Fireworks, CLGO Visit, and Plant Treks, Oh My!

It's been a busy couple of weeks here in LGO-land!  Last week marked the halfway point in the summer term and it all seems to be flying by so quickly.  Rather than have to decide between focusing on school and focusing on fun, I've taken the approach of doing it all and am planning to catch up on sleep sometime after I graduate.  Here are some of the highlights from the last few weeks:

Fourth of July

Boston Pops Concert

It turns out that Boston really knows how to celebrate America's birthday in style and the whole city seems to get involved in the party.  The festivities kicked off on the evening of July 3rd, when several LGO folks and families headed over to the Hatch for the Boston Pops 4th of July Pre-Concert.  It was a fantastic opportunity to see the Pops (and many special guests) perform an amazing concert without all of the massive crowds of the actual 4th.  The highlight for me was definitely the iconic 1812 Overture, complete with real cannons firing on the banks of the Charles!

On the 4th, I woke up early and went on a bike ride for the first time since moving to Boston.  I linked up with the MIT Outing Club (MITOC) for a 62-mile ride through some of the historic sites of the Revolutionary War (i.e. Lexington and Concord).  Each site had special events going on for the holiday, including reenactments!  It felt great to be back on the bike again, though with 90+ degree temperatures and full humidity, I was definitely ready to quit by the end.

View from the MIT Sailing Pavilion

Of course, the 4th wouldn't be the 4th without a huge display of fireworks and Boston DEFINITELY knows how to do them right.  The display is launched from a set of barges in the Charles, and MIT has the unique advantage of having our sailing center positioned dead-center in front of the barges.  Since LGO is one of the only programs on campus during the summer, we sent people early to block out our spot and ended up with about half of the rooftop deck with incredible views of the river.  With a full BBQ, stocked coolers, and a little shade, we had everything we needed for an incredible afternoon / evening by the river.  By the time the fireworks started, we were all sitting on the dock with our feet in the river looking out on a perfect evening in Boston.  You can't get any closer to the action without getting arrested!  This was definitely one of the best fireworks displays that I've ever seen and the whole day was definitely a highlight of the summer.

CLGO Visit

CLGOs Visit Sloan

Not long after the smoke cleared from the fireworks, a group of visiting students arrived from our sister China-LGO program at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for a week of cross-cultural exchanges in Boston.  They came in off a red-eye flight from San Fransisco and jumped into a buy day of touring MIT, Harvard, and some of the sights around town.  The highlight of Friday was the LGO-CLGO BBQ we intorduced our Chinese friends to American football, and had lots of fun with frisbee, soccer, and croquet games.

Whale Tail!

Saturday was a packed day of sightseeing in and around Boston.  The day started with a duck tour of downtown Boston and the Charles.  From there, we headed to Quincy Market for a fantastic lunch of local favorites.  As the temperatures started to rise, we headed out on the open water to cool off a bit and go Whale Watching!  That trip was great, and we did end up seeing a humpback whale off the coast of Cape Cod that we watched for about an hour before heading back to Boston.  We concluded the day by eating a wonderful meal of duck and lobster in the heart of Chinatown.

Cross-Cultural Bonding

After such a busy day on Saturday, the CLGOs had a much lighter schedule on Sunday and had time to go shopping and recover a bit from the busy trip so far.  While they were shopping, a few of us LGOers drove down to the South Shore and went out on a boat for an awesome day of cliff jumping and water-skiing.

On Monday, the CLGOs came to class with us and we had some great discussions about operations and the difference between doing business in China and in the US.  The highlight of the week was on Monday morning, when our new Chinese friends invited us over for a delectable feast of homemade dumplings and other delicious creations.  They taught us how to make dumplings and we all gorged on the incredible food!  Throughout the rest of the week, we continued some cross-cultural events and discussions before wishing them goodbye.  The visit was great and they definitely set a high bar for us to reciprocate when we visit Shanghai next year!

Plant Treks

One of the cornerstones of the LGO program is our close tie to industry and the opportunity for students to tour the facilities of our partner companies.  While most of the plan tours are held during the 2-week Domestic Plant Trek in January, many partners are close enough to Boston that we can see them in a day-trip.  Last week marked our first set of tours, with trips to Sanofi, NationalGrid, and Amgen, of which I made it to the latter two.

LGO Visits National Grid

The NationalGrid tour was the first time that I've really had any exposure to the utility industry and it was a great tour across many of their sites.  We started at the US HQ building in Waltham to get an overview of the company and meet some of their leadership.  From there, we headed to the NE Distribution Center in Sutton, which provides all of the hardware needed to maintain, upgrade, and repair the electric grid in New England.  It was there that we saw first-hand how the challenges of managing numerous legacy power systems can drive the need for huge amounts of inventory in order to sustain operations (This areas has 20+ different kinds of power networks, each requiring unique transformers and other hardware!).  Even with the challenges, the DC was able to provide needed hardware to the field within a few hours' notice.  Very impressive indeed!  Our last stop of the tour was the line-crew training center in Millbury.  This was also and EE's playground, with entire mock-up neighborhoods with electrical and gas networks in various stages of completion, ready to be used for true hands-on crew training.

