Mount Kinabalu Trek (3 Days 2 Nights)

Recommendations

1. Try to spend your first night close to Kinabalu mountain region than the airport. The elevation gained help you to acclimatise.
2. One inner layer and one outer jacket are ok to beat the cold. The temperature at the summit would be around ~2 Celcius. Definitely not under 0.
3. Book your tickets in advance (like 2-3 months). There are restricted number of permits allowed every day.
4. Practice climbing stairs (downwards as well) to strengthen your legs.
5. Use a waterproof hand gloves. You would use ropes and quite a possibility they get wet.
6. One pole is ok. No need to take two. 

Just climbed the highest mountain in South East Asia - Mount Kinabalu (4095 meters above sea level). Though the climb is only 2 days and is far easier compared to climbing Kilimanjaro, you definitely need to train yourself before attempting Mt Kinabalu. I learned through my research that the terrain contains stairs, so this time I spent much time climbing 30 storey building. Twice. Three times a week. This helped me this time but it did affect me a bit while climbing down. Also, I would suggest that you strengthen your arms and shoulders muscles a bit, as towards the top, you need to use ropes as the climb becomes steep.

Click Read More below.

Mount Kilimanjaro Trek (6 Days Machame Route)

Recommendation and Tips

1. I would recommend to go for 7 days Machame route instead of 6 days if you have not done high altitude hiking before. If you go for 6 days, then on Day 4 you would be walking a good 8-10 hours (ie cover two days of trekking in one day) followed by 5-6 hours break and then trek again for 6-8 hours summit climb in the night. Not to forget you have to climb down as well. It becomes just too much to handle if you are not trained.
2. Make sure you have your toe nails trimmed. Mine was not and it hurts while climbing down as trekking shoes are hard from inside.
3. Generally people do safaris after climbing Kili. Serengeti has so much to offer compared to Lake Manyara/Tarangire.
4. You could rent most of the trekking stuff from your tour agent. I was booked with Zara Tours and their collections were good quality.
5. I ended up paying a tip of US$250 (in a group of four climbers) plus some additional for an assistant guide.
6. Dinner will be served by 6:30-7pm everyday. Suggest to come out of your tent by 9 or 10pm to view the beautiful sky.
7. Yellow fever certificate is usually required for African and South American countries. It was not required for India or Singapore residents.

What did I train on?

You will find many itineraries, experiences online so I will try to cover something else in this post. This is the first time I did a trip on my own, and mountains and hiking were never close to me. So it would be wrong to say that I was not nervous. I was but I read a lot and made sure that I have a good exercise regime to train up. I was going gym three times a week and spending most of my time on walking treadmill 15 degrees incline at 3.5 km/hour for 45 minutes. Followed by climbing steps up to 30 floors (gradually increasing it to 90 floors). Followed by squats. Now after climbing, I realize that spending time on following will help in your climb - on your shoulders (as you carry nearly 5 kgs everyday), on climbing down and on your back. I would have been better off if I had worked on these.

3 Days Trip to Seattle

Just concluded a three days trip to Seattle. It was not a holiday trip but a short visit to Seattle while on a business trip to San Francisco. It was a great trip, precisely for  -

• meeting my old friend and his family after a long time 
• to be at a place which is the HQ for great IT giants like Amazon and Microsoft 
• visit first starbucks coffee shop of the world, and 
• watching Boeing aircraft assembly line (747, 777 and 787 Dreamliner)

There are lots of things that can be done at Seattle. Tripadvisor lists following activities  - which personally did not excite me at first. I had always thought that since Seattle is in the north, there should be few places which would offer good natural sceneries, and you could see that Tripadvisor does not list them at all in the first page. However, a little google search and talk to locals could offer you advice not mentioned in official pages.

Click on Read More below for more details.

Starting Conversations, Building Network

Finding a job in Singapore is not easy. Market dynamics are different and things are not easy if you have come to Singapore for employment. Personally, I have witnessed few people coming here, spending time finding a job and then finally returning to their home country. Have seen many NUS MBA students passing through the same rigorous process. I have gone through this process myself at Singapore as well and do believe that perseverance will pay, however you need to gain the art of conversing with others and building your network in order to reach where you want to be. There had been many weaknesses I learned about over a period of time though I now feel a little content that I have become better at tackling few things that I was completely fearful about during and after my MBA time.

