Tie Conference

Saturday night…. Raining outside and here I am in my sofa, gently musing thorough my week. What a week it was….. World cup, and the TIE CON conference, the Amnesty, Thulo daddy’s visit.

World cup- Bloodied but not beaten, the United States bounced back to hold Italy to a 1-1 tie today in an ugly World Cup game with three ejections, a disallowed American goal and wide-open play. With thousands of fans in red, white and blue cheering the United States on a warm night as it seemed, the Americans came out aggressive, quite agressive actually and then hung on while playing most of the second half at a man disadvantage. I was at “Phoenix Landing”, the Sports bar at Central Square surrounded by American fans, almost 100 of them and somewhere hidden amongst the crowd in blue jerseys were the Italian Fans. I was of course rooting for the ITALIANS.ITLAIA... :) I guess the Referee for today’s game was by far the harshest ones amongst the game I have seen so far. Three RED cards…. Simple unbelievable

TIE Conference- Along with my husband Prasanna, I had the honor of attending the TIE (The INDUS Entrepreneur Conference). This conference is dedicated to providing a collaborative framework for entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists and leaders of global ITC companies to discuss the big issues facing the technology industry and entrepreneurism.

WOW, the IDEAS and the SPEAKERS were so impressive. The conference took place for 3 days, Thursday -Saturday at Hynes Convention Center in Downtown Boston. Koffi Annan was supposed to be one of the distinguish speakers, however, he was replaced by the Deputy General Secretary of the UN at the last minute. I was really excited to meet with me. I had seen his wife Nana, almost about 4 years back, when I was in NY for the “ Model UN” conference. Sadly, I did not get to see Rajat Gupta, the director of McKinsy either, but I have seen his speech at Harvard Business School couple of years back, so I guess I can least say that I have seen him speak. He is a MAN with ENERGY AND IDEANS. What an energetic conference it was. I felt thrilled to be a room filled with thousands of Entrepreneurs, predominately, Indian entrepreneurs.

I was also really very impressed with Ray kurzweil’s idea on “Translation.” He provided us with a little demo where he spoke on a phone in English, which was then right away translated to German by a so-called the “software” person. The he spoke in French, and then same software, quickly translated that statement into English. What can I say; it is the 21st century Technology! We may not have arrived at pervasive computing yet, but with these techies, trust me soon we will!!

Justice for Bhopal- I went to my first “Justice for Bhopal” meeting on Wednesday. I met with Aquene, who is the core organizer of this team. I had heard about this topic, but never really knew the background of it. I was bit daunted by the whole story. It is really sad and heartbreaking.

The Bhopal Disaster of 1984 is claimed by many as THE worst industrial disaster in history. It was caused by the accidental release of 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate from a Union Carbide India, Limited pesticide plant located in the heart of the city of Bhopal,in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

“In the city people were sleeping. They woke in darkness to the sound of screams with the gases burning their eyes, noses and mouths. They began retching and coughing up froth streaked with blood. Whole neighborhoods fled in panic, some were trampled, and others convulsed and fell dead. People lost control of their bowels and bladders as they ran. Within hours thousands of dead bodies lay in the streets.”- BBC

I am still doing some thorough research on the topic as I am totally clueless on it. This is what I have read so far. Union Carbide sold its Indian subsidiary, which had operated the Bhopal plant, to an Indian battery manufacturer in 1994. Dow has publicly stated several times that the Union Carbide settlement payments have already fulfilled Dow's financial responsibility for the disaster. However efforts by survivors to get Dow to clean up the heavily contaminated site are on appeal in US District Court.

The sad part is that a BBCinvestigation conducted in 2004 confirmed that even after 20 years, the contamination is still present, I do not what my role in the group would be, but I am very determined to help in every way I can.

Thulo daddy- my thulodaddy lives in Mississippi and he had come to Boston for a day for a meeting. Though, it was a really short visit, (he left on Friday morning), we had a good time. He came to our place for dinner and was impressed with my cooking, considering the fact, that I had zero knowledge about cooking in my college years. I guess I really have mastered in the cooking area, thanks to Pras.

As you can see, I really had a very long day today. The weather was VERY HOT!! Walking in Sun was no fun!! We also manged to make a quick trip to hay market; both of us dressed in a suit and did some shopping. We got tons and tons of fruits.. Cherries, lychee, strawberries, cantaloupe, bananas, oranges… and the list goes on!!

Eventhough, it was a rough trip, at the end of the day, it was those cherries and strawberries, that gave us a smile, with the delicious nectars.. oh! How sweet it was.

Good night!