India as a Land of Infinite Variety Essay Example for Free

India as a Land of Infinite Variety Essay So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked. India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Mark Twain, the writer of this quotation, was obviously impressed by the subcontinent. Travel agents say its nearly impossible not to be impressed, astonished and amazed by India—all within the first hour off the plane—for this nation is blessed with sacred sites and ancient ruins, each with a mesmerizing story to tell, creating a treasure-filled world of travel opportunities. Towering Mountains, Vast Deserts and Lush Rainforests Nestled between Pakistan, China and Nepal, India is bordered in the north by the worlds highest mountain chain, while further south, tropical rain forests mingle with windswept deserts. To complete the geographic smorgasbord, palm-fringed beaches trim the peninsula like ribbon on a huge Christmas gift. The only thing missing is a glacier, but no one seems to mind. Visitors and locals alike do not complain about Indias astonishing cultural diversity either, for the nation boasts an inspired, imaginative burst of religions and cultures, races and tongues, resulting from 5,000 years of history. Indias long, historical significance and great natural wealth have lured a long succession of foreign influences, traders and craftsmen, each having left their distinctive imprint on the country. Whether you come to rejuvenate spiritually, relax on the countless beaches or live like a queen in the land of princes, Indias amazing diversity offers everything you could ever want in a holiday. With so much to choose from, its wise to enlist the aid of a trusted travel agent. Paragons of advice, travel agents suggest that, because of Indias size and diversity, its best to focus your journey around a particular tour or theme. This allows you to experience in depth one tantalizing aspect of the country while still enjoying the variety that makes India a top travel destination. The Golden Triangle: New Delhi, Agra, Jaipur Of Indias many tours, the Golden Triangle is one of the most popular, for the three cities that form the triangle—New Delhi, Agra and Jaipur—feature the images that epitomize India. Inside this triangle youll see a panorama of majestic architectural creations that feed the areas rich traditions, like the symphony of marble that is the Taj Mahal (arguably the worlds most perfect structure), the imperial elegance of New Delhi and the desert city of Jaipur. | Taj Mahal| Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan, one of the largest of Indias 28 states and host to the exotic Desert Adventure tour. Rajasthan is known as the Land of Kings, where sumptuous palaces dot the desert landscape and battle-scarred fortresses stand tall atop hills like sentinels. Youll begin your adventure at Jodhpur, an ancient stronghold on the edge of the Thar Desert, before traveling along trade routes to the unforgettable golden fortress at Jaisalmer and beyond. Beyond Indias present-day heritage is a past steeped in spiritual lore, enlightening travelers who tour the Buddhist Circuit. Walk in the footsteps of Siddhartha Gautama—the gentle sage who became the Buddha—and sit beneath the Holy Bodhi tree at Bodhgaya, under which he gained enlightenment in 528 BC. Visit Sarnath, where the Buddha gave the world his first sermon, and Kushinagar, the site of his death. This tour is a spiritual journey that will stay with you for a lifetime. The Land of Coconuts Another Indian journey that will surely stick with you for a lifetime is a cruise through the Backwaters of Kerala. Kerala, on the southwestern tip of the peninsula, is called the land of coconuts, where palm trees shade nearly the entire state from the tropical sun. All along its coast, exotic backwaters, canals, lagoons and inlets create an intricate maze stretching nearly 1,200 miles throughout the land. Traveling by boat along the emerald-tinted backwaters is a magical experience. Any trip you make to incredible India will be a magical experience, especially if you book your journey through your friendly, neighborhood travel agent. Travel agents can combine any of the above tours or extend them to include exciting nights in bustling cities like Calcutta, New Delhi and Mumbai (Bombay). They can send you along other fabulous tours of India, to the Temple Trail of the south, across the Seven Sisters of the northeast or through the jungles that inspired Kipling in the Heart of Heritage. Always warm and inviting, India is a land of timeless beauty with 5,000 years of life under its ornate belt.Contact a trusted travel agent today and start exploring the infinite variety of this magical land.

