NO MORE AIR INDIA!

I tried not to remember how terrible the flight experience I had with Air India, but I figure this count as part of the adventure and could be a heads-up for those who are planning to go to India. I’m not going to describe every little details of what happened with Air India, but PLEASE take my advice it is not worth it for you to fly even the airfare is $1000 cheaper.

We got stuck at the Bangalore Airport for about 10 hours because our plane could not land due to fog. I understand that whether related delay is nothing that the airline company can do about, but at least they should keep us updated with the ACCURATE current information. I specify on “accurate” because they kept giving us wrong information. Whenever they said the plane is going be here at 10am, guess what, the plane did not landed until 1pm.

Once we got boarded to go to Mumbai, we missed our flight to Frankfurt. Yep, that means, we get to stay in Mumbai for a night. We got up early, around 5am, to go to the airport. Gladly the flight departed on time.

Somehow we ended to be an hour and a half late when we got to Frankfurt. Long story short, we landed in Chicago about 2 hours later than our expecting arrival time. While we were waiting for the luggage, the baggage door on the plane froze. So while the airport staff worked to deice the door, we missed our connection flight to Minneapolis.

By the time we all got our luggage and tried to catch another flight to Minneapolis, they told us that there were no more flights going to Minneapolis, and that means, again, we need to stay in Chicago for a night. Oh, that’s just great. We all waited with the greatest patience we had left after all these great adventures while the Air India agents behind the counter writing our hotel and meal vouchers on carbon papers one by one for our entire group. We stood in line for 2 more hours and there’s nothing to eat, drink, or even a bathroom for us to use. I felt like I’m stuck again even I’m back in U.S. now, but you know what, that’s because I’m still with Air India.

With all that been said, I finally made home and I just can’t stress enough how much I miss all the conveniences I have in U.S. I do miss home!

Last Day of Lecture: E Governance

When I first learned the topic of the day is e governance I was thinking how could India manage government services online given the slow internet speed and the high cost of internet access (given our experience at the Ginger Hotel) in the country? Professor Padmanabhan covered a lot of different areas on e governance but I think what he had mostly talked about were future plans and may not be carry out as action now.

One of the future plans is to provide wireless internet service to villages of smaller population. My next concern for the plan is if the locals have not been expose to computers or internet before, how will they be able to access the information they need? This is far away from what Friedman would expect the flat world would be. Friedman mentioned in Flattener 3 the workflow of software will allow one to stay connected all the time. If these villages does not know how to access the internet, how well of this plan will be when it carries out? And just want to insert a personal opinion here that I do think India needs to work on their infrastructure first before worrying about e governance.

Branding in India

Given this is our last week of class in Mysore I felt like time has slow down for me. Anyhow, the lecture today was given by Professor Balakrishnan on the topic of branding. One thing that I found very interesting is the difference between branding in U.S. and India. He said that India branding is lots of brands diversify into other products. In other words, to give an example, Company XYZ has numerous products like shampoos, food, office supplies, etc. The company does not need to have different brands for each category of the products they had. Because in India, the company does not have to worry about how a consumer differentiates a shampoo brand from a food brand as long as that they are all Company XYZ products. Whereas in the U.S., it would be hard to imagine if Johnson & Johnson has a food product in the grocery section of the supermarket. I think this is a very interesting thing to learn as a business student, even as this world is becoming flatter, there’s still a difference between consumer behaviors between different regions of the world due their unique preferences and culture.

Temple Visit Plus More Day 2

Our first stop of the day, again, is a temple. We took off our shoes, again, and went into the Kesava temple. According to AR, this temple was a cursed temple. One of the goddesses back when put a curse on the temple stating that every other generation of king will not have his own descendent and for those who are in politics will loose their power. So the very first question occurred to me was why are we even visiting this temple? AR said that since none of us is in politics, the curse will not affect us. How interesting!
The second stop of the day, surprise, surprise, is not a temple. We stopped at a beach looking place and got a boat ride on the river. It was the most relaxing thing I’ve done in the past week or so. Right after the boat ride, we had our lunch outside of a worshipping temple, and left for waterfall right after lunch. The waterfall is used for a power generation plant and it was considered as a big project when it was built. Today was a lot of lighter day compare to yesterday, what a relief!

Happy Birthday Gene!

A manager at Ginger Hotel find out about Gene's birthday. She's been waiting until we got back today and presented the cake and flowers to Gene. How special!

