Started reading a hindi book after a long time.
Some background. I have this background thread in mind reflecting continuously on my western persona - the books I read, the music/movies I watch, my education, thought process, views, my job, language, dressing etc etc. So I get into these phases where I try to get out of that mode and search for the "Indianness" in me.
The first of these bouts started when I was in the first year of my engineering. I started reading a lot of hindi literature - Premchand, Gandhi par punarvichar (Osho) to name a few. Heck, I even found an old copy of Kalidas' (or was it Tulsidas) Shakuntala lying around and the read the whole thing in verse!
So now I am elated to find this book after a long gap, recommended by my dear friend P - Volga Se Ganga by Rahul Sankrityayan. Its a historical novel about the journey of nomadic Aryans from upper Volga through to the Gangetic plains of India. Some of the words are hard to understand but it's pretty interesting so far.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Just finished reading this interesting book. Even if I hadn't read its reviews earlier, it's intriguing name was enough for me to give it a go.
There are four main characters in the book. All are leading confused lives, kind of and their destinies are a result of coincidental macro and micro happenstances. The central character in the book, Thomas, is a confused, likable and incorrigible womanizer.
At times Kundera starts talking about himself or speculating about the characters as if they had life outside of his own imagination. For example, at some point in the novel he goes: "Even I find it difficult to explain what she felt ..". Or another time "I think Tereza's problems were due to .. had it been otherwise..". Funny.
Some of the passages in the book were so compelling that I had to keep a pencil ready so that I could mark them and go back to them when I felt like. Many other times I couldn't figure out if Kundera was being just flippant or dead serious.
All in all there is not a thick plot to speak of. Its somewhat of a character study on the backdrop of philosophical mind benders.
Sometimes Kundera just leaves off the character's stories and gets into his opinions on their conditions and fate, and starts relating to his personal philosophy. Other times he starts advocating some concepts using the characters conditions for example the whole section on "A short dictionary of misunderstood words".
One thing that he has done very well is to bring out the suffocative era of Russian and Czech communism. I had read "The Master and Margarita" a while back and it was supposed to be excellent in that regard but I didn't think much of it. This was way better.
Though notwithstanding this passage mocking rich capitalistic nations:
Another witty philosophical observations I couldnt help underlining:
There is also a strong "franco nature" to the novel, where arbitrary quirks in characters play an important part (think Amelie).
All in all an interesting read if one wants reflect as much as read every once in a while. The kind I like to read.
There are four main characters in the book. All are leading confused lives, kind of and their destinies are a result of coincidental macro and micro happenstances. The central character in the book, Thomas, is a confused, likable and incorrigible womanizer.
At times Kundera starts talking about himself or speculating about the characters as if they had life outside of his own imagination. For example, at some point in the novel he goes: "Even I find it difficult to explain what she felt ..". Or another time "I think Tereza's problems were due to .. had it been otherwise..". Funny.
Some of the passages in the book were so compelling that I had to keep a pencil ready so that I could mark them and go back to them when I felt like. Many other times I couldn't figure out if Kundera was being just flippant or dead serious.
All in all there is not a thick plot to speak of. Its somewhat of a character study on the backdrop of philosophical mind benders.
Sometimes Kundera just leaves off the character's stories and gets into his opinions on their conditions and fate, and starts relating to his personal philosophy. Other times he starts advocating some concepts using the characters conditions for example the whole section on "A short dictionary of misunderstood words".
One thing that he has done very well is to bring out the suffocative era of Russian and Czech communism. I had read "The Master and Margarita" a while back and it was supposed to be excellent in that regard but I didn't think much of it. This was way better.
Though notwithstanding this passage mocking rich capitalistic nations:
When a society is rich, its people don't need to work with their hands; they can devote themselves to activities of the spirit. We have more and more universities and more and more students. If students are going to earn degrees, they've got to come up with dissertation topics. And since dissertations can be written about everything under the sun, the number of topics is infinite. Sheets of paper covered with words pile up in archives sadder that cemeteries, because no one ever visits them, not even on All Souls' Day. Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity. That's why one banned book in your former country means infinitely more than the billions of words spewed out by our universities.
Another witty philosophical observations I couldnt help underlining:
Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).
There is also a strong "franco nature" to the novel, where arbitrary quirks in characters play an important part (think Amelie).
All in all an interesting read if one wants reflect as much as read every once in a while. The kind I like to read.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Is India overheating?
NY Times wrote in Feb 2007
Economist thought similar. An excerpt which also highlights my dissatisfaction with the Indian media:
In Feb 2007, the index was hovering around 14-14.25k. Today it is ranging between 18-19k.
At the present, our own Rakesh Jhunjhunwala predicts that markets will reach 50k levels in 6-7 years.