People say that the most important aspect one learns in a MBA program is Art of Networking. “How do you come across as a personality to other people, how do you sell yourself in a job event, how do you make an interesting conversation that could lead you to where you want to be”. These things are exceedingly important in one’s career as he/she will be evaluated more and more on personality aspects rather than technical aspects as one gains experience. And I was not good at this at all the time I joined my MBA school. I, definitely, was not one of those who can get along with anybody in minutes, actually far from that. I was not confident of speaking in public, I had problems continuing (or even starting) a conversation on anything, etc to name a few. Furthermore, my career experience post undergraduation after IIT Bombay was in a technical domain, as a software developer, which is more like an inward job where one gets evaluated more on technical skills than anything else, and does not expose much to interacting with customers often. Moreover, getting a job in IIT does not inculcate that very skill which is so much needed in a career growth. IIT students are given a silver spoon and companies line up to get the best available student, unlike any other university in world where students understand from very start that they need to sell themselves to a prospective employer.

Boracay Island - 3 Nights/4 Days Trip

Just completed a 4 Days/3 Nights trip to beautiful Boracay Island. Here goes my recommendation

Recommendation and Tips

1. Try to arrive at Caticlan aiport instead of Kalibo. 2-3 hours can easily be consumed while traveling from Kalibo to Caticlan jetty port where you will be taking a boat ride to the island. Caticlan airport is just 5 minutes ride to the port.
2. We made end-to-end journey reservation from Kalibo airport to our resort via Southwest tour. It costs ~560 pesos per person. You could buy tickets on arrival as well.
3. We loved station 2. Reserve a hotel that opens up to the beach. We chose Boracay Regency.
4. Take a mat and lie down at the beach in night. You will not regret the view of the sky.

We loved Boracay Island for two reasons - Phenomenal Sunsets and Excellent White Sand. Both of these things made our journey quite memorable. Although, reaching Boracay Island is not so straightforward. From Singapore it could take anywhere from 9-11 hours (end-to-end time). So I feel that you should plan for at least 3 complete days to enjoy the beach.

There are lots of sports activities available in Boracay - you could go para sailing, island hopping, banana boat, snorkeling, sunset sailing etc. We did not do any of this as we have done all in some other trip. Just relax on the beach, take a dip in the water, drink and read a novel. Just destress ;)

Click on Read More to continue reading.

Places/Countries Visited in the World - 2

It is time for some update. For the past one year, we have traveled a lot and here are the places that we visited, last being Boracay Island in Philippines. Will write about my experience in Boracay in some time, but here is the travel we did last year

Vienna, Salzburg - Austria
Zurich, Jungfrau, Interlaken - Switzerland
Rome, Florence, Venice - Italy
Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia
South Island - New Zealand
Boracay Island - Philippines

5 new countries. All of them offering a unique charm. If it was breath taking scenery in Switzerland and New zealand, it was the churches and histroy in Italy. If it was the sound of music in Austria, it was one of the most amazing beach in Boracay. It is good that world has so much to offer.

Here is the new updated map. 16 countries and counting.

11 days visit to New Zealand - South Island

Recommendation

1. Choose good AirBnBs (which are a bit high on a hill, we chose at Fernhill and Frankton (both in opposite direction to get diff views) in Queenstown. You will not regret it
2. If taking helicopter ride on Franz Joseph, chose the one which drops you higher (HeliHike) for further hiking. Glaciers are receding.
3. Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki offer unbelievable views. It should be there in your trip.
4. Going to Puzzling World (in Wanaka) on a hot day could lead you to frustration when searching for routes in the maze.
5. You should book a good car (higher power) as many drives pass through mountains.
6. Accommodation in Milford Sound (only one lodge) gets filled up pretty fast, so book them early if planning to go during festive season.
7. There are lot of scenic routes in South Island, so you would want to stop at every point to take pics. At most places, you would find look out point which will anyway offer spectacular views. So follow the signboards.

