Pics from New York

New York Visit

Day 3 of my visit and I am having a blast. The trip started off with a delayed flight. Arrived in New York bright and very early thursday morning.

I was going to be visiting Columbia Business School(will be a separate post). It was certainly a productive visit. In the evening, had dinner with a few of my husband's classmates from the Berkeley-Columbia EMBA program. We went to an Italian restaurant on 9thAvenue. Good food.

The next day I slept in a little bit as I had had only 3 hours of sleep on the flight the previous night. Then took the subway to the Grand central Station. What was supposed to be a 15 minute ride, turned out to be about and hour and a half. No way to get to the opposite platform without exiting the station in some cases. The ride involved getting on a train heading the wrong way, one limited stop train that made me miss my stop and one totally wrong train.

I then spent some time in the Grand Central station taking some pictures. On my way back, I stopped to watch the St Patrick's Day parade on Fifth Avenue. Since it was towards the end, there were quite a few school bands marching.

In the evening, we headed to an Indian restaurant called bay Leaf on W 56th Street. Pretty decent food for the price we paid. On the way back we stopped at the Rockfeller Plaza. we missed the last ride up to the Top of the Rock by 10 minutes.
The plaza was very windy but there were a few brave souls skating.

This morning I met with a few more people from the EMBA program - to hear their persepctive on their Columbia experience.

I am heading off to do the toristy thing in New York - ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty. More pictures and a post dedicated to my Columbia visit to come. Stay tuned!!

Chinese paper-cut masks

I finally got the Beijing Opera mask paper cuttings up on the wall. I bought 4 of them for about $20 in Zhuhai. They were being sold by this guy at the Underground mall (Zhuhai-Macau border)

Well, two of them are up on the wall now. Below are some pics.

Women Role Models

Does anyone mention Indira Gandhi when we speak of women role models? Yes, Indira Gandhi, and no, she is not related to Mahatma Gandhi.

Indira Gandhi was the first and only woman Prime Minister of the largest democracy in the world - India. She was PM from 1966-1977 and again from 1980-1984.
A strong woman with some radical ideas, she "ruled" Indian politics for a considerable period.
But when there is talk of women leaders in the world, her name is hardly mentioned. Everyone remembers Margaret Thatcher.
Why am I talking about her in my blog? Now that the US-India nuke deal is in the news, there was picture of Indira Gandhi visiting Pokhran - the site of India's nuclear tests in the paper. And that got me thinking.

She was the PM who furthered India's nuclear agenda. It was during her tenure as PM in 1974 that India became a nuclear power.
Yes, there are aspects of her style that alienated the masses from time to time. But which great leader is perfect?

A courageous woman who stood up for what she believed in..a worthy role model in my book.