All this lead me to asking, how much water do these observations by journals of such repute hold? For some perspective, lets turn our attention to this nice summary from rediff in Jan 2005 vis-a-vis predictions from top international brokerages on the Indian markets in 2004 and 2005. Notice the cautionary tone exercised by most of these firms. Most of them were predicting the markets to go from 5k to 6-6.5k in Jan 2005. These targets were revised downwards in the middle of the year when markets plunged and confidence evaporated.
The markets closed that year at around 9k levels. Furthermore, notwithstanding the cautionary tales, it hasn't looked back since, ignoring the occasional drop of 10%, and is today at 19k levels! One naturally wonders, did these guys know any better than your grandma or that paan shop owner down the street who constantly issues unsolicited market commentary with equal confidence?
So, who does one rely on to get some advice on investing at the present time in the Indian market, in view of such erratic judgements from leading professionals?
More thoughts on this in the next post.
But now, after three years of near double-digit growth, signs of a potentially dangerous inflationary spiral are beginning to emerge. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his closest economic advisors gathered just last weekend over fears that India’s extraordinary economic expansion was starting to overheat, an issue they labeled as a “key short-term priority.”
They may have waited too long. Food prices are climbing for everything from lentils to onions, squeezing the poor. Apartment rents and prices are rising steeply, especially in large cities. Factories that make the country’s increasingly ubiquitous motorcycles are running at full tilt and have still fallen weeks behind in meeting orders from dealers.
Economist thought similar. An excerpt which also highlights my dissatisfaction with the Indian media:
A recent study from Goldman Sachs, which forecast that India could sustain 8% growth until 2020, was widely trumpeted in Indian newspapers. However, the bank's report clearly stated that this would require better education, labour market reforms and less red tape. Oddly, most newspapers failed to mention that.
In Feb 2007, the index was hovering around 14-14.25k. Today it is ranging between 18-19k.
At the present, our own Rakesh Jhunjhunwala predicts that markets will reach 50k levels in 6-7 years.
All this lead me to asking, how much water do these observations by journals of such repute hold? For some perspective, lets turn our attention to this nice summary from rediff in Jan 2005 vis-a-vis predictions from top international brokerages on the Indian markets in 2004 and 2005. Notice the cautionary tone exercised by most of these firms. Most of them were predicting the markets to go from 5k to 6-6.5k in Jan 2005. These targets were revised downwards in the middle of the year when markets plunged and confidence evaporated.
The markets closed that year at around 9k levels. Furthermore, notwithstanding the cautionary tales, it hasn't looked back since, ignoring the occasional drop of 10%, and is today at 19k levels! One naturally wonders, did these guys know any better than your grandma or that paan shop owner down the street who constantly issues unsolicited market commentary with equal confidence?
So, who does one rely on to get some advice on investing at the present time in the Indian market, in view of such erratic judgements from leading professionals?
More thoughts on this in the next post.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Apple
I am considering adding Apple (aapl) to my portfolio. Here are some of the reasons for the record.
A dear friend of mine who works in a big bay area chip company suspects that Apple is on to something big. Apple is a client of theirs and they have ordered chips which combine three different functionality in a chip which has never been done before. One of these is bluetooth so you get the picture where it is headed.
I don't see anyone getting tired of updating ipods. I probably am the owner of the oldest ipod on earth from the prehistoric era. It is a 15GB first gen brick from Apple for which I paid upwards of $350. At the time I bought it, to say that it was a head turner it would be a gross understatement. It was an eye-popping, saliva-inducing, heartbeat-skipping, reality distorting instrument just as intended by Steve Jobs. And even though it serves my music needs still, I feel a bit awkward carrying it around. Its like a gorgeous mistress that has grown old and ugly and more of an embarrassment to keep. We live in such times! The new ipods, well, they get sexier by the day not just in style but in functionality as well and are merging with cell phones, video, and what not.
Iphones - Most of the issues with the iphone is lack of 3rd party software due to proprietary format and lack of Java Runtime on the phone. Though I think that is a concern, but maybe not so for the not-techie masses. And even for techies like me the sex appeal of the phone masks this shortcoming. Proprietary formats haven't stopped the Itunes and Ipods form becoming a success for sure. And it aligns well with Apple's philosophy, do a few things, keep it simple but do them very well.
Network partners like ATnT in the US are paying hefty fees for each iphone sales to Apple and this should generate a good revenue source. Not sure if this is a better strategy then tying with all the networks and accessing larger markets with small commissions per phone, time will tell. But there might be more than meets the eye here, maybe Apple plans its own network in the future. Kind of redo the synergy between the Itunes and Ipod?
As a side note, emerging markets might have a great growth potential for the likes of Apple. The well-healed in India seem to be crazy about gadgets, especially cell phones. With rising incomes and dispensable spending power, a rising rupee, and a rapidly growing consumerist economy, the growth projections in these markets might be a tad short of reality.
Another side note, well maybe not so much a side note, there is something to say about the mushrooming satellite industry around ipods like chargers, car adapters, speakers, audio systems, etc. Even the newer luxury cars come with ipod compatible features. Even a few airlines are integrating ipods with their in-flight entertainment systems.
