Aaron S. – Industrial Engineering
Today we started out by having a morning class about the politics and history of Uruguay. We learned some insights into how the countries in the southern cone got their independence from their respective ruling European countries. The southern cone was almost entirely under Spanish control for a while but often fought the Portuguese and British for borders over who reigned over what territories. Once the first country gained independence, all the other southern countries followed in about the next decade, in the early 20th century. Although when Argentina gained its independence, Uruguay came with, so later on, Uruguay finally seceded from Argentina with the help of Britain. We also talked about some traditions down here like carnival, and how it is different in every country in South America, but they all have it. In Uruguay, the carnival started from slavery when slaves who did not speak the same language wanted to communicate, they would bang drums and whistle to communicative with each other. Carnival is a massive part of Latin culture and a huge source of patriotism.
Next in our supply chain class, we learned about master production scheduling, and different ways to implement many different strategies of managing the supply chain. We used the example of Zara and how they manage theirs. They treat their basic items differently than their fashionable items. They use a zero-inventory system for fashionable items, meaning they only have what’s in stores and they don’t have excess stock, which drives demand to buy now. As opposed to their basics which they outsource production to because the quality is not important and will be made as cheap as possible and since demand is stable, they keep inventory of in their central warehouse in Spain.
After class, a few of us went to the Uruguayan National Museum of Visual Arts. We looked at many artworks spanning from paintings, to sculptures, to pottery, and even things like album covers, book covers, and movie posters. My favorite part was the geometric art area which captivates me, and I love staring into and being able to interpret in different ways. Most of the paintings, however, were portraits, which I am less interested in. Another category they had a lot of were paintings that depicted scenes from life, that have a clear theme or feeling they’re trying to convey. After the museum, my friend and I crossed the street to walk around a park after sundown, which also had an old castle in it, inside what appeared to be what used to be a moat. There was an inner island inside the pond in the park which I found very interesting, and I assume was built and used for some tactical advantage way back when the castle was in use. Then for dinner, we all went to a local grill and I, for the first time on this trip, ordered 2 entrees, I got asado for the first time as well as chicken thighs which were both great. In addition to my double main course, I got a parfait dish for dessert which almost resembled cheesecake and was delicious. Our waiter was very friendly and, although I don’t speak Spanish very well, I could tell he was very happy, and even proud of me for my order choices.
Swanson School of Engineering 