10 Levels Of Intimacy In Today’s Communication
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I'm in Boulder, Colorado for my MBA :)
So, a lot of you reading this may know it already but, there, I said it.
I've joined the MBA program at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In case that's a mouthful for you, it's commonly called the Boulder MBA. Orientation begins in a couple weeks, but I landed in Colorado 3 weeks back to soak in some of the awesome front-range summer (unlike the one back in Mumbai). And by God, it's been fan-bloody-tastic. Proof is here. Boulder is a gorgeous little city about 45 minutes north of Denver, Colorado. It's right at the foot of the Rocky Mountains (hence the term 'front-range') which lends it the most breathtaking views. This city, as with most of Colorado itself, is extremely outdoorsy, with a majority of the population heavily into hiking, biking, skiing and snowboarding. It helps that there are over a dozen ski resorts within a 2 hour drive from here. Honestly, the quality of life here is fantastic. Not just that, Boulder has the most exciting tech and startup scene outside of the Silicon Valley (at least in my opinion). In fact, I had even put up a post some ten days back which explains exactly why this place is perfect for me from a professional standpoint.Now, I'm an international student here and, even though I've been to this place before, it's still foreign land for me. It's gonna take me some time to get a hang of the American culture (including everything from people, etiquette, accent to the food and even the transportation system). Here's a few things that I think are gonna be an interesting change for me --
1. American English. This one's going to be tricky. For the past three years I've been using a mix of British and American (for clients) English to the point that I can't quite distinguish between the spellings anymore. Practice practice practice.
2. The cold. The consequence of living in a city that's a mile above sea-level. But here's the thing, the winter is something I'm really looking forward to. After the depressing summer and monsoon of Mumbai, extreme cold is something I could definitely use, even if it takes some getting used to. That said, the summer here has been so awesome (well, at least for me) I would hate for the weather to change at all.
3. Coffee. It's served black and without sugar here. Dude, I'm no Jai Vardhan Singh. I need my sugar and cream (which I fortunately do get on the side).
4. Food portions. Anyone who knows me at all can tell you that I eat A LOT. And yet I struggle to finish even the lunch-sized meals here. That's just crazy.5. Biking. Yes, I do look forward to that. I sure can use the exercise. But I haven't biked in 10 years. And even though I just need to ride from home to the bus and on campus, it's not so fun when it's all on hilly slopes.
Anyway, the other piece of news is that I'm going to be the official first year MBA blogger for Leeds and will also be bringing in the international student perspective. That's something I'm really excited about. Blogging, as you can see, is totally my thing and I'm stoked that I can contribute to the school's marketing and communications efforts. I don't have a link to the blog yet (it should be set up by tomorrow hopefully) but it's going to be on http://www.cuboulderblogs.com. In fact, I've also created a new Posterous blog for this purpose which will Autopost to the official Leeds blog. Check that out at http://mba.aviraj.com. So, finally this post is done. It's been lying in my drafts for well over 2 months now so it's relieving to get this off my chest. Uhh, wish me luck? :) Cheers!
6. Toilet Paper. 'nuff said. Ha! Seriously, I'm not gonna elaborate. If you're from India, you'd understand.
Anyway, the other piece of news is that I'm going to be the official first year MBA blogger for Leeds and will also be bringing in the international student perspective. That's something I'm really excited about. Blogging, as you can see, is totally my thing and I'm stoked that I can contribute to the school's marketing and communications efforts. I don't have a link to the blog yet (it should be set up by tomorrow hopefully) but it's going to be on http://www.cuboulderblogs.com. In fact, I've also created a new Posterous blog for this purpose which will Autopost to the official Leeds blog. Check that out at http://mba.aviraj.com. So, finally this post is done. It's been lying in my drafts for well over 2 months now so it's relieving to get this off my chest. Uhh, wish me luck? :) Cheers!
Getting around within cities
We either walked or took public transit everywhere we went [except for a single ill-fated adventure involving a free cab ride that I shall describe in another post]. In London I rode the Tube to work and back every day. This gave me a feel for what it's like to live in London. It also filled my head with thoughts of the black lung as I flirted with asphyxiation in poorly ventilated underground trains. I initially chalked this up to the fact that London has the oldest subway system in the world but that excuse stopped holding water when I saw the Metro in Budapest, whose subway system was built only a few years after London's but felt vastly more spacious and cleaner. I actually liked the Budapest Metro very much and it had only one problem that I discovered while riding it: if you enter from the wrong side on one of the 3 lines, there's no way to get to the other side without using another token. We did not see a subway per se in Istanbul but we rode the light rail system, which was always crowded despite being scarcely faster than walking. It reminded me of the VTA light rail that runs between San Jose and Mountain View, which I fondly refer to as "the choo-choo train" because of it's absurdly slow speed.
