EUROPE BY WALK! AMSTERDAM Travelogue! (Vol 23) Down Memory Lane!

In front of castle in London

Continuing from previous Blog L&T Medical at Mysore the Beginning! (Vol 22)

 Our first weekend trip from London was to Amsterdam. As planned all the 7 members of this tech gang assembled at a pre- determined place in Amsterdam. It was the coldest day that winter of 1990 with temperature hovering around 0 deg C as we arrived.

Our L&T Medical team at Amsterdam!

Unlike USA, the beauty of Europe is that except major cities like Paris and London rest of the cities are relatively small. We found that many of the cities like Amsterdam (Netherlands) can be covered by walk! 😊

All the metros in Europe used to have maps (no google search those days!) 😌 real color-coded folded full-size maps with all landmarks and connection to metros available for tourist free. Our tech guys had done enough research well before we arrived at Amsterdam. During breakfast we chalked out the day’s plan. We observed that all the landmarks are close and can be covered by walk. Our guys then  planned the entire program for that day and made sure that we don’t miss any major landmarks. It is important on Saturday we should cover maximum places as we had to start our return stressful journey by train to nearby port-ship-train back to London which will stretch till Monday morning. So, we had effectively only 1.5 days to cover all the places at Amsterdam. Believe me we continued this approach “Europe by walk” of this trip in most of the countries we visited later. Reading such city maps and chalking out our innovative ideas used to be stimulus to our brain and made us creative. 😇Nowadays Google has spoiled all this thrill of reading maps habit and made us dumb. Now without google directions in our cellphone we cannot go anywhere like those years! Sorry to say this rather we have become slave to technology! 😠     

We covered all the places that day including  canals  and waterways  in that sub-zero temperature. By evening the main tourist places are done. Our  colleagues then came up with some other plan to see Amsterdam by  night . We went through the night life streets and  have never seen anything like this except in movies.  That was  a different world existing in the same beautiful place. It is similar to what you see in Las Vegas.

                                                          In front of LT Bus at Amsterdam!

Kontron Training: Kontron Training went on after return from Amsterdam. Since PMS had 4 products to cover (Micromon, Minimon ,CNS and Heartstation ) we decided to divide the training on these products. NR went into details of technology transfer of Minimon and CNS and me Micromon and Heartstation. We found out some deviations from Kontron then to our future operations. Kontron was using temperature cycling for burnt in of final product in the environment test chambers that checked both temperature and humidity. Mysore works had already purchased a dry heat chamber for the same purpose   for temperature but not humidity. This cannot be reversed. Kontron was using Automatic Test Equipment for testing complex PMS Printed Circuit Boards. The leadership has decided already without we SME inputs that ATE is required only for Ultrasound Manufacturing because it is complex and is not required for PMS because it is relatively simple. 😟 I don’t know who took that decision the impact of which affected adversely our PMS group for next 2 years and more about it later. We could not get the tech transfer for the ATE test fixtures which was offered by Kontron because we did not buy their recommended ATE system. If we had bought the same system, we could have used Kontron test fixtures for doing assembled PCB Testing. Kontron was amused and asked us how are we going to test in India without ATE? 😉When we asked them to explain the functionality of the circuitry, they said they have no documentation since everything is done by ATE.

London Sightseeing:  After Amsterdam sightseeing after 2 weeks our folks came to London in the following weekend, and we became the host. We showed all the landmarks in London. 

London sightseeing  double decker buses

I must tell that I was truly disappointed seeing Buckingham palace which was not as grand as our Mysore or Jaipur Palace when we looked from outside. The change of guards standing outside like a statue used to excite the tourists. 😀 I have seen the same in VGP Golden Beach Resort in Chennai. The difference between Buckingham Palace and our VGP Golden Beach is that our guard at VGP will be provoked and challenged by the crowd, and still he will remain motionless all day. 😫 Here in UK the guard earned the respect for his service.

 Museum London

Madame Tussauds wax museum conceptually was awesome, and it had everyone’s heroes chiseled to perfection. The horror side of Madame Tussauds is  really scary!

Horror side of Madame Tussauds

                                       

 I took a picture of my idol Mozart with ABD and GRM and NR with Charles Dickens and so on .

With Mozart at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum

 Later during our visit of heritage government  buildings  we visited iconic 10 Downing street official PM residence and took pictures.  😎

 10 Downing Street official PM Residence

London has retained the old charm retaining the heritage of the past. British developed same iconic buildings in India but we have neither maintained our glorious past heritage nor the one created by British. We should be grateful to British at least for the nationwide rail network in India and for creating such iconic structures which we have only renamed to sound Indian.  NR was excited with the London Big Ben which we visited many times. He bought at least 2 dozen clocks as gifts, and I don’t know 80% of his suitcase when we left training was filled with clocks. Clock man! 😁

Heritage Buildings at London!

We visited iconic undergrounds used during World War 2 and learnt all about the heroic Churchill as PM during the World war. The Queens Walk along the south bank of the Thames  near Buckingham the Palace is awesome to walk through like Century Park in New York. We also visited a castle one weekend near London a great palace.  British Rail is always on time wherever we went in London

Ravindran in front of  Castle 

We had glimpse of Chennai as we  visited London Sri Murugan Temple  as we visited our family friend at  East Ham. This area is typical like Luz Corner Mylapore Chennai and was a welcome change for us to enjoy south indian food!

London Sri Murugan temple with Ramachandran

Is this Luz Corner Mylapore  or London?

If there is one place, I would like to visit again it will be London and to see scenic Scotland which we could not see that time.😊

The next trip was planned after 2 weeks this time we all are meeting  at  Paris!   

(To be Concluded)