Paris: Day 2 in Pictures

As karthik and I felt we didn’t do enough justice to Eiffel tower, we thought of going for some early morning photography:

Then we also came here in the night

then we went to Versailles Palace…

The we explored some market

And Saint Germain, the fashion hub of the world. This street is where the who is who of the fashion industry is decided… We could only do widow shopping in here

Then went on for a boating in seine river for a night tour of Paris.

Then we went on to explore night life at Paris. walked through half the city.

Some food that we tried today

Bread Toast, Egg and Ham, served with hot chocolate and Orange juice.

Le petit déjeuner meaning French breakfast.

pasta with smoked salmon

well cooked lamb with potatoes beans and pepper, served with Bread crumps.

PS: Too tired to write. Will write more about experience in Paris.

Paris: Day 1 in pictures

After exploring some night life at Paris and a lot of talking Karthik and I weren’t able to sleep last night and it was 6:30 am in the morning. So, we thought of not sleeping and start exploring Paris. There are about 60 museums and monuments in Paris. First we took a museum pass and headed to Louvre museum.

Spread across half a mile in length, Louvre is the largest museum in the world. With over 300,000 collectibles, people say it takes 5 days to explore Louvre completely. I don’t have so much time so, we decided on this: “we’ll not try to crack any Da Vinci code, but we’ll spend time on only those that require admiration”. Here are some masterpieces…

 

Venus de Milo (Goddess of Beauty)

Victory of Samothrace (Goddess of Nike (victory))

Mars

One of the things I wanted to see at Louvre was the Renaissance paintings. I must say some of the paintings really had the potential to shake the world, like this one, the death of virgin (Death of Jesus’ mother) by Michelangelo.

Some Rafael's work… This picture is a close competitor to Mona Lisa…

And finally, this requires no introduction…

After Louvre, our next destination was Champs-Élysées, a 2-km long street and the most famous street in Paris. Its one of finest destinations for shopping in Paris (The city known as the fashion hub)…

The street ends at Arc de triumph…

It is no coincidence that the Arch looks similar to gateway of India because both were designed by the same architect.

We climbed up the Arch.

From one arc to another. The picture was from the top of Arch de triumph and in the picture you see a modern Arc at the place called La defance.

Then it was time for the Eiffel Towers…

It took us over an hour to get the entry ticket, but it was worth every minute and every penny.

The steel structure with all its symmetry is indeed a beauty.

While climbing to the top of Eiffel..

Here’s Paris city and the seine river from the top of Eiffel Tower.

New Delhi is just over 6000 kms, of course we cannot see from top of Eiffel.

Lastly, I’ve been writing about food. There are two picks for the day. One Crepe, It is our Dosa but filled with chocolate inside instead of masala. It is one of the famous street food here and I loved it. Second is Cassoule. It is duck meat with kidney beans, served with bread crumps.

La belle ville de lumières

The title reads “The beautiful city of lights”. That’s one of the many things that has impressed me about Paris in the last 6 hours. When I woke up from my sleep in the flight just before landing in Paris the areal view was amazing with all the lights glittering. While the areal view of any city for that matter looks amazing, it was different with Paris. The lights were not just the golden yellow, but had a bunch of other colors like blue, red, green etc. and was awesome. The sight was so relieving for me as I had just woke up from a jet lag and a tiring experience of being in three different countries on the same day (Germany, Spain and France). The very sight of those bright lights made me super excited about being in Paris.

It almost seemed like forever to reach Paris. First, I boarded the flight in Chicago at 4 pm and they played a beautiful movie in flight called Secretariat. By the time the movie was done we were almost about to land in Frankfurt, Germany. My watch still showed 11pm and we were reaching Germany in like 2hours. It was 6 am when we reached Frankfurt. I felt cheated like my one full night was being stolen away. I tried to catch some sleep and woke just before landing Germany. Contrary to what I expected, I got my immigration stamped at Frankfurt itself and I was shown the way to get out of the airport. I didn’t have a lot of time to explore Frankfurt so I decided to wait in the airport for my flight to Spain. My port of entry was Spain, so I had to go there before coming to Paris. So, I boarded another Lufthansa flight to Madrid and was really excited at Madrid. The weather was like 18 degrees centigrade and was bright and sunny and felt like being back in Hyderabad.

By then, I was tired of waiting in Airports, so immediately got out of the airport and went to a nearby place, explored some market and had lunch in a local restaurant. My pick of the day at Madrid is Potato Omelet. It had mashed potato and egg in it for sure. I need to try that at home. I went back to the airport at 3:30 pm as I had a flight to Paris at 5:30 pm. I reached the airport and checked in and as I was waiting for boarding I fell asleep. Woke up just before boarding began and went it to the flight only to sleep even before the boarding got completed. My flight was an hour and half late and I got to sleep through out the flight. I met Karthik at the terminal and went to his room.

We explored some night life at Paris and it was beautiful, strolling through the streets and eating out in a restaurant. The interesting thing is the restaurant got busier as the night progressed and by 3 am when we left the restaurant, it was full. No wonder they say “Citi never sleeps” [citibank’s caption]. Karthik stays in a upscale location in Paris called Norte-dame and the famous Cathedral built in 15th century is right opposite to his house. Below are some pictures:

Loved eating outside on the street.

Lastly, this captures the essence of being in Paris with the guitar and wine and all.

The picture was taken by Karthik, while writing this post, sipping in some French wine.

End of an Era

As an enthusiastic reader, visiting book stores is something I ‘d always love to do. After I started working in 2006, I stopped buying ‘used’ books and was buying new books from the book stores, sort of an ethical commitment. One of the things that happened in Hyderabad (for that matter, any metro in India) during that time was the opening of the Mega bookstores. Every other day we had a new mega bookstore opening in the name of Crossword, Books and Beyond, Odyssey etc. With these brick and mortar bookstores, going to a bookstore itself turned out to be a hobby of mine.

Going to a bookstore was not just about buying a book. First of all, the aroma of fresh books is so beautiful and is so inviting. The facilities like providing a couch to sit, let me pick books and start reading it at the bookstore itself. Selecting a book was itself an activity. I go and search for books in the shelf, pick up attractive titles, get the feel of having the book, read the back cover, then pick a couple of others. Then, I sit on the couch, start reading the prologue and if it is interesting start reading the first few pages and if I find it attractive, check the price. Now if I don’t find it worth it, start the whole process again. I tell ya, 9 out of 10 times I ended up having a good book in hand at the end of the day. Lastly, the activity for some reason was tiring and I always ended up eating something the moment I got out of the bookstore.

One of the pioneers of the brick and mortar bookstores business is Borders. They are the ones who started the concept of having a mega bookstore, where you get all sort of books under the same roof. All others just tried to catch up with them. Recently, Borders filed for bankruptcy. Today, I went in to check the closure sale at a nearby Borders store, where they put up signs saying “25-50% discount, everything must go!”. Oh boy, I felt butterflies in the stomach, the moment I went inside. The shelves are all empty and it really seemed like being in a deserted island.

One of the biggest mistakes Borders did was to outsource its online business to Amazon. Amazon cashed on it and went on to come up with brilliant ways of selling books. It offered free shipping for books ordered online. Today, Amazon even provides you the opportunity to sell the used books.They came up with an electronic reader called Kindle. They patented the E-Ink technology, that gives a close to reading a physical book experience. They went on collaborating with Authors to publish their works on Kindle. When it didn’t go well with the publishers, they went on to start a publishing house of their own. However, the biggest value proposition of kindle is “Think of a book and start reading it in 60 seconds”. I wonder what strategy of brick and mortar stores could compete against that.

For our strategy exam we were asked a question “Now that Borders has filed for Bankruptcy, what should other brick and mortar bookstores do. Should they try to acquire or form alliances with Borders?”. My conclusion was that “the best thing is to acquire, however, because the industry is no more attractive, they should not even do that. They should let the store close and buy the assets”. With Amazon leading in book sales through its online store, people now seldom visit these brick and mortar bookstores. And with the growing popularity of electronic book readers like “Kindle”, the physical books almost seems like being extinct. Last year, for every 100 physical books purchased, there were 115 kindle books purchased.

When I went to an underground library at Purdue, I imagined a library like those shown in movies with ladders to reach out for books. But I was pretty surprised that I couldn’t see anything of that sort. Library had not many books as I would like it to, but had a lot of space to sit and read or surf the web. But, I liked that the library had a large collection of national and international magazines and journals. All, our references are through online libraries as I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts.

Borders closing seems like the beginning of an end, of the brick and mortar bookstores and who knows, the (physical) books itself. I would, for sure, miss this hobby. I wish Borders come up with some new thing and the brick and mortar bookstores remain forever, else, my last book at Borders would be ‘The moveable feast’ by Ernest Hemingway.

Here are some pictures of Borders:

What’s in a name?

This post is about our university and my homage to what is known as ‘Boilermakers’! Yes, Boilermakers, that’s what we are called. The nick name has a history to it: In 1891 when the Purdue (American) football team defeated a nearby Wabash college in their home ground, the local newspaper ran a story titled ‘Slaughter of Innocents: Wabash Snowed Completely Under by the Burly Boiler Makers from Purdue’. The intention was not very modest, it was to embarrass or rather insult the Purdue team by referring them as ‘Boilermakers’. Back in 1890s, Engineering Education meant the students have to work on heavy metals, heating and molding metals like blacksmiths making boilers for industries. But when the students saw that name, they loved it. It caught the attention of Purdue press and the rest is history.

There are two public universities in the state of Indiana. Indiana University (IU) and Purdue University. The authorities didn’t want these two universities to compete with each other so, they decided to give each university a specialization. Indiana University got the college of Arts, Medicine and law, while Purdue got Science, Engineering and Agriculture. However, it is inevitable for universities to compete against each other. Of all rivalries, Purdue Vs. IU is the most celebrated rivalry. Here is a glimpse of the rivalry, the song is called IU Sucks! This song is played by the Purdue band before the start of every home basketball match irrespective of whether Purdue is playing against IU or not. pay close attention to when the crowd shouts in unison: IU Sucks!

Back to Boilermakers, the name has an underdog perception and we are loved by the people here, for Ivy league and other top universities represents students from very well to do families, it is the universities like Purdue that compete head-on with these universities and are kind of considered for the ‘common man’ (I don’t know how widely this term is used here). Also, Boilermakers is a brand, a promise that those who come out of the university are meant to be strong and can withstand any adversities. Time and again the Alumni have proven this, for instance, last year a plane that took off from New York had both its engines failed and was safely landed in Hudson river by an Alumnus Pilot Chesley Sullenberger, who saved the lives of 150 passengers and the crew members.

What I like about the name is, its kind of retro cool especially with its history and Branding. When famous alumnus like Neil Armstrong associate themselves as Boilermakers with pride, its more of a cult thing. The latest is that the new interim prime minister of Egypt, who is bestowed with the responsibility of building democracy, is also a Boilermaker. He spent seven years at Purdue for his masters and doctorate degree.

What’s more, I am proud to be a Boilermaker. Boiler Up!

Its not all mugging!

We had an interesting game in our operations class as part of our course with 12% of the total marks. We were formed into teams of 8 and the goal was to build a production line that would deliver three varieties of electronic circuits to the customer while the customer placed an order every 30 seconds. The game was for 27 minutes and the customer would place an order of any variety and the challenge for us was to to deliver all the 54 orders. It was fun but we had to spend a lot of time planning about how the process had to be executed. We drew ideas from the book “The Goal”, some Toyota’s lean manufacturing principles and also from the course. Below is our team during one of the practice sessions…

Some students really got into it. Below, a team doing some stretching exercises before the game began:

And this team with Helmets and Mustaches:

The above team with helmets won the competition as they delivered all the 54 orders to the customer without any defects. Of course, it had a very disciplined workforce from the US marine and coast guard.

