Hoi Ann Vietnam

 

Magical Hoi An

The fairy tale land of twinkling lanterns ,swaying palms ,glistening water ,bobbing boats ,the story of a twisting river flowing under a low stone bridge causing bending heads Hoi An is mythical mystical mesmerising and memorable .

Lamps and rivers ...lamps floating in rivers be it in Hoi An or in Ganga Maa shows us the impermanence of life .

We move ahead alternatively  flickering glowing and dimming like the days in our life ,we go out in an instant to a perfusion of black darkness into the realms unknown unfathomed.

Danang Vietnam

Bana Hills is a range of hills near Danang city  around 45 km away .

Danang is a city in central part of  Vietnam it's a beach city with hills around 

French had colonized Vietnam for long and they used to retreat to small houses they constructed in hills .

The climate was more pleasant than the tropical sweltering of a coastal city .

By 1919 the French had built a resort up Bana hills ..

It was in 2013 that the Vietnamese Goverment realised it could be a tourist attraction like the nearby UNESCO approved heritage city Hoi An .

So they gave the licence to a private enterprise to build and manage a hill top resort cum amusement park .

Sun enterprises which today runs most resorts  amusement parks and tourist spots I'm Vietnam owns Sunworld in Bana hills .

It's around 26 km from Dhanang .

The longest stopless cable car one of worlds top five is in Bana hills sunworld .

It takes around 30 minutes of a steep ride into clouds of fog to reach top of hills .

In it there is a fantasy park  with wax museum ,Disneyland like shows ,French quarter  spiritual section with a 30 feet Buddha in a Buddhist temple and a flower garden .

The latest addition is the Golden bridge with Teo weathered hands holding pedestrian bridge 

This bridge is Big hit in  social media 

More than 10000 people throng every day with numbers going up in weekends to one lakh .

The ticket is 750000 VDG without buffet lunch or 100000 with buffet .

This includes cable car entry French quarter flower garden fantasy park etc .

By afternoon the whole place was covered by fog 

The French quarter had  colonial European chalets  ,cathedral ,and with the fog it looked truly European

 

Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella

Microsoft in IT was almost like the proverbial steam engine of James watt a pioneer in bringing the computer to every home .

Started by Bill gates and Paul Allen by developing microsoft windows and internet explorer as an operating system in IBM designed PC and by turn of century was at its peak making three billionaires and twelve millionaires .

In 2000 Bill gates stepped down as CEO to managing his charity foundation earning his billions he could afford to do so but by the nineties microsofts monopoly was looking shaky with free operating systems open ended like Linux ,the advent of APPLE and IOS ,development of Google and Android .

And finally the giant in E commerce Amazon which brought in cloud computing .

Microsoft basking in its past glory missed the bus entirely .

as mobile browsing spread by Android and Apple and it made a failed attempt to join hands with another giant mobile company NOKIA  that fell with a thud with advent of smart phones .

In 2000 Steve Ballard became CEO after Gates .

By then microsoft was using its powers to get market monopoly using unethical methods and Steve a marketing person not a technocrat  had short term vision to bring healthier graphs than having a holistic vision of the future 

It was thus in 2014 Satya Nadella an Indian American who studied in Hyderabad and who had been working in Microsoft for many years was made the CEO .

He was till then looking after Azure its cloud business 

Satya was told to lift the company that was going slow .

Satya knew his priorities .

But he also knew he had to change the core philosophy of his company from a competitive inward looking fiercely protective of its client one to a more inclusive adaptive one which  harnessed the  latest in technology .

HOLO LENS , cyber virtual technology was instituted .

Satya Nadella was born to parents who taught him patience and piety with perfomance far away from the brash American marketing of stayin alive snd in front at any cost .

He knew EMPATHY by his attachment to his elder son with Autism doomed to a wheel chair for life .

Satya needed every employee in microsoft to develop this culture 

He plunged into cloud technology Azure being his responsibility earlier 

Linkedin was purchased by Microsoft 

Bing was promoted as an alternative to Androids Google .

Visual studio  and Microsoft gaming to bring up microsoft to third position of a trillion dollar company first two being Apple and Amazon .

The title of his book HIT REFRESH was his very  philosophy of being CEO of Microsoft to embark into the new while preserving the good old .

Satyas struggle in personal life with a disabled child made him emapathetic to the weak and using technology to help such less fortunate .

His leadership was one of humility curiosity mutual respect and hard work which he infused in the company bringing a fresh wave .

His son passed away in 2022 at 21 years now he has two daughters .

It was an excellent read ,of not only his personal saga of reviving a company but on how corprates should turn human and how he managed to do that in his company .