Land of the Dragon

If there is one thing I don't mind spending money on that would be traveling!! I spent a whopping $3500 on my trip to China, this certainly made a dent on my financial statements..but hey u only live once right.

The photos from my Beijing trip are available here.

Ni Hao (means hello -- Nee How)

I spent 2 weeks in Beijing on the study abroad program at Tsinghua University and 4 days in Shanghai. I felt Beijing was a better place to visit than Shanghai. The first thing that surprised me was the amazing investment in infrastructure that the government has made. Due to the Olympics there was construction happening all over Beijing, they were building some fantastic sky-scrapers. I could see construction cranes all over the city.

The food is definitely a culinary delight.. if you know what you are ordering :) we had one mandarin speaking girl in our group of 50 and whenever she was with me I had the chance to try some great food. As long as you are open to eating anything (like me) you will have a great adventure with food.
Some of my friends had wild experiences in restaurants..they were actually making animal sounds to order chicken and beef ...ha ha ha even now I cant stop laughing when I think bout it. Some places I went I pointed at the pictures and I didnt have any problems with my food. I cant forget the cold chicken dish I had in one place..it had some spicy sauce on it which made my lips tingle whenever I blew over it... it felt quite good.

Well in terms of the places we saw..i guess we covered all the famous sites. Some of the must sees are obviously the Tianenmen square, Forbidden Kingdom, Beihai Park, the Great Wall (duhhhh), the Summer Palace, hutong area, San Li Tun area, wangfujing (the food street), the Silk Market & some of the buddhist temples.

The metro system was very well planned and the taxis were super affordable. We were out in the city till 2-3AM on some days and it was perfectly safe to take a taxi back to the hotel.

Since I was walking around with a few tall white Americans we were stopped by girls who wanted to take pictures with us... I am quite certain it was bcos of the American guys and not me ;) A lot of Chinese (i am guessing from out of town) took pictures of my group when we were walking around. It felt kinda weird !!! BUT this would happen only if we are in a group consisting of white people.

We had classes on 8 days till 4PM and then we hit the road to discover
as much of Beijing we possibly could. It was a special moment for me to see the Pandas in the Beijing Zoo. I had wanted to see a Panda at his own country.

& of course we were in Beijing when the earthquake hit the sichuan area, we didnt know that it had caused more than 80,000 deaths. May their souls rest in peace and I hope the remaining affected people are given a chance to restart their lives.

Next post bout my Shanghai trip.

c'est la vie - This is Life

I have posted a few of the pics from my trip here.

Paris is definitely one of the most romantic cities ;) It is a place for a guy to walk around aimlessly with a girl in hand. sighhhhh I wouldn't mind being lost in this city.

Well I got the opportunity to stay in Paris for one week for a one credit study abroad program, we had the International Marketing course at ESCP-EAP in the mornings and had one free day as well. The classes got over around 3PM and we would go all over the city on the very well maintained Metro. I went to almost all the major attractions just by the metro, I didn't take the taxi even once.

I had a desire ever since I was in high school to visit the Eiffel tower and I finally satisfied that wish. I dont know what made me feel so attracted to it ;-)

The other place that made me feel very peaceful was Sacre Coeur unfortunately they didnt allow photos to be taken inside the cathedral. When I went in I heard sisters singing songs in french in such a slow and mellifluous tone that I got immersed in that haunting melody. The interior roof painting was amazing. This is a must see for any visitor but please be careful of the big guys who wait at the bottom of the hill trying to sell wristbands for like 10 to 20 euros. Another surprising thing here was that a lot of the gift shops were owned to tamil speaking people, I bought stuff from a Chennai guys shop and I ate at a small shop owned by a sri lankan tamil lady.. I had forgotten how beautiful Sri Lankan tamil sounded.

Of course I did go to the Louvre.. I never imagined that it would be SO HUGE.. it was a 3 storey building on 3 sides of a long rectangle with the glass pyramids in the middle. For an art enthusiast this could be heaven..or one could die from an overdose of culture ;)

Notre Dame had these really great statues on its rooftops.. i think they call it gargoyles..they are ugly demon like things ;)

Some other places I saw was the Arc de Triomphe, La Defense (The military building) , Moulin Rouge, l'Orangerie (a Monet display) and a couple of gardens.
I kept myself busy enjoying the french life.. I only wish I had practised my french before going there..I could read the menus but I couldnt speak as fluently :(.

