Random things

* Well , an update from the previous post....Well it seems it is an original. But here is a background music which resembles the hutch ad.

* Meanwhile I managed to catch the movie "The Pink Panther" (the one by Steve Martin...I have heard that the Peter Sellers' version is better). I loved a few aspects of the movie (like the Hamburger scene) .... and the way they kind of make pun on the French way....If you can, try to catch the movie.

* Anyone is following IPL ? I will see from the semi-finals , I guess. I was initially angry with the team selection of Royal Challengers. But now I care a hoot for the team. After Dravid and Co. keeps losing,losing,losing,losing,losing,losing,losing,losing matches, I guess they can change their team motto to "They came, they saw, they lost". And the team name could be "Royal Losers" or Royally Challenged (LMAO) ?
Rajasthan Royals is my new favorite. So many unknowns in the team, yet such a nice performance.

* I had a look at the new BIAL airport, just timing from my house. The airport itself looks damn cool... It may be around 2.5 hours on a weekend. From Electronics City, it could be a different story altogether. Three hours minimum.

* I have noticed a growing trend. Being a Software Engineer in Bangalore for quite sometime, I feel, the Software Parks are decentralizing and many people are moving to the city closer to their homes. Chennai and Hyderabad are already established in the South. In the north, we have Gurgaon and Noida. Pune is also an option and for the Easterners Calcutta. Although I don't endorse any extremist views, I feel, finally after devouring Bangalore's infrastructure and after complaining endlessly, "India Inc." is decentralizing.

* I have been wondering about the term "individuality". What exactly is individuality ? Does it get killed by teamwork/environment which you live in ? In my opinion no man keeps his behaviour constant. Behaviour depends on environment. At least Sudeep in 2001 != Sudeep in 2008 (as far as behaviour, opinions is concerned)

* I was following some nondescript TV program in the morning. Heard that City Market was called Seegeballi in 1900s, which was an affluent residential cum commercial area at that time. There was a plague breakout during that time. The then Maharaja of Mysore asked the local vendors to move to beyond the hillocks...beyond a temple which we now know as "Bull Temple". The area was christened as NarasimhaRaja Colony in honor of the king. Thus NR Colony was born. The layout had site-rates of Rs.30 for a 40 x 60 site in NR Colony. Thats when gold was values at 8/- per souren.

* Some people are unbelievably innocent. I wonder how they lived for so many years ? I am still reeling in disbelief! Some people are methodical...They rigorously follow a something like a "ten-things-to-do-before-i-die" list and live by it. All the best for them....But also remember to take life as it comes :-) ...I am noticing a pattern in the human society. Everything is so inter-connected. A subject of another post when the thoughts are crystallized.

* Morning walks and runs are good fun.

Everyday

Have you seen the latest Vodafone ad ?

The Vodafone Customer Support guys (or rather, the guys who make the ads for Vodafone customer guys) need to pat themselves on their back. They have come up with the above very refreshing ad with a haunting , introspective music (with dollops of inspiration from Taare Zameen par). And the result is an amazing ad, which gives an assurance to a prospective customer of Vodafone Call Support. Don't ask about the reality though.

The famous Hutch "pug" dog is back.But this dog is really lovable...(a statement from a dog-avoider like me is worth considering.).The Hutch ads were good and the brand was pretty established....Some Vodafone ads are very good, but MANY of them are bad....They are really abstract orr some of them are irritating....The "Kabhi Kabhi Mere Dil Mein" ad and the "Pehla Nasha" ad were just screwed up.

But what attracts me to this ad, is the music.....Man!!! It's been quite sometime since I listened to something like this. Simple and lovely...

But something is enigmatic about this ad...Which song is this ? Who is the singer ? I tried all my googling skills to locate the singer or the song, but of no avail....Is it an original composition ? Such a lovely composition for a jingle ? Maybe it may be a song in some other language, which has been adapted into English...

Meanwhile I'll keep on singin' :

Everyday I want to fly, stay by my side,
Everyday I want to dream, stay by my side,
Every morning I wish I could just play,
wish the mornings would just stay.

Gandhi's dream

Almost every woman's dream, a free and safe india for the Fairer sex. Is it too much to ask for ??

