I think, we should conduct IQ tests for ppl, mostly for illiterates and uneducated. If someone scores above the baseline, govt trains them in manufacturing or some other useful skill and also educates them for free. Mostly in basic reading and writing so that these ppl can carry out their work and life responsibilities better.
Create an institution. That will go around, conduct tests and recruit these people. It will train them and keep them on their payrolls while lending them out to industry. It will also pay part of the money they get as unemployment insurance while allowing industry to hire and fire at will. Or there could be two such agencies. One for training and other for employment. It would need initial funding but in the long run, we have to find a way make it sustainable.
I think its a whacko idea, none the less, it might get us better trained for the future and give the young but illiterate people hope.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Secular India?
This is bad enough to catch the fancy of the west, including the pope. Hindus and Christians. The only way mass hatred / hysteria is channeled is through religious bigotism, regionalism (Maharashtrians vs the North) and Castism(Rajasthan). With growing economy, extremism is also on the rise.
Is it a way the have nots are venting their anger? Is it coming from those who feel untouched by economic boom?
Whats the solution? We know we have to have inclusive growth. We understand that better than most other nations. I feel there are enough opportunities around us, but only for the educated and well trained. Is there a way to train ppl to be economically useful?
Is it a way the have nots are venting their anger? Is it coming from those who feel untouched by economic boom?
Whats the solution? We know we have to have inclusive growth. We understand that better than most other nations. I feel there are enough opportunities around us, but only for the educated and well trained. Is there a way to train ppl to be economically useful?
Sunday, October 12, 2008
World is going to be poorer
I was reading this post from Ny times. Experts may say that the world will be fine once the money starts flowing again. I am not convinced. I think at the end of it all, world will be a poorer place than it was till lets say mid 2007, for a long time. For how long? At least 5 years. It could be more.
Yes, wealth or at least illusion of it can be created by borrowing and overextending oneself. But without creating underlying wealth to support it it can't go on for ever. When eventually the bubble bursts, a lot of this wealth will disappear. This will show up in reduced prices for houses and reduced values of 401K for all Americans.
This will impact rest of the world too. If US can't afford the accesses any more, all the asian economies that make a living out of selling to the Americans will also be poorer.
The good thing about this crises or the bad thing, depending on how you see it, is that it will bring down the wealth of the over leveraged part of the world (that is most of US and first world). But there is an irony there. Wealth is always relative. This means that everyone is poorer, people may not be as poor as they think they might be. Let me explain, when all people earn less, the house rents and mortgages will also be smaller. Its not to say that their disposable income in terms of its buying power will remain the same. It will not. It will diminish. But it might not be as bad people think when compared to current price levels.
The asians that did not invest in this crises will be relatively richer.
I think, India will turn out on the winning side of this. Its exposure to sub-prime crisis is minimal and its not a export driven economy. All that will help. Though India is also facing liquidity crisis, I think its temporary. Its caused by outflow of hot capital as FIIs needed to cover their positions in their county or origin. It can be addressed by relaxing CRR and reducing rate. What will also help is that given all this slowdown, oil may remain subdued for a few years to come. If India does not get drunk on low oil prices, it would not have to spend all foreign money to buy it. Over all, its good for India's standing in the world. This event will narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.
Yes, wealth or at least illusion of it can be created by borrowing and overextending oneself. But without creating underlying wealth to support it it can't go on for ever. When eventually the bubble bursts, a lot of this wealth will disappear. This will show up in reduced prices for houses and reduced values of 401K for all Americans.
This will impact rest of the world too. If US can't afford the accesses any more, all the asian economies that make a living out of selling to the Americans will also be poorer.
The good thing about this crises or the bad thing, depending on how you see it, is that it will bring down the wealth of the over leveraged part of the world (that is most of US and first world). But there is an irony there. Wealth is always relative. This means that everyone is poorer, people may not be as poor as they think they might be. Let me explain, when all people earn less, the house rents and mortgages will also be smaller. Its not to say that their disposable income in terms of its buying power will remain the same. It will not. It will diminish. But it might not be as bad people think when compared to current price levels.
The asians that did not invest in this crises will be relatively richer.
I think, India will turn out on the winning side of this. Its exposure to sub-prime crisis is minimal and its not a export driven economy. All that will help. Though India is also facing liquidity crisis, I think its temporary. Its caused by outflow of hot capital as FIIs needed to cover their positions in their county or origin. It can be addressed by relaxing CRR and reducing rate. What will also help is that given all this slowdown, oil may remain subdued for a few years to come. If India does not get drunk on low oil prices, it would not have to spend all foreign money to buy it. Over all, its good for India's standing in the world. This event will narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
GM and Ford in Dire straits
Read this article and then this one.
The US Flagship Auto Makers are on their death beds. A company like GM and Ford were the pride of US for decades till Japanese started making inroads in the 80's and irrespective of what Lee Iaccoca might have said in his book about Ford and then Chrysler its now evident that the slide that started then is now reaching its culmination. US Auto companies face annihilation. All 3 of them GM, Ford and Chrysler and even though there might be talks of merger between GM and Chrysler, I feel their time has run out.
Unless the US govt bails them out they are going to go under by this time next year.
The US Flagship Auto Makers are on their death beds. A company like GM and Ford were the pride of US for decades till Japanese started making inroads in the 80's and irrespective of what Lee Iaccoca might have said in his book about Ford and then Chrysler its now evident that the slide that started then is now reaching its culmination. US Auto companies face annihilation. All 3 of them GM, Ford and Chrysler and even though there might be talks of merger between GM and Chrysler, I feel their time has run out.
Unless the US govt bails them out they are going to go under by this time next year.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Unconscious Discrimination
A Good article in NY Times on Unconscious Discrimination made me think about the discrimination against Muslims in India. During my short stay here in US I've come to believe that the Muslims in India have the same status as Blacks in the US.
However open minded we call ourselves, we are in some way uneasy in our dealings with our Muslim countrymen. When Shabana Azmi expressed her views on moderate muslims, a lot of people came up with examples with how our president was a Muslim and so on and so forth, but the truth is that since 1992, we are living in an increasingly polarized society.
1992 brought the Hindu-Muslim divide to even the most moderate citizens. That singular event has created a mistrust that has only grown with time. In many cities, Educated muslims have sold their properties in otherwise Hindu dominated areas and have moved to predominantly Muslim areas. Ghettos have come up in all major cities.
A relative of mine has done PHD on the biases against muslim traders and she gives examples of how the municipal corp of Mumbai neglects Muslim areas. The basic cleanliness and hygiene is missing.
Its true that given everything else is identical, if we were to choose between a Muslim and a non Muslim candidate we would lean towards non-muslim. Its a fact of life and we are all guilty of it.
That the builders discriminate against muslims is a known fact. There are Muslim only buildings and then there are non-muslim buildings. Any other religion is fine, christians, parsi, sikh all are welcome. North Indians and south indians and jains and bengalis are welcome. Muslims are not.
My theory is that the spate of violence recently is in news is an aftermath of 1992 and Godhara. Unless we make attempts to address the deep psychological divide between Muslims and the rest, there will be no peace in India.
However open minded we call ourselves, we are in some way uneasy in our dealings with our Muslim countrymen. When Shabana Azmi expressed her views on moderate muslims, a lot of people came up with examples with how our president was a Muslim and so on and so forth, but the truth is that since 1992, we are living in an increasingly polarized society.
1992 brought the Hindu-Muslim divide to even the most moderate citizens. That singular event has created a mistrust that has only grown with time. In many cities, Educated muslims have sold their properties in otherwise Hindu dominated areas and have moved to predominantly Muslim areas. Ghettos have come up in all major cities.
A relative of mine has done PHD on the biases against muslim traders and she gives examples of how the municipal corp of Mumbai neglects Muslim areas. The basic cleanliness and hygiene is missing.
Its true that given everything else is identical, if we were to choose between a Muslim and a non Muslim candidate we would lean towards non-muslim. Its a fact of life and we are all guilty of it.
That the builders discriminate against muslims is a known fact. There are Muslim only buildings and then there are non-muslim buildings. Any other religion is fine, christians, parsi, sikh all are welcome. North Indians and south indians and jains and bengalis are welcome. Muslims are not.
My theory is that the spate of violence recently is in news is an aftermath of 1992 and Godhara. Unless we make attempts to address the deep psychological divide between Muslims and the rest, there will be no peace in India.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Crisis in the US, Impact on the world financial systems
As US Congress debates over $700 billion bailout and citizens cry foul over what they see as govt sponsored robbery, the world is grappling with the ripple effects of the liquidity crisis.
Trading in Russia got suspended for 2 days until govt pumped in $120 billion into the system. RBI in India is pumping Rs 84,000 Crore(~ $20 billion) into financial system.
US is a special country. When they screw up its not just them who gets impacted. It impacts the entire world. Till about last month RBI was trying to suck liquidity out of the system to contain inflation, now its pumping in money to ease lack of liquidity issues. Nothing has changed with Indian financial system or economy except that investors from US have exited. RBI had to sell them dollars and so in turn it has collected thousands of crore of Rupees (which have been sucked out of the system). In fact inadvertantly RBI may have made some cool profit in the process. It must have accumulated these dollars earlier this year by paying @Rs40 and are now selling these dollars to perhaps the same investors @Rs45. In coming days they might even reduce the CRR to inject more liquidity in the system.
It just goes on to show how US impacts the world. I just hope US congress sorts it out quickly without getting sentimental about morals and conscience. Let history and coming generations debate this in their economics masters curriculum.
Trading in Russia got suspended for 2 days until govt pumped in $120 billion into the system. RBI in India is pumping Rs 84,000 Crore(~ $20 billion) into financial system.
US is a special country. When they screw up its not just them who gets impacted. It impacts the entire world. Till about last month RBI was trying to suck liquidity out of the system to contain inflation, now its pumping in money to ease lack of liquidity issues. Nothing has changed with Indian financial system or economy except that investors from US have exited. RBI had to sell them dollars and so in turn it has collected thousands of crore of Rupees (which have been sucked out of the system). In fact inadvertantly RBI may have made some cool profit in the process. It must have accumulated these dollars earlier this year by paying @Rs40 and are now selling these dollars to perhaps the same investors @Rs45. In coming days they might even reduce the CRR to inject more liquidity in the system.
It just goes on to show how US impacts the world. I just hope US congress sorts it out quickly without getting sentimental about morals and conscience. Let history and coming generations debate this in their economics masters curriculum.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
House Hunting in DC
The matter apparently resolved itself on Sat. I've been given go ahead to join work. Indian s/w services companies perhaps have one of the worst employee policies in US. I wish there was some bench mark available that would bring out the contrast between a US based company's HR policies and compare them with India based companies operating in US.
Coming to the topic. Went house hunting today. DC area is about as expensive as Bay area when it comes to rentals. Choose a house. Looked like a steal. Closed the deal. Came back to check what its residents say about it on the net. Got the gory details of the catch(gotcha). Trying to wriggle out of the deal. Lets wait and see the damages.
Coming to the topic. Went house hunting today. DC area is about as expensive as Bay area when it comes to rentals. Choose a house. Looked like a steal. Closed the deal. Came back to check what its residents say about it on the net. Got the gory details of the catch(gotcha). Trying to wriggle out of the deal. Lets wait and see the damages.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Holed up in DC
Its been a week and we are holed up in DC without the knowledge of what future may bring. Paid a visit to White House with my family. Finally rented a car so that I could be mobile. Planning to visit a ranch today. I'm told there would be pony rides et all. My daughter has not ridden a horse before. I hope she likes it. Weather is a hide and seek. Its been wet and darb through the week. Friday was a better.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Perspective
We were sitting at Golden Bierch sipping beer when we were informed about the loss. One of our collegue's father had passed away in his sleep. Needless to say we rushed to his place. About half a dozen guys frantically placed calls to find the fastest route to B'lore. Alas, there is no way he can reach home before 9-May. We finally took him to airport and put him on Cathey Pac flight.
In all of this somewhere, I find myself shaken up. Sitting so far away from my parents there is absolutely nothing that I can do should they face any emergency. Makes me feel helpless and vulnarable and guilty of Green Greed.
In all of this somewhere, I find myself shaken up. Sitting so far away from my parents there is absolutely nothing that I can do should they face any emergency. Makes me feel helpless and vulnarable and guilty of Green Greed.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
God vs Religion
I was travelling to work on a crowded Subway. It was an unusual day. Trains from my residence to my workplace were cancelled and I had to take a detour. On the way there are few churches and I was looking over the holy cross with a pigeon perched on it, when it occurred to me.
Everyone needs God. But only the unenlightened need religion.
To me, God represents our inner self. Our faith, our hope and aspirations, our guilt and pride, our fears and convictions.
Religion is oversimplification of God to make him more comprehendible to the masses. The Dos, don'ts and the rituals are an over simplified rule book with broad black and white strokes.
Couple of years back when I was visiting China I asked a friend how did they decide what was right, how did they console themselves when everything seems to be going wrong. Being a communist country there is no concept of God there. He said they look upon their elders for comfort and are largely governed by social norms and conscience.
It seems its possible to survive without religion, perhaps even preferable if you can handle ambiguity in life. But for me its impossible to imagine a world without God.
Everyone needs God. But only the unenlightened need religion.
To me, God represents our inner self. Our faith, our hope and aspirations, our guilt and pride, our fears and convictions.
Religion is oversimplification of God to make him more comprehendible to the masses. The Dos, don'ts and the rituals are an over simplified rule book with broad black and white strokes.