Temple Visit Day 1

We started the day with the visit to Gomateshvara statue on top of Vindhyagiri Hill. It is located on the way to Halebid and Belur. AR intentionally made this the first stop of the day so we will have enough energy to climb the 614 steps that Vindhyagiri Hill offers. (If I would know this the day before, I think I will be more mentally prepared for it.) So up I climbed.

Once we reached the TOP of the hill, the view it offered was fantastic. And when we entered the temple, this 60 feet statue stands in the middle of the temple is a view that I would not want to miss.

All right, it is another challenge to walk down the 614 steps given that their consistency is not all that even. Oh well, I made it to the bottom of the hill and got mob by several vendors again. (Pretty much every tourist site we visited, there will always be some beggars tried to ask for money and some of them were very annoying.)

Our next stop for the day is the Belur temple. We got a tour guide waiting for us at the temple and before we entered, AR told us that we should pay great attention listening to the tour guide. The tour guide went through series of different goddesses’ positions, instruments they were holding in their hands, and the symmetrical significance of their poses. Supposedly, they were all significant to the culture, but I was thinking to myself, if there are 10 billion gods and/or goddesses in Indian culture, how many could people remember who’s from whom? With that we ended our second temple visit of the day.

Surprise, surprise! Our final stop of the day is yet another temple. And of course, for every temple we been to we had to take our shoes off. I did not go into this one. My interest for the temples kept going downhill that I could not push myself into this temple. The greatest similarity between the temples we visited during the day were they are all stone carved and no colors to them at all. (This is really different from what I expect a temple to be.) And the greatest difference between them is that they have no differences because I could not tell one temple from another.
With that I ended my journey of the day, feel exhausted, we rode the bus back to Mysore in about 2 hours.

Cultural Show

We have been talk a lot about globalization, international business, outsourcing, etc. One thing I think that is missing from Friedman’s book is the cultural factor. He mentioned a lot of manufacturing jobs and even services are outsource to India, which is for the greater benefit of the world economy as the products and services will be produced in the country that has the best comparative advantage. To do so, one does not need to relocate to another country in order to serve the customers of another country, while still be able to live the lifestyle of their own culture.

Personally, I think there is a limited cultural experience you could get without really live or been to that country. For instance, I will not be able to understand the Indian cultural by just reading the books. And I don’t think I have a full grasp of Indian culture given that I’m in India for two weeks now and not until tonight, I’ve witness the beauty of this culture. Special thanks to the students at SDM-IMD for putting the show together for us. I really appreciated the great shows they had performed.
The bottom point is, although the world is inevitability become flatter, but I don’t think it will be as flat as a sheet of paper since there is the culture factor that we should consider, and consider it with a greater aspect.

Infosys

The minute we drove into the campus, we were all awed by how gorgeous this campus is, and there are four more buildings that are under construction now. As always, we had our presentation first and follow by the tour.

This presentation did not impress me at all. Instead, it gave me some negative gut feelings that I will rarely have. Before I say anything else, I want to insert a disclaimer here that everything I said in the following is pure personal opinion.

We watched a short clip about Infosys and towards the end of the clip, one of their Asian employees stated: “Infosys has helped me with my confidence” with her head look down and did not even look at the camera. I was thinking to myself, if she really have confident in her, won’t she be at least looking at the camera to show her confidence or maybe with a smile? She did not look happy or confident at all. Then, the presenter kept saying that Infosys is an employee based company and because the company has such a great value system that holds all of their 80,000 employees together. So one of my fellow classmates asked the presenter what is their value system, and the presenter could only give two out of their four values. And what’s more ironic is that this presenter is a trainer at Infosys for new hires. So my guess is if he didn’t know the GREAT value system that holds the employees together, then what about the employees he trained? The chances are they will not know the values of the company too. Then, the next question will be, what exactly do hold these employees together for Infosys?

Oh well, the presentation really turned me off. Later, we toured the fabulous campus they have in Mysore.

And nothing occurs to me that if I were one of the graduate students in India I will want to work for this company. On the counter side, I could see why all the graduate students want to work for Infosys. Infosys have all the training sessions structured and planned from morning to afternoon; they even have their evening life planned too; and weekends too. It is no doubt that the amount of capital Infosys spent on their employees are great, but whether this type of investment is for employee’s personal development or just to “program” their employees to company’s specifications is a matter that continuously concerns me.