Look at the following news from today's TOI. Its truly disgusting.. 12-year old, rape, murder .. can imprint horrifying images in your imagination. After the shameful incident in Goa a more henioius and shameful act. Whats with India, molestations and rapes that even cant spare children.. Sucks big time.

12-yr-old raped, murdered
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Bangalore: Enthusiastic about shopping for Monday’s Ugadi festival, she went to the market, never to return. A 12-year-old girl was allegedly raped and brutally murdered in Harohallli police limits in the Ramangaram rural limits on Saturday. The deceased was a student of class five in a government school in Harohalli. Police said the girl had gone to the market in the morning to buy neem for the Ugadi festival and went out again in the afternoon to buy mango leaves. When she didn’t return, her grandmother started searching for her. It was only on the afternoon of the following day that some passersby found her body in an eucalyptus bush, near Hosagabbadi. “The assailants had strangled her to death after raping her. The body has been shifted to Ramanagaram hospital for autopsy. We are questioning locals who had seen her in the afternoon,’’ police said. The girl was staying with her grandmother as her mother was working as a housemaid in Bangalore. Her father had passed away some time ago. Her mother used to visit Harohalli frequently, police added.

Time and Money..

or Time vs Money?? Doesnt matter. These two are inveresely proportional.
How much you earn depends on how much you work. We are hourly paid souls.
Our package is deterministically quantified in terms of time. Forget the official hours.
Those are just nominal anywhere in the world.

Heard that Infy had to pay overtime for its californian employees. What if such a legislation is bought everywhere???? I wish.

Coming to the matter of fact, I miss school and having time in my control part.
What I appreciate about work is cash flows. The money is certainly the thrill (job satisfaction is too... but nothing beats like money.)

So the search is for earning money but having Time in control. Time necessarily doesnt mean more time. I need Flex time. To all those souls who are searching jobs, take it slowly, enjoyy your holidays, vacation, leverage money and enjoy, cos once you start working you get sucked into to myraids of life and end as 'Evano Oruvan'. Job is a necessary evil.

Phd?????????????? in management sounds vague, but CK Prahalad, Michael Porter are inspirational. Phd should pay atleast 75% what the working environment pays. Today Phd renumeration is abysmal and it sucks. I know that money is not the motivation from researchers, but a pinch in the pocket might affect research output????? So richer, the better researcher you might end.

I am talking crap, time to stop now and get back to work

Invincibles Humbled..

This year seems to be a revalation in sports. Some of the greatest upsets

Aussies - defeated on homeland in one-days, if not for Bucknor even in Test matches.
Federer - Aussie open and lately Dubai Open
AC Milan - Defeated at home by Arsenal
Real Madrid - they are down from a long time, but it was Home again this time
Indian hockey - invincible in view of South Americans, humbled by England on SA soil (this really sucks)
on the borring part

I should have missed quite a few from the above list..

I-banks (not bankers) - badly humbled, and rite now screwing the economy
US GDP.. (from the past 4 years)

next to follow.. China, India????

Predictions
Olympics - China will stop US dominance??

A Day Lost

Happens somedays. At Infy it used to happen more (more at offshore).
It is one such day. Woke up late (8 am). Broke a tile. Reached office late. Dint do much.
Dint achieve much.

Lost, totally lost. I dint have any control or my browsing behavior.
Its mostly browse today.

Is this compensating for overdoing yday?? What is it?? Why do we lose days like this?

Simple - We are not machines............ Niether do we do mechanical work..

Some more minutes and am offf.. The Business is closing officially. Want to really call it off

After reading this, I feel sorry for the state of affairs (that a person may be hung to gain/offset some political mileage), at the same time, i cant help but appreciate the way things have unfolded.

Whoever is working on his case in cong is damn intelligent and cong has 'used' Afzal's case very well. I mean, look at it this way, had the govt not stalled his clemency petition and had they subscribed with supreme court's order, then not many would have noticed what happened. But they spotted an opportunity, they kept the mercy petition pending, allowed bjp to make noises abt the case, and donned the role of a govt which is considerate to minorities. Now, they have spotted that there is a chance of the issue backfiring, and they will do their best to prevent that. They basically played a game in which they had nothing to lose, only to gain, if at all. Contrast this with what bjp would have done and you would agree that cong indeed has 'seasoned' politicians.