Couple of years back when I was visiting China I asked a friend how did they decide what was right, how did they console themselves when everything seems to be going wrong. Being a communist country there is no concept of God there. He said they look upon their elders for comfort and are largely governed by social norms and conscience.
It seems its possible to survive without religion, perhaps even preferable if you can handle ambiguity in life. But for me its impossible to imagine a world without God.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
In the Valley of Elah
I've seen a few movies around army life and I must admit I like the genre. Be it A few Good Men where I loved Jack, or Courage under fire, or Saving Private Ryan. In my book, this movie ranks up there with the best.
Another pleasant surprise was its creator, Paul Haggis. I had loved Crash, Million Dollar Baby(Script), Casino Royale(Script). In general I like this guy. This is his second movie and its brilliant.
Its about post traumatic stress thats impacting American troops in Iraq and how the war there is changing things in the mainland. Its one of the best antiwar movies, especially so as its so subtle(its disguised as a crime thriller). Tommy Lee Jones is outstanding. He carries the movie with a stoic restraint. Charlize Theron is equally good in her role.
Especially noteworthy scenes are.
- Tommy Bracing himself for the bad news(about his son) while tending to the cut he got while shaving.
- Tommy sharing the news with his wife.
- Tommy telling David and Goliath story to Charlize's son.
Another cool thing was the way he used his son's phone recordings as flashback, in insight into his son's life and persona.
How can you tell a gut wrenching story, without really having any villains. Then again its about parents having to face the loss of their children. (a theme that I've always found myself sensitive to, it brought back memories of In the Bedroom)
Somehow Paul Haggis movies do not go down well with the critics. For me, though, he is one of the best story tellers out there.
Another pleasant surprise was its creator, Paul Haggis. I had loved Crash, Million Dollar Baby(Script), Casino Royale(Script). In general I like this guy. This is his second movie and its brilliant.
Its about post traumatic stress thats impacting American troops in Iraq and how the war there is changing things in the mainland. Its one of the best antiwar movies, especially so as its so subtle(its disguised as a crime thriller). Tommy Lee Jones is outstanding. He carries the movie with a stoic restraint. Charlize Theron is equally good in her role.
Especially noteworthy scenes are.
- Tommy Bracing himself for the bad news(about his son) while tending to the cut he got while shaving.
- Tommy sharing the news with his wife.
- Tommy telling David and Goliath story to Charlize's son.
Another cool thing was the way he used his son's phone recordings as flashback, in insight into his son's life and persona.
How can you tell a gut wrenching story, without really having any villains. Then again its about parents having to face the loss of their children. (a theme that I've always found myself sensitive to, it brought back memories of In the Bedroom)
Somehow Paul Haggis movies do not go down well with the critics. For me, though, he is one of the best story tellers out there.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Adam Gilchrist Vs Kumar Sangakkara
World has hailed Adam Gilchrist as the greatest Wicketkeeper batsman of the world after he decided to hang his gloves this season. I too am his fan, especially in ODIs. In fact he is still playing ODIs. He has only retired from Test Cricket.
His is an illustrious career. I think he has most dismissals against his name for a wicket keeper. And to top it he is a great batsman, coming in late in the innings he has been the rock of Gibraltar for Aussies. No team has ever breathed easy when he is on the crease.
Thats clearly awesome. But calling him the best ever is taking it too far when we have a worthy contender in our neighborhood. The great Lankan Kumar Sangakkara.
Lets compare them side by side in test cricket
Adam Gilchrist
Test matches played 96 (1999-2008)
Test Runs scored 5570
Ave -47.6
100- 17
Dismissals 416 (Ct-379 St 37)
Kumar Sangakkara
Test Matches played 71 (2000-)
Test Runs 6032
Ave - 56.37
100 - 16
Dismissals - 170(Ct- 149 st -20)
Kumar is clearly blocks ahead in Batting Dept. He has scored more runs in less tests and at a phenomenal rate of 56.37. For comparisons, thats better than Tendulkar's 55.5 or so.
Coming to Wicket Keeping. I believe that its a combination on how good you are, and also, how good are your bowlers. Australia being the leading world side has a clear advantage there. They have the best bowling attack in the world. McGrath and Warne were awesome bowlers. No wonder the batsmen kept nicking the ball or misreading the ball and stepping out of the crease and to that extent any Australian Wicket Keeper is likely to have good statistics there. Though Lanka also has Murali and Vaas, they do not seem to generate as many behind the wicket dismissals as Australians. Or maybe Kumar Sangakkara is a terrible wicketkeeper... How is one to judge?
Another thing is age, Kumar is 30 and is likely to be around for another 4-6 years. That would mean he has a fair chance of reaching 9000-10,000 runs in test cricket and may have chance to better Gilchrist's record in dismissals.
Lets wait a few more years and see where Kumar Sangakkara performs. Right now he seems to be doing better than Tendulkars and Pointings of the world. Don't forget he is a wicketkeeper too.
All said and done, Adam Gilchrist is a legend and will an inspiring player...
His is an illustrious career. I think he has most dismissals against his name for a wicket keeper. And to top it he is a great batsman, coming in late in the innings he has been the rock of Gibraltar for Aussies. No team has ever breathed easy when he is on the crease.
Thats clearly awesome. But calling him the best ever is taking it too far when we have a worthy contender in our neighborhood. The great Lankan Kumar Sangakkara.
Lets compare them side by side in test cricket
Adam Gilchrist
Test matches played 96 (1999-2008)
Test Runs scored 5570
Ave -47.6
100- 17
Dismissals 416 (Ct-379 St 37)
Kumar Sangakkara
Test Matches played 71 (2000-)
Test Runs 6032
Ave - 56.37
100 - 16
Dismissals - 170(Ct- 149 st -20)
Kumar is clearly blocks ahead in Batting Dept. He has scored more runs in less tests and at a phenomenal rate of 56.37. For comparisons, thats better than Tendulkar's 55.5 or so.
Coming to Wicket Keeping. I believe that its a combination on how good you are, and also, how good are your bowlers. Australia being the leading world side has a clear advantage there. They have the best bowling attack in the world. McGrath and Warne were awesome bowlers. No wonder the batsmen kept nicking the ball or misreading the ball and stepping out of the crease and to that extent any Australian Wicket Keeper is likely to have good statistics there. Though Lanka also has Murali and Vaas, they do not seem to generate as many behind the wicket dismissals as Australians. Or maybe Kumar Sangakkara is a terrible wicketkeeper... How is one to judge?
Another thing is age, Kumar is 30 and is likely to be around for another 4-6 years. That would mean he has a fair chance of reaching 9000-10,000 runs in test cricket and may have chance to better Gilchrist's record in dismissals.
Lets wait a few more years and see where Kumar Sangakkara performs. Right now he seems to be doing better than Tendulkars and Pointings of the world. Don't forget he is a wicketkeeper too.
All said and done, Adam Gilchrist is a legend and will an inspiring player...
Amores perros
The first movie of the director Alejandro González Iñárritu I watched was 21 grams. I think it was a good story, but the best part of the movie was the narration. The non-linear narration made it an interesting watch. I later followed it with Babel. I loved its music but the story telling style was the same.
Today I watched Amores perros, the movie they say launched the director. Its 2000 movie, way before Babel was made. Its in Spanish. During all these movies, there are multiple threads, the stories have remained dark with an element of redemption, the movies show some gruesome shots, may be for the effects, and all these threads then converge through a singular incident, here shown as the opening shot.
The dog fights are gruesome, and convey the gritty nature of the movie. The homeless hitman is perhaps the master stroke. An ex militia who does not think twice before killing a human gets a dose of his own medicine when a fighter dog he saves from a road accident kills all his other pets as soon as he recovers from its injuries. And yet the hitman can't bring himself to kill it for he was the one who saved that dog in the first place.
To me that was the master stroke of the film. Later when he leaves two brothers in a duel like situation is genius.
A lengthy, gruesome, yet great movie. Enjoyed the last 20 minutes of the movie.
Thats where the twist is.
Today I watched Amores perros, the movie they say launched the director. Its 2000 movie, way before Babel was made. Its in Spanish. During all these movies, there are multiple threads, the stories have remained dark with an element of redemption, the movies show some gruesome shots, may be for the effects, and all these threads then converge through a singular incident, here shown as the opening shot.
The dog fights are gruesome, and convey the gritty nature of the movie. The homeless hitman is perhaps the master stroke. An ex militia who does not think twice before killing a human gets a dose of his own medicine when a fighter dog he saves from a road accident kills all his other pets as soon as he recovers from its injuries. And yet the hitman can't bring himself to kill it for he was the one who saved that dog in the first place.
To me that was the master stroke of the film. Later when he leaves two brothers in a duel like situation is genius.
A lengthy, gruesome, yet great movie. Enjoyed the last 20 minutes of the movie.
Thats where the twist is.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Once
One of the best things about US is Netflix (Another is its libraries). Movies that I'd never have had a chance to watch in India are available here.
Watched an Irish movie called Once. Its about a street singer and part time mechanic coming to know a Czech street hawker (sells roses and magazines) and together they composing some touching music. Writer, Director John Carney creates magic on the streets of Dublin. 80 minutes of movie flows gently deriving its sentiments from mellow romantic songs. Guy, a street musician sings popular songs during the day. At night however, when no one is listening, he sings his heart out through self composed songs. One such night, Marketa Irglova , an immigrant street hawker, notices his songs and tips him 10 cents.
From there the story takes off as the couple works together to compose songs. She herself is a piano player and plays at a music shop as she can't afford a piano herself. Any regular Hollywood movie, the leads would fall in love. For "Once" this movie is refreshingly different. Here, finding strength from each other and their music the protagonists find their lost loves. The subtle romance and their passion for music anchors the movie. Together, and with help from other street musicians they piece together an album. The transformation of the indifferent recording technician to an admirer (almost a band member over just 2 days of recording) captures the fact that ordinary ppl can create extra-ordinary things.
Its a short, simple and yet a memorable movie. I'm editing my favorite movies list to add this one.
Watched an Irish movie called Once. Its about a street singer and part time mechanic coming to know a Czech street hawker (sells roses and magazines) and together they composing some touching music. Writer, Director John Carney creates magic on the streets of Dublin. 80 minutes of movie flows gently deriving its sentiments from mellow romantic songs. Guy, a street musician sings popular songs during the day. At night however, when no one is listening, he sings his heart out through self composed songs. One such night, Marketa Irglova , an immigrant street hawker, notices his songs and tips him 10 cents.
From there the story takes off as the couple works together to compose songs. She herself is a piano player and plays at a music shop as she can't afford a piano herself. Any regular Hollywood movie, the leads would fall in love. For "Once" this movie is refreshingly different. Here, finding strength from each other and their music the protagonists find their lost loves. The subtle romance and their passion for music anchors the movie. Together, and with help from other street musicians they piece together an album. The transformation of the indifferent recording technician to an admirer (almost a band member over just 2 days of recording) captures the fact that ordinary ppl can create extra-ordinary things.
Its a short, simple and yet a memorable movie. I'm editing my favorite movies list to add this one.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Tendulkar's word saved Harbhajan
Is this a PJ? Is this a Jaspal Bhatti sit com? This can't be true. This is as cheeky as it can get at international level. You call a guy Monkey and invite 3 test match ban for racial abuse, but if you actually abuse him using loathsome slang "Maan Kee" you get away with it, losing only 50% of the match fee. Check it out... This is the cricket at it kinkiest best...
Accenture's next champion of waffle words
Accenture's next champion of waffle words
Had fits of laughter reading this. I'll not comment on why should they single out Accenture for this treatment. She is right in deriding ppl who belt out jargons at the drop of a hat. Its true, Mr Foster could have summarized that memo in a sentence but for the embellishments that are implicit in any MBA curriculum.
A must read for all high flying execs who have traded the art of simple and direct communication for worthless euphemisms
Had fits of laughter reading this. I'll not comment on why should they single out Accenture for this treatment. She is right in deriding ppl who belt out jargons at the drop of a hat. Its true, Mr Foster could have summarized that memo in a sentence but for the embellishments that are implicit in any MBA curriculum.
A must read for all high flying execs who have traded the art of simple and direct communication for worthless euphemisms
Monday, January 28, 2008
Housing Bubble in India
Read this article in ET on Home Loan market in India. Things are pretty bad. Home loans dropped by 30% over a year. Interest rates soared by about 300 basis points. Thats catastrophic. But we aren't calling this a crises yet. Quite ?Unlike US. Why? I think the reasons are as follows.
- Prices have help up offsetting any panic situation.
- The maximum tenure in India for a housing loan is 20 years which got adjusted upwards upto 25 years easing Increase in EMI due to interest rate increase
- There are no teaser rates in India like in US that reset from 4% to 8% after couple of years. Combined with growing salaries, that ensures that every passing year ppl are financially better protected against EMI/interest rate hikes
- The down-payments are higher in India than in US. This gets higher commitment from the buyer
- Salaries in India are still growing by 15% or so every year, allowing ppl to adjust to higher EMI better than US where incomes are more or less static.
- Indians lead a less leveraged lives than US allowing them a better chance to adjust to vagaries of life.
In the end, its the conservatism of Banks when lending and growing economy that have ensured the situation has not gotten out of hand.
Did I miss anything?
- Prices have help up offsetting any panic situation.
