Would you like to work for a biotech company?

This is the question I received from an Indian student I know at Buffalo. I met this guy, let's call him 'pseudo-Mallu', a week before I got his call at the campus-shuttle bus stop. Seemed like a nice guy, very talkative, inquisitive, wanted to know all my history-geography in a matter of minutes. We got down at our final destination, exchanged phone numbers and I completely forgot about him. So pseudo-Mallu knows that I'm doing PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences and says that he has an interesting project in collaboration with a biotech company and he wants to involve me in it (with the added incentive of extra money). I say sure & we decide to meet the next day (Friday) at a Starbuck's at 5 pm.

I reach there on time and this guy turns up a few minutes later looking very professional, carrying a leather bag and all. We buy ourselves coffee, find a nice secluded place to sit and exchange pleasantries. Then we get down to business. He starts the discussion by asking weird questions like how much free time do I have everyday and what do I foresee for myself in the future. Suddenly, I smell fish instead of the sensuous feeling of coffee. He then mentions something which I recognize immediately - 'Quixstar'. Its multi-level marketing, I said. Call it whatever u want, dude, but this is the next big thing he said. He then goes on to question why we should buy Pepsi when Britney Spears gets paid for it, buy Nike and Tiger Woods goes all the way laughing to the bank. He gave me a brief history of how a guy started McDonald's, which is now the biggest chain of fastfood joint in the world. Apparently, he had his own restaurant, started giving training to other restaurants or people who wanted to open restaurants, asked for a lifetime cut for each sale and became rich without investing a single cent in opening a new outlet. Pseudo-mallu says that there are people who have taken early retirement from their jobs since this thing pays them so well and they have all the time in the world to do anything they wish. He gives me a booklet and a couple of CDs to listen to, basically talks by highly successful people in this field. I go home really disappointed. By the way, did you notice that not a single time does he mention the word biotech!!!

I had learned about Quixstar a few months back when the eldest son of a friend of my father drove all the way from Washington DC to explain me this concept. Pay around $250 to get started, buy products online from Quixstar, convince other people to do the same and you get a cut each time a new member joins in because of you. I had recently moved from Fargo to Buffalo and said that I was sorry but I neither had the time nor the inclination to do it.

So I read the booklet, listen to the CDS, one by an American named Bill Hawkins and the other by a guy from Orissa, now in the US and apparently, retired at the age of 29 because now he was earning 4 times more than he would have earned doing his job. This Oriya guy spoke horrendous English but was funny at mocking people who did not join this 'business'. I seriously recommend him to do some stand-up comedy.

So, pseudo-mallu calls up a week later and we decide to meet the next day, same place, same time. I was very busy and somehow forget about it ( not too difficult to do if you are not interested). I realized this later when he called me up at night. So we decide to meet the following day at his place. I reach there and am really surprised to see many people inside. One of their more succesful business partners, actually their mentor, had come all the way from Chicago to convince other people to join this scheme. There were around 10 people listening to him, including a Russian. Basically, it was a sophisticated version of what pseudo-mallu had explained to me. The other members of his team including pseudo-mallu were listening and watching him with awe, as if Moses himself had come down the mountain to deliver the 10 commandments. I noticed that most of the people there were students on the verge of graduating or who recently got jobs and were looking for ways to pay off their student loans asap. Apparently, this company had recently tied up with a biotech company I had never heard of. So later, pseudo-Moses talks one-on-one to me, asks me what my primary concerns were. I said I'm a student and have other priorities. I don't have financial problems, am busy with my studies and in my spare time want to do some recreation instead of chasing people around. He gives me another CD to listen to, take my time and tell pseudo-mallu my decision.

So pseudo-mallu calls me a week later, comes to my place and then I tell him 'Heck, I'm in'. Just kidding!!! I politely say no and his face was worth watching. Disappointment was writ all over his face. He said that he respected my decision but then asked for a more difficult task; giving him the contacts of 2 of my friends who I think would be interested in this. Now who shall I make the 'bakra'?

So in future, if I do face some financial problem, don't be surprised if I call you and ask 'Would you like to work for a biotech company?'

Ohio trip

This may be really late for something that happened a month ago (17-19 March), but as they say, ‘Better late than never’, I am referring of course to my Ohio trip. The reasons for the delay…. oh well…. forget it. It was just the two of us, I and my ‘travel partner’ Harsh. We planned a two and a half day trip including the traveling time. We left for Columbus, Ohio from Buffalo, New York at about 12 pm Friday. The distance..300 odd miles and the time required would be just more than 5 hours. This time went in Harsh’s car. It’s a stick-shift & since I haven’t driven a stick-shift car in the US before, there was no way I would have tried it this time. This meant that poor Harsh would be driving during the whole trip. Well, this was a fair deal since I had driven during our two previous trips. The drive was uneventful except for the fact that we bypassed a couple of major cities like Pittsburgh and Cleveland. The Cleveland loop was amazing. We were passing through just outside the city and were parallel with the city traffic for almost 40 miles with regular exits towards the city roads. There were offices of major companies like Progressive Insurance, Mettler-Toledo intruments etc. At one point, we say a truck ahead of us & it seemed to be coming from the opposite direction on the wrong side toward us. It was only when we were a bit closer that we realized that it was being towed away by another truck. We called it the ‘Ghost Truck’.