Hey I almost forgot.. the fresh croissants are to die for..even the fruit juices tasted much better than in the USA. Apparently they dont add preservatives in fruit juices and most importantly; WINE. Everywhere we went we were offered wine.. in fact wine was cheaper than water :) the food in the restaurants were exquisite ..though the cost was quite high. So it wud hurt a students meager savings.

The boulangeries (bakeries) are certainly very inviting.. they have beautiful and tasty cakes and pastries. I spent quite a lot of money on them due to my sweet tooth.

The one interesting food I had was frogs legs .. well it tasted just like chicken wingettes. Of course I wud probably never have it again because I felt quite guilty because it seems like such a travesty to kill a whole frog just for its legs!!

Anyway I will be going back there some day !!! Of course probably when I have more money ..sigh isnt it sad that when u start making money u just cant find the time to travel like this. Thats why I am trying to make the most of my time as a student to travel as much as possible.

Next post will be about my Beijing & Shanghai trip in May 2008.

au revoir mes amis.

net analysis of internship?

I have been wondering about the overall returns from my internship . In terms of short term financial gains.. this 10 week work will end up costing me more than I earn because I had to buy a car(just when gas hits $4) and am paying rent in 2 places (though it is quite less thanks to the kind couple I am stayin with as a Paying Guest).

Also in terms of emotional gains.. it does give me immense satisfaction to finally get an internship but I am in a small town (there is no McD or starbucks ;) with no one I know nearby & I am missing the opportunity of a lifetime to spend time with a great girl as well...so again this does seem like a net loss.

But when I look at it over a longer term period the overall NPV would certainly be positive (I had no idea what the hell NPV was b4 BSchool :) NPV is Net Present Value which can be sorta explained by saying: the NPV of $10 after 2 years will be $8 due to various reasons like inflation, currency rates etc.

Anyway I digress.. So this 10 week internship will give me some good operations related experience and I hope to combine it with my IT involvement in financial services to get a full time job in financial services (hopefully). Although I realize that this is probably the only opportunity to really get to know this girl, I guess sometimes I am just unlucky.

So 2 weeks have gone by in southern indiana..I have started on a 5 mile jog in the evenings along the wheat farms.. & I also managed to get a first hand experience of wheat harvesting in the USA thanks to my house owner.




I rode along with him in this machine called the Combine which makes wheat harvesting seem so easy. It does everything : cuts the wheat stalks somehow filters all the chaff out and stores the grain alone on top.

I did travel to Lafayette on the weekends but that will stop after this weekend cos there is not much point going there once summer school is done and "everyone" leaves town.

In July I will be exploring Southern Indiana and the nearby state of Kentucky.

well here is to a good summer ..cheers!!!

update on the internship front

I had mentioned bout my endless internship hunting earlier.

Some good things did happen later.. which made me appreciate the power of networking. This kind lady from my department forwarded my resume to a Krannert alumnus and voila I had an interview. Then at the same time I had asked a friend, who had started interning recently in a local firm, for a reference and soon I had one more interview.

& Both the interviews ended up on the same day :) I got the offer from the Krannert alumni in 2 days and I decided to accept it since it would give me the opportunity to enhance my skills in the logistics arena.

This certainly gave me a much needed boost in confidence ;-)

Thanks to all my friends that supported me with their kind words.

the jump into oblivion

I just dont understand how relationships work. Seriously is there a thin line between friendship and relationship?? and if so how do we know that we have crossed over.

Long ago I attempted to crossover this damn line but I ended up losing a dear friend and thus in limbo. With just a few words I had managed to lose her trust in me and ever since then we have never been able to be comfortable talking to each other. Now we are not even in touch...
It is like the very foundation of our friendship had been vaporized.

Ever since then I have been very careful with who I begin to have a deeper friendship.

Now my question is where does a relationship begin?? do people who fall in love start of from being friends. Is there a certain point in the friendship that they both understand that they should move into a stronger relationship??

I do have to ponder about this because in the next 2 years I will not be able to prevent my dear parents from pushing me into an arranged marriage: not that I am against an arranged marriage but it would be great to marry a girl I already love than marry a girl and THEN love her.

I have always pushed off the thoughts about relationships by thinking that I have other things, like job search, MBA studies and then again full time job search etc, which take higher precedence over the quest for love. But eventually I will have to fess up to this.... I lost one friend and am not ready to lose anymore.

I know it sounds silly but I felt going thru life without a dear friend is really disturbing for a single child like me. That one experience was enough to scare me.