- The maximum tenure in India for a housing loan is 20 years which got adjusted upwards upto 25 years easing Increase in EMI due to interest rate increase
- There are no teaser rates in India like in US that reset from 4% to 8% after couple of years. Combined with growing salaries, that ensures that every passing year ppl are financially better protected against EMI/interest rate hikes
- The down-payments are higher in India than in US. This gets higher commitment from the buyer
- Salaries in India are still growing by 15% or so every year, allowing ppl to adjust to higher EMI better than US where incomes are more or less static.
- Indians lead a less leveraged lives than US allowing them a better chance to adjust to vagaries of life.
In the end, its the conservatism of Banks when lending and growing economy that have ensured the situation has not gotten out of hand.
Did I miss anything?
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Nano Blitz
Read the following article in Rediff about Nano.
Was stunned that Analysts expect Tata to sell just 60,000 cars in 2008. and max of 180,000 cars next year. Avg of 15,000 cars per month. Can this be called revolution???? I don't get it.
Was stunned that Analysts expect Tata to sell just 60,000 cars in 2008. and max of 180,000 cars next year. Avg of 15,000 cars per month. Can this be called revolution???? I don't get it.
Friday, January 25, 2008
India, A Presidential System??
Was browsing TOI site and chanced upon this column by Sashi Tharoor about Parliamentary vs Presidential form of democracy. It brought back memories of class IX civics lessons.
In fact during the last few weeks as I watched the Democratic and republican debates, I had wondered if US style democracy is more suitable for Indian diversity. Above article echos similar sentiments. Lets face it, India is a fractured, hetrogenous, region centric polity. We are more like confederation than a nation. This reflects in our government's composition. Our govt is fragile as it has to rely on support of regional parties and be subject to their whims and fancies. It has neither the will, nor the mandate to take bold decisions. Though I give Manmohan Singh due credit for swallowing his pride and strangling his conscience by suspending the nuclear deal in favor of political stability.
Having a president directly elected by the people might be a better bet than having a nominated PM. But if that was to happen and if Mayawati was to be the president, I shudder at the thought of it. I understand and appreciate the fact that its our current political system that has given us Manmohan Singh. It may have been impossible to have him as president in presidential system.
I just hope our political masters don't come in the way of our economic renaissance. We have progressed inspite of our political system and not because of it.
May be as Sashi said its time for a change...
In fact during the last few weeks as I watched the Democratic and republican debates, I had wondered if US style democracy is more suitable for Indian diversity. Above article echos similar sentiments. Lets face it, India is a fractured, hetrogenous, region centric polity. We are more like confederation than a nation. This reflects in our government's composition. Our govt is fragile as it has to rely on support of regional parties and be subject to their whims and fancies. It has neither the will, nor the mandate to take bold decisions. Though I give Manmohan Singh due credit for swallowing his pride and strangling his conscience by suspending the nuclear deal in favor of political stability.
Having a president directly elected by the people might be a better bet than having a nominated PM. But if that was to happen and if Mayawati was to be the president, I shudder at the thought of it. I understand and appreciate the fact that its our current political system that has given us Manmohan Singh. It may have been impossible to have him as president in presidential system.
I just hope our political masters don't come in the way of our economic renaissance. We have progressed inspite of our political system and not because of it.
May be as Sashi said its time for a change...
Friday, January 18, 2008
Traffic Curse of LA
Started off early 7:30 on a long weekend vacation to LA. Was hoping to get there by 1:30 pm and spend the evening touring Kodak studio and Sunset Blvd Strip. Did pretty well till about 30 min to LA. And suddenly the flood gates opened. Cars of all shapes and sizes spilled over the road and covered every square inch of it. It was irritating and exasperating. It took us 2 hrs to wade through the traffic to reach our hotel.
After cleaning up, armed with GPS and traffic meter, we went back out to fight the zombies on the road. Trust me, in a place like LA there are no empty roads any time of the day. Traffic sensors, forecasters etc. are all worthless when the Zombies are flying in all directions. In the end we could see just 2 spots. The Hollywood sign and Kodak Theater. We'll try and cover other places on Sunday.
Sometimes it feels like a cluster of mosquitoes hovering over your head on a warm summer evening. They follow you whereever you go and they find you however hard you try to dodge them. LA traffic knew all about our plans and whichever route we took, they got there before us.
With a population of just 4 million(Mumbai is 5 times more populated) LA has managed to choke itself. Its convinced me of need for mass transport system for every city thats more than a million people. It just does not make sense to broaden the roads. I was driving on 10 lane highways( 5 lanes each side) and yet they were all chock-a-block.
After cleaning up, armed with GPS and traffic meter, we went back out to fight the zombies on the road. Trust me, in a place like LA there are no empty roads any time of the day. Traffic sensors, forecasters etc. are all worthless when the Zombies are flying in all directions. In the end we could see just 2 spots. The Hollywood sign and Kodak Theater. We'll try and cover other places on Sunday.
Sometimes it feels like a cluster of mosquitoes hovering over your head on a warm summer evening. They follow you whereever you go and they find you however hard you try to dodge them. LA traffic knew all about our plans and whichever route we took, they got there before us.
With a population of just 4 million(Mumbai is 5 times more populated) LA has managed to choke itself. Its convinced me of need for mass transport system for every city thats more than a million people. It just does not make sense to broaden the roads. I was driving on 10 lane highways( 5 lanes each side) and yet they were all chock-a-block.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Tata Nano
There is a lot of hype around Tata's new car Nano. Its expected to revolutionize the world of cars as we know today. There is a lot of positive press surrounding its launch, including in Newyork Times. A couple of pages were dedicated to how this engineering marvel is going to change the world.
I'm not so convinced. Sorry about raining on your parade. But Mr. Tata I'm not sold to your concept. I'm listing my reasons. Please convince me otherwise.
I'm comparing Nano to Maruti 800, a car my parents and I have driven for years. We bought it new it for Rs.100,000 in 1989 when I was in my teens. Same price, just about 20 years ago. And remember today its not the largest selling car in India. I think its being phased out by Maruti.
EMI vs Price Tag
In the world of financing ppl have stopped looking at the price tag. They rather look at monthly outgo. The way I look at it, financing a maruti 800 over 7 years makes my monthly outgo around Rs. 3473 assuming @15% interest and price of Rs. 200,000 loan. Downpayment requirements on maruti 800 are are also fairly relaxed. Maybe 10% should be enough.
Same can't be said of Nano. I'd be surprised if any Bank is going to allow more than 5 years of financing on Nano. Considering the same variables except Rs. 100,000 loan for 5 years instead of 7 the monthly outflow comes to Rs. 2379.
So for an incremental Rs.1,100 monthly I can upgrade to Maruti 800.
Resale Value
We solf our Maruti 800 @Rs. 30,000 after 17 years of service in 2006. It lost 70% value over 17 years. For cars, buying decisions are greatly influenced by resale value. Maruti 800 offers industry's best resale value. Can the same be said of Nano? I doubt. A car that can't go more than 70kmph, can't be driven on the highways, I do not think it can retain its value over lets say 7 years in same ratio as a maruti 800. While I can sell a maruti -800 for Rs 100,000 after 7 years, I may not get more than 25,000 for a Nano(I know I'm guessing here, hopefully I'm not sounding unreasonable).
Given I'm loosing only Rs. 25,000(100,000 for maruti and 75,000 for Nano) more over 7 years, to me, tilts the balance in favor of Maruti
Limited Use
Maybe I'm repeating myself here. I have driven Maruti 800 from MP to Mumbai. I have driven it @100kmph without breaking sweat. It held up pretty nicely. Can Nano achieve this feat? I t can't go beyond 70kmph without wearing out its bearings. It does not have the power needed to overtake on a highway without which its actually hazardous to drive on a highway. To me Nano is for city use. Driving to office and back home.
Nano is a cheap second car rather than worthy first car. The first time car owners are unlikely to buy it for above limitations.
My verdict, Nano is unlikely to be a success. But then its important to define success before measuring it. I would define success as doubling the car market (volume) and taking 50% of it.
So Nano has to sell about a million cars a year in India to be successful.
Am I being unreasonable? I do not think so. I'm pegging 2007 mkt at around 1.4 million conservatively. Nano, should be able to create a market for itself. Adding another 1 million to 1.5 million other cars that would be sold in 2008. A million in 2009 would also be fine.
Will it make it? I vote a big NO!
I'm not so convinced. Sorry about raining on your parade. But Mr. Tata I'm not sold to your concept. I'm listing my reasons. Please convince me otherwise.
I'm comparing Nano to Maruti 800, a car my parents and I have driven for years. We bought it new it for Rs.100,000 in 1989 when I was in my teens. Same price, just about 20 years ago. And remember today its not the largest selling car in India. I think its being phased out by Maruti.
EMI vs Price Tag
In the world of financing ppl have stopped looking at the price tag. They rather look at monthly outgo. The way I look at it, financing a maruti 800 over 7 years makes my monthly outgo around Rs. 3473 assuming @15% interest and price of Rs. 200,000 loan. Downpayment requirements on maruti 800 are are also fairly relaxed. Maybe 10% should be enough.
Same can't be said of Nano. I'd be surprised if any Bank is going to allow more than 5 years of financing on Nano. Considering the same variables except Rs. 100,000 loan for 5 years instead of 7 the monthly outflow comes to Rs. 2379.
So for an incremental Rs.1,100 monthly I can upgrade to Maruti 800.
Resale Value
We solf our Maruti 800 @Rs. 30,000 after 17 years of service in 2006. It lost 70% value over 17 years. For cars, buying decisions are greatly influenced by resale value. Maruti 800 offers industry's best resale value. Can the same be said of Nano? I doubt. A car that can't go more than 70kmph, can't be driven on the highways, I do not think it can retain its value over lets say 7 years in same ratio as a maruti 800. While I can sell a maruti -800 for Rs 100,000 after 7 years, I may not get more than 25,000 for a Nano(I know I'm guessing here, hopefully I'm not sounding unreasonable).
Given I'm loosing only Rs. 25,000(100,000 for maruti and 75,000 for Nano) more over 7 years, to me, tilts the balance in favor of Maruti
Limited Use
Maybe I'm repeating myself here. I have driven Maruti 800 from MP to Mumbai. I have driven it @100kmph without breaking sweat. It held up pretty nicely. Can Nano achieve this feat? I t can't go beyond 70kmph without wearing out its bearings. It does not have the power needed to overtake on a highway without which its actually hazardous to drive on a highway. To me Nano is for city use. Driving to office and back home.
Nano is a cheap second car rather than worthy first car. The first time car owners are unlikely to buy it for above limitations.
My verdict, Nano is unlikely to be a success. But then its important to define success before measuring it. I would define success as doubling the car market (volume) and taking 50% of it.
So Nano has to sell about a million cars a year in India to be successful.
Am I being unreasonable? I do not think so. I'm pegging 2007 mkt at around 1.4 million conservatively. Nano, should be able to create a market for itself. Adding another 1 million to 1.5 million other cars that would be sold in 2008. A million in 2009 would also be fine.
Will it make it? I vote a big NO!
Rejuvenating my computer
I bought my current laptop more than 3 years ago. At that time, the configuration seemed reasonably high end with windows XP prefessional with 512 MB RAM and I felt smug in believing I had future proofed my self. I ignored Moore's law at my own peril (computing power doubles every 18 months).
Over the next 3 years my laptop served me fairly well. I installed a bunch of useful and not so useful programs. As time went by I started finding the performance deteriorating. The boot up times starting crawling upto a point where it became excruciatingly long. The time to load any application started stretching to minutes. My hard disk kept working harder and harder but to no avail. Tethering at the brink of my patience, I decided to take my chances. I was not ready to accept that the same programs, IE6, MS excel etc. should take longer on the same machine where it took just seconds to open.
The results were surprisingly pleasing. Here is what I did and its relative success.
- Defragment the disk. Marginal success. I gained just a few seconds improvement over my boot up and application load times but nothing worth elaborating.
- Uninstall some applications I did not need. That improved the bootup time a bit.
Then I realized, if I needed to improve my bootup timings, I need to manage start up programs. The way to do it is
- Press Windows+R and key in "msconfig, and hit enter. System Configuration Utility will open up.
- Go straight to Start Up Tab and you will find a list of all the programs that kick start every time you bootup your system.
- Google each name you think is critical to booting and proper running of computer. I searched and disable a bunch of stuff such as Yahoo Messenger, Google tool bar and so on.
- AFter I had saved the changes I was asked to restart the computer and Viola! My startup time reduced from about 4 minutes to less than 3 minutes
Enthused with my success I went a step further and clicked on services tab. just next to Startup and unchecked every service that I did not need. I realized that MY-SQL db, Apache Server etc. a lot of applications were being started as service and I really did not need them now.
Unchecking them and restarting the server did the trick. The start up times got down to less than a 60 sec from 3 min. Wow! I said This is cool. One added benefit was my start up memory also reduced and that allowed me to load applications faster. Earlier I used to run out of 512 MB in just 1 browser session. Now, I could open multiple sessions together.
Now what ever I dish out, my laptop handles with ease. I think I just added a couple of years of life to my computer without spending any moolah!
Over the next 3 years my laptop served me fairly well. I installed a bunch of useful and not so useful programs. As time went by I started finding the performance deteriorating. The boot up times starting crawling upto a point where it became excruciatingly long. The time to load any application started stretching to minutes. My hard disk kept working harder and harder but to no avail. Tethering at the brink of my patience, I decided to take my chances. I was not ready to accept that the same programs, IE6, MS excel etc. should take longer on the same machine where it took just seconds to open.
The results were surprisingly pleasing. Here is what I did and its relative success.
