250 Words on Violin

I started learning violin from Smt. Anuradha Sridhar in 1989 when I was 8 years old. I was one of her first students. Before starting violin with Smt. Anuradha, I spent a few years playing Western Classical Violin and singing Carnatic music. Over the next 11 years, I immersed myself in Carnatic violin, and it soon became my primary activity outside of school. These 11 years were probably the most challenging in my life, because Anuradha demanded only the very best from us. During my time as Smt. Anuradha’s student, I played in several Thygaraja Aradhanas, a duet concert with Ravi Narsiman, and a solo concert in 1999 before I left for college.

My solo concert remains one of my proudest accomplishments. It was an affirmation of the philosophy of single-minded focus. That is, if you eliminate distractions, focus on one thing, and work hard, you can achieve something that few others will ever attempt. Reaching this goal at the young age of 17 did wonders for my self-confidence and has been the pillar upon which later successes were built. When up against another challenge – running the Boston marathon or getting through a difficult engineering class – I remember the primary lesson from my 11 years of violin. Namely, that success is not due to luck or magic, but results from passion and dedication. Thank you Smt. Anuradha for teaching me lessons that are as applicable to life as they are to music.

Shot through the heart!

And you're too late! Darling you give love....a bad name. When that song comes on, you know it's a going to be a good night. And it was a great night on Monday when 76 of my healthcare classmates and I went to a random Chinese restaurant in Chinatown to eat a gigantic dinner and sing karaoke. Good times were had by all, fueled by Riesling wine and Tsingtao beer. I sang at every opportunity I could, and even did a duet with a classmate singing 'Zombie' by the Cranberries. The girls sang 'Uptown Girl' and the guys countered with Bonjovi's 'Shot through the heart' and Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. At one point, we were all doing the Thriller dance and forgot to sing. Even June got up on stage to sing. Ah, karaoke brings out the best in us. Did I mention that we were served 5x as much food as we could eat?

The Wharton 'Sorting Hat'

Today I felt like I was in the world of Harry Potter, except my Hogwarts was Wharton. And England was Philadelphia. We finally received our cohort assignments shortly before introductory welcome speeches - I am in Cluster 1, Cohort B. My learning team will be comprised entirely of healthcare management majors, so I have some idea of who will be on my learning team. After the welcome speeches, we went to Koo plaza in Huntsman Hall for yet another meet and greet social. As usual I met more phenomenal people. My cohort has 4-5 ex military folks who have seen action in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm eager to learn more about their experiences. The more people I meet, the more I feel that I made the right decision to come to business school, and to Wharton in particular.

Pre-Pre-Term

And so it begins. After months of anticipation, welcome weekends, and networking, we finally start pre-term at Wharton. As a Healthcare Management major, our pre-term begins a few days early. Healthcare pre-term started with a tour of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. We saw the Emergency Department, neonatal intensive care unit, and trauma surgery intensive care unit. We also had a great social at the Manayunk brewery, in a foresty area overlooking the Schukyill River. The healthcare pre-term had a serious entrepreneurship focus, which I really enjoyed. This focus was intentional given the next 4 months will be dominated by presentations from investment banks and consulting firms.

I just finished taking my math waiver exam and am working on submitting credentials to waive other classes; however, I'm not sure they'll be accepted so I'm busy studying for waiver exams. This plus social events is going to add up to a busy August.

Here are my first impressions of Wharton: everyone is very impressive and it's hard to stand out. Second, there are a lot of social activities and a lot of drinking. Given that I'm not a big drinker, I wonder how my experience will be. Lastly, there are a million things to do here, and I need to stay focused on what I want to get out of my Wharton experience.

Tunisia

The last stop on our tour was Tunisia. Originally we planned to go to Algeria but decided that it wouldn't be safe. Also, unlike Algeria, Tunisia didn't require us to get a visa.




The 2 hour ride from Carthage airport to Sousse was beautiful. With vineyards on both sides of the road, I felt like I was in Italy (just to the north of Tunisia). Being near the coast, the weather was pleasant. Neil and I were looking forward to our stay at Movenpick, a newly built 5 star hotel in Sousse. Unfortunately, to our great dismay, Movenpick proved to be as disappointing as Royal Air Morocco. The hotel clearly opened about 6 months too early. The hotel looked great from afar, but hotel guests quickly saw that many of the details were lacking. Movenpick's staff didn't understand how to be hospitable to guests and some amenities were clearly lacking (like having a water cooler in a gym). Once, during my stay, I was in an elevator and a father carrying a child tried to enter the elevator with me. The elevator's sensor apparently wasn't working and the door slightly crushed the father's shoulders. According to the waitress at a nearby restaurant regarding Movenpick, "They try to be classy but they have no class".


After a day of running by the beach and working out, we decided that it didn't make sense to spend the next 2 days holed up at the classless 'resort'. We eventually negotiated a great deal to see El Jem, Mathmata, the Saharan desert in a private car. There were a few problems with this great deal, however:

1) The driver brought his wife. So even if we didn't want to take part in a certain excursion, if his wife wanted to, the driver would try extra hard to convince us.
2) The car came 1.5 hours late and was nearly out of gas. Neil and I had to push the car to the gas station before we could pick up the driver's wife. Because of this, I negotiated an additional discount.
3) After driving in serious heat for over a day, on the way back to Sousse, the car started experiencing problems with the transmission that caused us to drive at 1/4 to 1/2 the speed that we normally would.

Despite these issues, we had a great time on the trip. First we visited the ruins of a Roman Coliseum in El Jem. Next we travelled further south to Mathmata to see the underground houses where Star Wars was filmed. We were also treated to an authentic lunch. Finally, in the evening, we arrived in the Sahara desert. We took a dramadeus ride (dramdeus are like camels) 2 hours into the desert and camped out in a compound.

