Things to do in Bath, UK

I've always enjoyed exploring historic towns and cities in England. Seems a lot more sensible for short holidays than to travel to Europe. Thought I'd add to this hobby to write a blog about each mini holiday my wife and I take. This blog is about a three day mid summer trip to Bath. It's a small historic city just over 100 miles west of London as you travel towards Bristol, just under 2 hours by train. The city itself was classified as a World Heritage Site in the late 80's to mark it's contribution to history. Other heritage sites include the Great Walls of China and the Taj Mahal, so you get the picture.

Day 1

After getting off from the station, we started walking around just to get a feel of the surroundings. The landmarks worth paying a visit, or more to say unmissable are the Pulteney Bridge, Royal Circus, Royal Crescent and Queen Square.

This is a view of the Pulteney Bridge from opposite the Guildhall Market. The bridge isn't like Tower Bridge as such which you cross - the bridge is actually a collection of shops over the canal, but trust me it's an amazing site to see. 

The market is also worth a quick visit - you'll need some spare cash with you as none of the shops accept cards but have loads of tempting items to buy whether you're looking for nibbles, antiques or collectibles. 

Check out the tea pot I was almost tempted into buying, but then realized I wouldn't have the appropriate place to showcase it.

The first thing you notice about Bath is the collection of Georgian architecture - possibly the largest in UK. This is characterized by a series of buildings made out of limestone derived stone walls. All terraced with a classic elegant look. 

The photo here is of the Royal Crescent. A collection of 30 or so houses, built during the late 1700's by John Wood to house the wealthy and ill who used to visit Bath for medication and relaxation.

Each house today is worth anything around 800K to 1.5 million. 

A similar landmark is the Royal Circus - no, there aren't any animals or magicians ! Imagine a circle of Georgian buildings, with a small field in between with four roads entering in / out of - bit like a roundabout for those from the UK. While around, try to see the series of decorative artwork on each - some are quite horrific and masonic.

If you're an avid photographer unlike myself,(I just use point-n-shoot) then you'd get awesome photos in a wide angle.

After lunch, we headed off to Royal Victoria Park. A decent sized botanical garden with an impressive collection if you're interested. Not exactly my cup of tea, but great for those who like taking flower shots. I enjoyed 'bird watching' instead. Don't think of nicking any of them , they're tagged with RFID tapes.

As the day almost came to an end, we looked around for dinner and settled for Salathai. It's located about 5 - 10 minutes from the rail station and offers value for money Thai food, without compromise on quality. Highly recommend the Tom Yam soup.

If you're in Bath for just a night, there are a couple of luxury hotels where you can spend anything between £180 to £220 such as the Royal Crescent hotel or MGallery Francis. We chose to stay in a mid scale hotel called Royal Hotel or The Royal, just opposite the train station. We paid about £250 for two nights in a superior double, with breakfast and a 3 course French dinner. I've rated this hotel very highly on Tripadvisor for their comfort level, service and decor - the only issue you might have is with the noise from the road at night if you leave windows open. Other than that, much better than a lot of 4 star hotels which charge more purely because of swimming pools & gym. This hotel doesn't have any of that stuff. If you do choose this hotel, try their dessert selection from the Brunel Brasserie - 10 on 10.

Day 2

 

 After having breakfast at the hotel (both continental & cooked :) we started the day with the Bath Abbey. Very much like Westminster Abbey in London, without the foreign tourists. And a lot smaller. 

The Abbey inside is like any other chapel, stained glass windows, high ceilings, immaculate architecture etc etc.

Something worth spotting are detailed paint work depicting Jesus Christ and St Mary.

 However, the Tower Tour inside the Abbey is my highest rated guided tour in Bath. There are lots of others, but this is one which you cannot miss. It costs £6 per person, takes under an hour, and the highlight is you get to climb 200+ steps to reach the top of the Abbey. The sights of the city from there are breath taking - especially in summer. The photos below are all taken from the tower, so I'll let them do the talking.

 Overlooking the Parade Park and the Abbey Square. This place itself is great for spending 30 minutes. Always has live Italian / Latin music. 

One of the best experiences was walking inside a clock tower and seeing the inside of the Abbey clock, mechanical working of the bells etc. Finally, Shopping Malls and City Center from the top.