- Defragment the disk. Marginal success. I gained just a few seconds improvement over my boot up and application load times but nothing worth elaborating.
- Uninstall some applications I did not need. That improved the bootup time a bit.
Then I realized, if I needed to improve my bootup timings, I need to manage start up programs. The way to do it is
- Press Windows+R and key in "msconfig, and hit enter. System Configuration Utility will open up.
- Go straight to Start Up Tab and you will find a list of all the programs that kick start every time you bootup your system.
- Google each name you think is critical to booting and proper running of computer. I searched and disable a bunch of stuff such as Yahoo Messenger, Google tool bar and so on.
- AFter I had saved the changes I was asked to restart the computer and Viola! My startup time reduced from about 4 minutes to less than 3 minutes
Enthused with my success I went a step further and clicked on services tab. just next to Startup and unchecked every service that I did not need. I realized that MY-SQL db, Apache Server etc. a lot of applications were being started as service and I really did not need them now.
Unchecking them and restarting the server did the trick. The start up times got down to less than a 60 sec from 3 min. Wow! I said This is cool. One added benefit was my start up memory also reduced and that allowed me to load applications faster. Earlier I used to run out of 512 MB in just 1 browser session. Now, I could open multiple sessions together.
Now what ever I dish out, my laptop handles with ease. I think I just added a couple of years of life to my computer without spending any moolah!
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Retirement Planning (Corollary)
Starting where I left off. What do I do, I had 2 more days to kill.
Well I started with a little introspection. What are the odds that I'd not live to see the next millennium. Pretty much 100% I guess. Living to be 80 is perhaps closer to reality, though still pretty far from where I am.
Obvious part of perpetual cashflow is that it requires higher initial base. When I plan for a more realistic life expectancy, anything less than infinite, one new variable springs up. Time.
Adding time to the equation made it a little more challenging. I had to brush up my class XI maths. Sum of Geometric Progression and Finding nth term of a series was something I had not done for a long time. After a rusty start and scribbling on sheets of paper for some time here is what I got
Well I started with a little introspection. What are the odds that I'd not live to see the next millennium. Pretty much 100% I guess. Living to be 80 is perhaps closer to reality, though still pretty far from where I am.
Obvious part of perpetual cashflow is that it requires higher initial base. When I plan for a more realistic life expectancy, anything less than infinite, one new variable springs up. Time.
Adding time to the equation made it a little more challenging. I had to brush up my class XI maths. Sum of Geometric Progression and Finding nth term of a series was something I had not done for a long time. After a rusty start and scribbling on sheets of paper for some time here is what I got
i = Rate of return on your investment (post tax)
if = Inflation
P0 = Initial Savings
B = Annual expenses (burn rate)
R = (1 + if )/(1+ i)
n = Time in years
Money remaining at the end of nth year
Pn = P0 X (1+i)n – B X (1+i)n-1 X (Rn-1)/(R-1)
That’s kind of lengthy equation. To solve this I needed excel. I’ll see if I can upload the excel so that anyone can try this out.
If I wanted to know how much do I need to last 50 years I could use above equation.
Lets complete the example. Please notice that all the values are the same as previous example except a new variable “n”
i = 8%
if = 3%
B = $30,000
n = 50 years
I’m now solving for P50 = 0 (as I plan to spend my booty in 50 years)
P0 X (1+i)n = B X (1+i)n-1 X (Rn-1)/(R-1)
Solving for P0 we get
P0 = $543,918
This is interesting. Comparing between perpetual cashflow (P0 = $600,000) and one lasting just 50 years I find the "Initial Savings" differ by just about $56,000. Less than 10% of perpetual cashflow requirements.
Given this, I’d rather work another couple of years to save an additional $56K than run the risk of running out of money just in case… What do you prefer?
Retirement Planning
Being lazy is my way of life. The idea of getting up every day, shaving, bathing, dressing in formals and showing up for work is not my favorite fantasy of how life should be. If I could, I'd love to retire today and spend my life in creative pursuits such as blogging, bidding for junk on ebay, updating my queue on Netflix, ripping CDs in lossless format and having orgasms listening to them on my Harman Kardon. No, Gaming and cybersex do not interest me yet.
So here I was, Friday night, fretting over my retirement and planning my life beyond, tinkering with excel, projecting my future finances blah, blah.
As I did "What If" toying with the spreadsheet, I observed something amusing. It was a simple equation. When put on paper it looked something like this.
i = Rate of return on your investment (post tax)
if = Inflation
p = Savings
b = Annual expenses (burn rate)
∆ = Difference in invest rate and Inflation (i - if)
Money you need to support yourself for ever without running out of it ever
p = b / ∆
For example
i = 0.08 (8% returns on your investment)
if = 0.03 (3% based on last 20 years)
b = $ 30,000 (excluding house, all other expenses or $2,500 monthly)
∆ = 0.05 (i - if)
Then
p = $600,000 ($30,000 / 0.05)
The secret here is to keep beating the inflation by 5 points, year on year. I'd bet that shouldn't be any tougher than breaking 128 bit encryption or hacking into NASA on your dell laptop. Hollywood does it every other Friday.
If I had $600,000 invested @ 5% better than inflation, I will never ever run out of money, no matter how long I live. I could be the longest living blogger @1000 years and like "Baba Moze" (In Hindi version of Phantom, he used to tell stories of 5th to 15th generation Phantom. He was only 400 yrs old though) read out this blog to my Android Generation-X.
If anything, the thought of never running out of money did make me feel lighter. Needless to say, I slept better that night.
The next to-do items are to get $600,000 and to find an investment opportunity that gives a stable 8% return.
You can try this out to your hearts content. Let me figure out if I can upload the excel so that all you lazy bums out there can retire tomorrow betting on my path breaking discovery to bring home the bacon. I'm sure when I'm 547 years old they will offer me a Nobel for my contribution to the lazy planet in 2008.
If you figure out that this theorm was proved 1300 years ago by Aryabhatta in his crib, pls keep it to yourself. I live in my cacoon and light of wisdom can't penetrate it.
Aaaaahhh!! This is the same as Annuities with growing cash flow. How Dumb of me!
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Draping my world with Music
I can hardly be called a music buff. I do not understand the intricacies of Jazz, do not hold fanatical view on punk or metal. But I like the feeling of notes gently dissolving into the daily drudgery of life, easing its monotony, making it more palatable.
To that end I got myself an amp and two decent speakers and hooked them to my DVD /music player. Once I had the basic set up I started looking at building a collection. There was a great deal on Yahoo Music and I ended up subscribing to it. The music was good and in a matter of hours I got hooked. I heard all the songs I grew up with and then I heard them again. Over a period of time I got introduced to new ones and got to like them.
It was all great but I was constrained by the fact that I could listen to my (Yahoo Music) songs only on my laptop. If I connected the laptop to my amp I could not work on the laptop as the Y connector required that I keep the laptop close to the system. And so I started looking around for alternatives.
I was looking for following
- To be able to store all my songs in one place instead of managing the CDs. Being lazy I did not want to go and change the CD every time I wanted to listen to something
- I wanted to be able to play Yahoo Music on my Amp without having to give up my laptop in the bargain
After some researching I figured these devices called Network Music/Media players that offer that freedom. There are several such boxes available D-Link has a few, Slim devices has one. For Apple worshippers there is Airport Express. I personally bought Roku. It allowed me to play DRM protected WMA songs which Airport Express does not. But then Airport Express is cheaper by $50 too.
Roku M1001 came with a display and a remote that allowed me to browse the song collection on my Laptop through the remote. I placed it right over my Amp and connected it to Amps input. I then configured Roku to talk to my Wireless network and I was good to go.
Last week I bought an external drive to store my personal CDs and connected it to my laptop. I ripped my CDs in WMA lossless format and created a 10 GB repository of songs. I arranged them and created playlists and now I'm able to browse, search and play songs from my Laptop wirelessly on my Amp through Roku and feeling ecstatic about it.
Another great feature Roku has is Internet Radio. It has thousands of preconfigured stations that I can browse and play. Great thing is I do not need to keep my laptop on. Roku connects directly to the Internet and plays stations. I can browse through the stations with my remote and play them just I would for any FM Tuner. Great thing is I can tune in to all the Bollywood stations just as I would in India :)
I'm also loving Winamp 5.5 It allows me to browse and play my songs on the web. Its like having my music library available to me anywhere anytime. I can also share my songs with others. My friends can stream music from my PC without owning my mp3. I hope thats legal though :) as they do not have a copy of the song, its just a stream.
Anyhow, I'm amazed how things have changed over the years. I still remember playing tapes, recording and re-recording them. Having boxes of Tapes and CDs under my bed and almost no radio as FM wasn't available at that time(Only Vividh Bharathi ). Its cool how tech has shaped our lives and enriched it.
There was a post I wrote on how Internet Music will replace satellite radio about 2 years ago. How prophetic ;)
To that end I got myself an amp and two decent speakers and hooked them to my DVD /music player. Once I had the basic set up I started looking at building a collection. There was a great deal on Yahoo Music and I ended up subscribing to it. The music was good and in a matter of hours I got hooked. I heard all the songs I grew up with and then I heard them again. Over a period of time I got introduced to new ones and got to like them.
It was all great but I was constrained by the fact that I could listen to my (Yahoo Music) songs only on my laptop. If I connected the laptop to my amp I could not work on the laptop as the Y connector required that I keep the laptop close to the system. And so I started looking around for alternatives.
I was looking for following
- To be able to store all my songs in one place instead of managing the CDs. Being lazy I did not want to go and change the CD every time I wanted to listen to something
- I wanted to be able to play Yahoo Music on my Amp without having to give up my laptop in the bargain
After some researching I figured these devices called Network Music/Media players that offer that freedom. There are several such boxes available D-Link has a few, Slim devices has one. For Apple worshippers there is Airport Express. I personally bought Roku. It allowed me to play DRM protected WMA songs which Airport Express does not. But then Airport Express is cheaper by $50 too.
Roku M1001 came with a display and a remote that allowed me to browse the song collection on my Laptop through the remote. I placed it right over my Amp and connected it to Amps input. I then configured Roku to talk to my Wireless network and I was good to go.
Last week I bought an external drive to store my personal CDs and connected it to my laptop. I ripped my CDs in WMA lossless format and created a 10 GB repository of songs. I arranged them and created playlists and now I'm able to browse, search and play songs from my Laptop wirelessly on my Amp through Roku and feeling ecstatic about it.
Another great feature Roku has is Internet Radio. It has thousands of preconfigured stations that I can browse and play. Great thing is I do not need to keep my laptop on. Roku connects directly to the Internet and plays stations. I can browse through the stations with my remote and play them just I would for any FM Tuner. Great thing is I can tune in to all the Bollywood stations just as I would in India :)
I'm also loving Winamp 5.5 It allows me to browse and play my songs on the web. Its like having my music library available to me anywhere anytime. I can also share my songs with others. My friends can stream music from my PC without owning my mp3. I hope thats legal though :) as they do not have a copy of the song, its just a stream.
Anyhow, I'm amazed how things have changed over the years. I still remember playing tapes, recording and re-recording them. Having boxes of Tapes and CDs under my bed and almost no radio as FM wasn't available at that time(Only Vividh Bharathi ). Its cool how tech has shaped our lives and enriched it.
There was a post I wrote on how Internet Music will replace satellite radio about 2 years ago. How prophetic ;)
Monday, December 17, 2007
Shop-o-holic!
My daughter loves soft toys and I love solid state trinkets. Of late I'm on an extended shopping binge! With all the advertising and teaser rates, they finally got through your purse strings somehow. Or so I discovered in the last 3 weeks.
I've bought a Web Cam with $20 mail in rebate, which had I seen before, I'd never have bought. In the blinding glare of greed, I did not read the fine print. Aaah! They built the mail in rebate system for bums like me. They who fall for the honey trap and in their post purchase lethargy, never make it to the mail box.
After a week in grieving, as if on rebound, I went on to buy belkin FM transmitter which works only when I hold it in my hands. That means that I get to hear my Zen micro only when I'm waiting at the signal. As soon I put the darn thing down, all I hear is static. Well thats not so bad, my wife consoles me, at least you've stopped fretting at the signal. Now I dont rush till someone honks me to...
If that wasn't enough, I bid for an SD card drooling at the price tag of $9 for 4 GB during one of those lazy browsing times at ebay. The bid was ending in <1m and I bid and won it for $9.96 only to notice that the seller was from Hong Kong and he's charging me $14 to send the wafer across the pacific.
The predictable part is that it does not end here, Barely recovered from that rude shock I was at it again. This time obsessed with external storage(Hard Drive). In my desperation to get a great deal, I passed up several auctions (got out bid) till finally my luck clicked. Got a great deal, but the seller has just 32 ratings (not all positives) and now I'm fretting if I'll ever get to see me prize drive...
Still waiting to hear from the seller, who hasn't shown much interest in establishing a contact.
I've bought a Web Cam with $20 mail in rebate, which had I seen before, I'd never have bought. In the blinding glare of greed, I did not read the fine print. Aaah! They built the mail in rebate system for bums like me. They who fall for the honey trap and in their post purchase lethargy, never make it to the mail box.
After a week in grieving, as if on rebound, I went on to buy belkin FM transmitter which works only when I hold it in my hands. That means that I get to hear my Zen micro only when I'm waiting at the signal. As soon I put the darn thing down, all I hear is static. Well thats not so bad, my wife consoles me, at least you've stopped fretting at the signal. Now I dont rush till someone honks me to...