Although I never had a chance to experience riding one of London's famous double-decker buses, we did ride buses in 3 other cities.Budapest, and Brasov have similar systems that involved purchasing tickets in advance and validating them on the bus while Plovdiv still relies on a conductor to sell you a ticket upon boarding. The human touch is a bit friendlier but it does seem rather inefficient, although I guess that this trade-off looks different depending on the cost of labour. We tried to travel on foot for short distances (within a couple of miles) but after a long day of walking we sometimes found ourselves taking the bus just so we could rest our feet!
General thoughts on travelling through different countries for two weeks
I had been planning to do a single write-up about my experiences
travelling around Eastern Europe (Budapest, Transylvania, Bulgaria,
Istanbul) for two weeks but after looking through my notes I realized
that such an effort would end up being quite a tome. Instead I am
going to do a series of shorter entries covering different aspects of
the trip, comparing them across cities as needed, starting with a few
general thoughts on doing a multi-country trip.
This time I was visiting four (if we exclude the UK), each with a
different language and currency. That proved to be rather exhausting,
although we managed (just barely) to use up all our foreign currency
as we departed each country. In the future I think I will try to at
least keep the language consistent across my entire trip. That way I
can learn some of the basic vocabulary beforehand without getting
confused. Living out of a backpack for two weeks also means that there is a
limited selection of clothing to wear. That's not terrible as long as
laundry facilities are available periodically and the climate doesn't
vary too much between regions, which can happen even at similar
latitudes with sharp changes in if the elevation or distance from
large bodies of water. For instance, I had assumed that summer in
Eastern Europe would be hot and a sweater would be unnecessary but in
Romania I felt uncomfortably chilly because we were high in the
Carpathians. On the bright side, at least I didn't need to get any vaccinations for the trip.
3-Minuten Videohilfe zu Screenr
Das Screencasting-Programm Screenr zur Video-Aufzeichnung des Bildschimgeschehens gehört neben Jing zu meinen Favoriten. Die von Screenr angebotene 1-Minuten-Einführung war gut, führte aber, vielleicht nur bei mir, zu einigen Startschwierigkeiten.
Deshalb hier meine 3-Minuten Videohilfe für Screenr, die hoffentlich hilfreich ist. (Erstellung des Screencasts mit Jing, Schnitt mit iMovie)
(Dieses Video in größerem Format hier als Quicktime-Film)
Tipp: Nach dem Start der Videoabspielung bitte den Mauszeiger aus dem Videofenster ziehen, damit der untere wichtige Teil des Videos zu sehen ist.
Zusammenfassung und Hinweise:
Vorbereitende Arbeiten:
--> Mikrofon oder Headset aktivieren bzw. anschließen
--> Screenr-Startseite (A) und aufzuzeichnende Seite (B) in zwei Tabs laden.
Horsts Tipp: Wenn (B) eine Anwendung ist, die nicht im Browser läuft, (B) in einem anderen Fenster öffnen. Auf jeden Fall Fenster (A) nicht schließen.
--> Auf Startseite den Twitter-Account aktivieren ("Sign in with Twitter")
--> Auf Startseite eine der beiden Aufnahmetaste anklicken (welche, ist egal)
--> Ein Aufnahme-Fensterrahmen müsste erscheinen.
Evtl. Problem 1: Bei Erstzugang oder nach vorheriger Löschung der Browser-Chronik erscheint der Hinweis "Applet von screenr.com fordert uneingeschränkten Zugriff auf Ihren Computer". Hier müssen Sie "Erlauben" anklicken.
Evtl. Problem 2: Der Fensterrahmen erscheint nicht, wenn Sie vor diesem Aufnahmeversuch eine ältere Aufnahme noch nicht abgeschickt hatten. Diese ältere Aufnahme zunächst löschen.
--> Umschalten auf Tab B, d. h. auf die aufzuzeichnende Seite
--> Den Aufnahmerahmen über der Seite B positionieren
Aufnahme:
--> Start der Aufnahme durch roten Punkt unter dem Aufnahmefenster
--> evtl. Pausieren der Aufnahme: II anklicken, nochmals klicken zur Fortsetzung
--> Beenden der Aufnahme: "Done" anklicken
--> Umschalten auf Tab A (screenr)
--> Abspielen und Prüfen der Aufnahme
--> Entweder Löschen oder Speichern der Aufnahme
Evtl. Problem 3: Eine Speicherung der Aufnahme erfolgt nicht und verhindert ein Weiterarbeiten, wenn Sie keine eigene Beschreibung im Textfeld eingeben.