 Overlooking the hills and Bath stone fields. Highly suggested you take the sky line tour which lasts 40 minutes and takes you through the hilly areas. The residential houses will entice anyone to invest here - a bit pricey though, nothing under a million. History trivia - one of the residences belonged to Beau Nash. One of Bath's wealthiest individuals - when a farmer earned a few pounds a year, this guy earned a thousand. He was responsible for converting Bath into the Las Vegas of the 18th century.

After catching our breath back, we spent the rest of the afternoon at the Roman Bath. This is literally a slice out of history. The ancient Romans built this as their communal bath retreat for the wealthy. The key essence of this place is the naturally continuous spring water. We went there in the summer, hence didn't strike us as a surprise until we touched and drank the spring water at 34*C without artificial heating, in fact originally 42*c but cooled down to make it drinkable. The water contains over 27 minerals and is very rich in iron. 

The amount of historical significance this place contains has gained Bath's reputation as a World Heritage site. I could probably write a whole blog on the Roman Bath itself. The entry fee is £12.50 per person and can take more than 2 hours , so those who are in Bath for just a day may re-consider, as you need to have a lot of time in hand. The Roman Bath houses a history museum, guided tours through archaeological remains and bespoke events throughout the year.

Later took the city bus tour costs £12.50 pp and valid  for two days. Can be used for two routes, the city and skyline. Hop on / off at sites you find interesting till 7pm. Ended the day with a classic three course dinner at the Brunel Brasserie.

Day 3

The last day was spent mostly shopping and visiting the Jane Austen Center. Jane Austen has been possibly Bath's most popular resident. You can visit the houses she used to live in, the places she used when writing Hangerlane etc. The Jane Austen museum tickets cost under £10 - starts of with a story telling mode of tour, the staff give you a short history of Jane's personal life. You are then free to walk around the museum, try on costumes from the era, view rare photos etc. The highlight of the place is the Regency theme throughout. The Regency Tea room offers award winning cakes and scones, with over 15 varieties of flavored tea.

Lunch time on our last day with the weather being probably the best you could ask for. Clear skies, bright sun, mild breeze. Chose Jamies Italian at the Milsum Place. The place has a very contemporary feel - historic buildings and their terraces and modern restaurants. The view from Jamies is amazing if you can pre-book a table.

Shopping in Bath is a lot different from shopping in London - to start with, there aren't that many people. Second, it doesn't remind you of a consumerist society. The shops are 'little shops' as they are called in Britain i.e. not high street brands. There's a massive Debenhams if you're looking for familiar high street departmental stores. I personally enjoyed Jollys among the large shopping malls.

Don't let that fool you - doesn't mean they are cheap. On the contrary, some shops have one of the expensive art pieces, watches, woolen wear. The best way to describe this is - imagine Harrods quality in a North London Angel shopping environment.

Don't forget to try the Cornish pastry shops in the Guildhall Market - whether you're looking for traditional, cheese or vegetarian - pure class.

To end the day before catching the train, we had to get a slice of Bath's afternoon tea. Bath was predominantly England's most elegant city back in the days. The shops, people, culture is still very characteristic of that. We found a balcony style cafe called Boston Tea close to the center which stays open till 7pm, serving scones, clotted cream, strawberry jam and Darjeeling tea.

Hope you found the blog useful if you're planning your trip to Bath for a weekend or similar. The city like any other in UK is best planned in the summer - although if you're going to visit the Roman Bath in particular, choose winter time.

Why we will never have a revolution against corruption in Bangladesh – a naive view

Set A: Ruling Party – Reap benefits in current state when their party is in government

Set B: Government loyalists – Reap benefits all year round, working for government

Set C: Paid Political workers – Reap benefits all year round, working for or against government

Set D: Dormant – have become immune and more concerned with bringing food to the table

Set E: Revolutionary Nationalist – active protesters against any government

Set F: Opposition Party – Invest in opposing current government to reap benefits in future

From my naive understanding, in order to have revolution similar to the Arab Spring, set E i.e. the Revolutionary Nationalist has to significantly inflate. The practical options are:

a.    Employ set C i.e. political workers – this can only be done through incurring huge costs, funded by Set F, i.e. opposition party. This usually never works out, as the original agenda of Set E is lost in the process.

b.    Employ set D i.e. dormant population – although the more appropriate approach, this can be achieved only through substantial length of oppression under the same party to build enough hatred and anger with the presence of a new revolutionary leader. Trouble is, this is highly unlikely given we have a memory refresh every 5 years. Also faint chance of this happening is immediately leveraged by Set F, the opposition party, therefore again, original agenda lost in the process.

c.    Under the most unlikely event of a new party forming within set D&E, all other sets ensure it is neutralized to secure the investments they have made as incumbents – therefore the revolution becomes too costly for the dormant population to continue.