New Zealand South Island journey has been the most spectacular journey thus far. Routes are most scenic, first time on glacier - hiking, different color lakes, milford sound, seals, beautiful views of queenstown, gorges etc etc. We avoided Sky Diving and Bungee as we have done it before. But in all, driving south island is a ggreat package. I'm listing down my journey route, nights we spent at different places and costs etc to plan your own trip. We landed in Christchurch and decided to go anticlockwise as shown in figure below. From my research, it didn't appear that we should be spending anytime in ChristChurch so we left directly from airport and stayed at Hokitika.

Click on read below for more information

Finding a Job

I have been contacted by many NUS graduates for some time now for advice on career in Singapore, finding about how job market works and others. And more often than not, I feel that students today are lacking the key abilities to position themselves in front of recruiters. I, during my MBA, also committed same mistakes and had a tough time to find a job where I fit well. I did commit serious mistakes, such as - I had more or less same resume floating everywhere for different kinds of job roles, I gave just one read to understand the job requirement, and many others.

Having met few candidates earlier, I see same issues again this and, hence, this is my attempt to explain -

• how important it is to understand a job description
• how important it is to position and up sell yourself according to the job requirement
• how important it is to network with industry people and alumni

I believe I can explain all the above points through a small story, which is quite powerful. I had attempted this on few candidates earlier and found same answers from everybody.

Click on Read More link below.

New Zealand Tourist Visa in Singapore (for Indians)

Getting a New Zealand tourist visa in Singapore is pretty straightforward (compared to the Schengen visa). You should be careful of few things though which might be tough for people working in Singapore in a regional role.

1. Total Visa fees including the Visa Application Center fees is S$202 per application. An application can have multiple members. So, apply together to save money.
2. The time taken to process tourist visa is 15 working days. However, they returned my application in 7 working days.
3. There is no appointment system at the moment, but this can change in future; so advise to apply one and a half months in advance.
4. All related links can be found here.

EuroTrip - 14 days Trip to Switzerland, Italy and Austria (Part 3)

Part 1
Part 2

So finally got the time to write about the third leg of our Eurotrip - first being Switzerland and second Italy. Our last 4 days were spent in musical cities of Austria - Vienna and Salzburg. Here are my recommendations and tips -

Recommendation/Tips

1. Use Rick Steves audio guide to tour Vienna. They are good
2. Most of the things to see in Vienna is around St Stephens Cathedral, so you may want to look out hotel for rent closer to this area
3. There are lots of people (dressed properly) outside the Opera House selling tickets. Do not get tricked into their sweet talks as they sell for more and gives you seat which may not be good to view the stage
4. You should have legendary Sacher tart at Sacher Cafe near Opera House, Vienna
5. In Salzburg - go to Wolfgangsee lake (via bus) and hire an electric boat. You can then visit the entire lake on your own. Shop closes before 6pm
6. Ride a bicycle in Salzburg to visit places like Hellbrunn palace and the fort. You will enjoy the ride

Click on Read More link below

Good Mobile App to learn Spanish (and many others)

Last few weeks I have been teaching my cousin English over phone. He could speak Hindi but has problem converting sentences in English. I believe it is tough to learn another language. The main problem is that one first thinks in Hindi and then translate in English. But as a kid, we always think and speak in a particular language. That's why I realized it takes a bit of time to speak and, hence, lots of practice is needed to learn the second language.

To realize this change and challenge myself (perhaps recharge my brain power), I decided to learn a new language (along with continue my efforts to teach English to my cousin). I wanted to learn Spanish, so started looking for mobile apps as I can then learn it at my disposal. After trying lots of different apps, I found Duolingo application very useful. Starts from Basic level and then logically moves to advanced ones. After completing couple of levels, I immediately realized the pain that I first think of any sentence in English and then translate it to Spanish. Guess, lots of reading and practice is needed to come to a level where I think in Spanish. Speaking will naturally follow then.

EuroTrip - 14 days Trip to Switzerland, Italy and Austria (Part 2)

Part 1
Part 3

This post covers 5 days trip itinerary to Italy that includes 2 days in Rome, 1 day in Florence and 2 days in Venice.

