary form of Buddhist meditation whose goal is the acquisition of concrete, symbolic visions attesting to the practitioner's purity and progress toward liberation. Both texts are "apocryphal" scriptures: Taking the form of Indian Buddhist sutras translated into Chinese, they were in fact new compositions, written or at least assembled in China in the first half of the fifth century. Though written in China, their historical significance extends beyond the East Asian context as they are among the earliest written sources anywhere to record certain kinds of information about Buddhist meditation that hitherto had been the preserve of oral tradition and personal initiation. To this extent they indeed divulge, as their titles claim, the "secrets" of Buddhist meditation. Through them, we witness a culture of Buddhist meditation that has remained largely unknown but which for many centuries was widely shared across North India, Central Asia, and China.
Eric M. Greene, Author
Eric M. Greene is assistant professor of religious studies at Yale University.
Robert E. Buswell, Jr., Series Editor
Robert E. Buswell, Jr. holds the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Humanities at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he is also Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and founding director of the university's Center for Buddhist Studies and Center for Korean Studies.
Reviews and Endorsements
The Secrets of Buddhist Meditation is an exacting and exemplary piece of scholarship in every respect. It converses critically with current work on Indian Buddhist literatures and newly discovered manuscripts, the genesis of "apocryphal" Chinese Buddhist scriptures, the transmission and translation of Indian Buddhist "sutras" in early medieval China, and revisionist writing on the formation of Chan and other schools of Chinese Buddhism. Moreover, it does so with extensive immersion in the latest scholarship in all of these areas.
—Daniel Stevenson, University of Kansas
Unquestionably, this book is a great contribution to our knowledge of medieval Chinese Buddhism as a whole. Eric Greene's work is clearly of a very high standard.
—Stefano Zacchetti, University of Oxford


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Germany: PV FITs to fall 2.5% following nearly 1 GW of new installs
Newly installed photovoltaics in Germany amounted to nearly one GW in September, and 1.85 GW between July and September. Consequently, it is now clear that the feed-in tariffs (FITs) will be reduced by 2.5% a month for the next three months.
October 31, 2012 Sandra Enkhardt
Germany's Federal Network Agency has finally released its photovoltaic installation figures for September. On the back of high activity, the FITs will be reduced by 2.5% in November, December and January, respectively. After January, the value will again be recalculated on the basis of further installations.
According to the agency, newly installed photovoltaic systems reached 980.83 MW in September. In addition to releasing the new figures, it also slightly revised the installation totals for July and August, meaning that between July and September, 1.85 GW of photovoltaic plants have been installed.
"The expansion of photovoltaic systems is still high. In September alone, they amounted to nearly one GW," said Jochen Homann, president of the network agency. "For the considered period, the specified installation corridor, which measures the electricity from photovoltaic systems, was around 3.9 GW."
As such, the FITs will be reduced to €0.1702/kWh from €0.1790 for small photovoltaic systems up to 10 kW in January. For systems up to 40 kW, a fee of €0.1614/kWh will be paid in January, instead of the current €0.1698. Meanwhile, plants up to one MW will receive just €0.1440/kWh instead of €0.1515, and parks between one and 10 MW will receive €0.1178/kWh, down from €0.1239.
According to the agency, Germany installed 6.12 GW of photovoltaics by the end of Q3, meaning total cumulative capacity is now sitting at over 31 GW.
Translated and edited by Becky Beetz.
Sandra Enkhardt
Sandra is Senior Editor of pv magazine Deutschland. She has been reporting on solar since 2008.
More articles from Sandra Enkhardt


Mahatma Gandhi, the man who won us independence is Gujarat's gift to India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi who flagged off the country's year long, high profile celebration of the Mahatma's 150thbirth anniversary on October 2,2018, hails from here as does Amit Shah who runs the ruling BJP .There are two state Governors and additionally a long line of bureaucrats, technocrats and politicians from the state doing duty in Delhi and around the country.