If that wasn't enough, I bid for an SD card drooling at the price tag of $9 for 4 GB during one of those lazy browsing times at ebay. The bid was ending in <1m and I bid and won it for $9.96 only to notice that the seller was from Hong Kong and he's charging me $14 to send the wafer across the pacific.
The predictable part is that it does not end here, Barely recovered from that rude shock I was at it again. This time obsessed with external storage(Hard Drive). In my desperation to get a great deal, I passed up several auctions (got out bid) till finally my luck clicked. Got a great deal, but the seller has just 32 ratings (not all positives) and now I'm fretting if I'll ever get to see me prize drive...
Still waiting to hear from the seller, who hasn't shown much interest in establishing a contact.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Change of Heart
Australia beat India 4-2, here in front of our home crowd. But thats not necessarily bad, as I gather from various discussion boards. I think we have tacitly accepted their superiority over us. Maybe it was the amazing twenty20 which softened our hearts and diluted the bitterness.
Sachin, has been been on the receiving end of things for the last couple of years. I've never seen so much anger against a single individual when the game is played with 11. It appeared as though he was THE reason for the failure of India team to perform. The loss in ODI worldcup only made things worse. Inspite of decent performances in B'desh and England the critics were flapping their touges calling on Sachin to give it all up.
But of-late things have changed a little. Its as if people have had a change of heart. With more than 1000 runs in the calendar year, it appears little master has atoned and redeemed himself.
In a nation of 1 billion people, a nation of worshippers, hungry for idols life is tough for those who stand on that pedestal.
I pray we offer our heroes a graceful exit into the sunset when they finally decide to hang their gloves.
Sachin, has been been on the receiving end of things for the last couple of years. I've never seen so much anger against a single individual when the game is played with 11. It appeared as though he was THE reason for the failure of India team to perform. The loss in ODI worldcup only made things worse. Inspite of decent performances in B'desh and England the critics were flapping their touges calling on Sachin to give it all up.
But of-late things have changed a little. Its as if people have had a change of heart. With more than 1000 runs in the calendar year, it appears little master has atoned and redeemed himself.
In a nation of 1 billion people, a nation of worshippers, hungry for idols life is tough for those who stand on that pedestal.
I pray we offer our heroes a graceful exit into the sunset when they finally decide to hang their gloves.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Last Ten Years
Last I listened to Kenny Rogers, I remember, was during growing up years. I was a wiry adolescent youth with sprouting beard when I first heard the story of the "Coward of the County". I loved Kenny's country stories and his gravelly rustic voice and often imagined how life would be in the country side.
Two decades have passed since. Last week, while browsing yahoo music library I came across this name again. While playing my old favorite numbers, I chanced upon one of his new numbers. This was a brand new story. A different one. Story of the last 10 years. Story of our lives.
I've heard stories of old times, of kings and warriors, of places I've never been and times I never lived . But this story was different. This is a story I've lived. Well we've all lived through the last 10 years. We've all experienced the phenomena that shaped the last decade. We have lived through the .com boom and bust, pre and post 9/11 world and I guess we all loved superman(Christopher Reeve) in his red caper and tortoise glasses to whom this song is dedicated.
The narrative takes us through the age of Y2K scare, the free world of Internet, the "new" war and all those changes that defiend the last decade.
This post is a tribute to the master of story telling Kenny Rogers.
Two decades have passed since. Last week, while browsing yahoo music library I came across this name again. While playing my old favorite numbers, I chanced upon one of his new numbers. This was a brand new story. A different one. Story of the last 10 years. Story of our lives.
I've heard stories of old times, of kings and warriors, of places I've never been and times I never lived . But this story was different. This is a story I've lived. Well we've all lived through the last 10 years. We've all experienced the phenomena that shaped the last decade. We have lived through the .com boom and bust, pre and post 9/11 world and I guess we all loved superman(Christopher Reeve) in his red caper and tortoise glasses to whom this song is dedicated.
The narrative takes us through the age of Y2K scare, the free world of Internet, the "new" war and all those changes that defiend the last decade.
This post is a tribute to the master of story telling Kenny Rogers.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Sub Prime Country
Greed is good, said Ayn Rand. Greed is a national epidemic in the capitalist's capital of the world. Housing meltdown in the US highlights the dark side of it. But its also an important lesson on personal accountability for one's actions. I would not say people did not see it coming. The soothsayers have been predicting it for years. I've read articles about it for the last 3 years, but then no body knew when and how bad.
Analysts and experts have a field day projecting the future. They have no concept of middle ground. They love stay on either ends of the spectrum. They would either lead you on saying there is scope for further profits or tell you that worst is yet to come.
Through financial wizardry they have made housing as leveraged and dangerous as margin trading only with higher stakes (for common man). They lure you with teaser rates, allow you take possession of a house with no down payment and sell you dreams of quick profits before the high interest rates kick in. Surprisingly, they then palm off your mortgage to other investors by secutitizing it and de-risk themselves in case you should find yourself at the short end of the life.
I think the next logical thing to do is to start an insurance company that would cover people against foreclosures in case of adverse price movement. In fact I wonder if there already are such companies out there doing business. I tell you, there is money in playing on people's fears.
Analysts and experts have a field day projecting the future. They have no concept of middle ground. They love stay on either ends of the spectrum. They would either lead you on saying there is scope for further profits or tell you that worst is yet to come.
Through financial wizardry they have made housing as leveraged and dangerous as margin trading only with higher stakes (for common man). They lure you with teaser rates, allow you take possession of a house with no down payment and sell you dreams of quick profits before the high interest rates kick in. Surprisingly, they then palm off your mortgage to other investors by secutitizing it and de-risk themselves in case you should find yourself at the short end of the life.
I think the next logical thing to do is to start an insurance company that would cover people against foreclosures in case of adverse price movement. In fact I wonder if there already are such companies out there doing business. I tell you, there is money in playing on people's fears.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Obsession with Blue
Odyssey in BlueAfter the Bluest Waters of Crater Lake and the Live performance by the Blue Angles its time to drench in the Pacific blue at Monterey. Loved the shades of blue as they merge with the skies to paint your world with the bluest of palettes.
17 miles drive in Monterey is best of the green and blue worlds as we know them. Just about 2 hrs SFO you could cover it on a bright sunny weekend even after a lazy start in the day, just as we did.
Also, if you wanted to spend time on the beach you could extend your drive to Carmel beach, just a few miles from there.
Here you can find the beauty of Pebble Beach Golf courses captured in strokes of blue and green
Blue Angles
Never before have I watched an Air Show. So when the Blue Angles (US Navy) came calling I was game.
No movie, Top Gun or otherwise can prepare you for the sound and fury of watching these angles live. I guarantee you. When the roar a jet flying just 500 meters away pounds your senses, its like lightening striking in front of your eyes. Your adrenalin level spikes like a giant Hawaii wave and perks up every hair pore on your body. Imagine when 6 of the kind flock together searing the skies right in front of your eyes.
Awesome!
I guess I'm lucky to see world's bluest birds unfurling their bright wings proudly in the azure.
Here are some very mediocre pics of the great spectacle I witnessed today.
No movie, Top Gun or otherwise can prepare you for the sound and fury of watching these angles live. I guarantee you. When the roar a jet flying just 500 meters away pounds your senses, its like lightening striking in front of your eyes. Your adrenalin level spikes like a giant Hawaii wave and perks up every hair pore on your body. Imagine when 6 of the kind flock together searing the skies right in front of your eyes.
Awesome!
I guess I'm lucky to see world's bluest birds unfurling their bright wings proudly in the azure.
Here are some very mediocre pics of the great spectacle I witnessed today.
Widespread Abuse on discussion boards
I've been part of some discussion boards and have had a few give and take with other contributors. However, we never crossed the line and ventured into exchanging explitives and personal abuse.
As it is, its always difficult to argue with a point of view. If you do not agree, just state so and put across your alternative. Its not like disputing facts and statistics. Facts can be disputed and corrected, but the interpretation is always gray. Same statistics can be used/ abused by different people based on their leanings.
In any case its sad to see people calling each other names and generally flouting the norms of civilized discussion. Especially on rediff its ever so blatant. I do not blame rediff for its just a reflection of our cultural maturity and all rediff is doing showing us the mirror. I do not like what I see and I guess its my problem...
As it is, its always difficult to argue with a point of view. If you do not agree, just state so and put across your alternative. Its not like disputing facts and statistics. Facts can be disputed and corrected, but the interpretation is always gray. Same statistics can be used/ abused by different people based on their leanings.
In any case its sad to see people calling each other names and generally flouting the norms of civilized discussion. Especially on rediff its ever so blatant. I do not blame rediff for its just a reflection of our cultural maturity and all rediff is doing showing us the mirror. I do not like what I see and I guess its my problem...
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Appreciating Rupee
Its shrinking my canvas. Its poisoning my dreams. Its ripping my wallet. When will this carnage stop? Or will this deluge ever recede? 0.5% drop by Fed in US caused a Tsunami of dollars that hit Indian Shores and bouyed the sensex by 10-15% in just a couple of weeks and rupee breached 39.
I'm not sure which side of Dollar Rupee equation am I on. I have a portfolio in India thats doing well, thanks to rate cuts introduced in US. At the sime time, I'm worried that my dollars are losing their green glimmer.
IT companies are no longer growth stocks. Even with high revenue growth, the margins and net profits are lagging.
I'm not sure which side of Dollar Rupee equation am I on. I have a portfolio in India thats doing well, thanks to rate cuts introduced in US. At the sime time, I'm worried that my dollars are losing their green glimmer.
IT companies are no longer growth stocks. Even with high revenue growth, the margins and net profits are lagging.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Crater Lake Oregon
Sharing their habitat
Who Moved My Cheese??
Inverted Icicles
Stitched Crater LakeThey call it the purest water lake in the world. Perched at 7000 feet in the cusp of the volcanic mountain its the bluest lake I've ever seen. May be the lakes in Leh would match the beauty and the purity of crater lake.
We stayed in a Log cabin in the wilderness with deers frequenting our room. Saw a few in the chill of the morning mist.
I've been trying to leverage Stitch feature of my camera and the results could have been good. Its a great feature which allows you to take multiple snaps and then merge them in a single picture to create a panoramic view.
The weather was misty on the day we arrived, but fortunately cleared up the next day. Another attraction there are amazing columns of solid lava that have frozen and look like upside down icicles.
The falls in the vicinity were too cold to enter. We were happy just to click snaps.
Here are a few of the snaps from my latest adventure.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Yosemite to Grand Canyon on Wheels
US is a beautiful country. The more I explore it the more I love it. I'm speaking of natural beauty. Last week I undertook a 2000 mile journey in an old beat up Accord that took me to Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, all in 5 days.
Yosemite was hot. I really had not expected the mountains to be like oven, yet it was frying hot out there. This summer has been especially harsh on CA, or so our host at Cedar lodge told us. Its dry and hot and prone to Forest fires. Earlier this summer Lake tahoe had one tragic incidence of forest fire, barely a month after I visited it in June. Lack of rains this year added to the woes of Yosemite as the beautiful bridal falls were reduced to a trickle.
Anyhow, after spending a day at Yosemite, I drove to GC. It was a breathtaking journey. I started off amongst the mountains. It was a beautiful, calm and cool morning with the sun lighting the mountain tops as we drove along a tiny stream on I-140 from El-Portal to Mariposa. As we reached downhills, we stopped at a place called Coarse Gold on route CA - 41 for breakfast. Just as we started off towards US 99 the scenary changed. The mountains gave way to hills to hillocks to gentle slopes and the green got replaced with bright golden yellow. California is called golden state for many reasons, but to me its the landscape. As we neared CA-99 the scenary became stunningly bright golden with beadings of trees making it look like some special effects film.
As we drove through CA-99 to I-15 N the scenary changed again. The vegetation disappeared and ugly, scarred scarred hills sprang up. The desert was dry as bone and hot as a furnace. It was quite scary as the signs carried messages like "Next services 50 miles". Goodness, what would happen if my car broke down in this sweltering heat?
As we crossed over to Nevada on I-40 E, the landscape became even more rugged and remaining traces of vegetation disappeared. The land became flat and bare. We finally broke for lunch at a Roadside Steak House in Nevada. They served some wonderful bbq chicken and life restoring lemonade. We then set off towards Az.
As we entered Az, we were greeted by thunderstorms and a mesh of railroad tracks. The silver streak of wagons crawling across the desert and pulled by 4 to 5 hefty locomotives looked like a stream of water flowing through the desert.
From time to time we'd see exits to Historic route 66 and it reminded me of Cars (Pixar Movie). The road was straight as an arrow with Giant trucks crowding the I40 hauling supplies deep into the desert to sustain US way of life.
We broke our journey at Kingman. Tanked up, as Gasoline was a wee bit cheaper 2.79 9/10 per gallon and set off again towards Williams (our base camp for GC). As we set off, the scenary changed once again. The barren land got replaced with green lands, with patchy green shrubs lining the way to Willaims. As the sun set behind us I kept looking up the breathtakingly beautiful sky in my rear view mirror. Shades of blue got mixed with the grey of clouds with pink borders as the sun struggled through the clouds on its way down. We finished our 650 miles long drive for the day as we took exit 163 to Williams. Once again the shades changed to bright yellow with millions of wild flowers painted the canvas with their bright petals.
Yosemite was hot. I really had not expected the mountains to be like oven, yet it was frying hot out there. This summer has been especially harsh on CA, or so our host at Cedar lodge told us. Its dry and hot and prone to Forest fires. Earlier this summer Lake tahoe had one tragic incidence of forest fire, barely a month after I visited it in June. Lack of rains this year added to the woes of Yosemite as the beautiful bridal falls were reduced to a trickle.