Recommendations/Tips

1. Follow Rick Steves Guide for monuments visit in Italy. They are good and free to download
2. Buy entry tickets online to avoid queuing in the lines
3. Stay close to Pantheon area in Rome to enjoy  wonderful street lane experience
4. While booking a hotel in Venice, see if you could get a room facing a canal. You will get a good experience of Gondolas passing by
5. When you (as a couple) take a Gondola, prefer sharing it with 2 more people; otherwise it is difficult to take pictures of yours as a couple
6. Have Gelato ice cream every day :-)

We had earlier planned to stay in Rome for 3 days and rest in Venice. But many of my friends told me later to not miss Florence, so I shortened Rome by one day and gave half day to Florence. We used AirBnB and chose a place close to Termini station. Owner of the house was an old Italian lady and she made sure that our stay was as comfortable as it could be. On the first day we visited a lot of places because of our shortened trip. We followed Colosseum > Palantine Hill > Roma Forum > Venezia Palace > Piazza Navona > Pantheon > Trevi Fountain > Spanish Steps > Colosseum (in Night).  You could avoid Palantine Hill and Spanish Steps if you are in a hurry. All others are just masterpieces which cannot be avoided at all.

EuroTrip - 14 days Trip to Switzerland, Italy and Austria (Part 1)

Part 2
Part 3

The Eurotrip has ended and, gosh, what a splendid trip it was. 14 days trip to the serene natural beauty, magnificent historical architectures, lakes and monuments that you attach with your childhood memories passed so quickly that two weeks of vacation felt less. We visited Switzerland, Italy and Austria on our debut Europe tour. Choosing countries/cities in Europe is always difficult and the foremost thought behind our planning was to have a mix of few things. So we started off with a visit to Switzerland to see the natural snow-capped mountains, followed by visiting architectural monuments in Italy and, finally, ending the trip with visiting the musical cities in Austria. In all, I was very happy with my planning as we found that just doing one thing, such as visiting monuments, churches, etc, would become utterly boring. After seeing so many beautiful churches in Italy, I doubt if I can go and see another beautiful church which is just across the street in Paris. So, in that way we never got bored and always looked forward to what the next city has to offer.

Planning was done entirely by us which took a bit of time, lot of reading, however, it was a great experience as I read a lot about what to visit and not visit and filter out unimportant things. We visited Interlaken, Jungfraujoch (Switzerland), Rome, Florence and Venice (Italy) and Vienna, Salzburg (Austria). Wonderful experience it was. I’m helping out with our itinerary (click Read More below) and places to visit, our experience, fares to visit monuments and few tips that may help you with your planning.

Places/Countries Visited in the World

One of my criteria to come to Singapore for my higher studies was travel. Travel across the world. And the below figure shows the current status. These are the countries where I have gone on holidays. There are more countries that I have visited like Vietnam, Malaysia etc but only for business. So, I have not marked those.

1. The best has been Capetown so far, but diving in Cairns is not behind at all.
2. South America, Europe and South Africa (other than South Africa) are largely untouched. Even US for that matter.
3. There are just so many countries/continents left :-(

Getting Schengen Visa In Singapore

Europe is our next destination in summers and since we are Indians, we have to apply visas for every other country in the world we want to visit. Damn Singaporeans who can visit so many awesome places without any visa.:-(

Anyways we have decided to go to following three countries in Europe - Switzerland, Austria and Italy. So the Schengen visa makes sense. Now the trouble is which embassy should you approach if you want to get a visa? So, I did my research and following is the result, which I feel is useful to share.

1. You need to apply to that embassy where you are staying the most number of nights. So, if it is Italy, you need to go and take appointment with Italian Embassy.

2. Visa is strictly by appointment and imagine this - I looked into Italian embassy for appointment on April 16th for my travel on 7th June and they dont have any dates available till 10th June. So, you need to keep track of this and take appointment early. And Italy and Switzerland being more famous tourist attractions than Austria, the dates are taken up fast.

What Places To Avoid In Singapore?

I'm writing this post to help tourists to avoid couple of destinations in Singapore during their visit on SUNDAY. This is my personal belief and I speak about them mostly because of congestion and traffic issues on Sundays.

