We had the morning off to do as we please. Mary had made an appointment for a massage and I went with hoping for an available time for me as well. They didn't have her down for the massage and wanted to reschedule for later. She couldn't because of a prior commitment, but I could. We went back to the hotel and I studied while I waited patiently for the spa driver to pick me up. India time had kicked in so they were 15 minutes late in picking me up. That was unfortunate because I then didn't have time for both a massage and a facial, since I had to be back to the hotel for a 1:30 tour. Lost revenue doesn't seem to phase them here.

This massage was nothing like in the U.S. and took me totally out of my comfort zone. It started out with me sitting in a chair wrapped in a towel. She poured warm oil all over my head and gave me a scalp massage. Then she had me lean forward while she dripped more warm oil all over my shoulders, neck, and upper back and massaged those areas. Next she moved me to a table and doused me with oil from head to toe. I felt like I was dipped in vegtable oil. Then another girl joined her and in unison they worked on both sides of my body from head to toe. Once they were done, they moved me to a steam box. The hot steam really felt good. While I was getting all steamed up, they turned on the shower so it was nice and hot. They had a cup of shampoo and another cup of brown soap that didn't look or smell very good waiting for me. Talk about pampering - WOW!! I will definitely do this again and recommend it to everyone.

Our tour today was really cool. We visited AT&S. Finally I felt Freidman's Ten Flattners in action and the world flattening. I thought I would have seen this occur more often than not, but this was the first big opportunity. The company made electronic circuit boards for companies all over the world - Motorola, Nokia, and BMW to name a few. Their marketing and distribution comes out of Austria. All they do is get the orders from the Austrian division, make the boards to the customer's specifications, and send them back to Austria, where they are then shipped out to the customer. This was an example of two of the flattners - offshoring and supply-chaining.

The process was very detailed and meticulus. Their QA was of very high standards. This plant has won a Deming Award. They had a clean room, which was interesting. There were many steps to the process. They reused every bit of scrap from the pieces. When we got back, I studied until I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer.