Amazing India…

Day 1

Today was interesting new experiences new foods. I think the hardest thing to get used to will be the food. I have always been a fan of Indian cuisine but I always had something with chicken. On a whole this is a really eye opening experience.

For my blog I want to compare my trip to India with my trip to Brazil last August. Coincidentally I was in Brazil during their winter and now I am in India during their winter. The skies were a lot clearer in Brazil, the fog here is ridiculous. It’s like living in a cloud. But regardless of the cloud like atmosphere, life here is not a fairy tale. Poverty surrounds you where ever you go. In Brazil they had their fair share of poverty, but it seems more prevalent here. Even when I went to visit the favellas it was more of a lifestyle. I just don’t see how to help these people. It’s the worst feeling in the world not knowing how to save someone. I had a brief discussion with professor Gupta about it. It is important to build and develop infrastructure but how can the poor compete in this technological world if they don’t have the skills necessary to compete in this world.

Day 2

I can’t sleep. I called Ricky yesterday and told him that I was up at 5am and he thought I was lying, well today I was up at about 4am and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I took some time to upload some pictures to facebook. Breakfast was a little later today. We had a more Indian traditional breakfast today.

We visited India Gate today and saw some of the military practicing for the parade later this month. I think the school children had a field trip to come visit because there were a lot of kids watching the procession. The kids seemed to be fascinated with us, I guess because we look different. But they were very friendly and welcoming, they even danced with us in and let us take pictures. I took a couple videos of the festivities.

After seeing the India gate we went to the auto expo. I have been to the auto show in New York before, but this one was very different. They had a lot of halls displaying internal parts of the cars. I am not a car person so I don’t really know a lot about the parts and pieces of a car. But we did stop to speak to a few vendors and they told us that they are primarily trying to target garages. My guess is that they want to get Indian car garages to use their parts. The auto show struck me almost like a career fair for cars. This is different from the US where it is mostly an attraction where people want to see the latest concept cars; cars of the future. They did have some actual exhibits showing off foreign cars. Volks Wagon was extremely popular because this is the first time they are going to manufacture the cars in India. Before Indian consumers would have to import VWs from abroad and they would incur a lot of taxes though this process. Now that they are being manufactured in India it will be cheaper for consumers. Audi was also very popular. And Honda had a really nice show displaying a new robot. It seems like robots are going to be the next hottest thing; Honda was not the only company at the auto expo that had robots on display. I did not really enjoy the auto expo as much as others did. I mainly attribute this to the fact that most of the cars are ones that I could see in the US. (Also I am not that into cars) But the Indian people were so fascinated with everything, and at first I did not understand why. But then I thought about it; after seeing the cars and buses that people see every day I can see why these new shiny spectacles would really draw in people’s attention. Also there are a lot of IIT schools so these are things that are relevant for them.

There were very few women at the auto expo.

We went to the Lotus temple next. It was SO BEAUTIFUL. It really looked like a flower floating on water in the middle of a pristine garden. The inside had amazing architecture and the floors and chairs were made of marble. The ceiling came to an apex with a large gold circular figure in the center. It was unlike anything I have ever seen in a Roman Catholic church.

I passed out next and then woke up for dinner. It seemed very similar to the lunch we had yesterday but I am told that they were very different. After dinner we walked back to the hotel and I passed out again.

Day 3

Today was a lazy day. We had breakfast a little later today then Nardy and I headed over to the supermarket to get some snacks. Then it was off to LPU (8 hours on the bus). We stopped in old Delhi then passed some historical sites along National Highway 1. I napped intermittently. We made one stop along the way at a rest area with various shops. Somehow everyone ended up at the same place and ordered the same thing…fries. It took FOREVER. One thing that I noticed is lacking is proper business strategy or execution, in some places management is something that needs to be addressed. After that slight issue it was off to the bus and back on the road.

Once we got to LPU we met with our buddies and did brief introductions. My buddy wasn’t here but I still had a good time. We had a short welcome presentation then dinner. LPU surprised us with a bonfire, music and dancing. Of course that was fun, all that was missing were some smores.

Off to bed… early morning tomorrow.