Below is a picture taken from one of Infosys’s training room, which is the largest training room in the entire world, it has the capacity of training 9,000 people at once. The world has become flattener for Infosys as their employees could sit in one of these GREAT training rooms to get trained without going anywhere in the world. Sounds wonderful?

Taegu Tec

This morning, we got a guest speaker coming from Taegu Tec. It is a multinational company with the primary business in industrial cutting tools. Dr. Krishnan did mention some of the brands that they sell to U.S. and England, but I can’t exactly recall the names now.

It was a very interactive lecture. One thing that makes this lecture memorable was when Rajiv asked what the significant changes in India were for the past 7 years that make businesses optimistic for the future given that India’s infrastructure is not all that great compare to U.S. Although Rajiv did say that India has gone through lots of changes, but as we were coming from a developed nations cannot see. So, listened to another experienced individual's perspective on this was exciting to me.

He gave three reasons, but I can only recall two now. First, the open up of the Indian trade in 1998 saved the economy. Secondly, the current government’s contribution to the aviation system that makes it easier for citizens to travel, which I couldn’t agree more to. Indeed, I think India needs to make the entire infrastructure better, especially roads, so the travel will be easier for the citizens to commute from one place to the next. If the Berlin wall fell in order to spread democracy, then the infrastructure in India should be a piece of cake compare to Berlin wall. I know it does take time to make it happen, but I figure I need to sound my voice given all sorts of road conditions I’ve been on in India.

In addition, with the respect to the flatter world, transportation is one of the important factors to help the world to become flatter. So the suppliers could deliver their products on time, and the management could operate on just in time instead of just in case. I don’t think many businesspeople or tourists would enjoy the bumpy roads we have been on. It was bumpy!

Best Visit of All: Larson & Toubro

I have to admit that L&T was the best visit of all so far. The hospitality we received at this place was fantastic. There were at least 7 employees stood in front of the gate waiting for our arriving. The minute I walked into the door, I noticed a strong scent of perfume by the hallway. They must have sprayed something around the staircase that makes the entrance smells really good. Second thing I noticed was they putted a sign wrote: “Welcome Students from University of Minnesota”, which was very touching!

Not long after we arrived, they had a brunch buffet ready for us. The food was the best I had in the past 2 weeks. All the foods are very much adjusted to American taste and not much were spicy. Okay, what I can say about this company is more than their hospitalities.

Larson & Toubro (L&T) specialize in consulting, medical equipments, software development, etc. One thing that I found this company to be especially interesting to me is that L&T helps many India infrastructure projects such as building of the Mumbai Airport, bridges, roads, and dams. For a multinational company to help building a country’s infrastructure really shows their commitment to the country they are in. And this is exactly the point that the International Business textbook said in the foreign direct investment chapter, when a company makes that kind of commitment to a country, they are going to develop their employees to the greatest potential and contribute to the national economy as much as possible. L&T is a company that do as they said, and thus, never lose a customer of theirs ever before (and probably never will).

After we had tour the four building they have in Mysore campus, we sat down in a conference room for additional Q&A. Mr. Nagaraj, the leader of L&T EmSys group, showed his passion for his work that he has been doing for the past 30 plus years. He answered all the questions we had, and before we left, he presented the gifts to every one of us. I could almost guarantee that most of us enjoyed this visit and L&T is a company that deserves the respect they had from their customers, suppliers, and even American visitors.

Sandalwood Factory and Silk Factory: Monopoly v. Free Market

Today we visited a government operated sandalwood factory and a silk factory. I find these two factories could be taken the formal one as a monopolistic factory and the latter one as a free market factory.

Sandalwood factory is run by the government and the government owns every sandalwood tree in the city, even if a sandalwood tree grows on one’s personal property, the government would come in and lists the tree as theirs. This is definitely a 100% pure monopoly. The government could set whatever price they want to and sell in the market.

Whereas the silk factory, although it is also a government run factory, but it faces the competition from other silk factories. The government does not have a monopoly in silk. There are many places in the world that have access to silk and I guess that’s why the security at the silk factory is stricter than the sandalwood factory. Shortly after we entered the factory, Nancy told me the truth of stricter security was that the guard at the desk wants to possess his hierarchy of power. Isn’t this sound familiar to me? Just like Chandogya Upanishad says: “Power is superior to knowledge” (33) in Being Indian book.