Two days before he kicked off the India-wide celebrations, the Prime Minister spent a busy day in Gujarat on September 30 with a slew of back to back engagements. One of them was the inauguration of the world class museum at the Alfred High School in Rajkot where the Mahatma had studied. Just two kms from it is the Rashtriya Shaala, a 97-year-old school founded by Gandhiji which closed down for want of funds two months ago.
There were over a thousand students at one time but the government during the present Prime Minister's tenure in the state did not find the primary school and the classical music school grant-worthy. Request to corporates for donations failed to get the desired response and the institution closed down.
Interestingly, chief minister Vijay Rupani hails from Rajkot and the present vice-chancellor of the Gandhian Gujarat Vidyapith, Dr Anamik Shah is also a product of the Rashtriya Shaala. And the thrust of the Prime Minister's speech was that past regimes had ignored Gandhi!
Inaugurating the Rs 300 crore chocolate plant of Amul, near Anand, India's milk town, on the same day ,the Prime Minister was himself guilty of ignoring the late V Kurien, the father of the cooperative milk revolution in the country and the man who made Amul possible.
There was not even a picture of the man. Not wholly unexpected, for a piqued chief minister Modi had ensured his ejection from key positions including Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) and Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF).
Incidentally, the day Kurien passed away, Modi was present at a function in the vicinity of Anand but remained straight-faced even when informed and moved on. Old timers sorely missed Kurien when they witnessed the dairy cooperative members being given a miserly eat while the VVIPs enjoyed a Rs 2500 per person lavish meal spread,at the function!
Though Prime Minister Modi is the present messiah of the Swachh Bharat movement, interestingly, it was Mahatma Gandhi who had launched the biggest sanitation drive in the history of Ahmedabad in 1919, cleaning almost 3000 tonnes of garbage. Thirteen plus years of Modi's helmsmanship and four years of his successors later, Gujarat accounts for three of the country's most polluted rivers and Pirana in Ahmedabad as one of the most toxic garbage dumps.
Spread over 84 hectares this dumping yard of 1982, today constitutes three 75 feet high massive mounds of garbage each weighing 69 lakh metric tonnes. Highly toxic, spewing methane and carbon dioxide, it requires 48,000 litres of water per day or 17.5 million litres of water per year to keep under control. And 4700 tonnes of garbage is added to it every day. Air-conditioners ,5 km away from the landfill site, are developing leaks due to corrosion.
Studies reveal massive groundwater pollution in the vicinity over four decades. Please remember that Ahmedabad stands sixth in the country in per capita plastic waste generation. So it is that a 2012 consultancy study aimed at a zero-waste city by 2031 undertaken at a cost of $ 20,000 is long forgotten and gathers dust while a veritable time bomb ticks in Ahmedabad's backyard!
On September 20, a National Green Tribunal (NGT) order, quoting a Central Pollution Control board (GPCB) report had bad tidings for the state. Of the 351 polluted river stretches in India 160 were in five state of Gujarat, Assam, Maharashtra, Kerala and MP, Rajkot's Bhadar stretch being India's third most polluted. In Vadodara, Mahi and Dhadhar river are in death throes and domestic sewage is sending Tapi river, off Surat city into convulsions.
Gujarat is among the top lethargic states in dealing with untreated domestic sewage and industrial pollutants. The crowning irony, Gujarat was first in Asia to form a Climate Change department and was last to suggest a climate change plan in the country!
BJP has been ruling Gujarat for close to a quarter century and is thus culpable for both acts of commission and omission in the state. It's failure in submitting Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) as mandated by the NGT, has resulted in projects worth Rs 50,000 crores being held up. This is because the NGT has directed the Ministry of Environments and Forests (MoEF) should not grant development permission in the regulated areas unless CZMP is submitted.
It is only after the hollering from the NGT on September 20 that Gujarat has finally agreed to formulate a river rejuvenation policy. Gujarat had all along chosen to be deaf to the Union water Resources ministry request for a list of lakes, water bodies and their current status. This despite the fact that in 2005,the state government had notified 44,138 lakes.
Thus, it is that the Prime Minister's own home state and one that he projects as a model for the country, does not present a flattering view of his own rule!