Apple earns more on the Macs then the Ipods with something like 40% y-o-y growth. I had always lusted after Mac Mini. But it seems to be passe now, I hear talk about Mac Nano. I do love my Macbook though and I think the growth will continue especially more so after Mac OS X Leapord comes out next week. From what I hear, Vista has taken a beating so far and old timers still prefer using XP to Vista, this might be a great opportunity for Apple to gain some turf in the OS arena. And one can run Windows on the Macs but not run OS X on PCs so there.
Is this the tipping point for Apple?
The risks
Obviously Stevie is a central point of failure. If anything were to happen to him, it might be hard to replace him.
More of the obvious, competition is immense, be it cell phones, mp3 players, etc. Apples success depends on staying ahead of the curve, exemplary marketing and brand management and a constant slew of amazing products with a little RDF thrown in.
My reality perception might have been severely distorted by Apple (read Steve Jobs) and others might recover faster from their hallucinations while I pump my hard earned money into this thing.
I haven't done much of fundamental, technical analysis of this stock but just a quick few notes.
The PEG ratio for Apple is 2.03 which is pretty high.
Macro economically, the US markets have been in a bull run for the last 4+ years. Faceobooks apps are selling for millions. All this is somewhat reminiscent for the dot com bubble and makes me queasy. I started investing at the height of the bubble in summer 2000 and bought tech companies like Cisco, Sun, AOL, Qualcomm etc! All above 100$. The idea was to buy and hold good companies for long periods and reap benefits. I had put in roughly 2000$ which became a couple hundreds after the bust and even in 2005 they amounted to around 600$.
The lesson learnt is that if the markets go for a free fall then no matter how good your holdings are, you might be looking at a loss for even long time periods. So I will buy some Apple but with a trailing stop loss of around 15%. Go Apple.
A dear friend of mine who works in a big bay area chip company suspects that Apple is on to something big. Apple is a client of theirs and they have ordered chips which combine three different functionality in a chip which has never been done before. One of these is bluetooth so you get the picture where it is headed.
I don't see anyone getting tired of updating ipods. I probably am the owner of the oldest ipod on earth from the prehistoric era. It is a 15GB first gen brick from Apple for which I paid upwards of $350. At the time I bought it, to say that it was a head turner it would be a gross understatement. It was an eye-popping, saliva-inducing, heartbeat-skipping, reality distorting instrument just as intended by Steve Jobs. And even though it serves my music needs still, I feel a bit awkward carrying it around. Its like a gorgeous mistress that has grown old and ugly and more of an embarrassment to keep. We live in such times! The new ipods, well, they get sexier by the day not just in style but in functionality as well and are merging with cell phones, video, and what not.
Iphones - Most of the issues with the iphone is lack of 3rd party software due to proprietary format and lack of Java Runtime on the phone. Though I think that is a concern, but maybe not so for the not-techie masses. And even for techies like me the sex appeal of the phone masks this shortcoming. Proprietary formats haven't stopped the Itunes and Ipods form becoming a success for sure. And it aligns well with Apple's philosophy, do a few things, keep it simple but do them very well.
Network partners like ATnT in the US are paying hefty fees for each iphone sales to Apple and this should generate a good revenue source. Not sure if this is a better strategy then tying with all the networks and accessing larger markets with small commissions per phone, time will tell. But there might be more than meets the eye here, maybe Apple plans its own network in the future. Kind of redo the synergy between the Itunes and Ipod?
As a side note, emerging markets might have a great growth potential for the likes of Apple. The well-healed in India seem to be crazy about gadgets, especially cell phones. With rising incomes and dispensable spending power, a rising rupee, and a rapidly growing consumerist economy, the growth projections in these markets might be a tad short of reality.
Another side note, well maybe not so much a side note, there is something to say about the mushrooming satellite industry around ipods like chargers, car adapters, speakers, audio systems, etc. Even the newer luxury cars come with ipod compatible features. Even a few airlines are integrating ipods with their in-flight entertainment systems.
Apple earns more on the Macs then the Ipods with something like 40% y-o-y growth. I had always lusted after Mac Mini. But it seems to be passe now, I hear talk about Mac Nano. I do love my Macbook though and I think the growth will continue especially more so after Mac OS X Leapord comes out next week. From what I hear, Vista has taken a beating so far and old timers still prefer using XP to Vista, this might be a great opportunity for Apple to gain some turf in the OS arena. And one can run Windows on the Macs but not run OS X on PCs so there.
Is this the tipping point for Apple?
The risks
Obviously Stevie is a central point of failure. If anything were to happen to him, it might be hard to replace him.
More of the obvious, competition is immense, be it cell phones, mp3 players, etc. Apples success depends on staying ahead of the curve, exemplary marketing and brand management and a constant slew of amazing products with a little RDF thrown in.
