Subway anyone?

Merry and I got up at 5:30 am to read our textbooks for our proposed quiz today. We ordered regular black coffee from the café coffee day in the lobby of our hotel. It was delicious. Everything we’ve had here has been saturated in sugar (the other coffee/tea we’ve had, even desert) or has consisted of starch, that’s about it. Class was given by Dr. R. Jagadeesh. It was on Indian suppliers meeting global standards and supply chain management. I didn’t particularly get a whole lot out of this lecture having just had an entire semester’s class on the subject.

We had lunch on campus, and then headed to Automotive Axles for a presentation and tour. I found it very interesting that they only allocate about 3-4 % of their operating costs to labor, where as back in the states they would have to allocate about 75% of their operating cost to labor. The tours are interesting, but the only person that gets to understand what is really going on is the first person in line. Otherwise it’s too loud and busy to hear.

When we got back to the hotel, the dean of SDM’s wife (Thangum) was waiting to show the women in our group the best places to shop. She is an incredibly classy and beautiful Indian woman. First, we went to a gold jewelry shop. It had beautiful pieces that were in no way in my price range (even though I pondered getting a pair of gold earrings for quite some time). We ended the excursion at one of our favorite shops called Fazil’s. This shop carries beautiful saris and scarves. I can’t get over how beautiful the fabrics are here in India. I know that I will be coming home with lots of it. After getting back to the hotel, Mary, Merry, Maleah and I decided that we couldn’t handle Indian food once again so we set out to find some American. We ended up at a Subway. And let me tell you it was quite an adventure getting there. Randomly we ran into Gene, Harvey, Karl and Todd there. We basked in the deliciousness of familiar food, although I’m not too sure that my chicken breast sandwich was actually chicken. Oh well, what you don’t know won’t kill you right?

At first I wasn’t interested in eating any American food while being here. Little did I know that I would crave it so badly. It’s been such a switch to go from eating everything familiar, to absolutely nothing tasting the same. When I think about where I am, and how easy it is for me to get the same food that I am used to at home (such as subway, or pizza hut) I realize just how flat this world really is. Just across town Pizza Hut will serve you a pepperoni pizza that tastes exactly the same as one I would order in Minnesota. The population of India won’t even touch pepperoni, but it’s readily available for us.