The main culprits from my point of view are the Political Workers – they have neither love for the nation, nor ethics behind the cause they fight for. Yet – they have played a pivotal role during each election in the last 20 years.

The dormant population has led itself into its own fate – we wait in traffic for 4 hours, watch the meter increase and complain on social media through our phones, instead of abandoning the rented vehicle and joining in a 30 minute march back home.

Architecture Snaps

 

Stone Animals on the Natural History Museum, London, UK

 Panoramic View of Leeds Castle, Leeds, UK

 Liverpool Eye & Echo Arena, Liverpool, UK

 The Liver Building, Liverpool UK

 Windsor Castle, Windsor, UK

Westminster Abbey, London, UK

St. Pancras, London, UK

 Wollaton Hall, Nottingham, UK

Basic SQL for Data Reconciliation

Excel’s VLOOKUP Function is probably the most used one for basic Data Analysis in a spreadsheet environment. Below are some SQL code snippets that do what VLOOKUP does in theory, but can be used when the data is in SQL Database for any reason.

The following tables will be used to describe on some very common scenarios. Let’s assume we have two independent data stores which are not integrated hence require regular reconciliation. Table A contains the Products Inventory. Table B contains the Online Catalog of those products. Table C is a mapping table across the two platforms. Table C contains sales figures made Online.

Product_ID	ProductName	Price	Category	OnlineCode	TotalSale
ZJU897JHG	JB Raincoat	110.00	Clothing	NULL	NULL
JOK23MK30	Autograph Luxury Col	180.00	Clothing	NULL	NULL
UIO0-SDNK	Animal Leather Wallet	20.00	Clothing	NULL	NULL
PO0IKJU-90	Austin Reed B/W Shirt	60.00	Clothing	NULL	NULL
78H-09-POI	Nike Sports Jacket	80.00	Clothing	NULL	NULL

Table A: ProductDetails

OnlineCode	CreationDate	Stock
OL-FAS-002	12.03.2011	5
OL-FOD-091	23.06.2011	25
EX-COM-09	13.05.2011	60
OL-EXC-178	30.11.2011	14
EX-FAS-450	05.10.2011	10

Table B: OnlineProductCatalog

Product_ID	OnlineCode
ZJU897JHG	OL-FAS-002
II9080JM77	OL-FOD-091
JOK23MK30	OL-EXC-178
UIO0-SDNK	EX-FAS-450

Table C: ProductOnlineMapping

OnlineCode	Date	Qty
OL-FAS-002	14.03.2011	3
OL-FAS-002	15.03.2011	6
OL-FOD-091	23.06.2011	12
OL-FOD-091	25.06.2011	9
EX-COM-09	13.05.2011	20
EX-COM-09	13.05.2011	13
OL-EXC-178	30.11.2011	5
OL-EXC-178	30.11.2011	5
OL-EXC-178	30.11.2011	3
EX-FAS-450	05.10.2011	2
EX-FAS-450	05.10.2011	7

Table D: OnlineSales

Case 1:   Identify products that are not available in the Online Store

SQL Code A:          Nested queries:

SELECT DISTINCT Product_ID

FROM ProductDetails

WHERE Product_ID NOT IN

                (

SELECT DISTINCT Product_ID

FROM ProductOnlineMapping

                )

SQL Code B:          LEFT JOIN

SELECT DISTINCT P.Product_ID

FROM ProductDetails P     LEFT JOIN ProductOnlineMapping PM ON P.Product_ID = PM. Product_ID

                                                LEFT JOIN OnlineProductCatalog OC ON PM. OnlineCode = OC. OnlineCode

WHERE OC.OnlineCode IS NULL

Case 2:   Update Product Details table so it contains each item’s Online Code

SQL Code :             UPDATE script with INNER JOIN

UPDATE ProductDetails

SET OnlineCode = PM. OnlineCode

FROM ProductDetails P INNER JOIN ProductOnlineMapping PM

ON P.Product_ID = PM. Product_ID

Case 3:   Update ProductDetails table so it contains total online sale per item

SQL Code:             