My reality perception might have been severely distorted by Apple (read Steve Jobs) and others might recover faster from their hallucinations while I pump my hard earned money into this thing.
I haven't done much of fundamental, technical analysis of this stock but just a quick few notes.
The PEG ratio for Apple is 2.03 which is pretty high.
Macro economically, the US markets have been in a bull run for the last 4+ years. Faceobooks apps are selling for millions. All this is somewhat reminiscent for the dot com bubble and makes me queasy. I started investing at the height of the bubble in summer 2000 and bought tech companies like Cisco, Sun, AOL, Qualcomm etc! All above 100$. The idea was to buy and hold good companies for long periods and reap benefits. I had put in roughly 2000$ which became a couple hundreds after the bust and even in 2005 they amounted to around 600$.
The lesson learnt is that if the markets go for a free fall then no matter how good your holdings are, you might be looking at a loss for even long time periods. So I will buy some Apple but with a trailing stop loss of around 15%. Go Apple.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Laga Chunri Mein Daag
I went to the movie with some expectations, mainly because ok Konkana Sen, and she definitely didn't disappoint. The movie though was just average. The opening shots of Benaras was ethereal and were living up to my expectations but as the movie progressed, I was forcefully taken for an emotional roller coaster where mostly I was screaming out of misery rather than fun.
The goods
Konkana Sen, she just shines throughout the movie. A very natural and consummate actress indeed. Some of the cinematography is decent.
The bads
The sudden transformation of the girls from naive benarasi girls to hip mumbai babes was amusing, to put it mildly. Subtle character transformations is what I appreciate in movies not effortless wishy-washy stuff.
Jaya Bachchan should do herself and others a service and retire. (I digress, but same goes for Amitabh, though he has some time remaining.)
The Hip-hop song in benaras towards the end, whats up with that?
What a beautiful coincidence, Abhishek B is our cool dude's brother!
Too tired to continue this review, dont think it was worth reviewing anyways. Later.
The goods
Konkana Sen, she just shines throughout the movie. A very natural and consummate actress indeed. Some of the cinematography is decent.
The bads
The sudden transformation of the girls from naive benarasi girls to hip mumbai babes was amusing, to put it mildly. Subtle character transformations is what I appreciate in movies not effortless wishy-washy stuff.
Jaya Bachchan should do herself and others a service and retire. (I digress, but same goes for Amitabh, though he has some time remaining.)
The Hip-hop song in benaras towards the end, whats up with that?
What a beautiful coincidence, Abhishek B is our cool dude's brother!
Too tired to continue this review, dont think it was worth reviewing anyways. Later.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
BSE close to 19k!
The BSE is flirting with 19k levels. Just last month it had dipped to 13k levels following the subprime debacle ripples. I missed the boat then since I did not have a DMAT account at the time which in turn was due to the fact that I did not have a PAN card.
I immediately applied for a PAN card then and now am the proud owner of one. Its real nice and shiny. But I still don't have a DMAT account. I researched a bit online and came across quite a few frustrated ICICI dmat customers so have decided not to go ahead with that. (I have an ICICI savings as well as a NRE account). I have narrowed down on Reliance and Kotak, leaning a bit towards reliance though.
Might not invest right away after opening the account, since the market is perched so high. But its impossible to tell if it will have a major correction before continuing its climb to newer heights. The correction, when and if it happens, might be in value or it time. That is it might lie low at a level (say 18k) for a long while before restoring its upwards momentum, in that case it will be foolish to wait for it to fall down to say 16k before investing in it, since that will lead to missing out on another short bull run. So I will probably enter the market but with strict trailing loss orders so as not to get caught unawares during a free fall.
Apart from the market the Indian economy is rocking. While in the US, it was hard to take the media on its word, but I am now witnessing it first hand. The market may be overpriced in some experts view but over the long term there is tremendous growth potential in India. Much of the India development story has been touted aplenty already so let me note just one important phenomenon I noticed here:
The parallel economy (read: black market) in India is HUGE. My brush with the real estate market in Indore opened my eyes to the fact that most RE deals have a larger component in black then in white. People are rich here more that one would gather from available data. That black component means thousands of crores of INRs in a II tier city like Indore! The impact of that will be very significant in the years to come.
Anyway, for now, I will run to the nearest Reliance money outlet and get myself a DMAT account, nice and shiny.
I immediately applied for a PAN card then and now am the proud owner of one. Its real nice and shiny. But I still don't have a DMAT account. I researched a bit online and came across quite a few frustrated ICICI dmat customers so have decided not to go ahead with that. (I have an ICICI savings as well as a NRE account). I have narrowed down on Reliance and Kotak, leaning a bit towards reliance though.
Might not invest right away after opening the account, since the market is perched so high. But its impossible to tell if it will have a major correction before continuing its climb to newer heights. The correction, when and if it happens, might be in value or it time. That is it might lie low at a level (say 18k) for a long while before restoring its upwards momentum, in that case it will be foolish to wait for it to fall down to say 16k before investing in it, since that will lead to missing out on another short bull run. So I will probably enter the market but with strict trailing loss orders so as not to get caught unawares during a free fall.
