Humility and life..

 Very often in life we hear people saying that if you remain humble others will sit on your head. I am not sure whether t is fully correct but can say that being humble does give you many avenues to let off your steam and complete work fast. 

From my personal experience being humble helps one person in many ways.

1. helps one think better and evaluate decisions faster

2. it helps one get along well with people, which will help in some other sphere of life. 

3. helps one to think more clearly regarding the goals and mission in life, helping to realign ourselves in the right direction

4. it helps us to be more useful to society and helpful to other friends

5. it helps us to set right our value system

6. helps to experience proper work life balance

Click here for a document from psyblog which is interesting .. click here for another interesting one..

In the cut throat competition in today's corporate world, we may think it is the smartest and show-off people who get to success. But actually in the long run it is the humble person who succeeds. In our daily life, unless you are able to  fall back on peaceful systems to rely in times of need, the journey can be tough.

Overal humility will help one to move well with people, the family the ecosystem and everything in the world. It removes jealousy from our minds and gives an open heart to help others.

George

Churches in Madrid and Barcelona

Sagrada Familia Cathedral, Barcelona

In our trip to Spain last month, we visited two important cities of Barcelona and Madrid. The cities are developing fast. My son who has been n Barcelona for the past two years at IESE has been telling of the work ethic in Spain. Government files move very slow here, and decisions take a lot of time. The people take it easy. 

While we were staying in the two cities, we came to see how the roadside pubs used to get full with customers from 9 am itself till midnight. We do not see real drunkards on the road like in India.

Toledo Cathedral

Spain was once upon a time a heavy Catholic country with great impact from the Vatican in Rome. There are more Catholics in the country in this country of 48 million people. Madrid city has a population of 3.2 million, double that of Barcelona.

Barcelona has been building a great church Sagrada Familia for the past 150 years, the construction is still continuing. I got the opportunity to enter inside the Cathedral. Really massive structure though the spiritual content was missing. The Catholic church should be aware of this aspect, the physical structure is important but the spiritual impact it creates on the human body is more important. 

The main aisle of Toledo Cathedral

After Barcelona we went to Madrid and spent a couple of days there. We went on a day long visit to Toledo which was the capital of Spain till 1560 AD. The Toledo cathedral was a marvel. I have not seen the Vatican St. Peters Basilica nor the other churches in Vatican, but I was told after the Vatican Toledo has the world's greatest churches. 

The churches are too big, but do they match with matching spiritual thoughts of the people ? 

The christian Catholic culture and traditions in Spain are too rich to be ignored. It is part and parcel of the Spanish culture. The riches Spain enjoys is partly due to their stealing the riches from North and South America from the fifteenth century.

The Spaniards were quite cruel in how they acquired land and riches from the Americas.

In America, events took their own course. The Spanish conquistadors, who went to Hispaniola and then to other Caribbean islands and finally to the mainland, were rough and violent. They took what they wanted, and when the Indians resisted--or even when they did not--the conquistadors attacked and slaughtered them. www.crf-usa.org

Spaniard history has been filled with lot of unfortunate events but we find Spain to be growing centre in Europe for automobile accessories, medical and electronics industry. Being a member of NATO, Spain has been dictating its presence to the world.

George..

Bullfighting in Spain, the savagery continues ...

Plaza de Toros Las Ventas is the famous bullring in Madrid and it was the same place we went on the 21 May 2022 Saturday evening 7 PM bullfight in Madrid. Bullfights in Madrid and deadly, ie. the bull is killed while in Barcelona it is let free .. There were approximately eight to ten thousand people in the stadium, on a rough estimate.

"Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor." - Ernest Hemingway

The fighting starts with the procession on a horse, followed by the matadors and the picadors (who pierce he bull in the back bone of the bull with spear) march into the stadium and then the fight starts. A pair of picadors enter the ring on horses with long spears from diametrically opposite corners. 

The Las Ventas Toros stadium in Madrid

The bull charges one of these picadors atop the horses and at that time the picador pierces the back of the bull with the spear, not deep enough to debilitate it, but deep enough to enrage it. It is then distracted by the matador, brought centre stage, after some tiring down in less than twenty minutes the matador with the help of a knife hidden behind his back strikes at the charging bull's aorta in the heart, piercing and withdrawing it soon. The piercing is over in a fraction of a second. 

The bull is bewildered, still looking around in fear, within fifteen seconds it collapses on the ground.  The dead bull is then pulled across the ground and taken out. The crowds wave with white handkerchiefs if they find it was a perfect kill. Else they disapprove with jeer.

Before half time three bulls are killed and after half time, three more.  We could not stand the killings and walked out after 4 bulls were killed. But one thing we need to understand is it is just the difference in culture and taste of the population. I found the people inside the stadium were jeering and shouting after each killing. Families come with kids, young people with their boyfriends or girlfriends and so on.

The Las Ventas, as per my information is the largest bullring in Madrid. It is in four levels. We were seated at the top level, balconey, cheaper, giving a bird's eye-view of the whole bullring, about 30 euros per person.

Though we feel upset with the fact that the bulls like us were killed, a primitive sport, we were happy we expressed our displeasure at the killing of these innocent animals and walked off. We were the only people to walk out of the stadium. When we came out there was pain in our hearts and relief on all our faces.

The visit made it possible for us to understand Spanish culture and psyche in a small manner.

“To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.” ― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

In a way we are all hypocrites, talk one way, while practice just the opposite.

George.

Dining at Hotel Sobrino de Botin, the oldest in the world ..

After reaching Madrid on 21 May '22, we decided to explore the city. We had heard of Sobrino de Botim, the oldest hotel in the world opened in 1725. There was Guiness book of world records certificate to prove this point without any doubt. We decided to visit this hotel situated in the suburbs of Madrid.

Entrance to Sobrino de Botin

The food is about three times as expensive as ordinary eateries around here, but tasty and very comfortable.  Food is served in high class expensive cutlery.

 

Ernest Hemingway mentions the hotel and its most favourite dish in two of his novels, but the fact that he did write part of a novel here is contested. Roast suckling pig is the most favourite dish here.  

Click here for the Statesman link ..

The Roast suckling pig dish

 

This hotel is situated a little away from the main city, in the old suburbs of Madrid in Cuichelleros area. Though we did not have roast suckling pig, we had some of the tastiest wine. We booked and slot was available only at 10.30 PM. We reached the hotel by 9.30 PM and asked for an empty table and we were taken to a corner table. 

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

All throughout we could internalise the solemnity of the occasion. We were siting in the same building where Spaniards in all their armoury would have waled around and where Nobel laurete Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) also sat and wrote some part of his books.

Quoting from www.botin.es -

The love this charismatic North American felt for Spain is well known to all. Few foreigners have felt and reflected our country’s beauty like he did. He needs just a few lines to evoke a landscape filled with all its scents, shifts of light and harmonies.

A fierce and passionate champion of bullfighting, in 1932 he published “Death in the Afternoon”, a veritable treatise on tauromachy in which he mentions Botín:

“…but in the meantime I preferred to dine on suckling pig at Botín than sit and think about the accidents which my friends could suffer.”

All of us at Hotel Botin

Botín also features in “The sun also rises”. For many years we have been gratified to observe the pilgrimage of American tourists who arrive in search of the dining room in which Hemingway sets the novel’s final scene:

“We lunched upstairs at Botin’s. It is one of the best restaurants in the world. We had roast young suckling pig and drank rioja alta. Brett did not eat much. She never ate much. I ate a very big meal and drank three bottles of rioja alta.” 

unquote ...

Enjoying wine ..

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1954 was awarded to Ernest Miller Hemingway "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."  www.nobelprize.org

 citation from Guinness group

 

By the time we left the Hotel, it was past 11 PM and had to rush back to the hotel lest we miss the sleep and the bus for the next day trip to Toledo, the capital of Spain till 1560. 

 

Though  I wanted to extend some pleasantries with the main chef of the Hotel and thank him for the excellent dish, due to paucity of time, we had to move out. Click here for a small video ..

 

The Botin visit was indeed very memorable. It helped me hold hands with the people who walked in the hotel about 300 years back while it was being started by French cook Jeanne Botin in 1725. The photo of the Guinness World Records citation is the authentic proof of the age of the restaurant.

George ..

At IESE Barcelona convocation of Easaw George

With family ..

Our son Easaw George finished an exciting two years of study in Spain. He had his MBA  convocation in IESE Business school, Barcelona on 20 th May 2022 in the IESE campus in Barcelona, Spain. We went from Bangalore on 18th morning, reached Barcelona and attended the convocation ceremony in person. A very joyous moment. Our flight took us via Frankfurt with a 2 hour halt there. At the Barcelona airport we met other IESE students and parents with their partners and parents.  Barcelona and Madrid are the two most important cities in Spain which was once upon a time a colonial power that extended its reach to North and South America, the reason why one still finds lot of Spanish speaking people in North and South America. IESE was established with strong support and backing by Harvard in 1958 and is the only Harvard established institution outside the United States. Toledo near Madrid was the capital of Spain until the fifteenth century.

About 350 students attended the convocation which was presided over by the IESE Director after a mass at the IESE chapel. Junetio Maetsu, Dy. CEO of Ikea global was the main speaker at the convocation, who also happens to be an IESE alumnus. The IKEA Dy. CEO was mentioning the importance of being global, trying to understand the customer better and provide him with more value that what he could think of. 

If you ask any IESE student, they are more close with their class group of size 10 than with other students in the class of 50. Easaw's class of 50 students were from 40 nationalities. Thousands of hours of discussions , assignments, role plays etc with the group members have cemented their relationship with the group very stronger.

 

In convocation robes..

All the while I was proud of our son securing an admission at IESE on his own merit with a good GMAT score, but was humbled on learning that some of his classmates at IESE had GMAT scores of 770 out of 800. We should realise that a 730 out of 800 could get one into the prestigious Harvard Business School, considered to be the mecca of business education in the world.  These students with 770 GMAT score, preferred to study in IESE instead. I feel, there is some solid reason why they prefer IESE over other schools. The 350 students of the IESE 2022 passing out batch came from 60 countries of the world, no Institute in the world has such variety of intake, with a few Olympians also joining. With these smart students, we took the time off to share in their happiness and of their parents and relatives, exchanging pleasantries and good wishes for their bright future. It was very interesting interacting with native Spanish students and their parents to understand more of the Spanish culture.

 

In discussions with friends and colleagues it was indeed striking to note that IESE was 2021 global #1 in the 178 year old The Economist rankings (click here). But at the IESE campus I was surprised to find no mention of the Economist rankings, instead they were mentioning the 138 year old Financial Times global #4 rank in MBA (click here) and global #1 rank in Executive Education in 2021. 2021 was a great year for IESE. It has got #2 rank in 2022 global rankings in executive education (click here). 2022 MBA rankings will be out in a couple of months. 

 

A proud moment

At the IESE entrance we were welcomed by a quadruped robot,  I forgot to take a snap of the same, one thing I really missed. The robot was also keeping a tab on all visitors at the IESE campus. After the mass at the chapel from 3-4 pm and a sumptuous tea, the convocation started in the top convocation hall on the terrace from 5 PM and went onto 7 PM followed by an extravagant dinner in the same premises up to midnight. Because of the long ceremony, I could not meet any of the Professors of Easaw, I missed a golden opportunity there too. Though some of them had expressed the desire to interact with parents, sadly it did not materialise. If I had met them it would have given me a better understanding of the expectations and standards of world class management education.

As regards collaboration with other Institutions by IESE, I was told by Easaw that IESE would think twice or even refuse a proposal for collaboration, unless it is really global in intake and offering and there is something reciprocal for IESE to benefit from. A collaboration with other Business schools of the world is totally out of contention unless it is in the top ten or twenty.