Our team during the game:

If you are thinking what those different colored sticky notes were meant to be, its to communicate the customer orders to the line. Inspired from Toyota’s ‘Kanban’ system, the idea is to have some sort of a visual signal for the line to move on, the idea is better explained in one of our presentation slides:

And you don’t see me in the pictures; that’s because I was not part of the production line. I was the one who took customer orders, took care of inventory and quite ironically was called as the runner (the guy in the above illustration). And, as far as our team was concerned, we lost ground in execution with 40% of our products ending up with defects. Well, we had a model that produced way ahead of the time orders were being placed and what happened was that by the time our customers detected a defect, we had already manufactured half of our products.

I was not joking about Toyota’s lean manufacturing. In our final exam, we were asked a Question: “Write about One principle from Toyota’s lean manufacturing that you incorporated in your game plan”, for which I wrote “We adopted the ‘quality check at source’ by having the quality check right at the beginning, while procuring the raw materials that avoided quality issues to occur in the first place” and I went on to write “However, having a Quality check at the source is one thing and a quality issue with integration is another and like Toyota, we had to recall half of our shipped goods”. It’s like saying ‘Hey, we were so loyal to Toyota that we not only incorporated their good things but also their flaws’! 
But on a different note, this is one of the great things as a student because probably, school is the only place where you are allowed to fail and add to that, you get extra points for saying ‘We learned from our mistakes’. I mean, if you fail at work, you will be fired even before you learn anything from your mistakes.

A little about Chicago

I’m no expert on Chicago and I’ve just been here 5 times, but I loved this place ever since I first landed here. Situated on the coast of Lake Michigan and built around Chicago river, the city is the heart of the mid-west. It is interesting that the entire city was rebuilt after a major fire brought the whole city into ashes, sparing 3-4 buildings, in the year 1871.  Known as ‘The Windy City’, Chicago is prone to fire accidents and it is attributed to the wind here that can spread even a small fire into a calamity. Below is the picture of the a tower that survived the fire accident (Water authority tower or something). It was the tallest building back then.

Situated in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t know Chicago had beaches around the city, until a few years ago. The city has a 31 mile stretch of coastline. Although it is just a lake, the lake is the second largest of the great five lakes and is the size of Kerala. What is good about this city is that there are no industries along the coastline. I think the city planers were knowledgeable about the recent real estate bubble back then. Below is the picture of the coastline on the north side of Chicago.

It is interesting, how, many cities around the world were built around rivers, primarily attributed to proximity to water resources for both agriculture and Industries. Most of the popular buildings in Chicago are built around the river. Its also interesting that so many of the skyscrapers of Chicago are built on marsh land between the river and the Lake. Another interesting fact about this river is that unlike most rivers this river does not flow into the bigger water body (lake Michigan). Earlier it used to, but then there was a lot of waste being flown into the lake that got accumulated near Chicago, leading to many water borne diseases and floods. So, engineers worked on the river and reversed the flow of the water! I wonder how they did that. Below is the picture of the river.

One of the most popular streets of the city is Michigan Avenue. This is where most of the Shopping happens in Chicago. I don’t know why, this street reminded me of Himayatnagar a lot. The big lane in the picture, Michigan Avenue: (BTW the water tower on top is also in the picture almost at the bottom)

Now, if you are wondering where these breathtaking views came from; It is my work. This is from the top of the John Hancock Building, the second tallest building in Chicago and the view is from 94th floor. When I visited Chicago to visit the Spanish Embassy for my Visa for the upcoming Europe trip, I had a lot of free time at my dispense. I went around roaming the downtown area in Chicago and went on top of this building. Well, some other interesting pictures I took during this time (boring aspects of travelling alone):

Chicago Tribune is one of the oldest newspapers here, which published its first edition in 1847 and it all started from here.

And the below picture covers almost half of the downtown Chicago; In the fag end on the top left side is the Sears tower, the tallest building in Chicago.

What is most admirable about this city so far for me has been the fact that this city quite literally rose from ashes. Two weeks back, it took just hours for Chicago to recover from a deadly snow storm with over 20 inches of snow on a day. Chicago is known for being resilient on many notorious feats of ‘mother nature’ like Wind, fire, flood and snow. This indispensable spirit of the city, to make it a better place to live, is commendable.