Anyhow, after spending a day at Yosemite, I drove to GC. It was a breathtaking journey. I started off amongst the mountains. It was a beautiful, calm and cool morning with the sun lighting the mountain tops as we drove along a tiny stream on I-140 from El-Portal to Mariposa. As we reached downhills, we stopped at a place called Coarse Gold on route CA - 41 for breakfast. Just as we started off towards US 99 the scenary changed. The mountains gave way to hills to hillocks to gentle slopes and the green got replaced with bright golden yellow. California is called golden state for many reasons, but to me its the landscape. As we neared CA-99 the scenary became stunningly bright golden with beadings of trees making it look like some special effects film.
As we drove through CA-99 to I-15 N the scenary changed again. The vegetation disappeared and ugly, scarred scarred hills sprang up. The desert was dry as bone and hot as a furnace. It was quite scary as the signs carried messages like "Next services 50 miles". Goodness, what would happen if my car broke down in this sweltering heat?
As we crossed over to Nevada on I-40 E, the landscape became even more rugged and remaining traces of vegetation disappeared. The land became flat and bare. We finally broke for lunch at a Roadside Steak House in Nevada. They served some wonderful bbq chicken and life restoring lemonade. We then set off towards Az.
As we entered Az, we were greeted by thunderstorms and a mesh of railroad tracks. The silver streak of wagons crawling across the desert and pulled by 4 to 5 hefty locomotives looked like a stream of water flowing through the desert.
From time to time we'd see exits to Historic route 66 and it reminded me of Cars (Pixar Movie). The road was straight as an arrow with Giant trucks crowding the I40 hauling supplies deep into the desert to sustain US way of life.
We broke our journey at Kingman. Tanked up, as Gasoline was a wee bit cheaper 2.79 9/10 per gallon and set off again towards Williams (our base camp for GC). As we set off, the scenary changed once again. The barren land got replaced with green lands, with patchy green shrubs lining the way to Willaims. As the sun set behind us I kept looking up the breathtakingly beautiful sky in my rear view mirror. Shades of blue got mixed with the grey of clouds with pink borders as the sun struggled through the clouds on its way down. We finished our 650 miles long drive for the day as we took exit 163 to Williams. Once again the shades changed to bright yellow with millions of wild flowers painted the canvas with their bright petals.
Buying a Camera All Over Again
First Digital camera I bought was about 3 years ago. I'm not too much into photography and so I was more interested in a point and shoot camera than an a bulky professional one. The site I put my faith in to read up various reviews available back then was CNet.com. Somehow Cnet plays a very important role in all my electronics items purchases. Be it buying a digital camera or mp3 player(I chose Zen micro over iPod based on Cnet Review) or an amplifier or a laptop, Cnet plays an important part of my decision making process.
After using the Minolta Dimage Xg for three years I thought now was the time for an upgrade. I was pondering a trip to Grand Canyon and thought it would be nice if the pics looked a little better than 3 megapixel point and shoot camera.
Dimage Xg has been a good companion. Its small and elegant (by 2004 standards). Amazingly it did not have a moving lens and most other cameras did and yet it provided standard 3x optical zoom. I read somewhere it used a prism internally to achieve the zoom and that made the images just a little too foggy for my liking, though for most occasions it belted out great ametuer pics.
So the quest started again. This time I was looking for a meatier camera especially with greater zoom, Image stablization and movie recording capabilities better than 320 X 240 (Dimage Xg).
The camera that captured my fancy was Canon Rebel xti 8 mega pixel camera. It was what reviews called a prefessional camera for an ameture price. Still the price was too high for my liking. After looking around for similar capabilities but lower prices, I chanced upon Canon S series. It had all the nice things I was looking for and a price tag that was considerably cheaper than the other Canon model. One feature I had wished for was a viewing screen that rotated 360 degrees. Sometimes I wanted to click overhead shots and I would raise camera over my head and click in the general direction of the subject using intuition and hope the pictures came out right. With this feature I could rorate the camera vewing screen and see the subject.
When researching cameras I'd recommend looking up Digital Camera Resource Page to read up about the cameras. Another great resource is Imaging Resource site. It has a range of standard subjects and you can compare the pics of some standard subjects from various cameras. This gives you excellent apple to apple comparison of cameras.
So far I'm happy with my new Canon S3 IS camera. I'll post some of the pics of GC I clicked with it. So far no Post Purchase Desonance :)
Overall this camera gave me the right value for money and
After using the Minolta Dimage Xg for three years I thought now was the time for an upgrade. I was pondering a trip to Grand Canyon and thought it would be nice if the pics looked a little better than 3 megapixel point and shoot camera.
Dimage Xg has been a good companion. Its small and elegant (by 2004 standards). Amazingly it did not have a moving lens and most other cameras did and yet it provided standard 3x optical zoom. I read somewhere it used a prism internally to achieve the zoom and that made the images just a little too foggy for my liking, though for most occasions it belted out great ametuer pics.
So the quest started again. This time I was looking for a meatier camera especially with greater zoom, Image stablization and movie recording capabilities better than 320 X 240 (Dimage Xg).
The camera that captured my fancy was Canon Rebel xti 8 mega pixel camera. It was what reviews called a prefessional camera for an ameture price. Still the price was too high for my liking. After looking around for similar capabilities but lower prices, I chanced upon Canon S series. It had all the nice things I was looking for and a price tag that was considerably cheaper than the other Canon model. One feature I had wished for was a viewing screen that rotated 360 degrees. Sometimes I wanted to click overhead shots and I would raise camera over my head and click in the general direction of the subject using intuition and hope the pictures came out right. With this feature I could rorate the camera vewing screen and see the subject.
When researching cameras I'd recommend looking up Digital Camera Resource Page to read up about the cameras. Another great resource is Imaging Resource site. It has a range of standard subjects and you can compare the pics of some standard subjects from various cameras. This gives you excellent apple to apple comparison of cameras.
So far I'm happy with my new Canon S3 IS camera. I'll post some of the pics of GC I clicked with it. So far no Post Purchase Desonance :)
Overall this camera gave me the right value for money and
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Magic of UPS
Some time back I had an emergency and needed to send something back home in a hurry. Time was really short and I was really worried how the logistics would pan out. In fact I was almost certain I was not going to make it on time.
It was just a fluke that I wandered to a UPS store near my place. I explained my problem and they assured me that if I was to use UPS it would guarantee that the shipment would reach its destination within the short time. I was skeptical yet not having run out of options decided to throw my money at it.
Well UPS delivered big time on the promise. It delivered a package half way across the globe in just 60 hours on a weekend. And all the time I could track the progress online. It was very reassuring and I'm still in the awe of technology as it demystifield the logistics behind UPS magical delivery system.
It was just a fluke that I wandered to a UPS store near my place. I explained my problem and they assured me that if I was to use UPS it would guarantee that the shipment would reach its destination within the short time. I was skeptical yet not having run out of options decided to throw my money at it.
Well UPS delivered big time on the promise. It delivered a package half way across the globe in just 60 hours on a weekend. And all the time I could track the progress online. It was very reassuring and I'm still in the awe of technology as it demystifield the logistics behind UPS magical delivery system.
Freakonomics Steve Levitt
Makes an interesting read. Challenges conventional wisdom and explores some very interesting questions ranging from explaining reasons for crime rate drop in the US to corruption in Sumo wrestling in Japan. Though my personal favorite is age old debate nature vs nurture. IQ thats gentic vs nurture, something parents can influence.
Though, he constantly argues that the kid's wiring is done in the womb and there is little that parents can do to change it. There is evidence that parents and help make best of the limited abilities the child may have. The fact that adopted children could settle down well(better that un-udopted kids) in life because of their parents' efforts brings out the impact of nurture on kids and how important parents could be.
Correlation is one thing and its quite mathematical. Causality is a completely different ball game. That requires deeper understanding of the issues and the insights to peel off the mask and identify the true cause of any phenomenon.
Refernce to Unabomber vs. Ronald Fryer is presented in a shocking way. This led me to check out some things about the UnaBomber and as usual Wiki describes the events in the life of UnaBomber that clearly bring out the social maladjustment that he suffers right through his life. Thats the reason why perhaps people talk of EQ being an important factor in shaping one's life. While its true that parents can't help much with a person's IQ, I'm sure if parents try, they could help build EQ of a child to help him make it through the vagaries of life.
Though, he constantly argues that the kid's wiring is done in the womb and there is little that parents can do to change it. There is evidence that parents and help make best of the limited abilities the child may have. The fact that adopted children could settle down well(better that un-udopted kids) in life because of their parents' efforts brings out the impact of nurture on kids and how important parents could be.
Correlation is one thing and its quite mathematical. Causality is a completely different ball game. That requires deeper understanding of the issues and the insights to peel off the mask and identify the true cause of any phenomenon.
Refernce to Unabomber vs. Ronald Fryer is presented in a shocking way. This led me to check out some things about the UnaBomber and as usual Wiki describes the events in the life of UnaBomber that clearly bring out the social maladjustment that he suffers right through his life. Thats the reason why perhaps people talk of EQ being an important factor in shaping one's life. While its true that parents can't help much with a person's IQ, I'm sure if parents try, they could help build EQ of a child to help him make it through the vagaries of life.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
World is Flat Silent Crisis (page 200-300)
Crawled past page 300. It took me a week to get there from page 200. It talks about the silent crises in the US triggered by lack of interest in Science and Technology fields amongst the American youth. I don't quite agree unless they insist on home grown talent. But then in a flat, world one would argue, why do you insist of indigenous production of an expensive product, here a math- science graduate, when you can source it from a flat world? Well, what works for the US is that it can import IQ just like textile and toys. Really, at the post graduate level they have the best education system.
Any country can import teachers for their primary schools and train them to teach well, but how do you create a community of capable professors that stimulate innovation and invention through constantly challenging and shaping the minds of the bright and the talented? US to me provides the most creative educational ecosystem. It attracts the best of both worlds by providing a meeting point for the best academic minds and the best pool of talented students around the world.
One could argue that internet has allowed the teachers and students of the world to collaborate and therefore universities do not matter. But I disagree. There is only so much one can achieve through bits and bytes. Universities are important because they create an atmosphere of learning which can't be replicated in a virtual world, yet...
A society when on top of its success breeds complacence and decadence which finally leads to its fall. Good thing about capitalism is that it breeds paranoia and competition amongst its practitioners. This I guess is good for US. In a flat world no one including US has the luxury of taking it easy and US knows it.
So much for now... Another 150 pages to go...
Any country can import teachers for their primary schools and train them to teach well, but how do you create a community of capable professors that stimulate innovation and invention through constantly challenging and shaping the minds of the bright and the talented? US to me provides the most creative educational ecosystem. It attracts the best of both worlds by providing a meeting point for the best academic minds and the best pool of talented students around the world.
One could argue that internet has allowed the teachers and students of the world to collaborate and therefore universities do not matter. But I disagree. There is only so much one can achieve through bits and bytes. Universities are important because they create an atmosphere of learning which can't be replicated in a virtual world, yet...
A society when on top of its success breeds complacence and decadence which finally leads to its fall. Good thing about capitalism is that it breeds paranoia and competition amongst its practitioners. This I guess is good for US. In a flat world no one including US has the luxury of taking it easy and US knows it.
So much for now... Another 150 pages to go...
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Rain cripples New York City transit - Yahoo! News
Rain cripples New York City transit - Yahoo! News
So just 3 inches of rain can do this to New York! Mumbai received 30 inches in a day and we cried out about how bad Indian infrastructure is. So 3 years later, this is the moment of truth. Come on stop cribbing about what's bad here. Things can get bad any where but we curse ,swear and blame it on our country as if our country is no good.
The other day a bridge in minneapolis fell with cars driving bumper to bumper and a few months ago a part of I-80 flyover crashed All of this makes me feel that disasters happen, things turn bad and even the most powerful nation isn't immune to all this.
Lets give ourselves a break. Lets not pick on our city. I did that some time back in one of my posts, but this has been an eye opener.
So just 3 inches of rain can do this to New York! Mumbai received 30 inches in a day and we cried out about how bad Indian infrastructure is. So 3 years later, this is the moment of truth. Come on stop cribbing about what's bad here. Things can get bad any where but we curse ,swear and blame it on our country as if our country is no good.
The other day a bridge in minneapolis fell with cars driving bumper to bumper and a few months ago a part of I-80 flyover crashed All of this makes me feel that disasters happen, things turn bad and even the most powerful nation isn't immune to all this.
Lets give ourselves a break. Lets not pick on our city. I did that some time back in one of my posts, but this has been an eye opener.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
How To Make Black Money Work For Govt
How bad is this idea? The only way to tell is to ask the people with Black Money if they would put their money behind this concept.
The basic idea behind this is to bring that money into main stream economy without punitive action against the investor for hoarding/not paying taxes on it. Here is how it works.
Allow Mutual Funds companies to launch such funds that would channelize black money into the economy. Any one can put money in these specially designated funds without having to declare the source for those funds. The underlying theory is that by bringing this money to the mainstream we can ensure we put this capital to best use i.e. create wealth.
There are various alternatives to tax investment flow in and out of these funds depending on following question. In what time the govt thinks money can change its color to white. Also, if the money spends enough time in the system, can we forego so of the tax liability associated with it.
Here is how a typical fund terms would look like.
