Our second to last day in Bangalore was mostly spent as a preparation for the presentations to come later in the evening. All the teams were hard at work putting the finishing touches on their presentations, as the culmination of three weeks of research, interviews, and exploration in Bangalore was coming to an end.
The morning started off with all of us sitting in the lounge area reflecting about the last three weeks together. It was bittersweet to reminisce on the many lessons and adventures that we’ve had here, and reflect on how the people and the city has impacted each of us. Everything from experiencing squatter toilets, finally feeling comfortable hailing an auto rickshaw, and forming close friendships with the Indian interns, this trip has impacted each of us in different ways.
In 21 days we’ve managed to fly half-way across the world, form unexpected friendships, and experience a whole new world then the one we’re accustomed to. However, even with all the experiences and epic moments that we’ve managed to cram into the past 21 days, it still doesn’t feel like enough time.
The rest of our day was a whirlwind of presentation preparation and last minute edits which didn’t leave us much time to dwell on our time together coming to an end. By 5:30 p.m., we’d all done at least one practice round of our presentation and were ready to share our proposals with our peers and audience members.
It was rewarding to be able to see the thoughtful ideas and research that we’d all spent so much work accumulating, culminate during the final presentations. Solutions ranged from improving the water quality of a local lake, a business that would collect excess food at weddings for underprivileged communities, to focusing on the customer segments of residential cooling in Bangalore.
After our talks were finished we stuck around to hear one of our instructors Kenton give us a presentation on how he may or may not have found Amelia Earhart.
After the presentations, we thought some ice cream was well in order and so all 11 of us piled into two auto rickshaws in the pouring rain and headed to an ice cream shop called the Corner House, their specialty, "Death by Chocolate."
Overall, it was an awesome night filled with fascinating solutions and great company.
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Jillian C. and Aaron K.
