Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Having a great time in Washington DC

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Washington DC is a beautiful city, as beautiful as an European city in fact as it was originally designed by a Frenchman.

The first thing we did on reaching there was to get as close to Barack Obama as possible.

We were delighted to have our picture taken in front of the White House.

Naturally, security was tight. We witnessed a great scene. The security guards had told everyone to stand still because one car (with some dignitary) was moving out of the premises. A man, who presumably didn’t hear the summon, kept walking. A secret service guy promptly told him: “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Hilariously, the man’s wife told him: “You’re on your own now.”

The next day, we went to the Washington DC monument which is huge yet beautiful.

And, of course, visited the Capitol. The guided tour was interesting as was the overall atmosphere. Being close to where the Senators and Representatives are is a great feeling.

We then passed in front of the US Supreme Court.

One thing which is interesting in the US is the sheer variety of restaurants that exist. It seems to us that Americans do not cook. They (mostly) always eat outside. So restaurants are plentiful, relatively cheap and varied. We ate salad in a French restaurant the next day and, as you can see, everyone was happy.

Yesterday, we visited the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Kyan and I were delighted to renact part of Top Gun, next to a glorious F-14D Tomcat.

We were amazed to see the real Enterprise space shuttle. It’s immense and, like the Washington DC monument, beautiful!

We also saw numerous historical airplanes, most notably Enola Gay, which was the first  airplane to drop a nuclear bomb over Japan during the Second World War.

Finally, just before reaching our home base, Christina and I both bought ourselves an Amazon Kindle. It’s a great device for reading books (and for lite browsing) and it’s cheap!

We’re having a great time in Washington DC.

Visiting Los Angeles and Hollywood

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During our stay in Los Angeles, we opted for a hotel in Hollywood for obvious reasons.

We are all movie buffs and we were delighted to be at Hollywood, the world capital of (occidental) actors, directors, producers and studios. Speaking of studios, we couldn’t prevent ourselves from spending the whole of two days at Universal Studios Theme Park.

The kids (as well as ourselves) were amazed to be able to take pictures with all their favourite comic characters…

… from the inoffensive (?) Bart and Homer to the more lethal (yet friendly) Bumblebee.

Anya, 8, and Kyan, 6, are, of course, huge fans of Scooby-Doo and they were ecstatic to have their pictures taken with Scooby, Daphne and Samy. Naturally, we were ecstatic too.

Universal Studios, being the home ground of Steven Speilberg, naturally features a quite magnificent Jurassic Park ride through rivers infested with dangerous dinosaurs.

After the dinosaurs, we got glimpses of Iron Man, Terminator as well as a very friendly Superman on Hollywood Boulevard.

And, last but not least, we paid respect to the King of Pop Music, Michael Jackson, on Hollywood Boulevard.

Living in the Silicon Valley

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Since I was a (geek) kid, I wanted to come to the Silicon Valley and see what it looks like.

Now that I’ve been there, I would like to share some thoughts about what I’ve seen and what I’ve felt there. Incidentally, I’ll also (try to) relate those to what is happening in Mauritius.

First of all, from a geographical perspective, the Silicon Valley is what is around the San Francisco bay. On the map, you can see San Mateo, Stanford, Mountain View up to San Jose on the left of the bay and San Leandro, Fremont, Sunnyvale up to San Jose again on the right. Everything falls within the Silicon Valley. In other words, the Silicon Valley is big.

Secondly, some very well known companies have their headquarters in the Silicon Valley: Adobe, AMD, Apple, Cisco, eBay, Google, HP, Intel, Nvidia, Oracle and Yahoo. A few years ago, I wrote about the reasons why the Mauritian Cybercity will (most probably) never become a (mini) Silicon Valley and I think the post is still relevant.

One of the first things I’ve realised is that it’s about people. People invent, people innovate and people create wealth. What is essential is that people have the opportunity to network and exchange ideas with others.

We were lucky to spend a few days with Audrey, the woman in the middle. She’s from Singapore, lives in San Carlos and is one of the co-founders of PlayMoolah. We spoke a lot and we found out that most people creating startups in the Silicon Valley are not doing it for money. Rather, they (simply) want to change the world.

Sun, the woman on the left, is the founder of LittleLives, a social networking platform for children and she also wants to change the world.

I feel the same thing about Knowledge Seven. Of course, the company is a training company but, at the same time, I work on side projects like Infos.mu and Elections.mu. When I return to Mauritius, I will start working on my grand project to transform the education landscape in Mauritius. My dream is to allow every single Mauritian to learn whatever he/she wants from the comfort of his/her home using technology.

The second thing I’ve realised is that it’s also about technology.

People in the Silicon Valley all use smartphones (the iPhone rules but I’ve seen quite a lot of Android and Blackberry devices too), laptops and (sometimes) tablets.

The Internet is pervasive here. Everything can be found online: spots to visit, places to eat, museums to discover, etc. I am actually amazed by e-commerce here. 99% of the places we’ve been allowed us to buy tickets online.

Allowing people to do everything online gives them the opportunity to devote more of their time to change the world. Maybe that’s why the Silicon Valley is so unique: people concentrate more.