I’m a local TV Celeb!
Last Thursday, I was invited by Chad Bishop and Chad Yokom to be a guest on their local TV Talk Show – MuscaTTime. I was thrown under the bus a couple of times, but on the whole..I came out smelling like the GPC aromas that waft through downtown Muscatine on sunny days.
I also got to talk about Hookah’s and places in Iowa to enjoy them, Bollywood music (although I am no expert), and what the Bindi’s significance is.
There and back again
Like I mentioned in my previous post, it’s been a tumultous ride in the past year. The year started on a positive note, with my work for Kurlon being admired, prototyped and ready for production. Towards March, I learnt the leadership at Kurlon was changing hands, and in-house design was not a direction they wey wanted to pursue at the time. So, we parted ways, and I began exploring new avenues.
March, April and May progressed rather quickly, interspersed with me meeting some rather colorful characters. There was the patent lawyer (IIT, IIM) who had developed a “product” he thought would replace wood. He wanted me to research potential uses for a month at a retainer of INR 10,000, but he wouldnt let me see, feel or touch the product. Yeah..I know what you’re thinking.
Then there was the pretty wealthy entreprenuer from Chennai who wanted me to relocate to Chennai and design furniture for him, but without a written contract. Remuneration and other expenses would be paid to me in cash (or black money). That didn’t work out either.
Around the same time, I was contacted by an entreprenuer in Mysore who ran a business that did contract furniture for the hospitality industry. They offered me the position of Engineering Manager, reporting to the COO, a gentleman with an interesting character, and a very unique way of running operations, I later found. Two months into that opportunity, and I was fed up. I had spent more time playing dirty politics with the COO, than doing what I was hired for. I learnt the hard way that my american sensibilities did NOT fit into the Indian work-place.
Just when I was beginning to despair, that perhaps, my decision to return to India in 2009 had been a little impetuous, I received a little surprise in my inbox. My ex-manager from Maxon was looking to set-up a new Engineering team based out of Muscatine, Iowa and he wanted me back. A couple of days later, I signed my new offer letter and immediately quit the gig in Mysore. Meanwhile, the COO had antagonized the local labourers and they went on strike, plunging the factory and its business into total chaos in the midst of a INR 40,00,000 order from a prominent hotelier in Bangalore.
It tok 2 months for the immigration-related paperwork to be processed, and on September 21st, I left Bangalore to return to my adopted “home” country. I had never experienced such joy. When people say “When one door closes, and another opens, there’s always a reason”, they have no idea it is so true.
Leaving home was tough, as I had spent a year and 7 months surrounded by family, my dear friends with whom I had reconnected and bonded so well. But, it was the right thing to do, as my career had begun to stagnate and I hate my mind being idle. Work in india was just not challenging enough for me.
Now, I write from Iowa and I am happy.I wake up happy everyday. I am so grateful for second chances. My friends in the USA call me Phoenix – although the only ashes I rise from are the ones that fall off the coals from my Hookah. I have setlled back into my old routine. I am making new friends, discovering new challenges at work everyday and as of January, will be starting my part-time MBA from the University of Iowa.
There, life updated.
Timeline
It’s been a crazy past few months. I bought an Enfield. I rode the Enfield. A lot!. I sent pics to my ex-manager in the US. he liked it. It jogged his memory that I was AWESOME! He hired me back. I sold the Enfield. I moved back to the USA. That’s right..this post is coming at you live from Muscatine, Iowa! I now own a 2008 Subaru Impreza WRX. I’m lovin it.
I bought a Royal Enfield Classic 500 EFI this past weekend and finally have some pics to show you. This bike was introduced to the Indian market in July 2009 and has been selling like hotcakes. There is so much demand for it, that the waiting time for one post-booking is 9 months! Needless to say, I lucked out when the guy who got the first ever piece to be delivered in India got transferred to Sharjah, UAE and wanted to sell the bike. It had 2000kms on it and 2 free services left. Got 25k off the original price..and all in all..excellent deal.
Checking In
It’s been 2 months since I had anything new to say. That must indicate two things. Either I am a boring person, or I am just too incredibly busy to blog. Before you decide, I’m going to go for the latter.Let me fill you in.
The gig I had been trying so hard to get in Mysore finally worked itself out, and I ended up relocating to this beautiful city on 10th May. The company has allowed me to stay at their “a roof and a bathroom and that’s about it” guesthouse until I can find my own place. Needless to say, I crave the small luxuries of living in Bangalore.
The company I’m working for now is primarily a manufacturing unit specializing in providing turnkey interior solutions to the high-end hospitality sector. In a nut-shell, we do hotel rooms. From the Plastering to the Furniture to the Drapes. We have a 3 yr old factory that has a bunch of good people working here, but zero systems. From Order to install, it’s chaos through and through. That’s where I come in. Not to add to the chaos, but to help sift and sort through it, and bring some normalcy and organization to the ops.
I’m heading the Engineering group with all things Design and production falling under me. Naturally, I’ve been on overdrive since I got here, as I finally have a willing canvas for my grand lean schemes. I’ve upgraded the team from AutoCAD to SolidWorks 2010 with PDMWorks, implemented a Part Numbering System, changed up the way Production Drawings are made, written a CAD Best Practices Manual, started to implement 5S and a host of other things. Having worked in the US for the big guns, the guys here treat me like God. I love the attention and respect, and have been firm about being equally nice to my reports and being the awesome and cool Engineering Manager I’ve always imagined I would be in my head.
Adios for now.
