Logistics of Noah ship!

"Transport Logistics: Past, Present and predictions" is one of the special book I have read on logistics. The book is well-researched, easy to read and provide sufficient examples. This book is not unique for its scientific outcome, but the author provides interesting discussions on logistics for different historical projects. Before reading this book, I could not even imagine stories of Torah, Bible and Qur'an being mentioned in a logistics book!   

Eleven historical case studies of construction, engineering, and humanitarian relief projects are presented in the first part of the book. These examples are illustrated based on the required transport logistics. Few examples are Nile logistics for construction of great pyramid, logistics of the great wall and the forbidden city in China, and Hannibal war. But I should admit, the most unexpected example in this book was the "Logistics of Noah Ship". No matter how we think about that story, the idea of some one thinking and writing on such topic in logistics and transportation field is interesting. 

Freight logistics industry and role of freight forwarders are main focuses of the second section. Relevant discussions on the freight logistics industries of China, India, Dubai, Egypt, and South Africa provide useful insights on IT-based supply chain integration and value-added service offerings.    

Final section of the book is related to the future of transport logistics, potential challenges including rising energy costs, security concerns, new technologies, and results of globalization.

Judging from academic perspective, this book might be not the first recommended text to read, but the provided examples on historical and recent cases make it an interesting book to read.         

Logistics of Chinese New Year Celebration

Sydney resides one of the largest  Chinese populations outside Asia, so no surprise to see how beautiful the Chinese New Year can be celebrated here. The festival is for two weeks with different programs everyday including outdoor markets, exhibitions, feasts, dragon boat race, film festival and so forth. One of the highlights is the Twilight Parade with thousands of attendants and performers.

 

Yesterday was the time for Chinese New Year Twilight Parade in Sydney, an amazing event to share the happiness of a great nation. Watching beautiful decorations, the giant Trojan horse, colourful carousel, and wonderful performances. With all those amazed people around us, I was thinking of the preparation, planning and logistics of this huge event. Where and how all those performers were organized? How the required resources were provided at the time when each group was supposed to join the parade? What if something goes wrong? Any contingency plan for unexpected problems? And it seems in addition to all the hard works of design, procurement, production and transportation, an interesting risk analysis had been performed. To me it was very interesting to read this document, with the potential risk scenarios, their impacts, evaluations and response strategies.

A book to read, a book to feel

Just finished reading "The book thief". It was not a book to read fast and skip lines; I enjoyed every single line, felt nervous, helpless and frightened with Liesel, Hans and Rosa. 

"The book thief" is a novel by Markus Zusak for the time of Nazi Germany. It about the life of a girl, her foster parents and a young Jewish man who hides in their basement for some time during World War II. The idea of narrating the story by The Angel of Death is brilliant. After all, who could narrate the events of those years better than Death?

I'm in love with numbers!

Everybody may encounter situation of being confused on where to go and what to do. Since seven years ago, I have been involved in research activities and during this time I jumped over one branch to the other, not only in terms of topic, but also from research method point of view. During early months of my research activities I tried to run my work based on case study, but it did not take so long that I realized it would be hard for an infant researcher!

I was lucky enough to base my first research attempt on survey. Even though it was not easy to do, I did not face serious difficulties to interpret my data. I enjoyed every single step of that project. But the topic I took for my PhD research unfortunately did not seem to be done through survey method. So, I started to run case study. But again my love to numbers persuaded me to deviate toward quantitative mathematical modeling.

Now it is just a few days that I have been involved in a survey study for the second time and I feel extremely productive, happy with my work and hopeful for future! Yeah, it is what love can do! And I am in love with numbers and statistics :) 

clean life

When I started my PhD program I was full of enthusiasm for high pitched topics in logistics. Especially fields with direct impact on daily life of people in my country. Probably I was not a person of patriotic feelings but I strongly believed that earning a PhD is not just a way I should pass to reach my personal goals, it means more. When someone wants to put 4-5 years of her life on a project it should worth to it. By the way I tried to catch a topic in clean production or green logistics. BUT after a while I found that if I start this topic I would never ever finish my PhD in a developing country (where I was).

Achieving green logistics and clean production is more being achievement of a new ideology rather than a new knowledge. If companies do not think green, any effort in this way would end to a tragedy of serious fraud.

When I came to this conclusion I started my work on another topic which was aimed to solve another problem in my country but after 2 years I absolutely understand what Dr. Hesabi said: "third world is where you are gonna destroy your life if you want to build your country; and you will destroy your country to build your own life".