2 Days at Kabini

For about ½ hour ride, we arrived at the Kabini River Lodge. It was a very beautiful resort. It is really peaceful, quit, and refresh. This is a vacation for me. This is a monkey I saw before I went to lunch. The baby monkey is so cute.

Around 4pm, we were off to the Safari. The ride to the jungle was very very bumpy. And according to Rajiv, this is their state road. I don’t think I have ever had such a bumpy ride in my life before. Once we arrived at the jungle, we saw a peacock right away. Later, I saw lots of animals and birds, but the most exciting part is the elephants.

There were three of them; two big ones and one small one. That was exciting. Then, our guide tried really hard to find us a tiger, but with no luck. We end up coming back later than rest of the group. What a fascinating journey! I will never forget this day.

A Tourist Day

For the past several days, I was busy with the sightseeing in Mysore. I will go through my experiences along with the pictures. The first place I visited is the temple on top of Chamundi Hill. This is an interesting visit. I have been to several temples before, and none of which required me to take the shoes off and go barefoot. Secondly, when we finally enter the temple to see the holy idol, we couldn’t get closer to the idol. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera that morning, so I don’t have any pictures I could post here. After the temple visit, we went back to SDM and practiced yoga. I have to admit that the yoga helped me to relax a bit especially due to the tight schedule we have throughout the weekend. Our next destination is the Mysore Palace.

This place is unreal. It is even more phenomenal at night time when all 96,000 lights are lit (I will post some night pictures later). Once I entered the palace, I couldn’t help myself, but kept looking up at the ceiling and was completely astonished by the amazing art this palace had. And yes, I have to go barefoot in the palace again, that was a first.

After the palace, we went to the St. Philomena church. I believe this church is the oldest church in Mysore. We didn’t spend much time here.

Next, we had the lunch at the Tipu Sultan’s summer palace. This palace is a different from a normal palace. This palace does not have any kitchen or bedrooms because this is purely for meeting only. Although the palace does not have a kitchen, we still managed to have a lunch at the palace, only we picnic in the garden. After this visit, we went to the bird sanctuary. You cannot believe that only 1 hour outside of Mysore is this beautiful sanctuary. There were so many big bats that I have never seen before. At first, I was in doubt whether these are bats or not. Their size could certainly be birds if one looks from a distance. I also saw some migrated birds from America. The tour guide told me that these birds do not need passports to enter the country, which I thought these birds really make this world flat, since there's nothing could stop them from coming and going to a different country. I wonder if the U.S. government and the Indian government need to sign some sort of treaty to allow these birds to freely enter a country like the goods and services treaties that they always signed between the nations : ) This is not it. When I got into the boat for a boat ride, I got so close to a crocodile that I have never come so close before in my life. It was exciting and nerve-racking experience!

Well, my next destination was Brindavan gardens. This was a busy place. Since this place charge for taking camera in, the group decided to count on Rajiv for pictures. We were just in time for sunset at the KRS dam. It was gorgeous! It was close to 7pm when we left the Brindavan gardens and we have to rush back to Mysore Palace again to see the lights lit. I can’t believe what’s in front of my eyes (just see the pictures below).

That’s it for my busy tourist sightseeing in Mysore and I have to get ready for my next journey to Kabini River Lodge.

AT&S

We visited AT&S, an Austrian own business sector, that produces electronic circuit boards. This company manufactures pretty much every electronic circuit board you could think of; from the circuit board in the cell phones to computers to the cruise control function in the cars.

The supply chain management at AT&S is global. They import cooper sheets from Hangzhou, China and the board, which puts in between the two copper sheets, from Taiwan. They drill holes into the board and furnish it to meet customers’ specifications. AT&S does not do any assembly of the components of the board. While we were there, we saw a circuit board produced for Siemens, which I thought was interesting. This visit reminds me the Globalization 1.0 in Friedman’s book where the world drives the integration. The final product of AT&S is an integrated global product that is owned by an Austrian company manufactured in India with suppliers in China and Taiwan, and their customers around the world. Below is a picture taken in front of AT&S.

Press Conference

We got visitors in class today. There were four journalists came from New Delhi to visit SDM and us, the students from America. Supposedly, they are going to find out about our experiences in Mysore so far, but it ended up been that we learned the roles of press in India.