To realise that our son was fortunate enough to study at this business school is truly humbling. God has been kind. Also to get an attractive placement with Amazon leadership team was indeed a great blessing from God. While at IESE captaining the IESE basketball team, Easaw brought back a couple of championships to IESE in Barcelona based tournaments. A personality  with equal interest in sports, games, interesting past times like skiing, scuba diving as much as in education, reading, travel, exploring etc by understanding the nuances of the global business environment is how IESE has transformed him.

It is happy to note that Easaw and his batch mates have become the alumni of a great global institution and would be banking on that association throughout their lives to add value to the organisations they work as well as to themselves and their alma mater. 

 

In short, their 2 year study at Barcelona brings a mix of great experiences, friendships and happy memories.

George..

Walking inside Gopalan Lakefront, Ecity.

This evening I tried to find the number.of steps it takes to cover from the main gate of GLF and back, 800 steps. ie. about 615 or app 600 m. 5 rounds is 3 km. 50 rounds is 30 kms. 

I intend to do 10 rounds next week, ie. 6 kms.

George 

Staying at our new apartment .. Gopalan Lakefront A 001

It was after a long search of four to six months that resulted in us zeroing on A001 in the ground floor of Gopalan Lakefront in Electronic city phase 1, Bangalore as our new abode. We finally moved out of our old 12 year old rented house in Koramangala 6th block to the new Gopalan Lakefront group of flats on Hosur Road on 26 th March, 2022.

The location of the new block is right on Hosur Road, but slightly away, facing the new Veerasandra metro station. Just get out of this gated community and you are at the metro station or the bus stand (the metro will be ready after a couple of years, at most). Going to Madiwala or to Chandapura is so easy here, buses keep coming every 15 seconds as Hosur Road is an important artery of Karnataka connecting Tamil Nadu. 

Being a gated community, we see less of strangers inside the gates, it ensures security, but that can also bring monotony to the inmates. The club house that houses a good size swimming pool, besides tt table, billiards table and indoor games like carroms etc, is the meeting place when any large club event or private event occurs in the apartment.

There are three blocks A,B and C, 12 floors + ground floor in each block (8 flats in each floor) making a total of of 3 x 13 x 8, ie. 312 apartments of 2 and 3 BHK configuration, with 2 basements for car parking. 

By 5 pm, we see a good number of inmates out for walking with their pets and this continues till 10 pm at night. Every morning with Anila, we are out for walking by 5.45 am, with nobody around and cool air blowing, it is indeed a terrific environment and an exciting experience. Walking is the favourite exercise of the inmates to keep fit, though at times we see cyclists race on around the buildings.

The Shuttle badminton court and the half basketball court is another way to exercise and keep fit, though we have an outdoor adult exercising centre and kids play centre on the ground floor. Immediately adjoining our compound wall, I could see the large stadium with indoor and outdoor facility coming up in our neighbourhood vicinity. That is a great blessing in future, though it will result in much more traffic passing through our front gates.There is a 300 m walking track around the flat. Every morning we take 4 rounds of this track.

Outside the building, there is a 1.2 km walking track around the lake, that is maintained well, though I was told that the lake is being maintained by Titan co. Tata is doing a good job by helping preserve the pristine nature of the environment. Till now, our experience is good and we look forward to interact with more of the owners and residents in the flats in the coming days and gain more of friends. 

Amazon has a retail centre in ecity which is a big help for us. So far, I am totally dependent on Amazon for shopping, of vegetables, fruits and provision items, they are punctual and good with quick delivery of about 4 -5 hour delivery once an order is placed, rain or shine. 

So far, our stay is fine and we look forward to get introduced to and interact with more acquaintances and friends here. The efficient maintenance team of Gopalan is ready to help with all small maintenance work now and we look forward to their continued support into the future to.

With barely 40% of flats occupied, or sold (do not know), the ambience is good now. Don't know how it would be with more inmates coming in the future. 

That is the update on Gopalan Lakefront, the 76th project of Gopalan Enterprises in Bangalore. 

Ge..