Microbrews and Brewpubs come to Karnataka!
As a connoisseur of micro-brews the world over, with partiality to stouts and porters, I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up the morning paper and found out my state is going to start issuing licenses to micro-brew. As a wannabe micro-brewer, I feel only true craft beer lovers will realize the implications of this opening.
Firstly, Indian beer lovers can slowly start appreciating the huge variety of beers that can be made, and not limit themselves to the 5 variants of lager beer available in the market today.
Secondly, with homegrown stouts and porters being brewed, we no longer have to bend over backwards trying to find the occasional can of Guinness or Murphy’s.We can get it on tap, freshly poured with just the right amount of creamy head!
Thirdly, with all the variation that is bound to come in soon, I cant wait to go to my favorite super-market and pick up a 6-pack of an interesting brew made locally, that will not be priced at Rs.220/-.
Finally, the chance to compete in international beer tasting competitions with local flavors like a Ragi Stout, or a Hefeweisen with a Chickoo twist, is just equal parts mind-boggling and mouth-watering.
I’m off to google the best brewing schools! I’m sure, India can use a few more brew-masters!
Honey-Comb Homes
I recently finished a pro-bono project that involved 3D Modeling of a relocation site for flood-affected villages in North Karnataka, India. The project piqued my curiosity because it involved construction using honey-comb panel composites, a material that I have been investigating for use in my furniture.
The company had recently received a contract to build 500 small homes for this relocation site, and included infrastructure like a school, a hospital and recreational spots in and around the village. They had roped in some architectural and civil engineering talent from Sweden and planned to build all the homes using cement-drywall-paper honeycomb composite panel. The unit cost per home was estimated to be approximately Rs. 2,00,000 (USD $4000) and could be constructed using prefabricated panels, cranes and erectors in 2 days. If the government promised a larger number of homes, then the costs could be spread out and brought down to Rs. 1,00,000 (USD 2000) per home.
I used Google SketchUp and AutoCAD to complete the project.
Bloom Box ! Responsible NPD?
For the past two days, the web has been abuzz with reports of a mysterious refrigerator sized box that can power entire households. It is purported to be the next big step in clean energy evolution, or the “holy grail” or “shiva lingam” of the energy sector. Technical specifications have not been released yet, except for a very very basic description of what’s in it, and how much power it can generate.
The company that developed it, is headed by K. Sridhar, a University of Madras graduate who went on to being an advisor to NASA, and then launched his company – Bloom Energy to develop next-gen clean energy tech. Sridhar has toiled on the R&D of the Bloom Box, for 8 years in shrouded secrecy, funded by angel investors Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers. Incidentally, these are the same venture capitalists that funded Google in its early days.
Now, to the Bloom Box. According to Sridhar, it is a small “box”, containing disks of Silicon dioxide(SiO2) that are coated with secret patented “inks” that allow the disks to react with chemicals in the air producing energy(huge amounts) and Co2(in very very tiny amounts). The smallest BloomBox can produce up to 100kW of power, thereby satisfying the energy and heating requirements of an entire house, and possibly even cars. Ebay, the company’s first customers, use 4 Bloom Boxes to power an entire building on their campus, and claim to have saved over $100,000 in annual energy costs. Each box costs $700,000, but will eventually be available for retail purchase at around $3000.
As a Product Development engineer myself, I believe that I must build in sustainability into every product I design and develop. We are the new generation, and we must focus our efforts into building products that have the potential to revolutionize industries. I constantly try to think about the usability of my products 8-9 years down the line, and try to build them with materials that will perish naturally without causing any harm to the environment. I would hate to see my product filling up landfills because I did not plan its obsolescence.
I would love to see the BloomBox powering entire rural counties in India. Huge power-grids being decommissioned and the land being used for fruitful pursuits such as agriculture. But I believe that the powers that be will never allow the Bloombox to prosper and multiply. This little game-changing device is going to re-write the way humans think about energy. Infrastructures of entire countries will have to be re-thought and re-planned. It has the potential to destabilize entire governments. As engineers, do we really believe that automobile manufacturers cannot make a car that will give 100 mpg? They had the technology to do this decades ago. But it is a planned strategy to keep people dependent on resources that they control. In a few months, the government will stage a huge explosion that kills an entire town that was using the Bloombox and then claim it was using unsafe fissionable materials or some malarkey. They would then commandeer the technology in “the interest of national security” and no one will ever hear of the Bloom Box again. Even if entire populations tweet and FB and Buzz about this tech, and make every single person on this planet aware of the prescence of this technology, the “powers” would find a way to squash it.
I would really like to see how the makers of Bloom Box will fight the “evil” consortium of “the man” to make their technology freely accessible to all humans on this planet. And in the meantime, if Mr. Sridhar suddenly disappears or meets with an untimely accident, my eyes will turn squarely to “the Man”.
“Inspiration for this article was drawn from conversation with my dear friend and daring entreprenuer Mr. Bharani Setlur”
2010
2010 is finally here. The year of hope. The year of dreams. The year of the recession slowly receding from our memories. The year of the Tiger. So, lets raise our glasses to the joy, peace and prosperity that this year will bring us all.
A Very Merry Festive Season and a Happy New Year to all!
After 5 years of spending Christmases and New Year’s Eve in a generally cold, snowy environment, this would be my first winter outside of the USA. So, to cheer myself up and get in the holiday spirit, I’ve added a cool little “Snow Falling” widget to my blog.
Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Hanukkah and a very Happy New Year to all my friends and family!
