Tamil Pongal during our last day in India

Tamil Pongal is one of many festivals Tamils celebrate every year. It indicates the end of the harvest season that begins on the first day of Tamil month of Thai which starts on the 14th of January and lasts for four days. The Indian celebrate Pongal to show their gratefulness to Mother Nature for blessing them with normal rainfall.
We were lucky to see this festival on our last day in India, we saw cattle that are colorfully decorated with flowers and painting on their foreheads, even their horns are painted. Families await this pongal to bring their children to watch the cattle show and enjoy the food. Also, there were a lot of small shops that we bought many gifts to bring back home. It was a great beautiful day, the temperature was in the seventies with a beautiful sunshine that we were enjoying before we go back to subzero weather that is waiting for us back home.

Hyderabad, India

Hyderabad was the most beautiful city that we visited in India. It is the fifth largest metropolitan city in India, followed by Calcutta, Chennai Delhi, and Mumbai. Hyderabad is located in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. It is a popular trading center for pearls and diamonds sometimes is actually referred to as the Pearl City. It is a very clean city compare to Chennai or Bangalore. We stayed there for four days and visited many places such as Charminar which was built in year 1959; it is a beautiful building with four towers called minarets and a dome right in the middle. The structure is made of granite, lime and marble. The other place that we visited was Golconda Fort which is one of the most wonderful monuments that was built in eleventh century. One of the most important features of this fort is that the sounds of hands clapped at the entry gate which can be heard quite clearly at the top of the hill. So, we all walked the 360 steps that took us to the highest point to see the beautiful scenery and to take the most gorgeous pictures in Hyderabad; after that we attended the Sound and Light Show that was boring in my opinion. After the show we went with Dr. Rao to a beautiful club to meet his friends and have something to eat. We stayed there for couple of hours and went back to the University where we were staying.

Project krushi, An initiative by Association Saikorian

Project krushi was established back in1994 by Association Saikorian, Alumni of Sainik School Korukonda; Association Saikorian is a charitable not-for profit organization located in Hyderabad, India. There are many members live in India and across the Globe. Dr. Rao, a BSU professor who was with us on this trip is an active member of this great organization, who has also donated so much money for an upcoming project that will take a place in another chapter of this organization.
The purpose of this organization is to foster boys who are orphans or came from poor families that can’t afford to send their boys to school. They actually send people around the city to look for homeless boys who left their parents house and do not know anything about their families, so they bring them in and treat them as they are their own children. Their ideology is to help the child to realize his full potential for his all round development, and to treat every child as their own child. They emphasize on their education and they make sure that every child leaves with a career in his hand.
This trip was an amazing trip that we will always remember for the rest of our lives because it was very unique and sacred. Also, we had the chance to talk with the kids who made us feel like we were their own parents. Also, the kids prepared a lunch and sat down and ate with us.

SIMB Bangalore, India. Birthplace of business leaders

SIBM, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, established in 1978; however, SIBM-Bangalore has been established since 2009, located in Electronics city, the heart of the Silicon valley of India.. At SIBM Bangalore students are carefully picked, each year there are more than 100,000 applicants but only few hundred are accepted. The Master of Business Administration (MBA) Program at Symbiosis Institute of Business Management Bangalore is a 2 year program that offers a blend of theory and practice to help students to equip themselves with the capability to handle current business situations and take the relevant business decisions.The first year of MBA Program teahes students the foundation in the areas of Management such as economics, accounting, marketing, finance, HR and others. At the end of the first year, the students are required to undergo a Summer Internship Project for 8 weeks. The second year covers specializations & electives offered in the areas of finance, marketing, operations and Human Resources Management. There are one thing that I thought was interesting in our visit that they have a dorm only for boys and no girls are allowed and also the same thing is for girls.

Our visit to Grundfos India

Grundfos, Demand Driven Distribution

Grundfos India was established in March 1998. Today Grundfos has 21 offices throughout India and more than 100 distributors across the country. Grundfos India is part of Grundfos which is one of the world’s leading pump manufacturers, with more than 16 000 employees and an annual production of more than 16 million pump units a year. They produce Circulator pumps for heating and air-conditioning counting for almost 50% of the world circulator pumps. They also produce water supply pumps, waste water pumps and other industrial pumps.
According to their spokesman, almost every large building, hotel, hospital around the world uses their pumping system. Grundfos has built the first green building in India. Green Building is a building that uses energy, water and other resources efficiently; also, it reduces waste, pollution, and it protects the health of its occupant.

Our MICROLAND visit, Bangalore, India

MICROLAND, India

Microland has incorporated in 1989 in Bangalore, India; they have more than 2500 young, skilled and motivated employees that work 24/7 to meet their clients’ needs. Microland is a pioneer of the remote infrastructure management concept and a leading specialist IT infrastructure services provider in India with clients in USA, UK and Middle East. They have strategic partnerships with technology leaders such as Avaya, ChangeBASE AOK, Cisco, Microsoft, Sybase, Symantec and VMware.
Microland's goal is to optimize their client’s server infrastructure, reduce overall costs and increase its performance. Their management services are designed to address an enterprise's entire server platform needs from design, deployment to optimization.
Also, as cloud computing services are getting more and more important in today's technology Microland offers their clients true enterprise class service over cloud delivery platforms to meet their clients business needs.

Our visit to Celebrity Fashions, Chennai, India

Celebrity Fashions is one of India’s expert garment exporters that manufacture many name brand products such as Timberland, GAP, Armani Jeans, The north face, Nautica and many more. Celebrity Fashions is number one trousers manufacture in India. Also it has its own national premier menswear brand, Indian Terrain.
We walked around the facilities and saw how they actually inspect the raw material before they start cutting it; they make sure it meets their standards otherwise they’ll send it back to the supplier. It was fascinating the way they cut the clothes, they cut hundreds of shirts at the same time and they label each part so they can easily sew it. After they finish sewing the shirts they wash it and dry it, then they put it through a special machine that blow the lint off. Finally they press it and package it in a special way so that they can fit a lot more shirts in a box.