The next morning our driver picked us up and took us to the 'Salt Lake' to watch the sunrise. The Salt Lake is a dried out lake filled with salt. After this, we drove to a poorly maintained zoo to get an idea of the animals that were living in desert. We saw dramadeus, ostrich, snakes, owls, coyotes, and even lions. The cages were in such disrepair that I was worried that the lions would escape. These animals also did not look well taken care of. The Chicago, Bronx, or San Diego zoo, this was not. After the zoo we visited a jungle oasis and then embarked on the long journey back to Sousse.

Thus ended our trip, and we flew back to the Unites States after an extra day in Casablanca. Our trip to Morocco & Tunisia was filled with ups and downs, but overall I had a great time. The Fez souq, surfing, and Sahara desert were the highlights of the trip.

El Jadida & Oualidia

The highlight of my Morocco trip was our 2-day excursion to El Jadida and Oualidia. After we returned to Casablanca from Marrakesh, we needed to figure out how to use our remaining few days in Morocco before we left for Tunisia. Because we missed out on seeing Essaouira and Safi (coastal cities) while near Marrakesh, we decided to go to El Jadida and Oualidia, instead. Both cities are located on the coast, just a few hours south of Casablanca.

We took the train to El Jadida and spent a few hours checking out the local Portugese fort. From there we took a 'grand taxi' to Oualidia. Most taxis that we had taken in Morocco were 'petit' taxis, or small, hatchback taxis that could take 2 or 3 passengers. The 'grand taxi' is an old Mercedes that can seat up to 6 passengers, though not comfortably. Since petit taxis did not travel as far as Oualidia, another 2.5 hours to the South, we had to take a grand taxi. The grand taxi rate to Oualidia is set at 180 dhirams and hard to negotiate, so we had to split that fare amongst 2 people instead of the 6 passengers who normally occupy the vehicle. It was a nerve wracking ride, going along the coast and passing on one-lane highways without seat belts. But hey, what can you do.

Oualidia was a pleasant surprise. Our goal was to surf, and surf we did. We located Dreams Surf, the surf shop from our Lonely Planet book. That afternoon, we took a 2 hour surfing lesson, during which I realized that my biggest weakness in surfing is weak paddling. However, when the instructor gave my surfboard a push as the wave approached, I was able to stand up every time. But without the push, I couldn't build up enough speed to 'catch' the wave. Timing is a crucial part of surfing, I'm realizing. After we surfed, our instructor showed us the carcass of a dead whale. When we got back to the surf shop, the owner invited us to stay the night at his apartment (for a modest fee) and surf again the next morning before we headed back to Casablanca. Sure, why not? And we spent the evening in the quiet beach town of Oualidia.

The next morning's surfing was far less successful than the previous day's. We surfed at a different spot with larger waves but these waves had shorter durations. I couldn't get up on any of these waves and quit early after my left shoulder got sore. Still, I realized that true surfers only get good by surfing every day, sometimes more than once per day. I've now been surfing 8 times, and need to raise my fitness level if I'm going to take it to the next level.

Jaleel, the owner of Dreams Surf had a small, energetic, friendly, black dog (probably a street dog), that came with us during the 2nd surfing session. The dog proved to be a useful companion as he watched all of our stuff while we surfed. Not all dogs like water though, as was clear when Jaleel picked up the scared dog and threw him into the water to give the dog some swimming experience.

Meknes, Fez, Marrakesh

The heart of our Morocco adventure was our tour through Meknes, Fez, and Marrakesh. We packed clothes for this 5 day portion of our trip and left our luggage in Casablanca. We stopped at Meknes for a few hours and attempted to do Lonely Planet's walking tour through the souq, but it proved too difficult. After a few hot hours meandering through city, we boarded the train for Fez, just another hour away to the East. We met some Moroccans and chatted with them about various topics pertaining to Morocco's culture. We learned that Moroccans are ethnically Berber or Arab, and learned about what physical traits distinguish them. We also learned that Morocco is becoming more liberal, and one way that this could be observed is the reduction of the number of women wearing the veil. In our train compartment were two young, attractive, Moroccan girls, who spoke little English but like most Moroccans, they were fluent in French and Arabic. We tried converse with them with the help of my trust Arabic / English dictionary; one of them found the Arabic word for 'handsome' and pointed to me. That just about made my trip ;)

The picture to the left is a mosque in the Fez souq; sometimes the souq, which is normally cramped and dirty, can house things of beauty. We followed the same routine in Fez and Marrakesh as we did in Meknes, getting to the cities and spending a few solid hours in the souq. The Fez souq was the oldest and most impressive one. The streets are narrow and winding, with what felt like thousands of stores lined right next to each other. Souqs are divided into areas: one for leather, shoes, clothes, meat, etc. In the Marrakesh souq I nearly gagged in Souq Dajaj, the 'chicken souq'. I witnessed numerous chickens butchered, so the combination of the site and smell was too much for me. Of course shop vendors would try to get us to buy their goods, but I had decided not to buy anything on the trip. My days of buying souvenirs on my travels are probably over. We had one very persistent shop sales man follow us for 5 minutes through the souq in an attempt to get us to buy some worthless trinkets (see first picture above), but the joke was eventually on him when we still showed no interest and he was far away from his store and probably out of his 'territory', possibly angering store owners in the local . During my 11 days in Morocco I witnessed 3 (random) fights, so tempers can run short in Morocco.

Being the furthest south, Marrakesh was the hottest city and clearly had the most tourists. Marrakesh featured an expansive square in front of the souq that housed all sorts of con-artists (snake charmers, monkeys, etc.) and the like. Fortunately, it did also feature numerous food stalls, and some of the best Moroccan food we ate on the trip was in this square.