On a bike ride in India

In a land where motorbikes are meant to transport entire families, I had the opportunity of going on a dirt bike and traveling around 6 kilometers on it! Dinner at the F Cafe & Lounge was great, and so was the ride. Here's my view of the road.

Solstice is special

A lot of interesting things, good and bad, have been happening in my life in the past few weeks. But nothing has given me the urge to immediately blog about... except THIS!

So what is this thing that has made its way into my "MUST BLOG" list? Nothing but the simple pleasure of having great (and I mean GREAT) food at the Goel Dining Hall. Granted that this meal cost me twice as much as the usual, the food was definitely more than twice better! I'm partial to it for the lack of spice... but it's mostly because I took small portions at a time and didn't taste the spice.



For those who have been here and have left... just view the photos and you'll see.

It's a Small World After All

I did not meet another Filipino in India! That's weird! Seems like apart from India, I meet at least 1 Filipino no matter where I head to. Just think, 3 months in India = 0 Filipinos. 7-hour layover in Singapore yesterday = at least 30 Filipinos.

So why do I say it's a small world? East Asian faces were a luxury during my stay at ISB so imagine my surprise when I saw familiar non-ISB faces at ISB! Those who were at the Asia MBA Camps (1 & 2) will remember Professor Gilbert Bok from SKKU... and those at the 2nd camp may remember Hoo-suk & Sung-ho too!



Turns out, SKKU has arranged a South Asian trip for their Asia MBA students and ISB was one of their stopping points. So we caught up on what everyone's been up to, obviously, a few of us are still completing our MBAs, but most of them have graduated and found great jobs. So I should be looking forward to job hunting...

The Caves @ Ellora

I can't believe I haven't blogged about my Ellora trip!
**Jovi, what's up with you?**

Three weeks after arriving in India, I was ready... ready to see the world beyond Hyderabad. I joined Katja, Fabrizio and Simran on a scenic and cultural tour through Maharashtra and was perfectly happy to let them make the plans (c'mon, too many people planning just makes things more complicated).

(L-R) Katja, Jovi, Simran & Fabrizio

October 31 8:00pm
With a Toyota Qualis, an Indian driver (who doesn't speak English) and our bags, we embarked on our journey and there was no turning back. Dinner at a roadside restaurant showed us how there were more Indian options than what's available at Goel (the ISB cafeteria). Per special request, non-spicy Indian food was served and they were yummy (and affordable too)!

November 1
Dark, bumpy roads in the late night and some "creative" Indian driving had our solitary Hindi-speaking friend, Simran, sacrifice sleep to keep the driver awake. The persistent mosquitos cut short the driver's pre-dawn sleeping break by an hour and saw the girls stranded (as the boys gave up on sleeping earlier and headed to a nearby temple) with no cellphone reception. Reunited at 4am, we continued on our journey and some three of us went back to sleeping state.



We woke up to a great scenic view of Indian sunrise, sprawling greens and beautiful mountains. Still, after a night of sleeping in the car, finding shelter for us to wash up and rest became the top priority. Trusting Lonely Planet's recommendation, we made inquiries with 3 hotels, but finally found one that wasn't in the list. Hidden one minute from the main road was Hotel Peshwall, a nice little hostel that provided value for money.

The unique shower and toilet implements had Katja stumped for a while, but her adaptive German nature helped her (and me) find out how to use everything... the boys weren't as lucky as I was, they left thinking that the toilet bowl had to be flushed using a pail of water. Learning India's electricity sharing policy by having our enjoyable TV show cut was a bit depressing, but it did give us an early start to Ellora.

The Ellora caves are among many man-made, hand-carved caves in India dedicated to dieties from the main religions... Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. A picture is worth a thousand words, so have a look at the slide show to see more of Ellora.

My current Facebook photo may be quite deceiving to some of you... I look like I'm at the TajMahal. But in reality, being in Aurangabad gave us the opportunity to go to Bibi Ka Magbara, India's mini-Taj Mahal. I was told that it was a poor imitation, but it still looks great in photos!

November 2
A new day has come and adhering to the Chinese tourism motto of "getting value for time & money by going to as many places as possible", we headed to Shirdi hoping to see Shri Sai Baba, a highly revered holy man in India.

Mobile phones, cameras and shoes aren't allowed in the temple so we had to deposit them with a shop. Walking barefoot on asphalted & cemented streets isn't my idea of a party, and while someone else was worried about his poor socks, I was worried about my poor feet... they were getting dirty, and from living in the Philippines, we know that there are just tons of stuff you can pick up walking barefoot on the streets! Long lines and bad timing had my poor suffer through the burning heat, with no avail... our consolation, we were able to see Shri Sai Baba from a TV screen.

Next stop... Chateau Indage, a vineyard that accounts for 75% of Indian wine exports. A tour through vineyard grounds made for great photo ops, but the wine was found to be wanting in comparison to European wines. Still, a great experience overall.

Heading back to Hyderabad was a bigger adventure. We got stuck in a 3kph traffic for more than an hour and were starving when we got to Pune, some great Indian food out there! And then, it was a series of overtaking the bigger trucks in a two-way two-lane road through counterflowing... the main philosophy, "Will I get in front of the next truck before the car coming from the other direction gets there?" A one-hour rest-stop at a gas station made me realize how widely practiced Yoga is... truck drivers practicing Yoga near the gas pumps (that should wake them up)!

