Day Eight : The Last Day

Ahh like I said before, its so relaxing to wake up in the morning without worrying about when the bus is or when the presentations start. Oops I spoke to soon. I have to again do my packing.

I had breakfast peacefully. Now I'm at the comp centre. My car leaves the hotel at about 3:30 pm. My flight DL 118 will hopefully end up at Bombay. Then another flight to Delhi and then a 6 hour train journey to Kanpur.

Lets see... if everything goes well, I should be in Kanpur at 6 am on August 1st.

It will be nice to be back... everything here was good...food, accomodation, sight seeing, learning... I really enjoyed it but there is something missing...don't know what it is but something that I would find in people in India but not here.

Day Seven : The Presentations

We woke up early and did a few dry runs for the presentation later in the day. My group was doing a presentation on MEMS for anthrax detection and acid detection.

We left the hotel at 11 am. We reached Bell Labs, Murray Hill and had lunch there (pizza). Then the presentations started... there were about 11 presentations totally. It ended by about 3:30 pm.

After that we had an internship workshop where we got to hear from one of the interns at Bell Labs this year. We were also told how to apply for our internships next year.

After that we returned to the hotel ... for the banquet dinner, which was followed by the Talent show and finally a DJ night.

Day Six : Mamma Mia

Ahhh its so relaxing when you dont have to worry about catching the bus at 8 am... you get to have a peaceful breakfast.

Anyway... there was a lecture by a former GSSP alumnus. After that we went back to New York City to see a broadway show "Mamma Mia". It is a musical-story which includes about 22 songs by ABBA.. so its a must see for ABBA fans. It was really good. 2.5 hours and not once did any of us get bored... it ended with the performers giving a mini concert..singing "Waterloo" and "Dancing Queen".

We returned to the hotel at about 6:30 pm, had dinner and now it back to the presentation making.

Day Five : Bell Labs, Whippany

We woke up real early (7 am), had breakfast and went to visit the Bell Labs at Whippany. It started off with a lecture followed by tours... I visited the Network interoperability group, the 3G testing group etc. After that, we returned to the Bell Labs at Murray Hill where we had lunch.

After lunch we went with our case scientist to his lab. There he showed us how to make the layer of fluid, immediately adjacent to a surface (over which it was flowing) flow.

After that we listened to a 2 hr lecture by the Nobel Laureate Horst Stormer. He talked to us about Nanotechnology. He actually passed around his Nobel medals which all of us took photos of.

After the lecture we returned to the hotel and had dinner... dinner was a poolside barbecue at which Stormer was present, so all of us ended up asking him for autographs.

After dinner I joined my group and we did some project work.

Day Four : Bell Labs, Murray Hill

We left for Murray Hill at 8 am. We reached there and listened to a speech by the Lucent CEO and others. We had lunch there, at the Oak Room after which we went touring around the labs.

I got to see the electronics lab (circuits working at 200+ Ghz) , the semiconductor lab (vacuum < 10^-9 torr) and the broadband lan (which was pretty interesting... voice/TV over IP)

Then we met our case scientists. My group was doing the case study on MEMs (micro electonic mechanical syatems). It was pretty interesting and for a moment I was actually wishing I'd taken MME at IITK. But it was only for a moment!! Now its back to comps.

After that we returned back to the hotal at 7 pm. I had dinner, played a bit of table tennis.
Thats it for today.

Day Three : New York City

We left for the city at 10 am. The bus trip took an hour and a half. We got off at Times Square and proceeded to the Empire State building, after which we (to be more specific, "I") started feeling hungry so we went to eat at a... um... it wasn't a restaurant... it was like a supermarket where we went and chose what we wanted and then paid for everything at a common counter and then sat in another area and ate. I had a pizza and also experimented with a lasagna (which was pretty tasty).

After lunch we went to the Museum of Modern Art (M.o.m.a.) which had quite a few paintings by Picasso and Van Gogh. After that we went to the Rockfeller centre. then we returned to Times Square and were picked up by the bus at about 5:30 pm.

Nope, not over yet....

The bus took us to the harbour where they had rented a private boat for a cruise dinner. It was really nice... we cruised towards the Statue of Liberty passing over several suspension bridges. We got nice views of the Manhattan area. Soon we had dinner and there was a DJ on board so after dinner the dancing started. The night view was really great...everything dark except for the Manhattan skyline.

We finally reached the hotel at 11 pm and I went straight to bed.

Day Two

I woke up at 7 am. Went to breakfast where I met the rest of my group and the guide told us about the places where we would go during tommorow's day tour of New York City.

After that we were supposed to go to a cross cultural event. I expected it to be 'not so interesting' but nooo wayyy. It was very innovative/interesting... a simulation...

They divided us into 11 teams for the simlation. The scenario was like this : each of the groups represented one ficticious country. We had just been elected to power and had a certain number of units of food, money and environmental programs and during the elections we had promised that we would meet certain targets for the amount of food/wealth/env progs.

We had some initial amount of these three and could trade it with other countries. We also had a certain number of "scandals". After every year, we could "scandalize" one of these three commodities of another country. They could defend using another scandal and we could attack with another and so on...Anyway, the loser would forfeit all his food/wealth/env progs depending on which was being scandalized.

This role playing went of for 5 "years". During each year, we could trade with other countries... which were classified into those which we were allowed to trade with and those with whom we couldn't.

This role playing helped us all to understand why certain things happen in the current political scenario in the world... we noticed in the siulation that countries who were hoarding more of a commodity than they needed were very likely to be attacked. Also, even if we weren't allowed to deal with a country, we could do it via a third country.

Anyway, it ended at about 11:30 am. Then we went to a nearby park where we had a barbecue lunch after which I played kick-ball (its baseball where instead of hitting the ball, you kick it like a football and run to the next base), then we went to the lake where some of us swam/went boating and others lazed around/played frisbee. I also tried my luck with a hula-hoop but it didnt go to well thanks to my above average moment of intertia so we ended up converting it to a game, throwing the hoops.

We got back to the hotel at 5 pm. My 1 GB card is almost full so now I better transfer it to my hard disk.

Now, I'm off to have dinner after which the Project Groups meet to start off the presentations.

The Journey Begins

I'm about to leave Muscat... as usual I'm carrying a few kilos more luggage than I'm allowed to carry... hope the Gulf Air people allow this.

My ADSL connection decided to stop working about 24 hrs ago. But I managed to set up the dial up connection and so have limited access to the Internet.

The plane should take off at 8 am local time and land at 12 10 pm local time at Bombay but its very likely that the plane will be late.

Thats about it for now. This is probably the last time I'll be in Muscat for a long time...so...Adieu Muscat. Next Stop : Shivaji Airport, Mumbai