Apart from the market the Indian economy is rocking. While in the US, it was hard to take the media on its word, but I am now witnessing it first hand. The market may be overpriced in some experts view but over the long term there is tremendous growth potential in India. Much of the India development story has been touted aplenty already so let me note just one important phenomenon I noticed here:
The parallel economy (read: black market) in India is HUGE. My brush with the real estate market in Indore opened my eyes to the fact that most RE deals have a larger component in black then in white. People are rich here more that one would gather from available data. That black component means thousands of crores of INRs in a II tier city like Indore! The impact of that will be very significant in the years to come.
Anyway, for now, I will run to the nearest Reliance money outlet and get myself a DMAT account, nice and shiny.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Siddhartha
Just finished reading this marvelous book and I wonder why I never got on my hands on it before. It definitely belongs in my top ten reads of all times.
The book resonated with me thoroughly. Lots of abstractions and vague notions that keep flitting through my head found such crisp expression in this book, I was completely vowed. The way Siddhartha refuses to accept teachers, the notion of experiencing the material world first before realizing the essence of spirituality, and the final stages where he insinuates the futility of words and thoughts (intellect) which just act as a barrier to enlightenment and spirituality are somethings I have always felt deep down.
Fascinating that Herman Hesse, a german, captures the Indian philosophy so well and expresses it so clearly.
On to The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The book resonated with me thoroughly. Lots of abstractions and vague notions that keep flitting through my head found such crisp expression in this book, I was completely vowed. The way Siddhartha refuses to accept teachers, the notion of experiencing the material world first before realizing the essence of spirituality, and the final stages where he insinuates the futility of words and thoughts (intellect) which just act as a barrier to enlightenment and spirituality are somethings I have always felt deep down.
Fascinating that Herman Hesse, a german, captures the Indian philosophy so well and expresses it so clearly.
On to The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Cool New way to Travel
I stumbled upon these travel podcasts from individuals and travel companies which you can download on to your mp3 player and take them with you. Its nice not having to carry heavy books around. Its more flexible than a guided tour since you can pause and rewind at any time. Some links:
I am also glad I bought the Sansa Express instead of the IPOD shuffle. The ability to tune in to FM anywhere, the plain mp3 file format and being able to use it as a wireless USB drive is neat.
Blogged with Flock
Monday, June 04, 2007
Tube Surprise
After a long day of loitering around London, I got on to the tube from Victoria terminal heading towards Green Park and eventually take the Jublie line to Kingsbury, the station after Wembley Park where the England Vs Brazil soccer match was to be played at 7.30 pm.
Obviously, it was crowded.
I manage to squeeze in. The train starts and I am still gathering my bearings when I notice a couple of guys drinking something from a can and talking and looking around furtively. The odd things is, it looks like they are drinking beer!
Whoa! I do a sanity check on myself. Beer/alcohol? check. Dope? check. Too tired? check. Hallucinating? pinch, ouch! check. Looks like I am all right. I squint at the contents on the cans and sure enough it says: alc: 5% by vol! A little later I turn around and find that many other blokes are consuming beer as well.
I am still not sure if that is legal, but I surely haven't seen any signs barring alcohol on the tubes so far. But to my US-tuned mind, the episode scandalous. Maybe it was just a pre-match or a Friday evening thing but still.
Blogged with Flock
Dont jump in water when chased by a bengal tiger.
Love this pic from Yahoo News Photo.
This post is also to check out Flock (browser) integration with blogspot. All I have done is right click on this pic on its web page and selected "Blog this" option from flock.
Blogged with Flock
Friday, February 09, 2007
A Costly Affair
The mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom recently confessed to having an affair with the wife of a very close friend and co-worker.
Now first of all, this is DELICIOUS news!
Secondly, what was the mayor doing dating a woman in SF? Didn't he know he was in ... well.... SF.
OK, climbing above the belt, for the next couple of days I listened quite a lot to radio talk shows discussing this topic. What I heard was interesting. The pattern was that 90% or more of the female callers were sympathetic to the mayor as against maybe 30% or less of the male callers. The statistics are based on maybe 60-70 calls over two days.
Very interesting!
For some reason, I was expecting the opposite, that women would be less forgiving of illicit affairs. Apparently not.
What do I think about it? Well, first of all let me state the obvious, relationships are complex. Very complex. What attracts two people to each other is hardly formulaic.
On a side note, I was watching this documentary on KQED where some social scientists were trying to predict mutual attraction between copules in a speed-dating session. Needless to say, they were mostly off the mark. Some of the participants were members of the London Seduction Society had lots of tricks uptheir sleeves to seduce women, by using negative hits, projecting themselves as dominating alpha males, etc.. and even more needless to say they didnt fare any better. Actually most of the women just plain hated them and wouldnt go out with them if they were the last men on earth!
