A bakery, a shoe factory,a buffet, oh my!

So I actually had a pretty nice day today, so thought it was important to share. First of all, I can say now "I come home next month!" Yay!!

My day didn't start off so well. My roommate was up until 4 or perhaps 5 am, and living in close quarters that meant I was up until 4 or 5 am. Not very fun at all. The one thing that works well here is the falling apart desk lamps that we were provided, they are VERY bright. So it's very hard to sleep when I have a bright light in my eye, pretty much felt like laying on the operating room table. Needless to say, my roommate finally went to sleep so I could attempt sleep as well. But I had to wake up early for a company visit today (company visits happen every Friday) and woke up with a very sore throat. So I begrudgingly trudged over to school to get on the bus, and has a very nice afternoon!

Since most of our classmates have left for Diwali vacation, there were only 6 of us (a much more ideal number for company visits than the usual 14). We went to Wibs Baking Company, a local family run baking company, and had a wonderful time. Three brothers started the company and are now grooming three cousins to take over operations. I have never met a nicer or more engaging family here in Bombay. They were clearly passionate about their business and very excited to have us to their factory. One of the cousins actually completed the IMBA program last year, which is how we were able to get a visit arranged. We sat down for some Q&A and taste testing, and then toured the factory. I took some pictures and will post them upon my return from Rajasthan. It was pretty neat to see the assembly line operations, but the whole process was surprisingly manual because bread is considered a "small scale operation" and therefore expenditures are not allowed to surpass a certain benchmark. This means, because labor is cheap, the company opted for a majority of manual operations, although many of the processes are still mechanized (it's more the transport which is manual... there is no conveyor belt). After we saw a loaf of bread from ingredients to package, the brothers decided to take us (unplanned) to a shoe factory across the alleyway.

The show factory was owned by a friend of the family, but I was disapointed to learn they only made men's shoes, not women's. Boo. But, this small exporting company has over 65 clients including Clarks, Aldo, JcPenny, Macy's, Sketchers, etc. They have 6 assembly lines, but almost all the work is done by hand. But, I find it ironic that all these high end brands are made in a backcorner shop in India, yet are able to charge exorbitant prices for simply a label!!! The workers in the shop make US$ 120 a month (to give you a benchmark, a full time security guard makes about US$ 100 a month, a cashier at McDonald's $75 a month), which is a "good wage" here. Clearly operation costs are small, yet Clarks will sell shoes for $100 (Almost a single factory worker's wage for the entire month of shoe production!!!). Pretty amazing. We got to go into their "idea factory" and look at all the samples of the shoes they have made (like I said, would have been heaven had it been women's... they hope to expand to ladies shoes, and I told them I was available to consult if need be) and they were kind enough to bring us drinks and show us shoe designs for winter of 2008. They are high fashion suppliers, but very low frills operations. Interesting pit stop.

After our time with our company visit, we thought we would head back. But the brothers, and two of the cousins, insisted on taking us out to lunch! We, of course, agreed since our group never turns down free food. We were brought to The Leela Hotel near the Int'l Airport, a lovely five star hotel with gorgeous architecture and treated to their buffet meal. The buffet had amazing hummus and really good steamed vegetables. But, like all food cooked in India, it didn't like me. Oh well.

We then headed on the bus back to Welingkar and I raced back to the dorm to talk to Mom one last time before hitting the train tomorrow, and packed for my trip. I hate packing. Because packing out of slim pickings, is no fun, and rather frustrating... plus makes me want to be packing for my "big" trip in December. Oh well. I am exhausted, so I will try and muster some energy to be sociable tonight for Mitika's birthday!