-- Declare a temporary table / view to store results of the aggregate function
DECLARE @ProductTotalSale table(
    Product_ID varchar(20),
    TotalSale int    );
 
-- Store results of the aggregate function
INSERT INTO  @ProductTotalSale
SELECT P.Product_ID, SUM(OS.Qty)
from @ProductDetails P INNER JOIN @ProductOnlineMapping PO ON P.Product_ID = PO.Product_ID
INNER JOIN @OnlineSales OS ON PO.OnlineCode = OS.OnlineCode
GROUP BY P.Product_ID


-- Update Products table using the stored values
UPDATE @ProductDetails SET TotalSale= PTS.TotalSale
FROM @ProductDetails P INNER JOIN @ProductTotalSale PTS ON P.Product_ID = PTS.Product_ID

Feel free to leave a comment if you have suggestions / queries.

Selling the sizzle, not the Steak

(Jump to 3^rd paragraph if you don’t want to know me or why I wrote this)

People who know me very well will agree I’ve always been an antagonist of style over substance. When I buy something, I never pay a premium for brand – I need things to be functional, reliable and fit the contemporary need. This behaviour is exhibited in my profession too. As an IT consultant, I am often required to answer the ‘Why’, ‘What’, & ‘How’ behind a solution. Being the minimalist I am, you might have noted I have missed out ‘Who’, ‘Where’, ‘When’ simply because I don’t consider them too relevant for the client. Nevertheless, I tend to focus on answering the ‘How’. In brief, I am always concerned about the content rather then the packaging – I’d like to know end-to-end how a product works and whether it ticks the all of the boxes in the client’s minimalistic list of requirements.

When I joined one of the largest and most successful Global Technology Consultancies, it took me over a year to fit in to the culture. Every successful manager I spoke to seemed to very well spoken in strategy, vision, thought leadership but never bother speaking about the underlying technology, how it all works etc – it made very little sense to me. Some of the most frequently used phrases were ‘high level’, ‘overall landscape’ and ‘big picture’. It seemed as though a techno-phobic corporate culture that avoids getting their hands dirty cannot possibly sustain in a competitive market filled with IT slaves. I then stumbled upon one of our core approach-to-market values: “Sell the sizzle, not the steak”. It struck me as if the style over substance phenomenon that I always avoided was characteristic & reputational to my company. Only then did I learn this is in fact a very old sales technique that plays with human psychology.      

Selling the sizzle not the steak is an old sales technique that focuses on the overall experience by promoting the factors that excites your senses, emotion etc over the entire need. The following is something I found really interesting from Marketing Comet:

“When we go out to eat (for steak or whatever) it's not for the food itself. Sure, I may be hungry, but really I have a lot of choices to satisfy my hunger. I choose a restaurant because it gives me the kind of experience I want and solves my hunger problem. Taste, smell, ambiance, location, service are just a few of the reasons I might choose a particular restaurant. And these things speak to my emotions through my senses.” 

One of my personal examples is buying handhelds – for me, no matter how many times I have read reviews, watched un-boxing videos and memorized the bundle and technical specifications, I always choose the one which is ergonomically compatible. At the end of the day its overall experience which true salesmen recognize is a humanistic element.

So how does selling technology fit in to this picture? Let’s say the client requires the bog-standard data migration or systems integration program – this is the steak. And let’s face it; every service provider can deliver this, same way every restaurant can prepare a steak. So how do you sustain as the premium rate service provider – how do you sell the steak at the highest rate? Answer – you don’t focus on selling the steak, you sell the sizzle. You build relations of trust and reliability with the client so they know it’s not just a walk-in and walk-out assignment for you. You engage with strategy and vision so the client finds a technology partner in you – not just operational support. Instead of focusing on how you deploy the program i.e. which technology you will go for, invest time in focusing on the why the program is being delivered, or what your benefits will be. In short, recognize, appreciate and tap into the human element behind the client and not the technology they are asking for.

Ten points for realizing that only the last 3 or 4 lines actually describe how to practice this sales technique in technology consulting - the rest is selling the sizzle ;)