Tabora - Cargo ship tour

This blog is not about Kaho na pyar hai's 'Pyar ki kasti mein' or Kheva re Kheva re Naiya Kheva. This is about a cargo Ship named Tabora which was carrying bitumen and crude oil to be unloaded on different ports of US.

Jan 2008 started on nice note. I met with Sunil and Umesh after many months. Both of them came to my home and we had fun within Connecticut on Saturday, Jan 5 2008. The next day was well planned by Sunil. His Dad had come on Tabora cargo ship to Providence, Rhode Island. This place is two hours drive from my place.

We reached harbor at noon time on Jan 6. This was first time I was planning to go aboard a ship of this size. I came to know about lot of new procedures around cargo shipping. The crew members couldn't alight because they had custom check remaining. So we spent few hours on New port coast. It was cold outside but still nice. Finally we came back to harbor and were aboard ship at 5pm. I was surprised to know that only 23 people were there to run the entire ship. On expressing this surprise Sunils dad explained that only Naval ships will have lots of people. For cargo ships this crew size is normal. We met with captain, chief officers and all. Most of them were in 30s or lesser than that. All but one crew members were India.

After exchanging few words with most crew members we went to uncles room. The corridors looked like cramped space. But again the room had laptop, fan, bathroom,bed and sofa. The ship was more than 25 years old hence the furtinure and interiors were kind of old. But yet it was good. I don't know how the feeling inside the room would be on moving ship as we were on harbored ship.

We had dinner at 8pm on the ship. All crew members were friendly and made us feel home. We had nice indian food prepared by the cook on ship. After dinner we took a tour to see entertainment room which had TV, magazines and TT table. The best surprising part is yet to come

Seeing the world below deck is what threw me off board. It was like a complete factory. The engines were 6 floor tall and there were 7 running in parallel. Hot water, cold water, drinking water and more such units were running continuously to meet daily needs of crew members. Floor of the ship was obviously under water but when told by Uncle that we are actually standing under water was awesome. Engine control room had all monitoring system for different units. Captain remains in direct contact with the engineers in engine control room. Being IT persons we 3 were discussing alerts and all system must be tested thoroughly before they can be deployed on running ships. We saw the food storage area where meat, fish, milk and vegetables were maintained at different temperatures.

The length of ship from bow to stern was close to half a mile. Under the deck I could count 8 floors of structures. We were tired after walking for 2.5 hours which we took to tour the ship. The next destination was above the deck which was observation deck. It had all GPS units and controls to communicate with external world. Over all I was in awe after seeing the mans wonder of running a huge factory on sea.

This was standing ship, sometime I will experience being on deck on ship making its way through the sea. May be 'pyar ki kasti mein' song on some cruise liner.

Daimler Chyrsler Story

The book "Taken for a ride - How Daimler Benz drove off with Chrysler' by bill vlasic and bradley a. stertz is so interesting that on finishing this book, I felt like writing a review after long time. The book talks about automaker industry and how Dailmer Chrysler merger happened. The starting point of the book is Kirk Kerkorian episode in history of Chrysler. He was a major private equity owner of Chrsyler stocks and announced his plans to buy out the company. The entire episode is captured like a nail biting story. It seems it all started with communication gap between two people and entire episode instead of becoming a beautiful path became nightmare. This laid the back bone of the book nicely. Later the author touched on Chryslers struggle to grow their international market on their own.

Books like this and HP story give a glimpse at how critical decisions are taken in boardroom.

After this an attempt is made by Mercedes and Chrysler group to explore feasibility of merger. This part of the book actually highlighted the divide at the upper level in Chryslers. Then in the book is introduced dynamic Daimler’s Jurgen Schrempp. The way he is portrayed makes you feel he is real leader. He is one step ahead in planning, works hard and parties harder. The way author has captured his inner plans behind each move (whether true or not) makes you feel that yes this is how you can makes others follow the path that you see.

The authors seemed biased against Chrysler CEO Bob Eaton. It was portrayed that he never stood on a decision or took and leadership role. I am doubtful that a person with such weak stance taking attitude can run a company for so many years. Emotional CEO may not be weak in action.

Culture differences during the merger process are brought out quite evidently. The book made me think about true human factor again. Industries can be merged but can people be?