Which leads us into my point: if you cant define the attraction, or what will cause it, the corollary is, that it is some phenomenon involving so many unpredictable variables, that no matter how exhaustive a predictive system is, it will fail. And if the forces are so incomprehensible, how does one fight them?
What it boils down to is self control versus giving in to forces we dont comprehend. I guess its easy to be self-righteous and claim that we ourselves stick to our relationships becaue of ideals, trust, faith and all those grand cookups. But lets think about it for a minute. Drop the mask that society enforces us to wear. Get rid of your persona, as Jung would put it. And reevaluate. What if, hypothetically, your dream partner who you thought wouldnt let you anywhere within 10 feet within him/her were to come BEG you to be with them, make love to them, no questions asked, no reasons given and no one in the world would come to know if it. Would you stand by the ideals?
Even that most saintly of politcial figures (I love that oxymoron) the world has known, Gandhi, was not sure if had everything under control. What he ended up doing wad sleeping with his adopted garnddaughter Manu, naked, to test if he could keep his control. My experiments with truth, blah!
It might seem like I am setting the stage to defend Gavin here. But thats not what I am trying. I am trying to play devil to my natural instinct, which is how can the public trust a man who doesnt have any self control. This was a sexual temptation, what if it was a monetary one, would he/she still succumb? Put his private interests before the public's?
Not sure.
Anyways, the women callers were pretty cool about it. One said that she had been in a similar situation and its just not black and white, its well .. complex. Most of the others wanted to separate the public life from the private But what do you do when your public and private masks collide? Who prevails? Do you give in to your animal instincts or stick to your human ones?
One could argue that being a good mayor is totally orthogonal to your private life. What goes on in the confines of your bedroom has no correlation to how you govern a city. Thats a rational argument. But, if you could betray your own personal friend, what about the impersonal, distant public who has placed trust in you? Are trust standards simlar across different domains or can they be contained within certain dimensions of your life?
Now first of all, this is DELICIOUS news!
Secondly, what was the mayor doing dating a woman in SF? Didn't he know he was in ... well.... SF.
OK, climbing above the belt, for the next couple of days I listened quite a lot to radio talk shows discussing this topic. What I heard was interesting. The pattern was that 90% or more of the female callers were sympathetic to the mayor as against maybe 30% or less of the male callers. The statistics are based on maybe 60-70 calls over two days.
Very interesting!
For some reason, I was expecting the opposite, that women would be less forgiving of illicit affairs. Apparently not.
What do I think about it? Well, first of all let me state the obvious, relationships are complex. Very complex. What attracts two people to each other is hardly formulaic.
On a side note, I was watching this documentary on KQED where some social scientists were trying to predict mutual attraction between copules in a speed-dating session. Needless to say, they were mostly off the mark. Some of the participants were members of the London Seduction Society had lots of tricks uptheir sleeves to seduce women, by using negative hits, projecting themselves as dominating alpha males, etc.. and even more needless to say they didnt fare any better. Actually most of the women just plain hated them and wouldnt go out with them if they were the last men on earth!
Which leads us into my point: if you cant define the attraction, or what will cause it, the corollary is, that it is some phenomenon involving so many unpredictable variables, that no matter how exhaustive a predictive system is, it will fail. And if the forces are so incomprehensible, how does one fight them?
What it boils down to is self control versus giving in to forces we dont comprehend. I guess its easy to be self-righteous and claim that we ourselves stick to our relationships becaue of ideals, trust, faith and all those grand cookups. But lets think about it for a minute. Drop the mask that society enforces us to wear. Get rid of your persona, as Jung would put it. And reevaluate. What if, hypothetically, your dream partner who you thought wouldnt let you anywhere within 10 feet within him/her were to come BEG you to be with them, make love to them, no questions asked, no reasons given and no one in the world would come to know if it. Would you stand by the ideals?
Even that most saintly of politcial figures (I love that oxymoron) the world has known, Gandhi, was not sure if had everything under control. What he ended up doing wad sleeping with his adopted garnddaughter Manu, naked, to test if he could keep his control. My experiments with truth, blah!
It might seem like I am setting the stage to defend Gavin here. But thats not what I am trying. I am trying to play devil to my natural instinct, which is how can the public trust a man who doesnt have any self control. This was a sexual temptation, what if it was a monetary one, would he/she still succumb? Put his private interests before the public's?
Not sure.
Anyways, the women callers were pretty cool about it. One said that she had been in a similar situation and its just not black and white, its well .. complex. Most of the others wanted to separate the public life from the private But what do you do when your public and private masks collide? Who prevails? Do you give in to your animal instincts or stick to your human ones?
One could argue that being a good mayor is totally orthogonal to your private life. What goes on in the confines of your bedroom has no correlation to how you govern a city. Thats a rational argument. But, if you could betray your own personal friend, what about the impersonal, distant public who has placed trust in you? Are trust standards simlar across different domains or can they be contained within certain dimensions of your life?