Office outburst

It can happen to anybody and at anytime. Of course, some people get more angry than others and some people get more frequently angry than others. Some people's anger is harmless whereas some people might get outraged.

This becomes quite a concern at office since the bonding is restricted only to the work-ethics and sometime not even an ounce more than that. Moreover it can be detrimental to one's career and one has to be especially careful in this ugly maze of corporate structure.

First, let us just look from a person's perspective on what he should do when :-
a) He lets out an emotional outburst of anger on his superiors due to any reason.
b)His superior(s) let out an emotional outburst against him.

In the first scenario he should well know that his juttu is his superior's hands before getting angry. Sometimes, an individual might have decided to make himself angry because he controlled his anger on a previous occasion. Whatever it is, the body language indicates aggression and the words start coming out really fast from your mouth. In case, the anger cannot be controlled, my observation is this :-

It is best to make it up as quickly as possible, because it won't stay much time in people's minds

In the second scenario, if his superior(s) let out an outburst of anger against him especially with five other people who are rumor-starved by nature, the best way to deal with it is to have an informal chit-chat with his superior and discover why this happened at the first place.

The most important thing of the lot is understanding why both the sides (the employee and the managers) got angry and get into a problem-solving mode.

Finally, I also believe that if the mutual sides are intelligent (not foolhardy creatures) they can actually work-out a solution.

Happy Grrrrrr-ing :-) But don't become like that dean of Munnabhai......That's really stupid !!!!!

Happy new year everybody!

I had a quite new year party snoring away to glory awakened by those loud crackers. 2007 has been a good year, but then as 2008 starts off, there is quite a bit of apprehension for me on several factors which are currently occupying my mind.

First and foremost my mood is a "Bah!" mood today and a little lull. I do like holidays. But a lot of holidays (I've been having holidays since 21st december) just upsets the rhythm. I had planned about doing this and doing that...Maybe I did 20% of what I thought I would do. Wasted Vacation.But driving to Madikeri, Coorg and the Homestays was a good break from the routine.

As I finished my vacation and came home there was the naming ceremony of my niece. So she is named as "Richa".

Hmmmm and philosophy gets created due to those sad and dull moments too....One realization is that life gets more and more "dont-take-me-for-granted".... As Lennon said "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans".

I have two finite and specific resolutions in mind. And two abstract ones. Well....

Was it worth the sweat, sleep, and stocks?

Dec 14th, the day when I ended my MBA, atleast from my side. I completed my last presentation of my last project and there by ending a roller-coaster ride of 16 months. Looking back was it one of my best decisions? Who knows, opportunity cost cannot be measured ? Really ? NO

Here are some positives
- A psychopathic (not Psychological) relief of being away from Infosys and its politics (onsite, offshore, hierarchy, blah blah blah)
- Alienating myself for IT (application development), which my colleagues used to treat
as a matter of life and death (may be thats what is required to excel, which I never could
attain)
- A new world of fuzzy knowledge - I love this , this is my domain, there is no single
correct answer. Anything and everything is dependent on perspectives. This models real life.
This is where the action is. Returns are correlated to risk and you chose your path in
decision making
- Analytics and problem solving are key
- Socializing is a bane though, which I have avoided to the maximum so far
- Traveling to different countries was fun, will do more of it in the future
- An opportunity wide open to explore Asia fully, North, east, south and west
- A possible travel to different continents (africa-egypt, Aus -nZ, South America-Chile, NA- Canada Trinidad and Tobago)
- High expectations, hope they get delivered
- A lot on personal front - its personal rite...no more explanations

From Jan 14th it shall be a new day, a new life.
Until then holidays.. ( just one more week of erratic sleep and stock selling)

Taare Zameen Par

One line advice - Don't miss it.

Its CLASSIC

Phewww, just incredible.

Are bankers paid to bring down the Economy

In the earlier years of this century, there was a dramatic shift in the finance industry. Actually the pre-cursor was set in the 1990s. Prestigious banks started to face competition from boutique companies and independent financial firms, many of which were established by ex-employees of these big banks. The innovation in products in the big banks were slowing down, and these smaller firms were creating newer attractive products. The big banks had the customers and smaller guys had the most creative products.