I got a lot out of it, but I don’t think the journalists got much out of us. When Mary asked what will consider being the news of 2007, one of them said that in one instance where 20+ kids were kidnapped and the police officers were not the first ones who took actions on. I don’t know how much longer it took until someone found two dead children bodies buried somewhere, and later been identified as part of 20 kids kidnapped and the rest remain unsure. These 20 kids were coming from lower class family and that’s why their kids didn’t get much of attention as they should. In contrast, when one government official’s child was kidnapped, the police force found his child in two days. These two examples set a really good ground for us to understand the corruption and inequality in this country, which is exactly what Verna was talking about. Todd did ask the journalists on what they think of the book Being Indian, and they honesty responded that they have not. But they did say that Verna is a well known author in India, which I thought is interesting. Verna’s writing style is very different from the Western. He’s like a factual writer (I’m not saying that everything he wrote about are facts; he likes to write a bunch of statements and not go much into elaborating them), which I found very difficult to read on. According to Rajiv, Being Indian is a very controversial book in India, which I could see the reasons now. The writing style he used made the readers want to believe that what he wrote is all facts, and I’m sure many Indians may disagree.

After the “press conference”, we had a little coffee break where I asked one of the journalists for whether an employer would prefer a new hire to have higher degree of education or someone that has more experience. His response satisfied me. He said it really depends on the position you are hire for. If an employer is looking for a plant manager, he probably would prefer experience over education. However, if he’s looking for engineer, he would probably look for someone who has the higher education. This totally makes sense no matter where you would go in the world.

Later in the afternoon, we visited the TVS plant. The ride to this plant is even bumpier than the one we went to yesterday. There were several speed bumps that were 3 or 7 in a role. That was bumpy! And when we rolled down the window, the smell wasn’t all that pleasant either.

Once we arrived at the plant, the security was a tough one to pass. No camera, no bag, and no purse. We finally got the permission to enter. We sat through four PowerPoint presentations in their conference room and I have to admit that it was tough to do after the ongoing schedule we had. We finally tour the plant!

The TVS plant is much better than the Automotive Axle we visited yesterday. Again, I don’t know much about this industry, but you can tell that this is a quality plant. The facility is clean and most of the workers have their safety protection gears on. The plant is well equipped and organized that we all think it will work just as well as it would in U.S. No wonder why they won the Deming award.

Supply Chain Management

The class started with a bunch of concepts and terms, which it was kind of repetitive of what I have learned from my production and operation management class and refreshed with the assigned reading we have for the day. It was almost towards the end of the lecture when the professor finally gave examples of how Indian companies manage the supply chain. I didn’t feel like I got much out of the lecture, but the visit to Automotive Axles plant was very interesting, despite the “rough” travel we had.

Once I arrived at the plant, I was astonished by how beautiful the facility is. They got a garden where they grow a variety of medicine plants for the community. We started our visit with a presentation given by the CFO of the company. He said that his strategy for supply chain management is just in case, not just in time. The reason is that it is very difficult to manage their suppliers. If a supplier didn’t deliver the materials they needed, they will be in trouble. So, what Automotive Axles do is order more inventory than what they would actually need. I found this to be interesting. Like the CFO said, the business structure in India is not as well structured as America, but I’m curious about the bond of trust between the company and the supplier would be. I learned from Verna that Indians build strong relationships with each other, so it will be easier for them to get to the business done. If this is the case, then shouldn’t Automotive Axles also rely on their suppliers would actually deliver the inventories they ordered in time?
After the presentation, we toured the plant. I think it is nice to see a plant facility in India, but it would be a lot nicer if I could actually know what I was looking at. Although it wasn’t that hot inside of the plant, but I just can’t imagine when summer comes around, how are they going to be able to tolerate the heat? I highly doubt that they will get any air condition. In addition, I also observed that the workers did not have much of safety protection on. Most of them did not have their goggles on; they don’t have a safety belt on when they climbed to the higher area of the plant; they don’t even have mask on when they worked in the welding area.
Personally, I wasn’t very interested in this type of plant visit since I have no background knowledge of the industry, whereas Harvey and Gene found it to be fascinating. Anyhow, I still enjoyed the experience of visiting a plant in India!