After class on Friday, we headed down to West Greenwich, Rhode Island to tour the Amgen manufacturing facility that produces Enbrel, among other biotech drugs.  This was my first-ever exposure to the biotech industry and it was definitely a unique experience.  As opposed to the pharma industry with creates drugs from chemical compounds, the biotech industry actually GROWS its product through an incredibly intricate process of cell replication and protein harvesting.  The factory was by far the cleanest facility that I've ever been in, and the team giving the tour (including several LGO alums) were all great in helping us understand the process.  It was certainly interesting to compare it to the aerospace industry that I have been used to!  After the tour, we wrapped up the day by discussing the business strategy of the site and then sharing it with the plant manager before we left.

Assignments for Next Week

Now, it wouldn't be fair to talk about the last few weeks without mentioning the academic side of LGO and ensuring everyone that we really are working hard between all these fun activities.  In the last few weeks, we've had several epic case studies (i.e. leaving the LGO lounge at 1am), long problem sets (p-sets in MIT speak), and our first test of the program (in Probability and Statistics; results still pending).  As we head into the second half of the summer, the workload definitely seems to be increasing, with the addition of major group projects to the usual load of p-sets and case studies.  We're always figuring out how to most efficiently cover the assignments amongst our summer teams, and so far we've been able to stay just ahead of the curve.  What I can say is that most of the stuff we are learning is very interesting and applicable, as we discovered after seeing some of the concepts being used at the partner companies that we visited this week.

It's certainly been a busy two weeks, but such is life as an LGO student.  If we didn't thrive off this, we wouldn't be here!

Car-free and lovin' it!

One of the big choices when I moved out here was whether or not to bring my car, and I decided to go car-less (see earlier post).  It's now been a month since I sold the car and headed East and I'm happy to report that I don't miss it at all!  Boston and Cambridge are both easy to get around (maybe easier?) without driving.  My favorite modes of transport have been:


1. Walking (http://mnmlist.com/joy-of-walking/).  Certainly the most low-tech of options, but the most preferred for short hops on beautiful summer days.  My apartment is exactly one mile from the LGO office, so the walk in the morning takes about 16 minutes if I hit the signals right.  All the streets have wide sidewalks around here and the city is generally pedestrian friendly, though sometimes crossing an intersection can feel like an interactive game of Frogger.  Most of the days I've been walking to school and taking a different mode home depending on the weather / schedule that I'm trying to hold.

2. Hubway (http://www.thehubway.com/).  The Boston-version of bike sharing, where you pick up a bike from any station in the city and drop it off at any other station.  MIT students can get a yearly membership for $25 and there is no per-use charge as long as you don't have the bike out for more than 30 minutes (hasn't been an issue so far).  There's a great mobile app with live stats on where bikes and empty slots are available and so far I've had pretty good luck.  The racks near Sloan fill up fast in the morning, but there's a second rack across the street which usually has room.  Just remember to bring your helmet (BTW, we get a discount on those too through the city of Boston).  With the walk to the station, ride to campus, and walk to Sloan, the commute is about 10 minutes.

3. MTBA - "The T" (http://www.mbta.com/).  This is the second city that I've lived in with an efficient mass transit system that actually goes where people want to go (Portland being the first).  Pretty much everything that I need is along the Red Line, from drinks at Harvard Square to the airport bus (and oh yeah, my place and MIT in between).  MIT students get a discount (see a trend here?) down to $35/month that gets us unlimited use of the T and busses in town.  I haven't tried the buses yet, but I haven't really felt a need to for anywhere that I go.  From my place to school is 8 - 14 minutes depending on the train schedule.

4. Zipcar (http://www.zipcar.com).  This is a great car-sharing program for short trips in the city (i.e. large grocery runs or moving vacuum cleaners and box fans).  As with everything, MIT students get a discount so it only costs $15 every year.  The hourly rate for cars ranges from $8.50 - $12.00 depending on the car type and day (Audi's on the weekends are more than Honda's during the week, go figure!).  So far I've only used it once but was impressed with the convenience when I did.

 5. Car Rental (www.budget.com).  As a truly last-resort, there is a Budget car rental counter two blocks from my apartment with a full fleet of cars.  I've only used it once, to rent a sweet minivan for a hiking adventure to New Hampshire a few weeks ago (see Ammar's pictures here).  Total cost for a 24-hour rental was $67 plus gas, so it's a lot cheaper than taking the Zipcar for a full day.




Between all these options, I really haven't missed having my own car out here.  That opinion may change a bit when the winter weather rolls around, but so far so good!