Day Thirteen, Chennai, India

6:24pm

          As expected, today was a nice change of pace from the past few days of schoolwork. I did my usual workout then went to yoga class and had breakfast. Around 10:30, Neil came to the hotel with a taxi to take us out for some sight-seeing. The taxi took us about an hour south of the city to one of India's many enormous IT corridors. Here, the world's top IT/ITES companies like TCS, Cognizant, IBM, Accenture, Wipro, etc. have at least one incredibly large office building. TCS has several buildings in this corridor which they lease or own. The most impressive building in the corridor is TCS's massive, modern campus that looks more like an NFL stadium from the outside. Some of these office buildings make normal office buildings look like dumps. Since the structures have all sprung up over the past decade or so, many of them have very modern architectural design. If you are ever wondering if the IT industry in India is making enough money, just one look at these facilities will assure you that they aren't strapped for cash. Here's the rendering of TCS's campus. See what I'm saying?



          And this is just in Chennai. There are campuses like this all over Indian cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. Neil did his best to get us inside one of the offices, but had no luck. They keep pretty tight security around the buildings in the IT corridor. Hopefully we'll get the chance to tour one of the big offices in another city.
         With little time before our scheduled lunch at the hotel, we headed back into the city. We ate another good meal and hopped back in the taxi. This time, we headed in the opposite direction towards the older part of Chennai where the original city was located hundreds of years ago. Our first stop here was at Chennai Central railway station. This is one of the major train stations in the country which helps support India's railway network that is now one of the largest in the world. The station was pretty crowded as expected and it wasn't even the busiest time of day. It was interesting to see people of all different income status, from the very poor to the upper-middle class, waiting to get on a train. The trains that travel across the country are divided into sections from first-class down to unreserved. The ticket prices can vary greatly depending on how fancy you want your ride to be. For unreserved (the lowest level), tickets across the country can cost around 4 or 5 bucks. If you want luxuries such as air conditioning and your own space to breath, you will have to pay closer to 40 or 50 bucks. This was the first time I have seen trains almost entirely made up of passenger cars that go on for over 600 meters. We walked through the train station to meet our taxi driver on the other side. It was here we saw the billboard that you will see below promoting pregnancy in women up to age 50. We thought this was interesting to see in a country that is struggling with the issue of overpopulation.
          Next, we headed to Fort St. George. This is a British fort that was built in 1644 to help protect their trading port and the city in case of an attack from the sea. The expansive fort is still in working order today and is where the state government assembly and secretariat are located. In fact, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu was in a meeting at the fort while we were there and we got to stand in the crowd as her motorcade of expensive cars and armed guards left the fort. I can't imagine any state governor in the U.S. being treated like such a celebrity.
          From the fort we drove around old Chennai to see how different everything is compared to where we're staying. Many of the original buildings from the 17th century are still being used, and it really gives you an idea of what India used to look like way back in the day. After driving around a little more, we headed back to the hotel. The fun is over we're back to doing schoolwork.

Entrance gate to one if the local Universities. For some reason, I only have a picture of the left half of the gate.

One of the huge apartment complexes near the IT corridor

TCS's stadium-like office buildings

Government building turned hospital

 Very old tombs in the yard of the church in Fort St. George

Day Twelve, Chennai, India

5:29pm

          Today was just another day of yoga, class, and schoolwork. I'm using this post as a way to procrastinate on the paper I should be writing. There's not really much to talk about for the events of today so I guess I'll just talk about today's international business class.
          As I said in my last post, we're starting to learn more about our professor as a person and he continues to impress us. Today we talked about the complications and blurred lines of international business in the telecommunications industry. During this lecture, Dr. Raghunathan started talking about how he met with the chief of staff for the mayor of Atlanta just before the start of the '96 Olympics and came up with the idea of putting internet banks in the Atlanta airport so that all of the people coming in from around the world could pay a small fee to get in touch with loved ones back home via email, fax, etc. The idea was immediately approved and was a huge success. Dr. Raghunathan and his team were featured on CNN and some local new stations. Soon after, a group of guys in California went public with their own, lower quality version of what he implemented in the Atlanta airport. Their idea featured only a small portion of the technology that Dr. Raghunathan had used, but they were the ones who immediately went public with the plan and were able to claim all of the credit. Within weeks these guys were on the cover of Fortune magazine for their list of "top 20 companies to watch". It was hard to believe our professor when he said he is not still bitter about that. I know I would be. Dr. Raghunathan tied this interesting story into a really good message about the importance of finding your calling in life at an early age so that you have more time to build upon it. It's pretty safe to say that today's class involved more life lessons than international business lessons and that's fine by me.
       