1. Orchard Road on Sunday - I go to gym on Saturday at one of the joints at Orchard. Because of some reason, I could not visit on Saturday one week and instead decided to go on Sunday. And to my surprise, orchard's main area on Sunday is occupied by domestic workers (maids). As Singapore government has granted compulsory day off for maids, which is good for them, looks like most of them spend time in Orchard. So, our dear orchard appears more crowded than usual days (at least around Paragon, Lucky Plaza areas). Furthermore, construction has been going on for some time, that creates more traffic.

2. Mustafa and Race Course Road on Sunday - You will be surprised to believe that you are in Singapore if you happen to be there around Mustafa especially during evening on Sundays. It is very much crowded and it will be good if you would like to do your shopping in Mustafa on any other day than Sunday. Simply avoid.

LinkedIn Endorsement - Useful Feature? Not Really

I have been a great great fan of LinkedIn. LinkedIn has frankly taught me many things in my professional career (most notably adding networks with an improved success rate) and has been quite instrumental in securing internships couple of times and a job in a tough market during my MBA period. The power of connections it imparts is out of the world. I have been using LinkedIn for quite sometime now and can easily point out that their continuous new additions have helped to a large extent. For example - recommendations feature, adding new connections only when you know the email, follow companies feature, trying their full-fledged LinkedIn premium version for a month for free, etc have all been great features.

LinkedIn introduced Endorsements some time back and I initially thought of it as a great feature to know quickly about a person's skill. But using it for sometime, I now feel that it increasingly will become a redundant feature. And LinkedIn to some extent is responsible for it. How? By simply providing a single click to endorse few skills that LinkedIn populates automatically when one person visits another person's profile. So easy and convenient to endorse.

But after experiencing this feature for sometime, I can convincingly "endorse" that this feature does not add any value as it is being use incorrectly. Sample this

1. My skills have been endorsed by people who I know personally but have never worked professionally. Why would they do that? well, probably they "believe" that I'm good in something.
2. My skills have been endorsed by people who I dont know personally as well, but at some point in time added into my circle and spoken to them over email. Why would they do that? well, probably they are looking for a job change, or some information or want to do business with me or my company. So they "believe" that this could be a good starting point to interact.
3. My skills have been endorsed by completely random people. Why would they do that? well, again for the same reason as 2 above.

South Africa - Cape Town and Kruger Safari

Continuing our travel journey, I went to South Africa this christmas and new year. I must say that I'm really impressed by Cape Town and Kruger National Park. So far, this experience has to be the most amazing; surpassing the Great Barrier Reef - Cairns that I did six months back.

The Safari
We took a flight from Singapore to Johannesburg (via Dubai) and booked our safari at Naledi Enkoveni in Balule Private Nature Reserve. We chose Balule as it has Olifants river passing by and Naledi is ranked 1 in that area. And Naledi did a fantastic job as well. We planned for 4 safaris (2 each day) which we regret because we both just loved the safaris and believed that we should have spend an extra day. We were able to view Lions, Hippos, Rhinos, Elephants, Impalas, Giraffes, Buffaloes, Zebras, Kudus, Dears, Wildebeest, warthogs and many others. The joy of finding them in a humongous jungle and then spending one hour watching them and listening to ranger's amazing stories about animals is unbelievable. We went pretty close to these animals and trust me there is no need for Binoculars. Yeah, of course you see animals pretty close in zoos, but then the animal has been trained to sit in the cage or the limited open area. In jungle, the excitement is there all the time. You need to find the animal, chase them and finally spent time watching them. We spent at least 45 mins watching each of the big four and trust me never felt that 45 mins were so long. The safari has left both of us with special memories and believe that we will be doing another later in our life. Some of the pictures below.

Cape Town
We then returned from  Kruger to Johannesburg and took a flight to Cape Town. Cape Town is a very beautiful city and offered lots of areas/places to go. We had 6-7 days and we spent every day doing only one activity. I guess we are changing as in our previous travels, we were focusing on our checklist - that is how many things have we seen. In this process, you get see many things, but surely one does not spend too much time about extracting pleasure out of seeing that unique place or thing.
We rented a car, which was a good thing because we came to know later that during the christmas and new year time, there were just no cars to be rented in any of the well known car rental companies. So, book your car well in advance.

