Japan Kaizen Study Tour

Under this head, I will keep posting some of my experiences that I had during my tour to japan.

This tour was scheduled starting from March 14th (departure from India) till 26th March (fly back from japan)

FLight that we took was Thai Airways. This was the first time i was travelling abroad and was my first international flight experience. Quality wise the flight can be rated at 6.5/10. Food was excellent and I appreciate the service of the crew despite huge number of passengers.

We had a connected flight from Mumbai to Bangkok  which took almost 6 hours and another from bangkok to Narita (Japan) airport which took around 4 hours. I hope I am correct about timings. We spent around 3 hours at the Bangkok ariport in between the flights.

Bangkok Airport, named as Swarnabhumi International Airport- has a lot of innovative designs. Looking from outside it would look like a DNA stucture replicated on four sides.

Some of the inside pics at Bangkok airport.

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Japan ICT Sessions

THIS comes as a rather late entry from me. I must have put this together earlier.

In the month of March, I got an opportunity to visit Japan as a part of Kaizen Study Tour for the year 2009, under the guidance of Dr. Shrinivas Gondhalekar (or Dr. G as we all call him, Founder / Expert at  KANZEN institute Asia Pacific ) and Dean (Operations) @ Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, where I am currently pursuing my Post Graduate Diploma in Management.

This trip is a part of one the initiatives taken up by Dr. G to promote and enhance relations with Japan and make us aware of the Japanese way of living and working.

I had always been fascinated by the way japan has developed over the years after 2nd world war post which the japanese morale had been destroyed completely. Everyone knows about Hiroshima and nagasaki attacks. With my current post graduation, learning Japanese language (Nihon-go) not only as a part of curriculum but also a part of the relationship development.
Utilising ICT to have carefully charted out chat sessions with the students from Keio University in Tokyo is also a plan of this. We used to have weekly chat sessions with japanese students in groups, which focussed on specific subjects and engaged in constructive chat with a lot of information exchange. These used to happen on thursdays morning 8 AM.
A multitude of subjects like Education in Japan and India, World of mathematics, Beauty of two countries etc.
Pre-relationship building happened during  these chat sessions.
Prof Hasebe from Keio had facilitated these sessions.

These kind of sessions help in nurturing the following objectives:
Developing trust amongst the Japanese students and professors
Understand a bit about Japanese culture
Assess the level of english as a language in japan.

These sessions ran for a period of two months, each of which was followed by feedback to be submitted on the Keio blog.

Th students we interacted in these sessions were the same ones we would be meeting in our trip to Japan

Back to blogging

I have been inactive so long here, that I had forgotten I had this blog..

Partly this was because, I think I was too busy in my MBA life and trying to make sense out of it. I completely ignored the fact it is necessary to retain knowledge that gets constantly created in the mind and till date we have not found the way to make sure we don't forget the things we create in our minds

Freedom after a caged life

Last sunday I had a chance to visit the Taraporewala Aquarium at Grant Road, Bombay. Its a small structure in itself. I had last visited it when I was a small kid(kids are small always). May be I was in 7th grade then. Actually I had gone to meet a friend and we made out a plan to visit it.

The last time I had gone there it all I remember was some small ponds and fishes in it. Very unclear picture. This time I was actually fascinated by the new fishes I saw there. There's this whole skeleton of a bog whale there in the room when you enter the door. In the middle of the whole floor lies that thing. I saw that there was a lot of renovation done and new fish ponds were added.

Fishes are such  simple and genteel animals. Just floating around the ponds wherever they get place to. The only pity I had for them was that they were caged and the ponds not big enough for their full free float in the water.

Sometimes I wonder, we make our lives like these small ponds and then cage ourselves in it, although the cage does not seem to be visible to naked eyes, to neither of us or the other people around us. Sometimes we like to live in that small net and keep ourselves confined. Human mind does not revolt against something spontaneously if that "something" is not directly visibly causing any mantal or physical pain. And in this case we have ourselves made up this cage unconsciously so we do not make a move to break it.
It take a lot of courage to break this kind of cage, because we are left in a free flowing world once we break it and are left in all awe.

I think if these fishes are put in the sea or river, they also must be feeling the same. Being in a pond for a long time, if they are let go into big river they must be feeling intimidated and afraid of all the big water around.

But still the freedom you get when you are out of the cage is invaluable....

Changing condition of the world ... a joke

World wide survey was conducted by the UN.

The question asked was:
"Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"

Needless to say -  The survey was a  huge failure!!

In Africa they didn't know what 'food' meant,

In India they didn't know what 'honest' meant,

In Europe they didn't know what 'shortage' meant,

In China they didn't know what 'opinion' meant,

In Middle East they didn't know what 'solution' meant,

In South America they didn't know what 'please' meant,

And in USA they didn't know what 'the rest of the world' meant!

Is Hell Exothermic or Endothermic?

A true story. A thermodynamics professor had written a take home exam for his graduate students. It had one question:

"Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with a proof."

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. One student, however wrote the following:

First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for souls entering hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since, there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant.

So, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.

Of course, if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.

It was not  revealed what grade the student got.

War of thoughts

Looking at the shining shadows of the windy clouds I feel the breeze of intelligence flowing seamlessly through each and every truthfully alive particle in this world. With that I flow, my heart mellows, my eyes reach for the birds of wisdom and try to hold on to their wings, I feel the flapping of their wings as if the monotonous laughter of a Yogi. A chirping nightingale lands onto my shoulder, I feel her weight but then I let go the thought of it being a burden and somehow I feel only the warmth of her legs and not her weight. I feel something changin in my body. I try to understand what it is but I cannot understand. It pains a little at first but then gradually the pain increases and takes over my whole body as if my body is a home for all the pain in this world. I close my eyes tight and try to concenterate on one and only one thought and that is the fact that pain does not exist, what exists is the human consciousness that "feels" the pain.

So what happens is ->

Crowded trains of thoughts running on my tentacled electrochemical rails are bumping into each other creating a havoc and chaos of emotions...I wanna get out of it...