--> Auswählen, ob man sofort einen Tweet zu Twitter mit einem Link zur Aufnahme wünscht ("Tweet it") oder zunächst keinen Tweet wünscht ("Häkchen bei "Don´t tweet this screencast" anklicken)
--> Erst dann "Tweet it" zur Einleitung des Speichervorgangs anklicken.
--> Anschauen der Aufnahme im Bereich "My Screencasts" oder im öffentlichen Bereich "Public Stream"
--> Im Bereich "My Screncasts" sind mehrere Aktionen möglich u.a.: Kopieren der URL oder des embedded Code, Herunterladen als .mp4-File, Publizieren bei Twitter oder Löschen des Screencasts
Crossing borders on night trains
Since I'd never tried crossing borders by train before, we decided to travel within Eastern Europe exclusively by rail. And because these trips tend to be quite long, we thought we'd avoid wasting daylight hours in trains by taking them at night. So armed with terrifying stories of hapless passengers being gassed and robbed blind at night, we resolved to barricade our doors and sleep with our passports and money hidden on our persons.
All this paranoia was quickly eviscerated shortly after we boarded our first night train in Budapest when the conductor proved to be fluent in English and very kind while our sole cabin-mate, a 20-year-old Austrian student, told us he'd taken night trains in Eastern Europe many times and they were totally safe. Even when we were roused from our slumber in the middle of the night (twice) by the passport officers, I found no cause for concern.
In fact, the scariest part of that train ride happened before we actually began moving. I wanted to eat some canned fish and Eliza insisted I do it outside the cabin lest it smell of fish all night. So I sat on the steps leading up to the car while we waited at the station and began opening the can. Suddenly I was startled by the sound of sliding metal and the door snapped shut a fraction of a second after I whisked my legs out of its path!
The train trip from Romania to Bulgaria was less pleasant because we tried to sleep in seats instead of getting a couchette. While Eliza managed to pull this off, I ended up staying awake the entire time. It didn't help that the conductor kept asking me for my ticket at every station. The toilets on that train dispensed with plumbing in favour of holes in the bottom of the toilet through which we could see the tracks below. Beats having it get clogged, I suppose. When the Romanian passport office collected everybody's passports for inspection, he had trouble finding mine in the stack and so handed them all to me so I could locate mine. I greatly regret not being more thorough in my perusal of that stack.
When we got to the Turkish border, everybody had to disembark and buy visas. Of course, they only took cash, in Euros, despite Turkey not being in the EU! Eliza had previously told me that visas cost 10 British Pounds but when we got to the counter the slimeball behind it refused to accept the 10 GBP note she handed him, instead writing "15" on a piece of paper and flashing it at her. He also gestured at the piece of paper tacked to the window and upon glancing at that we noticed that the prices were all listed in only USD and Euros. She tried explaining that 10 GBP was equivalent to 15 Euros but he would have none of it. In desperation she handed him an additional 5 Euros (the last of her cash), which he finally accepted in return for a visa.
Having watched Eliza get swindled, I handed him 15 GBP right away, only to be rebuffed and directed toward the price list again. Apparently Turkey charges Canadians 45 Euros for a visa! Shocked by this, I ask him where the ATM was but he said there wasn't one. At that point I started to worry because I was stuck at the Turkish border in the middle of the night with insufficient cash to buy a visa and no ATMs around. My deus ex machina came in the unlikely form of a loan from a German traveller whose t-shirt had a University of Waterloo logo emblazoned across it. It turned out that he had spent a year there as an exchange student!
The First Whiff of Pollution
My street, my home
Today I drove way out of my comfort zone to Sukhbaatar District, which is in the northern part of the city. It's considered a ger district, though most people there live in small houses. I was with Lee Lawrence, a freelance journalist who is also my dad's wife. She's interested in the work of the Urban Development Resource Center (UDRC), an NGO which works with local neighborhoods to improve living conditions. They do it by creating a savings collective in a single neighborhood. The act of making small, daily contributions to a collective fund knits the residents of a street together, a big accomplishment for people with independent, nomadic roots. They use the savings to improve their neighborhood and make small loans to members.You can see the difference. All the gates are painted bright blue. Each home has a little mailbox and trash can. Newly-planted trees line the street. One street even had a narrow sidewalk. The daily contributions of 100 tugrugs a day per household (about 7 cents) add up, and actually make a difference.For some reason I like being in ger districts. I like their simplicity, their roughness. I'm impressed by the people who so recently moved to the city from the countryside, who first live in their gers, then save up and build houses. Conditions are harsh, but I have the feeling they'll keep improving their situation. It was chilly today. I saw a truck delivering sacks of raw coal. You could see smoke coming out of chimneys, and smell the first whiff of pollution which will soon grip the entire city.