We visited following places and all of them are beautiful.

1. Table Mountain - Gosh, what a beautiful place it is. Pleateau on the top of a mountain. We spent 5 hours on the top and experienced amazing weather change from clear to windy to cloudy to clear. Amazing views. Watched one of the best sunset ever.

2. Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens - Again a fantastic place. Amazing weather, beautiful scenery all around.

3. Stellenbosch and Franschoek - Lots of wine yards in these two areas. Was so much impressed by the overall scenery that decided to go twice to this place. You should do wine tasting (at least couple of times). Wines are very cheap as well. So make sure you get couple of them when you return back.

4.  Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope - Place where Atlantic meets Indian Ocean. The entire drive to Cape Point is absolutely amazing. One should drive from the Indian Ocean side and return back from the Atlantic. This way you can see amazing sunset while coming back as well as take a sundown drink at Camps Bay (Happening place). While going to the Cape Point, you should definitely stop at Boulders Beach to say hello to Penguins. Yes, Penguins .. can you believe it? Also, we were lucky to see a group of Ostriches while going from Cape point to Cape of Good Hope. You turn your car and you see Ostriches on the road. This is amazing and thats why South Africa made me surprised so much.

We missed Robben Island because tickets were all sold out due to so much tourist traffic. But I have been to Alcatraz before so it was ok for me.

Overall, this was a well spent christmas and new year. Hope to visit safari soon. But now next summer I believe is a time for some architectural visit. Lets see where journey takes me in June.

Do It Yourself - Speaker Stand

After a very long time, I created something from scratch this weekend. Had spent some time creating a mobile app some time back. The anxiety of creating this myself and the perseverance of finding the material after making at least 4-5 rounds to the market to assemble pieces for the stand finally pays off.

I had purchased YAMAHA receiver and speakers some time back from one of the YAMAHA stores in Singapore. When I enquired about the prices of the stand, they quoted me S$150. It sounded expensive to me but at the same time I believed that I could create my own. I had an idea of how I'm going to do it and, therefore, wanted to test it out. Thus, started the whiteboard design and then validating on net with possible solutions.

The next task was the most difficult, finding out the places to get the materials. And I knew nothing. Had seen couple of materials shops close to my house, but whenever I went (on sundays, on week day evenings) I found them closed. It was becoming frustrating and then I decided to go to Little India and search there. Found one small tiny shop near Little India that gave me most of the materials other than the wooden planks. It is recommended that whenever you go to buy these things, always have your measurements ready.

Finding wooden plank with my measurements was also very difficult. Went to a second hand furniture shop close to my house and asked the owner there to give me 4 such planks. He gave me the planks, but I had to cut the plank myself to adjust the shape and extra width. Held the saw after a long long time, but I was determined to get this thing done.

Rest was easy, got the pieces assembled according to my design. The stand now stand firmly around my sofa. Proud of this small thing.

Materials needed - 4 wooden planks, bolt, washer, steel pipe, plastic pipe and black paint.
Final cost - S$55 (excluding cost of making numerous trip to many places)

The Art of Selling

I've been investing at personal level in Indian Stock Market for a long time now. I bought my first stock in Dec 2004 and since then my portfolio has grown and grown. I love taking bets and ready to forgo the amount if the market crashes. (so, in a way I'm prepared for the risk). Most of the times I hear news about some stock from somebody in the family or office (and never follow CNBCs, NDTVs stock experts etc), track that stock for probably a month and then take a decision to invest in it. That has been my usual investment style. Things that I have learned post MBA is to look at the financial reports and try to form a basic reasoning before investing. Nevertheless, my returns have been pretty ok and I'm happy doing this personal investment and excelling my return targets every year.

One very important thing that I have observed over a period of time and learned during MBA that the trick of making money in stock market is not through continual investing. However, it is really through selecting the right time to exit and make a realized profit. The realized profit every year is actually my return targets. And because of this strategy, I've made money in the stock market by not waiting for a return and either take a sell or buy more call once I don't see the stock moving in the direction I expect. Have been fortunate to not wait for a long time and see my profits eroding as the financial crisis these days is taking a short cut and returning pretty fast.