Day 25: MIT Make in India

Day 25: MIT Make in India

When you wake up after a long night in the lab wrapping soaps with cloth, all you want is a hot shower on a bright sunny day. Instead I still have no light in the bathroom and the shower was a trickle. Life’s great. 

On the bright side, the shark was finished printing and we put it on the shark. Aishwarya, Forest, and I also made the pitch (not the presentation) to Raj for our product and company. We got some good feedback, and Aishwarya edited the pitch. Now’s it’s perfect. If only we had a legit product...

Then I started helping the soap people who had their pitch to the hotel association today because it was coming up soon and I honestly didn’t have that much to do. Or least that I wanted to do. I began remaking the brochure, which it turns out Vignesh was doing the same. Finally we came together after lunch and merged our thoughts and edits into the final brochure which hopefully turned out ok. Soap is hard. Everyone tried to help out. They had to come up with questions that they could expect and be able to answer them well and on the spot. I got a bit bored and made this!

Raj's picture of me and Vignesh and the product of my boredom

Then they began working on the pitch and arguing who would pitch it and how. I think they got someone somehow… And somehow it’s Aishwarya who isn’t even on the soap team… Good job, guys. 

It was soon time to go to the hotel in Trivandrum on the party bus, but it was almost time to watch the NASA mission pass Pluto after going for nine years! Duncan and I were ready. It was literally about 19 minutes away and everyone was getting ready to leave. We were trying to figure out ways to stall so that we could somehow watch it. We rebelled and took out the laptop and began streaming. This was important, man. 

We managed to stall and watch it while sitting on the bus in front of the house. It was quite anti-climatic. We reached the hotel playing Aishwarya’s party music. There were a ton of hawks/crows/bird things flying around. Titan was going to leave soon on her flight to Indonesia and she was hungry. There was Baskin Robbins right there in the hotel and we were slowly inching toward it. Finally we made it there and ate fairly delicious ice cream. I also arm wrestled Chingy and Titan (who makes weird noises and poses while wrestling). Wow I was weak. I think the pitch had gone well…there was some interest shown in the soaps that I so beautifully cut and packed. 

Gonna miss you, Titan!

Finally we went inside the hotel’s restaurant and only ordered “light appetizers.” So basically we ordered a ton of snacks for our vegetarian table and shared it all using the spinning thing on the table, which was fun and could also be used to tease. I also heard Dhruv’s life stories about how he hates girls… There was more, but that was interesting. 

Titan then left…such sadness. SEE YOU SEPTEMBER 9TH THELONIOUS MONKFISH. I just realized I have been saying the restaurant name wrong this whole time. Oops. Thanks, Google. 

We then went to the Punjabi Dhaba, much to Jaspreet’s happiness. We were greeted with a dhol! It was hilarious. And a very beautiful place. We got the party room, because party as usual. THEN WE SAW THE CHAAT AND GOL GAPPE. My life was made right there. 

Dhol greeter...also turned out to be the chaat guy.

Dhaba Project.

GOL GAPPE. I shamelessly drank all the water. Forget my throat.

This is perfect. His mumma will be so proud.

Playing the dhol

He actually doesn't know how. Unacceptable.

Dancing to dhol.

We ordered a ton of food as usual, lots of chaat, gol gappe, and sabjis that everyone shared. Felt really good eating North Indian food. There was dancing and playing of the dhol was well. Then party bus on the way back, as always. And Forest's dance. 

Party karoo raat mein.