9:37pm

          We ate a good dinner at the hotel tonight and now everyone is doing schoolwork then going to bed. Tomorrow's post should be a bit more interesting and have at least a few pictures since we're leaving the hotel for a while to visit some places. For now, here's a picture of my breakfast. I'm not sure what all of the names are or what exactly they're made of, but I do know it's good. I also know that the red cubes in the bowl are just plain old watermelon. Other than the obvious, I don't have a clue. I'll post the names later if I can remember.

       

Day Eleven, Chennai, India

7:16pm

          It's hard to believe we're already into our second week in India. Keeping our schedules busy has made things go by pretty quickly (another reason I'm taking the time to write this blog). I woke up later than usual this morning so I had to postpone my workout and go straight from bed to yoga class. I won't make that mistake again. Rolling out of bed and immediately being told to attempt folding yourself like a pretzel is never a good idea. Another reason that I won't wake up late again is that my morning run turned into a game of running frogger. At 6am, the streets of Chennai are relatively calm. Around 8 or so, they are flooded with cars, street sweepers and construction workers. Since the sidewalks here aren't designed with exercise in mind, you have to run on the side of the road. At 6am, I can basically run in the middle of the road without coming close to a moving vehicle. After 8, however, I'm tip toeing as close to the edge of the road as possible and still having cars come within a foot or so of my elbows. Not to mention, the temperature increases about 20 degrees within that time period.
         I ate a quick breakfast after my workout then I was told that the group was leaving in 15 minutes to go to a zoo before class started. So I hopped in the shower and headed out on the streets with everyone. We did the usual routine of flagging down auto drivers and refusing to pay double the price on the meter. We eventually found a good driver and headed to the zoo. This was the longest auto ride we've taken so far and sure enough, we got to the zoo and they are closed on Tuesdays. Yes, Tuesdays. I still haven't quite figured out why this is the day of the week they chose to shut down for, but it is what it is I guess. With no other ideas, we told the driver to take us to the Express Avenue mall again. The second trip here was just as impressive as the last. With so much square footage, it wasn't hard to find stores we hadn't seen yet. Jeevan and I looked in a few of the men's stores then headed to the food court for some lunch. Here we found out the Indian Quiznos is not quite the same thing as in the U.S. I'm learning that a lot of the big restaurant chains will reduce the quality of their ingredients in order to be able to sell their food at reasonable prices for the local markets in other countries. This is why my foot-long Quiznos sub with a bottle of water only costed me about $3.50. We will probably stick with cheap local Indian places from now on.
          It wasn't long before Jeevan and I got tired of walking around the mall and decided to split up with the girls and head back to the hotel. For those of you who may be concerned by that last sentence (cough cough Mom cough cough), the answer is yes. We left the girls in a very safe area where they able to make it back to hotel without any problems. The rest of the day consisted of more class and schoolwork. No pictures today.

Day Ten, Chennai, India

9:46pm

          This will probably be my shortest post so far. What can I say? It's Monday. Back to schoolwork and no all-day adventures. We got back into the routine of two hours of yoga in the morning, lunch, then three hours of international business. I'm still finding the class to be pretty interesting. Our professor is a very smart man with infinite knowledge of Indian and U.S. economies and their relations. He can also name just about every current elected U.S. government official. Today he was shocked that none of us were able to name all of the current members of the President's cabinet. He does a really good job of constantly making us think critically and debate issues amongst ourselves instead of just lecturing for three hours about the way the world does business. The more I learn about him, the more I realize what a valuable connection he will be someday down the road.
           We ate dinner at the hotel since our meals are free on weekdays, then the guys and I walked around the local area for an hour or so to check out a few stores and buy some of the necessities that we're running out of. Now we're all working on twenty-page papers and presentations. Since I didn't take a single picture today, here's a panorama from yesterday. Look closely and you'll see goats and monkeys on the rocks to the right.

Day Nine, Chennai, India

11:05pm

         Sundays here have some similarities to home. Some of the stores, restaurants, etc. aren't open today and most of them open a few hours later than usual. After breakfast this morning, we looked up some sights to see that are closer to the hotel than the places we went yesterday. With a pretty vague idea of where we were going, we left the hotel on foot. Not too far down the street we waved down a couple of autos and told them to take us to a mall called Spencer Plaza. It was a quick ride and cheaper than a usual auto fare. This mall was not even close to the incredible Express Avenue mall. It was huge like the EA, but not nearly as modern. Inside, the ceilings were low and the stores were more comparable to the outdoor market type of stores. They had the usual Nike, Puma, Reebok, and New Balance stores that seem to be in every mall here, but they were a little bit smaller with less of a selection. After quickly exchanging some dollars for rupees at the exchange station and peeking into a phone store, we headed out of the mall and onto the streets in search of another auto. 

         After 20 minutes of haggling with drivers who wanted to rip off the dumb American kids, we met Baba. Baba is an auto driver who overheard our broken conversation with another driver and chimed in with an offer to squeeze all four of us into one auto and take us to all of the places we wanted to see for a total of 600 rupees (around $10). Since this offer was less than half the cost of the other offers we had gotten, we agreed and hopped in. It wasn't until halfway into our first ride that Baba told us everyone calls him "Crazy Baba". He then started singing Tamil songs and occasionally yelling "YEEEEHAAWWWWW!!!!" in an effort to make us laugh. We found this pretty funny until the 3rd or 4th ride with him. 

          Our first stop was at the Valluvar Kottam. To be honest, I had no clue what this place was until we arrived. I had seen some pictures online and thought it looked pretty cool so we added it to our list. The Valluvar Kottam is a massive stove monument built in the 1970's in honor of an Indian poet and philosopher. As you can see in the pictures, it is designed to look like some sort of chariot with huge stone wheels 10 feet in diameter. Like almost all Indian monuments, it was covered with incredibly detailed carvings and artistry. After taking some time to walk around the monument and take pictures, we called Baba and got back on the road. 

          Next we headed to the Egmore Museum. This is a government-run museum arranged like a large college campus. The different buildings around the campus consisted of a geology gallery, a sculptures gallery, a bronze gallery, and a contemporary art gallery. It was pretty strange to see priceless 7th century sculptures, paintings, etc. on display in buildings with no air conditioning in a city that gets hotter than Arizona in the summer. I wasn't particularly fascinated with the things we saw with the a couple of exceptions. After all, it was a museum, not an amusement park. The coolest thing, for me, was seeing the huge 7x12 foot oil paintings (some of which were 200+ years old) of the British chief ministers that used to hang in the government mansions.
          My favorite part of the day came next. Baba took us to the other side of town to see the St. Thomas Basilica. It wasn't quite as mesmerizing as St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, but it was still a very old, very massive catholic church. Seeing the tomb of St. Thomas was just as unique and borderline creepy as I remembered the tomb of  St. Peter to be. We walked around and read all of the posters about the history of the church and St. Thomas himself. Every time a Pope has stepped foot on the church grounds is well documented on large posters. We made our way outside to take in the view of the entire church and paid an auto driver 10 rupees to take pictures of our group. As you can see in my picture below, not even a panorama was able to show the entire church.
          We left the church hungry and tired so we told Baba to take us to the best restaurant close by. Of course, it ended up being a traditional South Indian restaurant. They had cold bottled water and chicken masala so I didn't have any complaints. Finally, Baba took us back to the hotel so we could relax and catch up on schoolwork.

Day Eight, Chennai, India

9:05pm

          Today was our first 100% free day. Our only assignment was to hire a driver for the day and see as many things as possible from sunrise to sunset without any guidance from our professor. This made the day extra interesting. We arranged to have the driver take us down the east cost along the beach and stop at several attractions along the way. First on the list was a boat ride. We showed up at a marina, paid about two bucks a piece and hopped in a motor boat with a local. For a little over half an our, we rode around the bay, checking out the sights of Chennai from a distance. We enjoyed the ride, but it wasn't much compared to the rest of our day. Our next stop was at the Dakshinashitra (pronounce it with an Indian accent, it makes it easier) Heritage Center. This was a bit more interesting than what usually comes to mind when you think of the term "heritage center". It was a large plot of land by the beach with 17 different style houses that represented the different Indian cultures. There was also a large market for handmade goods and an art gallery. While the girls looked at jewelry and made deals with the sellers, the guys and I made our way around the area, stopping into one house after another and learning about the very different cultures of the Indian states.
          After walking around in the hot sun for a couple hours, we decided it was time for lunch and headed towards the town of Mahabalipuram (a small town next to the the beach with loads of historical monuments). We were advised to eat at a place called Moon Rakers right on the beach. As we soon found out, this was a very good choice. We gazed over the menu of various fresh seafood options while the waiters brought around platters of live shrimp, lobster, crab, prawn, and fish to prove the freshness of what we would be eating. My dish of choice was the calamari masala. It was excellent, but I didn't realize that someone had already ordered a huge appetizer of calamari so I left the restaurant with more squid in my stomach than I care to admit.
          A quick one or two kilometer drive brought us to the world famous shore temple. You can see it in the pictures below, but as the name implies, it's a temple. By the shore. On the way into the temple park, we passed on the opportunity to pay 800 rupees for a barefooted "tour guide" who was incapable of passing on his knowledge of the temple in English. We read the signs around the temple and that gave us all of the knowledge we needed. The shore temple was built in the 7th century and is somehow still standing to this day with almost all of its intricate decorations, carvings, etc. still intact. Yet another pretty incredible sight to see.
          We left the shore temple and took about 20 minutes to find someone who spoke English well enough to point us in the direction of the other monuments. Within walking distance we ran into a monument called "the butterball", a lighthouse, and another temple built on top of a massive rock. This is where we had our first encounter with monkeys. Unlike most American monuments, these places do not have security guards telling you not to stand too close to the ledge or huge signs telling you not to feed the animals. The monkeys roamed wherever the wanted and so did the people. From a distance, the monkeys seemed like the cute little furry friends you see on tv. Once you get up close and personal, you realize that they are mean little thieves who will stop at nothing to get your water bottles, snacks, purses, etc. These little critters are so accustomed to human food that I was able to witness one pick up a soda can and start drinking from the mouth of the can with perfect form. As we climbed up to the top of the rocks in order to see the temple, we kept an eye out for the monkeys and watched as other people were relentlessly tormented. Getting to the temple and seeing the incredible view of the ocean and miles of scenery made the journey entirely worth the hassle. If I had the time, I would have just sat on top of the rock and watched the sunset.
         Now that the sun was going down, we had only a short amount of time to reach our last stop of the trip, the crocodile bank, before it closed. This was a huge amount of acreage arranged in the form of a zoo with the only difference being that the separate animal enclosures only contained different species of crocodile. As we walked through, we wondered about how many animal rights organizations and safety freaks would have a heart attack about this place if it were located in the US. Several of the enclosures were about the size of a basketball court and were filled with up to 430 crocodiles sleeping next to and on top of one another. Top that off with a lack of high fencing around the enclosures which would allow a very stupid/suicidal person to reach their arm over and be easily within biting distance of 6 or 7 crocodiles. About 20 minutes into our tour of the place, we were encouraged to pick up the pace of our walking because the park had closed and the employees wanted to go home. After quickly peeking into the last crocodile enclosures and looking at some king cobras, we got back in the car and headed home.
         On the way back we ran straight into some of the craziest traffic I've ever witnessed which forced us to each give our driver less than a dollar extra. Feeling exhausted and hungry, we opted for the closest restaurant to our hotel and had a good, traditional South Indian meal.