Free Awakening Essays: The Parrot :: Chopin Awakening Essays

The Importance of the Parrot in The Awakening "Go away! Go away! For heaven’s sake! That’s all right!" (1) Chopin opens her poetic novella, The Awakening, not with the dialogue of a character, but with the ramblings of a brash parrot. Immediately, Chopin compels her readers to ponder what significance, if any, these seemingly random words will have in the following tale. Yet, it is not until the final pages that we recognize the bird’s true importance and meaning. The parrot, though seldom referred to within the text, comes to symbolize Edna’s role in society and the woman she becomes as she is spiritually awakened. At first impression the parrot’s bold demeanor creates an image of eccentricity. His spirited exclamations give him an air of impertinence, defiance, and intelligence that one would not expect of such a bird. Chopin portrays Edna in the same light, showing that perhaps as the parrot may deviate from the norm, so does Edna, who digresses from the society in which she lives. She does not conform to the image of a typical woman in society, playing the roles of a devoted mother and wife. Edna ignores these standards by engaging in two extra-marital affairs and by placing her own life before those of her children. Her desire to live as she pleases lies in direct opposition to the duties she is expected to perform, and she refuses to put on this performance to satisfy society. As a result, Edna seems as brazen and audacious as the parrot that obviously does not mimic the sounds he hears and instead seems to create his own. Again squawking, "Go away! Go away!" at the bothersome piano playing of two girls, Chopin writes, "He was the only being present who possessed sufficient candor to admit that he was not listening to these gracious performances for the first time that summer." (23) Edna shows similar candor in her unwillingness to accept society’s burdening stereotypes. The seemingly intelligent bird "could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood..." (1) Though the parrot’s remarks appear to fall on deaf ears, Edna is one who can identify with his presumable wisdom, as her existence too is misjudged. Both Edna and the parrot are depicted as extraordinary and misunderstood in their surroundings, yet they are not free:as the parrot must exist in a cage, so Edna is caged by the restrictions society places upon her.