- Entry Load of 10% on all capital inflows. (proceeds to flow to the govt)
- Exit load of 25% if you exit in the first year of investment. Proceeds to flow to the govt.
- Exit load 20% between year 1 and year 5.
- Exit load 10% between year 5 and year 10.
- Exit load 5% between year 10 and 20. (if at all)
- No exit load beyond 20 years.
Govt makes immediate 10% when black money enters the market and taxes money going out purely based on how long it stays within system. Unlike other small savings schemes, govt does not have to ensure a fixed return. Based on any given fund's performance people can choose between various options.
The basic idea behind this is to bring that money into main stream economy without punitive action against the investor for hoarding/not paying taxes on it. Here is how it works.
Allow Mutual Funds companies to launch such funds that would channelize black money into the economy. Any one can put money in these specially designated funds without having to declare the source for those funds. The underlying theory is that by bringing this money to the mainstream we can ensure we put this capital to best use i.e. create wealth.
There are various alternatives to tax investment flow in and out of these funds depending on following question. In what time the govt thinks money can change its color to white. Also, if the money spends enough time in the system, can we forego so of the tax liability associated with it.
Here is how a typical fund terms would look like.
- Entry Load of 10% on all capital inflows. (proceeds to flow to the govt)
- Exit load of 25% if you exit in the first year of investment. Proceeds to flow to the govt.
- Exit load 20% between year 1 and year 5.
- Exit load 10% between year 5 and year 10.
- Exit load 5% between year 10 and 20. (if at all)
- No exit load beyond 20 years.
Govt makes immediate 10% when black money enters the market and taxes money going out purely based on how long it stays within system. Unlike other small savings schemes, govt does not have to ensure a fixed return. Based on any given fund's performance people can choose between various options.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
The n-deal: US' Dhritarashtra's embrace?
The n-deal: US' Dhritarashtra's embrace?
Well this is good because
- India has come out of nuclear wilderness after 30+ years
- India breaks away from the past of being spoken of in the same breath as Pakistan. In fact it is now being associated as credible balance for China's growing might(economic and political) in the region
- India needs all the power is can get. I hear, France gets 75-80% of its power through nuclear energy. Japan about 30%.
Concerns
- US has not built a Nuclear power plant in decades as US does not consider that a safe mode of generating power. Also, waste disposal has its own sets of problems. Considering above, it's surprising that it should encourage India to go that route and offer help to set up Nuclear Power Plants / provide fuel.
This to me is a clear indication that this deal is not so much about Nuclear Power. Its about Balance of Power and India is US's best bet against China Threat.
- India not being able to test /create more nuclear weapons. I think we already have enough nuclear war heads as "credible deterrent". Work in recent decades is more around delivery of these war heads and I guess we have successfully shown that we can strike deep into enemy territory with what we have(Agni-II et al). We may not be able to reach Beijing but reaching Shanghai / Islamabad is enough to maintain peace with our neighbours.
- Installing Nuclear Power Plants. Its always very expensive to build a nuclear power plant as its capital intensive. On the other hand per-unit cost of electricity generation is relatively less. At the same time maintaining requisite level of safety, discharging waste and closing the power plant if need be are all fairly expensive. Us usual there are pros and cons. Personally I'm not convinced with idea of nuclear power given the risks involved.
All in all this is a historic milestone. It establishes India as a responsible Nuclear power state while providing us an alternate source of energy.
Well this is good because
- India has come out of nuclear wilderness after 30+ years
- India breaks away from the past of being spoken of in the same breath as Pakistan. In fact it is now being associated as credible balance for China's growing might(economic and political) in the region
- India needs all the power is can get. I hear, France gets 75-80% of its power through nuclear energy. Japan about 30%.
Concerns
- US has not built a Nuclear power plant in decades as US does not consider that a safe mode of generating power. Also, waste disposal has its own sets of problems. Considering above, it's surprising that it should encourage India to go that route and offer help to set up Nuclear Power Plants / provide fuel.
This to me is a clear indication that this deal is not so much about Nuclear Power. Its about Balance of Power and India is US's best bet against China Threat.
- India not being able to test /create more nuclear weapons. I think we already have enough nuclear war heads as "credible deterrent". Work in recent decades is more around delivery of these war heads and I guess we have successfully shown that we can strike deep into enemy territory with what we have(Agni-II et al). We may not be able to reach Beijing but reaching Shanghai / Islamabad is enough to maintain peace with our neighbours.
- Installing Nuclear Power Plants. Its always very expensive to build a nuclear power plant as its capital intensive. On the other hand per-unit cost of electricity generation is relatively less. At the same time maintaining requisite level of safety, discharging waste and closing the power plant if need be are all fairly expensive. Us usual there are pros and cons. Personally I'm not convinced with idea of nuclear power given the risks involved.
All in all this is a historic milestone. It establishes India as a responsible Nuclear power state while providing us an alternate source of energy.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
The world is flat (Thomas L. Friedman)
Started reading this book with completely wrong expectation. I thought this would give me a glimpse of the future just like Future Shock. But none of that stuff. I was always impressed by the vision of Alvin Toffler and how he predicted the future almost 40 years ago. How some of those theories must have sounded down right stupid or exaggerated in late 60's.
Tough Luck. This cliched book talks about a theme that has been beaten to death. Every Indian working in IT for the last 10 years or so understands it as good as the dollar rupee conversion rate. Out sourcing, offshoring, supply chain, all of these were born more than 10 years back and are bread and butter to a million Indians, millions of Chinese and hundreds of companies.
Talking of these in 2004/5 is like Bolly wood making an Angry young man movie, a cop fighting against the goodaraj in 2007. Ram Gopal Verma's Siva for example.
I might be completely wrong here. I've only labored through 200 pages in hope of vision unfolding somewhere, but it does not seem like the Author would go beyond quoting Indian IT icons' most banal statements and dressing them up in prophetic garbs. e.g. "The playing field is being leveled" as stated by Nandan Nilekani and "The world is Flat" as understood by the Author.
Also there is a contradiction here. Round world actually brings people closer. The farthest points in a Flat world are in fact close neighbours in a round world.
Columbus would have turned a few times in his grave as Mr. Friedman compares himself to the greatest discoverer of all times. Especially when his discovery comes after millions of Indians, Chinese and Americans were doing business that way for about a decade. Some cheek eh!
May be the average American was still not aware this phenomenon till Mr Friedman finally cracked the mystery open. Though that would be hard to imagine given that America is at the cutting edge of this transformation and is actually shaping this revolution. Also I guess most Americans speak to Indian Customer Service Agents for most of their queries and complaints.
I really could not understand the cause for the runaway success of this book. But may be there is a treasure at the end of the rainbow. And so I shall wade through to the other side in search of a vision.
Tough Luck. This cliched book talks about a theme that has been beaten to death. Every Indian working in IT for the last 10 years or so understands it as good as the dollar rupee conversion rate. Out sourcing, offshoring, supply chain, all of these were born more than 10 years back and are bread and butter to a million Indians, millions of Chinese and hundreds of companies.
Talking of these in 2004/5 is like Bolly wood making an Angry young man movie, a cop fighting against the goodaraj in 2007. Ram Gopal Verma's Siva for example.
I might be completely wrong here. I've only labored through 200 pages in hope of vision unfolding somewhere, but it does not seem like the Author would go beyond quoting Indian IT icons' most banal statements and dressing them up in prophetic garbs. e.g. "The playing field is being leveled" as stated by Nandan Nilekani and "The world is Flat" as understood by the Author.
Also there is a contradiction here. Round world actually brings people closer. The farthest points in a Flat world are in fact close neighbours in a round world.
Columbus would have turned a few times in his grave as Mr. Friedman compares himself to the greatest discoverer of all times. Especially when his discovery comes after millions of Indians, Chinese and Americans were doing business that way for about a decade. Some cheek eh!
May be the average American was still not aware this phenomenon till Mr Friedman finally cracked the mystery open. Though that would be hard to imagine given that America is at the cutting edge of this transformation and is actually shaping this revolution. Also I guess most Americans speak to Indian Customer Service Agents for most of their queries and complaints.
I really could not understand the cause for the runaway success of this book. But may be there is a treasure at the end of the rainbow. And so I shall wade through to the other side in search of a vision.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
An enjoyable evening with friends
We aren't really the most socialable family in town. Inviting friends over and cooking for them is not our idea of an ideal weekend. Yet we did that today and to our amazement we actually loved it.
This managed property has several ppl from my company living here, most of whom I don't even know. It was my wife who befriended some residents. As they got talking they realized that their men, they all worked for the same company. And so we got introduced through our wives. Since, we have had a couple of parties (pot lucks) and they all have been quite enjoyable.
Today was our turn and while my wife did most of the preparations, I was made incharge of my daughter. I took her out to the market and fed her lunch. In the evening the couples came over and we played Dumb Charade with Hindi movies. It was a lot of fun after a long time. We were transported to our college days. We debated the rules and the signs and established the code. Had a laugh guessing the movies. The one word ones the the toughest to guess. Albert Pinto ko gussa kyun aata hai is a standard 7 word movie and one of the easiest ones to guess as our opponents figured out.
The kids, they all had a blast. They laughed, they fought and cried and became friends again, all in the same evening. Some of these families will be moving out as their projects are coming to an end. But the fond memories will remain...
This managed property has several ppl from my company living here, most of whom I don't even know. It was my wife who befriended some residents. As they got talking they realized that their men, they all worked for the same company. And so we got introduced through our wives. Since, we have had a couple of parties (pot lucks) and they all have been quite enjoyable.
Today was our turn and while my wife did most of the preparations, I was made incharge of my daughter. I took her out to the market and fed her lunch. In the evening the couples came over and we played Dumb Charade with Hindi movies. It was a lot of fun after a long time. We were transported to our college days. We debated the rules and the signs and established the code. Had a laugh guessing the movies. The one word ones the the toughest to guess. Albert Pinto ko gussa kyun aata hai is a standard 7 word movie and one of the easiest ones to guess as our opponents figured out.
The kids, they all had a blast. They laughed, they fought and cried and became friends again, all in the same evening. Some of these families will be moving out as their projects are coming to an end. But the fond memories will remain...
Friday, July 20, 2007
Boom Boom Becker
How I idolezed him. What a swagger! At times his swagger reminded me of Viv Richards. He walked upon the court as if he owned it. Hell he did own it. I remember we had just bought our first TV when I watched him defeat Kevin Curren at the age of 17 to become the youngest player ever to win Wimbeldon. Our entire family fell in love with this kid. My mother, who is not much of a tennis enthusiast would never miss a Becker game. She remembers him as the kid who made his parents proud.
Here is an unbelievable clip. Looks all concocted but for the fact that the players are real and so is the match. The King of Comeback. Poor Andrei Medvediv looks so hapless against the blaze of Becker's Aces. Imagine trailing 0-40 and then coming back to win the game with 5 consecutive aces. Awesome!
Talking of Tennis I admired Pete Sampras very much. I'd say Sampras could break any player at the top of one's game. I've seen Ivanisevic at his best being tamed by Sampras in straight sets(1994) Wimbledon Finals. I've seen Becker being tormented by this great player. Though when ever these two played, I'd cheer for Becker as Sampras made him look real underdog. Aaaah! the excrutiating pain of watching your idol being clinically decimated. Inspite of all the heroic dives Becker could hardly ever match Sampras cool precision. BUT FOR THIS OCCASION. I Looooved it. Becker getting better of Sampras. Its a rare clip :) Hail Becker!
Here is an unbelievable clip. Looks all concocted but for the fact that the players are real and so is the match. The King of Comeback. Poor Andrei Medvediv looks so hapless against the blaze of Becker's Aces. Imagine trailing 0-40 and then coming back to win the game with 5 consecutive aces. Awesome!
Talking of Tennis I admired Pete Sampras very much. I'd say Sampras could break any player at the top of one's game. I've seen Ivanisevic at his best being tamed by Sampras in straight sets(1994) Wimbledon Finals. I've seen Becker being tormented by this great player. Though when ever these two played, I'd cheer for Becker as Sampras made him look real underdog. Aaaah! the excrutiating pain of watching your idol being clinically decimated. Inspite of all the heroic dives Becker could hardly ever match Sampras cool precision. BUT FOR THIS OCCASION. I Looooved it. Becker getting better of Sampras. Its a rare clip :) Hail Becker!
Real Moments, Real people, Real Heros
Fact is stranger than fiction. If it was the reel world I'd give it a thumbs down for over dramaticizing. But what do you do when you see it in the real world? You bask in the glory of it and soak in its impact. These are moments history is made of.
The clip calls it the best goal ever. I saw it about 15 years ago on doordarshan once, as a build up to a world cup and it stayed with me. Today, I looked it up in youTube and was thrilled as a boy to find it there. View this and get inspired. This is no movie and the opponents are no dummies, as George makes them out to be. I agree THIS is the Greatest Goal Ever.
Its such a pity that such a great man should die so pathetically as an alcohol addict. The price of greatness I guess. In memory of George Best
The clip calls it the best goal ever. I saw it about 15 years ago on doordarshan once, as a build up to a world cup and it stayed with me. Today, I looked it up in youTube and was thrilled as a boy to find it there. View this and get inspired. This is no movie and the opponents are no dummies, as George makes them out to be. I agree THIS is the Greatest Goal Ever.