So an era of "open innovation" started, where the big banks started adopting the creation of the smaller banks, by distributing the products from these smaller guys. Previously the industry used to be rewarded based on the %age of returns they generated. But now, this could not be done anymore with the big banks having no rights on the products returns. This probably gave rise to the new way of compensating managers - %age of assets managed.

With this new compensation structure, bankers were pushed to sell more and more, and accumulate assets rather than concentrating on returns. The amalgamation of different industry players left customers with few choices of going elsewhere and look for people who had a different structure of operations. Almost all banks issued 3rd party products.

Well bankers kept on innovating products by wrapping up different layers of structured financial methods. One such product is the CDO - collateralized debt obligations. With the compensation structure tied to assets, all it mattered was raising money. The process of due diligence took a back seat. Evaluations were left to third parties. Bad debts were projected as AAA securities and sold to investors. The frenzy caught on, and no banks could resist such an opportunity.

It is estimated that in the $15 trillion US debt industry (this itself is a staggering number) 20% is subprime (not only mortgage it includes everything from credit card, car loans, student loans etc) and in this 90% is bad debt, which will be written down mostly. That mean nearly $2.5 trillion. Till now the total write down is around $100 billion probably. So there is still a lot to come. Embrace bankers embrace. The numbers might be wrong, but it is still huge.

The question is are bankers paid to bring down the Economy?
- the Internet bubble, where the banks issues so many overhyped IPOs
- Now the housing market

History repeats for sure in the banking industry, and mistakes are soon forgotten. Whats the next frenzy wave boys?

disclaimer - this is totally out of my ignorance. I might be grossly wrong

After one really hectic week I am back on a saturday blogging about things happened/happening. First things first. I thiunk Richie will be in India this week. With four of us here, it would be a nice December season. Nothing much happening in life. Mysore Tata, I love you and I am grateful to you.

I am expecting major team changes in the beginning of the first quarter in 2008. Let's see how this whole thing goes. Keeping my fingers crossed! Work had quite a bit of a lull this week and me committing a stupid compile break because of a CFLAG. This whole compile-break issue has been bloated and blown out of proportion. Hmm. It is strange that each manager or client has his own philosophy. Some people prefer Timeliness over quality in Software, and some people prefer quality over timeliness. I am good at delivereing first and keeping on adding patches , but I have to get used to the people who want things picture perfect at first shot.Change is constant in life and we have to learn to move on.

Caught up with Om Shanthi Om. Didn't like it so much, because I was aware of almost all the gags. Ruchira has started driving the car around everywhere in the first and second gear. Thats about from me now .... signing off with work increasing exponentially (for sure) the next week ....
:-(

TWTW (The week that was)

Better late than never....

Because of blogger and blogspot being blocked in office, it has become quite a task to blog!!!!

The beginning of this week I had been to three weddings all in and around Shimoga. The beginning of this week , witnessed a lot of different bakshagaLu and tested my gastronomic limits.

The creme-de-la-creme was me having a little bit of tambaaku (with some excruciatingly fiery betel leaves) unknowingly. It was like a shot in the head to say the least.

Last week, Tejaswi, Kumar and me packed our bags to Shivamogga, Nadahalli and the nearby places. I will upload a few photos for your viewing. We had been to Teju's very old house in Nadahalli. (the above one).

Teju had a quiet birthday , most of it was celebrated using phone calls ... :-)

There are a lot of things to say abt the trip, but I gotta go !!!

State of Higher Education in India

Stumbled on this article on Outlook.

http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20071122&fname=harsh&sid=1

Found this piece of cliched quote and stopped reading further

"If we leave aside the IITs, the IIMs, and some other institutions such as the AIIMs, the Indian Institute of Science, and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, we will find a higher education sector that is increasingly unwilling and unable to bear the weight of the rising expectations of an emerging India. "

Agreed IITs and IIMs are institutes of High reputation which have contributed greatly to the Academic circles and the industry, but there are people from other institutes too who have made some kind of contribution. What about the IISc, the RECs(NITs), the UVCEs and RVCEs of different states, the Delhi university, ISBs, SPJAINs, FMSes etc? and the many numerous schools of a decent reputation?

Enough of cliche. The obsession of maintaining exclusivity of IITs and IIMs have really crippled the higher education system, and limited the infrastructure for many talented students. ( I think this is what the author is cribbing about). 2 lakh people for 2000 seats for IIMs? That sucks really. It presumes the 97 percentiles are not worthy enough compared to the 99s. I do not know if it is the lack of infrastructure, or the mentality of maintaining EXCLUSIVITY that is more prevalent or both.