An Adventurous Afternoon

We have a free afternoon today and I just can’t stay at Ginger to waste my time. So, I went out with several others in the group and it was quit an experience. We got to Fab City and went to a different direction than what we have been going. Somehow, we ended up in a market that sells fresh fruit, vegetables, powder, and scent oils. The vendors kept asking us to stop in their shops. One thing I found very interesting is the way how eager they want to get our business. There were kids at the market try to get our business too. Many shops usually run within the family, which means that the store is passed from grandfather to father and to son. I stopped at a store and bought some scent oil, it smells really good. Omni told me that was made from an Indian flower named Champa. I got a pretty good deal on it.
After we walked out of that market, we walked to a street that is just off of the main street. Somebody on the street told Harvey that there is a craft market nearby, so we decided to go there. We kept on walking until this man came up to us and said that he will take us to the craft market. We let him to lead us the way. Instead, he took us to the shop that he owned to see the incense making. So, that was a great walk and disappointing. After we have seen the incense making, two other men in the shop showed us some therapy oil that could help you to loss some weight. Gene ended up with some sandalwood oil.

After that shop visit, we were all tired and hungry. We were trying to find out where we could get some American food. Harvey worked really hard to find a Subway. He have asked so many people and no one knows what he’s talking about until we went back to Fazil Silk and Saree place, the owner’s brother knows exactly what Harvey was talking about. We got into a rickshaw and off we go. We found the Subway. Gene is ready to have that sub.
We were just overwhelmed with seeing a Subway in Mysore India. According to the manager, Subway just open for about six months and that’s why not many locals know about the place. Alright, that's all the adventure we had in this afternoon and looking forward for more adventures down the road.

India’s Legal System

The lecture today is the best one I had in India. The guest speaker was a lawyer, who drove 50 miles to come here to give us a presentation of India’s legal system. I really liked the classroom interactions we had. He’s very open about India’s legal system and had enough experiences to tell us what’s going on in this culture. He said the positions in the legal system can be purchased due to corruption in this country, which is exactly what Being Indian book was talking about. In addition, I really appreciated the fact that he told us some of the things not to do while we are visiting the court, such as no cross legs while standing, no pictures in court rooms, no talking among yourself while the court is in session.

Later in the afternoon, we visited Mysore’s District Court. There are tons of people outside of the courtroom in which we have no idea what they are doing there. We listened to a lawsuit over income tax issues between the father and the son. And the courtroom itself is quit interesting. It has broken windows, broken chairs, and the paint on the wall is all chapped. What’s more interesting is that I saw the oldest computer in my life. It was an interesting visit, but if we could understand the language of prosecuting case, it would make the visit even more meaningful.

Al and Rajiv waited patiently outside of the courthouse until it is time for us to enter the courtroom.

Class 2

I really enjoyed the lecture today, although it was different than what I expected. The lecture was supposed to be ethic discussions, but it turned out to be very philosophical. Anyhow, I had easier time processing the information that Professor Subramanya was talking about and I found a lot of interesting materials too.

Professor Subramanya began the lecture with some form of prayer statements, which stated that we all want to be happy. On the second slide, he mentioned that "wealth adds an edge to beauty, family prestige, as well as to education". And wealth should be your duty. I was working on a paper last semester titled "Happiness and Duty", and I do not believe that wealth will contribute to happiness because wealth is external factor to an individual's life while happiness is internal.

However, Professor Subramanya offered a different perspective today. He argued that wealth is necessity for you to pursue happiness because it will meet your basic needs to survive and it allows you to take care of your family and friends surrounding you. He also claimed that we need to position ourselves to where we wanted to be. I don't know if I will agree with him completely. Although meeting the basic needs in life is important, but taking creation of wealth to be your duty does not sound right to me. I think this may explain why Indians think that corruption is good only if you get the ends you asked for.

Celebrating New Year

Our entire group went to Planet X celebrating the New Year (of course, both professors did not come with) and we had a blast! Here, we are all waiting "patiently" outside of Planet X to make sure all of us have arrived before we enter the place.

Here we go, we got in and the place looks like a park. There were several people dressed in their Disney costume greeting us as we entered the club. I just took a random picture inside of Planet X. The man in dark, that's Gene. The man of the night!

Mary just can't wait to dance. She went over to the dance floor and there she goes. This little girl loved to dance with Mary. She copied every move that Mary made. She's adorable!

2008 is here now! We kept dancing, screaming, and laughing under the stars and fireworks. The fireworks was ongoing for about 1/2 hour until the smoke occupied the sky. Slightly after the New Year bell rang, some Indians shake our hands and wishing us a Happy New Year. We had a wonderful evening!