Its such a pity that such a great man should die so pathetically as an alcohol addict. The price of greatness I guess. In memory of George Best
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Hi Fi Discussion Forum
I was trying to weigh options for a Hi-Fi system. Not surprisingly, the choices in India are limited and prohibitively expensive. I happened to walk into Bose store in Pyramid and was awed by the equipment on display. Bose stores are great at marketing their products. After I was treated to a well scripted demo I was sold to the idea of owing those tiny jewels (I guess the satellites are actually called so) . Eventually the conversation drifted from the sound and fury to the price tag and one could hear the jaw and spirits fall to the lower end of sonic spectrum. I scuttled off suddenly remembering a phantom appointment and returned home crest fallen.
Upon googling the topic a bit I discovered a new world. A world of Audioholics. In this world there are only bose bashers and no takers. Bose is for sissies they say. Well that kind of hurt my sentiments. But I took a deep dive into their world and discovered I was swimming with Dolphins.
I guess the forum is one of its kind for Indian Audioholics and ironically its hosted on a german domain. Thats kind of weird I thought but then so long as the contributors are desi bhai log, the .de domain is just a minor technicality.
These guys know what they are talking about. They know which good brands are available in India, and for each cities who are the dealers, where the shops are and how they compare to each other. Also, the threads taught me how to describe music in its own lingo. Whats sound stage, what are upfront / laid back / transparent / colored / rolled off speakers and how to navigate through the myriad choices to pick whats best for you. Also, they would tell you whats the bargain and how much to pay.
A bunch of music romantics amongst tone deafs like me. Quite heroic. Through them I could learn to appreciate the sound of music. Check this out hi-fi forum Pick the stereo track. Most other tracks are in german if you fancy the language.
Upon googling the topic a bit I discovered a new world. A world of Audioholics. In this world there are only bose bashers and no takers. Bose is for sissies they say. Well that kind of hurt my sentiments. But I took a deep dive into their world and discovered I was swimming with Dolphins.
I guess the forum is one of its kind for Indian Audioholics and ironically its hosted on a german domain. Thats kind of weird I thought but then so long as the contributors are desi bhai log, the .de domain is just a minor technicality.
These guys know what they are talking about. They know which good brands are available in India, and for each cities who are the dealers, where the shops are and how they compare to each other. Also, the threads taught me how to describe music in its own lingo. Whats sound stage, what are upfront / laid back / transparent / colored / rolled off speakers and how to navigate through the myriad choices to pick whats best for you. Also, they would tell you whats the bargain and how much to pay.
A bunch of music romantics amongst tone deafs like me. Quite heroic. Through them I could learn to appreciate the sound of music. Check this out hi-fi forum Pick the stereo track. Most other tracks are in german if you fancy the language.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Bloggers Block
True bloggers dont worry abt following too much. They plug their keyboards to their thoughts and the bytes flow. Then there is a Bloggers Block. You gotta build the momentum to get over that hump and from then on its nice and easy as if its part of your daily chores.
Here is an example. Someone I'm following lately on the net. See the first 2 years... They are patchy but then as if by a miracle the person found the rythum. You dig till you hit the eternal fountain and from it you draw your thoughts. Here is to OfTravelAndTravails...
Here is an example. Someone I'm following lately on the net. See the first 2 years... They are patchy but then as if by a miracle the person found the rythum. You dig till you hit the eternal fountain and from it you draw your thoughts. Here is to OfTravelAndTravails...
Sunday, July 15, 2007
List of my favorite Soundtracks
Spent the whole day listening to Soundtracks from various movies... Here is a short list of my favorites
Road to Perdition - Thomas Newman
Forrest gump - Thomas Newman
Summer of 42 - Michel Legrand
Scent Of a Woman - Thomas Newman
The Phenomenon
Once Upon a time in America - Childhood memories (Zamfir Pan flute) Ennio
Babel
American Beauty - Thomas Newman
The Godfather - Larry Kusic and Nino Rota
Picnic at Hanging Rock - Zamfir Flute
Il Postino
Road to Perdition - Thomas Newman
Forrest gump - Thomas Newman
Summer of 42 - Michel Legrand
Scent Of a Woman - Thomas Newman
The Phenomenon
Once Upon a time in America - Childhood memories (Zamfir Pan flute) Ennio
Babel
American Beauty - Thomas Newman
The Godfather - Larry Kusic and Nino Rota
Picnic at Hanging Rock - Zamfir Flute
Il Postino
Discovering Thomas Newman
In my growing up years, I guess I was in college when Al pachino won Oscar for Scent of a Woman. In my small town there were handful Video Libraries and I scourged through them to get the Video Cassette as I had loved Micheal in God father so much.
I fell in love with the movie right from the starting moment when the boy Charles looks up
baby sitting assignment. I did not realize then but the music stuck in my mind. It was couple of years later, I had graduated and joined a computer company as a salesman. Forrest Gump had swept the Oscars that year. I was bunking office to watch Forrest Gump at Chanakya when once again I felt the same exhileration as the feather swooned and floated across the screen.
Once again time past and I stumbled upon Road to Perdition. This time curiosity got better of me and I looked up the internet to figure out composer and there was this name, Thomas Newman and listing of his work. Both above movies featured there along with American Beauty, Shawshank Redemption.
I think he is one of the finest composers of our times. Certainly my favorite.
Alas! my Yahoo Music subscription does not have these soundtracks. What a shame!
I fell in love with the movie right from the starting moment when the boy Charles looks up
baby sitting assignment. I did not realize then but the music stuck in my mind. It was couple of years later, I had graduated and joined a computer company as a salesman. Forrest Gump had swept the Oscars that year. I was bunking office to watch Forrest Gump at Chanakya when once again I felt the same exhileration as the feather swooned and floated across the screen.
Once again time past and I stumbled upon Road to Perdition. This time curiosity got better of me and I looked up the internet to figure out composer and there was this name, Thomas Newman and listing of his work. Both above movies featured there along with American Beauty, Shawshank Redemption.
I think he is one of the finest composers of our times. Certainly my favorite.
Alas! my Yahoo Music subscription does not have these soundtracks. What a shame!
Geneva NY US
Driving thru NY state was one of the most beautiful experiences I've had. The untouched forests and vast lakes surrounded by hills are breathtakingly exotic. I loved the fields merging into forests heaving gently with the slopes of the hills.
On our way back to New York from Buffalo, we passed through the sleepy town of Geneva, yes there is a Geneva in NY state. We had our breakfast in one of the local joints. As we entered the place all eyes turned towards us as if we were from some other planet. There was a momentary pause and then every one went about their business. Not surprisingly almost every one know every one else. The family that runs the business was at first name basis with most customers. and the Hot Chocolate they served me was miles ahead of Starbucks Chocolate.
As we exited the city I drove by Seneca Lake. The road hugged the lake from north to south serving up a delicious visual dessert after meals. There were so many houses that had the lake as their back yard pool that I felt jealous of people living there. I'm sure these folks have internet, electricity and all the modern day amenities along with the scenic and peaceful life of the country side.
I'm a small town boy and will always remain so. This life appeals to me more than the sky scrapers of NY.
On our way back to New York from Buffalo, we passed through the sleepy town of Geneva, yes there is a Geneva in NY state. We had our breakfast in one of the local joints. As we entered the place all eyes turned towards us as if we were from some other planet. There was a momentary pause and then every one went about their business. Not surprisingly almost every one know every one else. The family that runs the business was at first name basis with most customers. and the Hot Chocolate they served me was miles ahead of Starbucks Chocolate.
As we exited the city I drove by Seneca Lake. The road hugged the lake from north to south serving up a delicious visual dessert after meals. There were so many houses that had the lake as their back yard pool that I felt jealous of people living there. I'm sure these folks have internet, electricity and all the modern day amenities along with the scenic and peaceful life of the country side.
I'm a small town boy and will always remain so. This life appeals to me more than the sky scrapers of NY.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
NYC vs Mumbai
Its uncanny. The two cities can be so culturally similar. Honestly, I'm not a very well traveled person. I have seen very few megapolis but last week when I hit nyc I felt a dejavu I guess mostly because its so similar to Mumbai.
Things that are similar
A melting pot- NYC is global melting pot while Mumbai is the most cosmopolitan city in desh. So may diff kinds of ppl living together harmoniously
Energy - The moment I stepped into NYC I felt as if I had entered an energy field. I get the same feeling in Mumbai. Everyone has an aggressive schedule to keep. Every twitch of a muscle is for a purpose, to achieve some goal. I step out at a busy station in Mumbai I get carried away by the crowd even if I was a reluctant walker.
The Subway - NYC Subway appeared old and tethering on brink of collapse. Mumbai feels the same yet its the lifeline of the city. I think in US there is New york and then there is rest of US. Very different pulse. Very different ppl.
Direct Talk - If they are pissed it'll come out, if they are happy it'll show. No apologies, don't come in my way if you dont want to get hurt. I have no time to explain, if you didn't get what I said, too bad.
Out doors- hawkers on the street, streets overflowing with ppl. I want to get across the road. Whats signal got to do with it? There is 2 and a quarter inch of space between two cars, can I squeeze in and pass through. Hey, the other lane is empty, lemme rush and fill up the vacuum. How dare you try get into my lane, ok get in after I've passed. 1 mile = 45 min
Night life - City never sleeps.
So much indifference, and yet, every now and then you'll find some one who would find time to help you, touch your life in a soothing way.
I loved NYC. I'm home!
Things that are similar
A melting pot- NYC is global melting pot while Mumbai is the most cosmopolitan city in desh. So may diff kinds of ppl living together harmoniously
Energy - The moment I stepped into NYC I felt as if I had entered an energy field. I get the same feeling in Mumbai. Everyone has an aggressive schedule to keep. Every twitch of a muscle is for a purpose, to achieve some goal. I step out at a busy station in Mumbai I get carried away by the crowd even if I was a reluctant walker.
The Subway - NYC Subway appeared old and tethering on brink of collapse. Mumbai feels the same yet its the lifeline of the city. I think in US there is New york and then there is rest of US. Very different pulse. Very different ppl.
Direct Talk - If they are pissed it'll come out, if they are happy it'll show. No apologies, don't come in my way if you dont want to get hurt. I have no time to explain, if you didn't get what I said, too bad.
Out doors- hawkers on the street, streets overflowing with ppl. I want to get across the road. Whats signal got to do with it? There is 2 and a quarter inch of space between two cars, can I squeeze in and pass through. Hey, the other lane is empty, lemme rush and fill up the vacuum. How dare you try get into my lane, ok get in after I've passed. 1 mile = 45 min
Night life - City never sleeps.
So much indifference, and yet, every now and then you'll find some one who would find time to help you, touch your life in a soothing way.
I loved NYC. I'm home!
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
NYC trip has been a strangely redeeming experience. All my life I'd heard abt the great city and blessed are the ones who get a chance to set foot in heaven...
So assuming a favorable planetary alignment and that this was our calling we planned our maiden trip to the east coast two months ahead. We even got a great deal at Travelocity and were set to dig into the big apple.
On the d-day, we stepped into winding check in line at American Airlines counter at the airport wondering how popular AA is amongst travelers. While other check in counters wore a deserted look, we had about 100 passengers ahead of us in AA check in queue. One look at the departures screen and mystery of AA's popularity was unraveled. 3 AA flights were cancelled and guess what, ours was one of them. Ouch!
Travelocity 1-800 numbers landed me in the hands of a eager representative in India. I explained my predicament and pleaded for help. The lady confirmed that mine was indeed a precarious situation with hotel and car bookings likely to go down the drain. The best she said she could offer were her prayers that I got onto the very next flight.
In the mean time AA circulated another 1-800 number to all the hapless passengers to call and negotiate the passage to their destinations based on availability on other AA flights. The 1-800 lady I narrated my misfortune to, put me on hold for 30 min before confirming that the earliest she could plant us on a flight to NYC was 2 days later. Well at least our assumption of AA's popularity was right!
Next step, call the hotels and plead with them. Last remember I pleaded my case this way was when I proposed to my wife. At least I was rewarded for the hardwork, but this time I just could not break the ice. The hotels refused to relent. Well two days rent down the drain. Boohoo!
But I get thats when I hit the bottom. From that point on I started bouncing back and the clouds started to lift...
Note: To be continued...
So assuming a favorable planetary alignment and that this was our calling we planned our maiden trip to the east coast two months ahead. We even got a great deal at Travelocity and were set to dig into the big apple.
On the d-day, we stepped into winding check in line at American Airlines counter at the airport wondering how popular AA is amongst travelers. While other check in counters wore a deserted look, we had about 100 passengers ahead of us in AA check in queue. One look at the departures screen and mystery of AA's popularity was unraveled. 3 AA flights were cancelled and guess what, ours was one of them. Ouch!
Travelocity 1-800 numbers landed me in the hands of a eager representative in India. I explained my predicament and pleaded for help. The lady confirmed that mine was indeed a precarious situation with hotel and car bookings likely to go down the drain. The best she said she could offer were her prayers that I got onto the very next flight.
In the mean time AA circulated another 1-800 number to all the hapless passengers to call and negotiate the passage to their destinations based on availability on other AA flights. The 1-800 lady I narrated my misfortune to, put me on hold for 30 min before confirming that the earliest she could plant us on a flight to NYC was 2 days later. Well at least our assumption of AA's popularity was right!
Next step, call the hotels and plead with them. Last remember I pleaded my case this way was when I proposed to my wife. At least I was rewarded for the hardwork, but this time I just could not break the ice. The hotels refused to relent. Well two days rent down the drain. Boohoo!
But I get thats when I hit the bottom. From that point on I started bouncing back and the clouds started to lift...
Note: To be continued...
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