Dont Repeat the Same Mistake..

Is an advice almost provided by everyone, but rarely followed. If rumors were to be true, Yahoo really paid a high price by doing it

First before 1997, the founders of Google went to Yahoo for a seed money for the search technology. Yahoo did not believe there is a market for information searching, as they were overwhelmed by banner ads. - Well this is part of history Google boasts on its website

Second time, Yahoo had an option to buy Google for $1billion in 2003 before the high-profile Google IPO. Rumors has it Yahoo dint acknowledge Google was worth it and some bankers were behind the deal being withered out

Hmm.. same mistake baby (well almost)

Sustainable prod development - REally funny

TOday we had a class on Sustainable product development. The professor presented some envelopes made up of papers from used magazines and commended on the creatitivy of the person who did this. She was so amazed of this massive reusability, recycling whatever she coined it and passed the envelopes around the class to have a deep look into it :-).

I found it really funny. This is a huge industry in India Damnit :D

Read This Please :-)

Think it is a good post in response to Consumerism :-)

FLAT WORLD

America needs a ‘patriot tax’ on gasoline

THOMAS L FRIEDMAN

Two dates — two numbers. Read them and weep for what could have, and should have, been. On Sept 11, 2001, the OPEC basket oil price was $25.50 a barrel. On Nov 13, 2007, the OPEC basket price was around $90 a barrel.
In the wake of 9/11, some of us pleaded for a ‘‘patriot tax’’ on gasoline of $1 or more a gallon to diminish the transfers of wealth we were making to the very countries who were indirectly financing the ideologies of intolerance that were killing Americans and in order to spur innovation in energy efficiency by US manufacturers.
But no, George Bush and Dick Cheney had a better idea. And the Democrats went along for the ride. You’d think that one person, just one, running for Congress or the Senate would take a flier and say: ‘‘Oh, what the heck. I’m going to lose anyway. Why not tell the truth? I’ll support a gasoline tax.’’
Not one. Everyone just runs away from the ‘T-word’ and watches our wealth run away to Russia, Venezuela and Iran. I can’t believe that someone could not win the following debate: Republican Candidate: ‘‘My Democratic opponent, true to form, wants to raise your taxes. Yes, now he wants to raise your taxes at the gasoline pump by $1 a gallon. Another tax-and-spend liberal who wants to get into your pocket.’’ Democratic Candidate: ‘‘Yes, my opponent is right. I do favour a gasoline tax phased in over 12 months. But let’s get one thing straight: My opponent and i are both for a tax. I just prefer that my taxes go to the US Treasury, and he’s ready to see his go to the Russian, Venezuelan, Saudi and Iranian treasuries. His tax finances people who hate us. Mine would offset some of our payroll taxes, pay down our deficit, strengthen our dollar, stimulate energy efficiency and shore up Social Security. It’s called win-winwin-win-win for America. My opponent’s strategy is sit back, let the market work and watch America lose-lose-lose-lose-lose.’’ If you can’t win that debate, you don’t belong in politics.
‘‘Think about it,’’ says Phil Verleger, an energy economist. ‘‘We could have replaced the current payroll tax with a gasoline tax. Middle-class consumers would have seen increased take-home pay of 6-9%, they would have had to pay more at the pump. A stronger foundation for future economic growth would have been laid by keeping more oil revenue home, and we might not now be facing a recession.’’
As a higher gas tax discouraged oil consumption, the Harvard University economist and former Bush adviser N Gregory Mankiw has argued: ‘‘the price of oil would fall in world markets. As a result, the price of gas to (US) consumers would rise by less than the increase in the tax. Some of the tax would in effect be paid by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.’’
But US consumers would have known that, with a higher gasoline tax locked in for good, pump prices would never be going back to the old days, adds Verleger, so they would have a much stronger incentive to switch to more fuelefficient vehicles and Detroit would have had to make more hybrids to survive. This would have put Detroit five years ahead of where it is now.
We simply cannot go on being as dumb as we wanna be. If you hate the war in Iraq, then you want a gasoline tax so you can argue that we can pull out of there without remaining dependent on an even more unstable region.
If you want to see America thrive by becoming the most energy productive economy in the world — a title that now belongs to Japan, which doesn’t have a drop of oil in its soil — you want a gasoline tax, which will only spur US innovation in energy efficiency.
NYT NEWS SERVICE