Saturday, January 27, 2007
The Future of the Internet
I was surfing aimlessly and came across this video from the Most Powerful Women's summit.
Huffington concludes with the observation that the business opportunity on the net lies not in the content but the advertisement piggybacking on it, unless the content is wierd porn.
I find myself in agreement, not because of the rider, and I myself have hardly ever paid for any content on the Internet as a consumer. On a related note, Padmasree Warrior adds that folks pay for content when it served personalized to them. Point in case, Motorola selling ring tones (a couple of lines from a song) for two dollars (!) which has turned out to be a five billion dollar business. And the same folks wouldn't pay 99 cents for the whole song from itunes etc.
No wonder Googles revenues scorns at the maxim: What goes up must come down. What with all that advertising money rolling in!
Huffington concludes with the observation that the business opportunity on the net lies not in the content but the advertisement piggybacking on it, unless the content is wierd porn.
I find myself in agreement, not because of the rider, and I myself have hardly ever paid for any content on the Internet as a consumer. On a related note, Padmasree Warrior adds that folks pay for content when it served personalized to them. Point in case, Motorola selling ring tones (a couple of lines from a song) for two dollars (!) which has turned out to be a five billion dollar business. And the same folks wouldn't pay 99 cents for the whole song from itunes etc.
No wonder Googles revenues scorns at the maxim: What goes up must come down. What with all that advertising money rolling in!
Saturday, January 20, 2007
MOTD
Heard on the local radio:
A man is incomplete till he is married ...
... and then he is finished.
Hear Hear!
A man is incomplete till he is married ...
... and then he is finished.
Hear Hear!
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Radio Tivo
So on the long drive to and fro Vegas I was wondering how cool would it be to have a tivo like solution for radio. So you can just start it for a station you like on a particular day or during a specific time slot whose host you like. Also you would be able to record talk radio programming which you would really like to listen to but cant due to some time conflicts. And on long drives you can just listen to certain songs again and again.
But I guess there will be some compicated legal issues with this.
Assuming there are, another idea would be to be able to "mark" and remember the song on some device integrated into the radio, allowing the listener to later purchase the songs on the list. The usecase being, that I often listen to terrific songs on the radio for the first time and would like to relisten, but trying to remember the song lyrics, finding out the song name from that and digging that around on the internet and then buying it ... ya right!
I think even the AM/FM radio stations (not just XM and Sirius) broadcast the song information (metadata) along with the songs, as is displayed on the dashboard on some of the luxury cars. Either this information can be used to remember the song or if not, wasnt there a google code project that would analyse audio and algorithmically determine its signature or some such?
But I guess there will be some compicated legal issues with this.
Assuming there are, another idea would be to be able to "mark" and remember the song on some device integrated into the radio, allowing the listener to later purchase the songs on the list. The usecase being, that I often listen to terrific songs on the radio for the first time and would like to relisten, but trying to remember the song lyrics, finding out the song name from that and digging that around on the internet and then buying it ... ya right!
I think even the AM/FM radio stations (not just XM and Sirius) broadcast the song information (metadata) along with the songs, as is displayed on the dashboard on some of the luxury cars. Either this information can be used to remember the song or if not, wasnt there a google code project that would analyse audio and algorithmically determine its signature or some such?
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Viva Las Vegas!
Adding to the list of long drives under my belt: drive bay area to Vegas Saturday, party with V and friends all night Saturday till 8 AM in the morning (!) and then drive back same day (Sunday) to the bay area. The ocassion being V's last crazy night out before he tied the knot. Total drive distance approximately 1100 miles mostly driving solo. Great fun, hallucinations of cop cars everywhere notwithstanding, since most of the driving was done ummm.. a "little" above the speed limit! Yes I am a sucker for cross country drives.
Actually the drive across from I5 to Vegas via highway 58 and I15 was pretty scenic. Vast expanses of mountains and deserts with a good amount of sunshine thrown in ... very beautiful.
After a night out on the town, I am so out of my shell and unintentionally I extrapolate that spirit onto other unsuspecting individuals, for example folks I run into in the elevator at work the next morning. I try to pass some funny remarks, tease or flirt if its a female and all this evicts are polite "hmmmms" and "ahhhhs" or just plain cold stares, which very effectively, albeit a bit disappointingly, put me right back into the work mind frame.
Actually the drive across from I5 to Vegas via highway 58 and I15 was pretty scenic. Vast expanses of mountains and deserts with a good amount of sunshine thrown in ... very beautiful.
After a night out on the town, I am so out of my shell and unintentionally I extrapolate that spirit onto other unsuspecting individuals, for example folks I run into in the elevator at work the next morning. I try to pass some funny remarks, tease or flirt if its a female and all this evicts are polite "hmmmms" and "ahhhhs" or just plain cold stares, which very effectively, albeit a bit disappointingly, put me right back into the work mind frame.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Random Pearls #1
Ruthlessness is a virtue. An emotional underbelly more often than not clouds clear judgement and blows issues out of proportion.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Cannibalization at Apple Inc.