Two Hotels

What Is the overlap between operations, marketing and product/service development at Acme Whistles? The simple answer to this question Is, There Is a very significant overlap between these functions'. The underlying question is Why? Partly, the reason is size. As Simon Ottoman says in the example, small companies cannot afford specialist functions so at a managerial level everyone does everything to some extent. This becomes especially true when the boss of the company Is also the owner, It Is literally his own money that Is being spent when creating any new managerial oleos.Partly also the tradition and competitive stance of the company has an influence. This is a company that competes on quality and innovation. Both these things rely on informal communications within the organization and a fast moving, agile ability to checkout and Implement new Ideas. Oxford 1 What are the main issues facing Sofa's operations managers? Broadly, Oxford will have the same issues as any other operati on. They must define their strategic objectives, design appropriate processes that deliver appropriate services, plan and intro those processes, and continually adapt and improve how they deliver their services.But they also have some particularly difficult challenges because of their status as an emergency and caring organization. They must provide a global service. By deflation, Sofa's scope of operations Is global. Anywhere a disaster Is likely to strike could receive the attention of the charity. However, much of Sofa's work Is not concerned with the high profile disaster relief side of its business, but rather the ongoing community development projects it undertakes. Most of these projects will e in the poorer, less developed parts of the world.The Implication of this is that, from an operations point of view, services must be delivered without an assumed level of infrastructural support. The ability to adapt development methodologies to such circumstances would be a key operat ions task. Another aspect of globalization for Oxford concerns the coordination of expertise. Experts, either in development or disaster relief, may be located anywhere In the world. The task of understanding and coordinating this pool of potential help must be a major operations task. It will rely on maintaining a database of expertise and on the ability to deploy it, sometimes at short notice.They must be environmentally ethical. To Oxford, the concept of environmental management must be tackled at two levels. The most obvious one Is that environmental awareness is an ‘output' from the charity operations. In other words, environmental management, to some extent, is one of the operation's products'. It will engage in lobbying governments and non-governmental agencies to achieve Its alms of greater environmental sustainability. However, there Is also another related Issue. Sofa's operations themselves must also be environmentally sound.Agricultural projects, for example, must be managed to ensure that there is 1 OFF local pressures to do so. They must be socially responsible. Again, this is one of those issues, which is both an output from the operation and an objective for the way it runs its own operations. A key issue here must be the way in which the ‘on the ground' managers of development projects tackle some of the particularly sensitive cultural issues. For example, ‘gender issues' are one of Sofa's campaigning points; forever, appropriate gender roles are seen in very different ways in different parts of the world.Pursuing its own ends in terms of, say girls' education, must be balanced against traditional ideas of women's role. Whereas this difficulty may be relatively straightforward to reconcile at a strategic level back in the charity Oxford headquarters, its success depends on how local operations managers deal with the issue at a day-to-day level. Prt A Manger What are the advantages and disadvantages of Prt A Manger organizing itself so that the individual shops make the sandwiches that they sell? There are a number of advantages in this type of organization. The load on the staff in the shop is equalized throughout the day.The demand from customers for purchasing the sandwiches occurs mainly in the middle of the day. If the staff only sold sandwiches, they would be busy in the middle part of the day and unoccupied at other times. The way Prt a Manger organize their processes, the staff can occupy themselves making sandwiches in the early part of the day, then, as the day progresses, staff will progressively move from making to selling. As demand then reduces towards the end f the day, staff will move onto general cleaning and tidying activities as well as making ready for the same cycle of activities to repeat itself the next day.There is clear and direct responsibility for quality, customer service and cost. If there are any problems with quality and availability of sandwiches, it is the same staff who caused the problems who receive customer complaints (In fact, Prt a Manger get very few complaints). Similarly, the effectiveness of cost control can be clearly associated with the staff in the shop. It is a more interesting Job that has a number of different activities (making, selling, cleaning, etc. ) than one where an individual will specialize in Just one of these tasks.It is easier to engender a sense of pride in the high quality and wholesome nature of the products when they are made on the premises. It should be pointed out that there also disadvantages. The main one is that the cost of making sandwiches in a sandwich factory (the way the vast majority of sandwiches are made) is very significantly cheaper because of the higher volume. How can effective operations management at Prt A Manger contribute significantly to its success? And what would the consequences of poor operations management be in this kind of organization?By developing a culture within each store that takes pride in the products themselves, the way they are made and the way customers are served. By listening to customers so that customers' reactions and comments can inform the design of new products. By not wasting materials through poor control, which would increase the cost of running the operation. By developing a sense of fun as well as a sense of commitment in the staff so that customers sense a friendly and laced atmosphere. Two very different hotels in delivering an appropriate level of service?For Formula 1, technology is harnessed in the manufacture of the self-contained bedroom units in the factory prior to assembly on the site. Because of the standardization, conventional factory automation can be used to some extent. More obviously, during the running of normal operations at the hotel, technology, in the form of the automatic ‘booking in' machine at the door, allows the hotel to remain ‘open' even while it is unstained for much of the day. This saves labor. Simi larly, labor is saved by the use of automatic cleaning in the washrooms.This also ensures that high standards of cleanliness are maintained throughout the day, even when the hotel is not staffed. Although not mentioned in the text, Formula 1 hotels also have automatic drinks and snack dispensers, which would allow guests to stave off hunger and thirst even though the hotel does not provide food in a conventional restaurant setting. At the Magus Safari Lodge, very little technology is used. The attraction of the hotel lies in its location and in how their staff treat the guests.Staff must not only be informative and courteous, they will also need to protect and reassure those guests who are anxious in their surroundings and create a sense of adventure (but not too much adventure). 2 What are the main differences in the operations management challenges facing the two hotels? The main difference is the degree of standardization in the operation's processes. For Formula 1, the main use of standardization is in the manufacture of the individual room units. All room units are exactly the same size. Because they all have the same fitting, these fittings can be artsy installed at the factory.This allows the company to buy furniture, curtains, and carpets in high volumes, keeping costs down. The standardized nature of the units also allows the hotel to be constructed quickly (which itself saves costs) using standardized methods of construction that are cheaper than building entirely different hotels at each site. Standardization of rooms also allows a standardized procedure to be adopted for cleaning and maintenance, so staff can be easily trained using a standardized training package. Finally, standardization of the room units, radically, allows all Formula 1 hotels to adapt to the geography of the site.By putting the standard units together, like children's building blocks, they can use unusually shaped pieces of land, which tend to be cheaper than regularly shaped s ites. By contrast, the Magus Safari Lodge provides experiences ‘customized for every visitor's requirements and abilities'. Also, the Magus Safari Lodge must be able to cope with fluctuations in demand through the year. However, Formula 1 try to choose locations that capture the business traveler market during the week and leisure travelers at the weekend.

Purly Imaginative Subject by Gary J. Kornblith - 933 Words

An essay written by Gary J. Kornblith, the main focus is on a purely imaginative subject. The use of this counterfactual approach is widely accepted as a methodology in research of causation. According to Kornblith, counterfactual exercises are necessary to â€Å"think more clearly about causation and to distinguish between essential factors and coincidental developments†(79). He uses the counterfactual method to present the idea that if Henry Clay had been elected in 1844, which he goes on to prove as plausible, we would be in a much different country. The thesis as a whole is stated as â€Å"†¦ My focus is on a different pair of wars: the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 and the American Civil War of 1861-1865†¦ Rather than project a different military outcome, I posit the absence of the Mexican-American War†¦The key to peace in my counterfactual scenario is a victory by Henry Clay over James K. Polk in the very close presidential election of 1844†¦ As a result Texas would almost certainly have remained an independent republic in 1845, and the United States would not have gone to war with Mexico the following year. Based as it is on a highly plausible turn of events, this counterfactual scenario promises to advance our understanding of the causes of the Civil War†(77). He then adds the fact that there are two viewpoints that come from this counterfactual exercise; Revisionists, who believe that the Civil War could have been avoided, despite the sectional differences, and