We reached Columbus at around 5 pm. Harsh’s friend Rohit came out to help us pull out our stuff from the car. We sat in the drawing room, drinking tea, chatting and getting to know him and his roomies. All were in the pharmaceutical sciences dept and one of them was my roomie Dhaval’s senior during his BPharm days back in Gandhinagar. The other roomie incidently was one of my MPharm junior’s friend. The world indeed is a small place (at least the Pharm. Sci. world).

Rohit then took us to his dept in Ohio State University. Apparently it is one of the biggest universities (at least in terms of the number of students studying, a staggering 40,000). There were a couple of high rises with equally tall buildings completely dedicated to parking. We reached his lab and took a couple of snaps. At around 9 pm we walked to a Mexican place for dinner. After that, we went in his car to see the downtown. Columbus is a relatively new city and there is nothing much to see. There were few tall buildings but one which stood out was made to look a bit old with a tinge of red lighting. Inspite of the cold conditions, we saw many people hanging out, especially the not so young ones. There were lots of parties going on but none of us were in the mood to join one. We roamed a bit more in the downtown, saw the council hall and took some snaps by the Ohio river. Unfortunately, none of the snaps came out well since it was dark.

The next day, we planned to make a round trip of Dayton and Cincinnati, both in Ohio state. We got the directions from a website and left for Dayton. There were four of us; I, Harsh, Rohit and Dr. Negi, a professor at Dehradun Univ who was here for a three-month project. We picked him up from Rohit’s dept. Our first stop was the US Air Force National Museum at Dayton which was around 60 miles from Columbus. It was a really impressive museum and was divided into four sections: Early aviation and WW I, WWII, Cold-War and present. We learnt a lot about how the first flights were tried and the first successful flight was by Oliver Wright (one of the Wright bros, the other being Wilbur) and how they and many others improved on each model. Most of the early models were based on car engines and we came across names like Ford, Mercedes-Benz etc. The later models were quite different and far more sophisticated. We were done with all the sections in about 3 hours and even then we missed out on seeing some planes, it was that huge. We had a pathetic lunch at the museum cafeteria since we all were really hungry and did not have any other choice. Meanwhile, Rohit called up his friend Sujeet in Indiana state since he too coming to Cinicinnati just to meet us. For this, Sujeet had to travel 2 hours each way to meet his friend for just 3 hours. Cincinnati is 40 miles from Dayton and when we reached there we weren’t sure where exactly to go. In between, we lost our way and ventured into Kentucky state. Cincinnati is on the border of Ohio and Kentucky states. We finally reached the downtown and after a lot of searching found a place to park ($8 for 3 hours). The city wasn’t as big as I had imagined. We saw a football and baseball stadium from outside. I wasn’t really impressed with the downtown. Must have been the cold and the dearth of people. We finally went into a Starbuck’s, ordered coffee and chatted away for almost an hour until Sujeet showed up. We then walked a bit more and finally decided to have dinner at an Indian restaurant. It was close to the University of Cincinnati. Now this restaurant called Ambar was, to my utter surprise, one of the 4 Indian restaurants in the same area. There are many more in other areas of Cincinnati. We had a couple of different chicken dishes which were spicy as hell and tasted the same. After we hungry monsters were well-fed, we decided to head back to Columbus. We bid good-bye to Sujeet and by the time we reached Columbus (110 miles, 2 hours), it was past 1 am. We dropped Dr. Negi off to his place and went home and slept till almost 11 am the next day. Oh, before going to sleep, I called my folks in India and surprised them by saying that I was in Columbus.

We had planned to do a couple of things in the morning but we neither had the time nor the energy to do it. We finally had brunch and Harsh and I left for Buffalo.
We reached around 7:45 pm and after 30 minutes were ready for dinner at a friend’s (Suraj) place.

Thus ended another journey and the spring break. Harsh and I have traveled together almost 3000 miles, with I driving 1700 miles, and covered 6 cities. Hope we have many more road trips but the problem is we are running out of places now!!!

Don't forget to check out these snaps and video.

Pittsburgh trip videos

Hey guys,
Here are a couple of videos from our Pittsburgh trip. Thank you for your response. Yes Vicky, I had a haircut before my Ohio trip which I should be posting shortly. Enjoy!!!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=l0vk6P7Epcc
http://youtube.com/watch?v=IeOAVl9nJMo