Consumerism

I am writing this out of sheer desperation of doing something different for the day, apart from browsing, refreshing inboxes, and surfing channels. It has really been killing :D

The fear is officially declared. Americans are spending less due to various things credit turmoil and rising oil costs being at the forefront. There is no dreadful event as this one - Americans spending less. Worldwide companies, governments, and now a days even ordinary people are worried about this phenomenon and this clearly sucks.

Here is a sect of people who are over draft on their credit, and enjoying a quality of life better than majority of people across the world. And the people supplying Americans are worried, working hard, in order to give these people a over decent life. (much more than they deserve)

With almost no savings and drawing heavy personal debts on undervalued assets, the life enjoyed by the people here is unrivaled. Their consumption cannot be satisfied. They never have heard of conservation, efficiency and similar words. This leaves the whole burden on the companies to innovate incessantly to produce products which can be suited to this consuming behavior and indeed achieve sustainability too.

Lets talk about the energy crisis. With crude kissing $100/barrel, what should be the focus ?
The Energy efficiency bill has so much hurdles getting approved. Everyone blames the Auto and Oil companies for this. But I think deep under its the attitude of American consumers which drivers the Auto/Oil companies not to think of Efficiency.

Now this has given some explosive growth to alternative energy systems in the US, ranging from Solar to biofuels. Somewhere it is wrong economics and somewhere else its rattling the food markets. But who cares of millions of hunger stomachs across the world, compared to vrooming SUVs across the roads of the US. Even people like Mr. Vinod Khosla is pitching so hard for Bio-fuels ignoring the fact that Bio fuels like oil is a global market and will disrupt food markets across the world. Well who cares? When bio-fuel is pitched it is all about energy security, farmers in the US, Green House Gases etc. Who cares what happens to other parts of the world.

Americans are overdrafted and its high-time they spend less and concentrate on savings, efficiency, preserving etc etc etc as there is not enough money to lend more for bad assets.

Spending without having money is stupid, but this country is currently having a gala time.

Diwali

Happy Diwali guys!!!

It was a great 3 day fun starting from Thursday and I had a gala time. Super oota for three days but very loud and noisy diwali everywhere here in Bangalore.

For me, it was the first diwali and it was fun and nice too. Two weeks ago I drove to Hosur, bought MANY crackers at 95% discount and also got a taste of Electronic City traffic. The elevated highway is a huuuuge project (it is more than 8kms, I guess) and the government has done a wise thing by splitting the project by giving it to 4 different contractors. There will be mutual competition and nobody can give a silly reason and escape.

Also, as I have seen many diwalis in my life, I notice that the crackers are getting more innovative every year. Nowadays, Diwali is not just about flower-pot, sur-sur bhatthi and lakshmi pataaki. There are much more innovative stuff. The Standard Fireworks factory has tied up with Chinese firecracker companies and have started crackers which launch something and there is an aerial display of color.

But of course, there is a lot of noise and smoke. I feel very bad about the pollution levels in the city. There are assurances that the noise levels are not more than some prescribed limit of decibels and there are prints saying that no child labor has been exploited. But something has to be done about the smoke. Or I guess, we should start using less fireworks ?

And this weekend, managed to catch the movie "Wag the Dog" on DVD. It's been quite a while since I watched an English movie and enjoyed it. If you find it , it's worth watching.Today there's Teja's wedding. Hope Kummi's Electra 5s has arrived. I am looking forward to see Kummi on it.

Small notes for memory's sake! :-

• Chola Batoora - Day0 with kalsdanna for Dinner
  
• Bisibelebaath, Holige and champaakali - Day1 (Naraka Chaturdashi)
  
• Veg Ravioli Tomato Sauce and Banana Walnut Cake - Day 3 (At Herbs and Spices, Indiranagar)
  
• Gobi Mutter and Chapathi - Day 3 (Bali padya)

Next week we have booked a rail ticket for Shimoga, in view of Avinash, Harsha Ramangagoudr's wedding. And hoping to enjoy some Nadahalli food also.