The Apple world is atwitter. The iphone looks pretty cool actually. The way I see it, its the end of the standalone ipod era.
Currently the disk sizes are limited to 4GB and 8GB. Harder sizes would probably cannibalize the video ipods now where Apple is still making a lot of money. But it shouldnt be long before the disk sizes go bigger on the iphones ... along with the inevtiable - a regular price drop. Think back to the original digital cameras in 2000, the 1MP resolution cameras used to cost upwards of 500$! So in 2-3 years we should be seeing around 30GB or more iphones for 250$! Poor ipods!
By the by, note that flash drives are outpacing Moore's law by doubling every year! And becoming stronger as well, you can drive VW Beetles over them without data loss!
Apple, of course, knows about the impeding death of the big brother - the IPOD. It is time that they carved out a new niche market as well with the likes of Microsoft, Sandisk, iRiver etc crowding it in the personal digital music space. Of course IPODs have been marketed extremely well and they are way ahead in market share but one can never be too complacent in the hi-tec industry. To think that xerox was synonymous with photocopying when it invented it!
Talking of Sandisk, also check out this smear campaign on ipods.
In this era, picking up the market trends quickly is surely the way to mediocrity, the leaders virtually create the market where none exists. Apple surely has its act together thesedays.
The Apple TV device is out too, more on that later.
Currently the disk sizes are limited to 4GB and 8GB. Harder sizes would probably cannibalize the video ipods now where Apple is still making a lot of money. But it shouldnt be long before the disk sizes go bigger on the iphones ... along with the inevtiable - a regular price drop. Think back to the original digital cameras in 2000, the 1MP resolution cameras used to cost upwards of 500$! So in 2-3 years we should be seeing around 30GB or more iphones for 250$! Poor ipods!
By the by, note that flash drives are outpacing Moore's law by doubling every year! And becoming stronger as well, you can drive VW Beetles over them without data loss!
Apple, of course, knows about the impeding death of the big brother - the IPOD. It is time that they carved out a new niche market as well with the likes of Microsoft, Sandisk, iRiver etc crowding it in the personal digital music space. Of course IPODs have been marketed extremely well and they are way ahead in market share but one can never be too complacent in the hi-tec industry. To think that xerox was synonymous with photocopying when it invented it!
Talking of Sandisk, also check out this smear campaign on ipods.
In this era, picking up the market trends quickly is surely the way to mediocrity, the leaders virtually create the market where none exists. Apple surely has its act together thesedays.
The Apple TV device is out too, more on that later.
Project Management thoughts
Currently came across this proj mgmt tool called Scrum. It is nice but has its drawbacks.
So let me pen (finger?) down some thoughts on what a simple project management tool can have:
So let me pen (finger?) down some thoughts on what a simple project management tool can have:
- LAMP based web app.
- RBAC, who can add projects, who can add other users, modify schedules for what users etc.
- The point above entails user sessions.
- A primitive workflow - eg. user adds his tasks and timelines and an email is sent to the manager for approval before updating the db.
- Scratchpad for miscellanious ideas, thoughts, TBDs.
- Wiki integration.
- Atom feed server allowing folks to subscribe to important events/changes
- An integrated business calendaring system
- A known/unknown risks section
- A main page displaying newfeeds for related articles/projects in the industry from various news sources
- Reporting tools eg status graphs, can be per project as well as system wide, eg percent overshoot time for past projects
- Risk analysis tools (?)
- Integration with source code control and versioning systems (eg CVS) for software projects
- Keyword search/Advanced search
- Export to other tools such as Excel etc.
- Dependency tracking, which module depends on which etc.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Custom Newsfeeds
So I was looking to write an app that will filter the newsfeeds from a particular server based on
some text search and not inflict me information diarrohea. Additional filter critera can be added on a per server basis.
some text search and not inflict me information diarrohea. Additional filter critera can be added on a per server basis.
A simple use case: craigslist has a newfeed for craigslist s.f. bayarea | cars & trucks. Since we would like to brand ourselves as a speed-addict, we would only like to search for new carreras being posted. If I subscribe to this feed, then my feed reader app will download all the feeds being fed by this server which will include the likes of corollas, contours and what not. Now since these cas will not be good for our thrill seeking self-esteem, we would need to do better. So the requirement for our newfeed reader is to filter out those items not containing "carrera".
Turns out this is already doable in craigslist. If you search for carrera in cars and trucks, the resulting RSS link at the bottom right already achieves similar. But all sites are not as savvy as our craigslist brothers.
The next thing we want to do is use additional filter criteria, for example find carreras posted after 1-1-07, under 50K posted by private parties. This can be done using the form on the craigslist website, which means the information is available structurally, and not just as free text. