Seattle skyline

Next to this event I have some time off to go to Olympic National Park; roam downtown Seattle and have a look on how the American Dream is lived. Or do you have to be asleep to believe it?

The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.
- George Carlin

Hang around for photos! :-)

PS. Unfortunately my Flickr account has reached its quota, so I’ll be posting the last photos when I get back.

Thursday November 6
We drove for one hour to get to the Biological Zoo which is situated at the border of Bangalore. For €2 we had a ticket for the zoo and a safari ride! The safari ride was pretty boring, the captive animals were ofcourse just like humans very dull at 40 degrees Celsius.

Cow & garbage

Friday November 7
Friday we had our first appointment at the R&D centre of HUL (Hindustan Unilever Limited). We had a brief introduction about the core business and afterwards about the development cycle of their new products. Each year a dozen of patents are claimed by this company, extreme!

Currently HUL is working on a waterpurifier which runs without any powersource. Since a lot of the Indian population does not have direct access to clean drinkingwater this is one heck of a great product! This device will approximitly cost $30 without filters. The filters have to be replaced every 1500 litres and will cost about $5. Affordable drinkingwater for all!

HUL interior, got to love this

At the end of the day we had an appointment with Rutger from Nexus Novus at a luxurious hotel. Two years ago he moved from the Netherlands to India to set up a business based in Bangalore. He told us a variety of things about entrepreneurship in foreign countries: helpful tips&tricks! Afterwards we went to a club called Kosmo where we drank a couple of beers and moved our hips from right to left!

Chat&drinks

Buddha at Kosmo

Saturday November 8
This day we got out of bed pretty early because we had to make a long bus drive, at least that’s what they said. ;-) We arrived 40 minutes to early at Wipro, a company which has its corebusiness primarily in IT. This company is a big player on the global IT market. Today Wipro has 93.000 employees!

Wipro Technologies is the No 1 provider of integrated business, technology and process solutions on a global delivery platform.

The campus is a great place to work and relax. In terms of work Wipro has many intern trainingcourses in the different fields of expertises. Relaxing can be achieved by practicing tennis, basketball, cricket or having a dip in the swimming pool.

By night we went to a James Bond party at a bar in one of the most luxurious hotels in the region. There we were with 6 of us having a drink next to the swimming pool. :-P

Sunday November 9
OCC (Open Coffee Club) is a session where fresh entrepreneurs (starters) come and have a chat with each other: solving problems, having feedback on their products, networking etc. In my opinion this was one of the most interesting sessions we had so far because this showed us how people are starting their businesses in Bangalore.

At OCC I met with Pranav Bhasin, who has set up a social networking website called Lifeblob. Lifeblob plots your life on a horizontal timescale by using third party data from other social networking websites. See my Lifeblob timescale:

In the evening there was a small surprise for us: … Karaokebar!!!

Yesterday we had a meeting with all the students and our teacher at the conferenceroom of one of the hotels. The topic was about the book we will be writing in the course of this program. The book has the workingtitle: “Howto successfully outsource to India”. More will follow as we gather information from companies we will visit in the upcoming days.

Conferenceroom: 'The Last Supper'-style

Yesterday we moved to a new hotel like I mentioned in one of my previous posts. Cheaper, bigger, better food etc..

Bart is chilling in our new and improved room

In the evening we enjoyed dinner on the roof of a 13-story building. The view on top was absolutly fabulous! This restaurant & lounge bar is the typcial place for expats and upperclass citizens to have a drink or a damn delicious meal. We were with 8 people and had to pay 5500 rupies all together, which is about like €90.. mad!

13th floor exterior

13th floor interior

13th floor roofview

I’m running a bit behind schedule updating this blog, but it will work out!

We went to one of the main shopping streets to have dinner. After 15 minutes of bargaining with the rickshawdriver we had a pretty wild ride to this area of the city. Roads do have lanes, but in this city no one cares. Just keep honking..

Rickshawcruisin'

Our meal was served on bananaleaves and tasted great! I had panbaked lamb with a dozen of green peppers for starters. I also needed a litre beer to cope with the taste.

Lamb and peppers

At 23:00 bars, restaurants and clubs close, so we had nothing else to do than heading back to the hotel..

The streets

The streets

In front of the hotel

First we went to Forum mall, which looks almost identical to shopping malls we know. McDonalds, Nike, Reebok, Tommy Hillfiger, Adidas, you name it.

Forum mall

Having lunch at Forum mall, nice..

After visiting Forum mall, we went to a Hare Krishna temple. The chanting went on and on..

Hare Krishna temple

I tried to post this yesterday, but unfortunately internet was down in our hotel. Today we moved to another hotel where the rooms are a lot bigger, the bathroom is more clean and the price is much cheaper.

Tonight I’ll probably post a roundup of yesterday’s evening and today!