November 3
Then came daybreak, our driver went as fast as 120kph! Back in ISB at 10am, I will remember the weird, great and tiring experiences of the weekend, and say my short prayers for the casualties (mosquitos and ****).

Bureaucracy & Inefficiencies @ Hyderabad

POLICE STATION

I was accompanied by ISB's Praveen and another exchange student on my first rickshaw ride when I went to the Cyberabad Police Station to get myself registered during my first week in India. Biometric ID in this tech city is done via the scanning of one's irises (it takes some people a long time to complete this process, I for one had to get my eyes scanned 3 times before it was successful), but this is done only after a preliminary internet registration and recurring documentary checks by 3 police officials. So it took around 2 hours to navigate around 10 square meters of office space and complete our registration (which could've been done in 30 minutes if they had been efficient). The bad news is, we have to go back to register our departure before we leave.

ICICI Bank

After getting our resident permits, we immediately proceeded to the ICICI Bank branch in ISB. Apparently, the branch was not ready for new account opening and did not have application forms for such. We had to make an appointment with a man named Santosh, who always missed appointments because he was busy (coming from another meeting). Ultimately, he left the documents with the branch manager, who allowed us to fill the forms. Here's the timeline:

OCT 17: Account opening at ICICI Bank, informed that account opening procedures will be completed after 7 business days.

OCT 29: Date of collection of welcome pack (which did not happen because they just kept the documents at the branch without looking at it even once), we were told that some documents were missing and that the procedure has changed in the past week due to the financial crisis (erm... highly doubtful).

OCT 30: Proceeded to branch to meet Santosh, who asked us to write a letter to the branch manager signifying our intent to open an account and detailing our stay in India. 5 more business days before we can make our deposits.

All in all, it took us more than 21 days to open a bank account. So in case you won't be having any money remitted from overseas, opening a bank account is too much of a hassle and is not worth your time.

Classes, Parties & Everything Nice!

Two academic weeks have just gone by at a blink of an eye... not that it's been a walk in the park, academics are demanding and with the tons of activities organized by the students, prioritization skills are a must!!!

Let me take you through the first two weeks.

The Academic Services and Administration (ASA) Office inducts you into the ISB system (of terms lasting 6 weeks each) by giving you a nice Planner Calendar. Course packs are also provided in advance so that students can read the required readings for the first day of class and participate in case discussions on the same day. I've elected to take 5 courses and you can see that I have 6 volumes of course packs for my Term 5 classes. Courses are held twice a week on 2 hour time frames and exchange students are allowed to take 1-5 credits based on their own requirements.

As an exchange student, it hasn't been hard for me to join groups since friendly and warm ISB students are extend invitations to us (special thanks to those who have extended invitations to me... it made my life a lot easier). Group dynamics are quite crucial since everyone's operating on a 6-week term where case discussions and lectures are interspersed with mid-terms, projects, presentations and final exams. Attendance is taken at every class and class participation (CP) could either be arbit or voluntary, depending on the professor. Funniest thing is, I think I speak more when it's voluntary.

Now that I've established that there's a lot of academic work that needs to be done, it ain't over yet. How come? Well, the Graduate Student Board and the various student clubs have organized a lot of activities for students, including exchange students. Events so far? Let me see... we had some non-professional activities such as:

1 The Hookah Welcome Party (started at 11pm and ended at around 6am) --> me sitting on the grass, Angela doing the Hookah!
2 Mehendi for an Indian tradition (don't worry... it's Henna! I don't even have it now)
3 Doing the Dandiya! --> a group of adults decided to play with sticks.
4 Expressions, a showcase of theatrical, dancing and musical talent
5 Diwali dinner with a local family & festivities at school

There have been a host of Pre-Placement Talks hosted by the Consulting Club (McKinsey, Booz & Co., AT Kearney, Parthenon Group, Deloitte... among others) as well as other professionally oriented whole-day activities such as the Social Responsibility Conclave (hosted by the Net Impact Club) & the Energy Conclave (hosted by the Energy, Manufacturing and Operations Club).

UP NEXT:
More on my adventures in school and outside... and the challenges of Indian bureaucracy.

Rock On!!!

Every time I notice something new, I'd always think "this is something I have to put into my blog". Each time, I'd file it at the back of my head hoping that I could find some time to sit down and just share my experiences chronologically.

I just realized that if I kept waiting for the right time, more and more things would have come up and I'd just end up with a blog that has little detail and misses out on what I felt when each event happened. I'll just have to commit to write about the first two weeks sometime in the future.

It is my fourth outing since arriving on campus and save for Hyderabad City Tour , this is farthest I've been from ISB. We had lessons on how to squeeze many people into a small car, learned of a great place to eat, "Our Place"... it had great ambiance too!

The highlight of the evening was our trip to the cinema. "Rock On" became my first ever cinematic experience in India and it's also the first time I've seen ticket prices comparable to the Philippines (Taiwan, HK & China have significantly more expensive rates). The chairs were quite comfortable and shifted into a slightly reclined position so I just relaxed while watching the movie.

Today, I learned and proved to myself that true art, when properly done, transcends cultural boundaries and languagebarriers. The dialogue on "Rock On" was a mix of 85% Hindi and 15% English. Majority of us were able to understand and appreciate the story despite there being no subtitles. I was so touched by the film that I didn't need the "Don't Download, Buy the CD" reminder they had at the end of the movie to convince me to get the soundtrack. I'm hooked!

The only thing I can say is... "Rock On"!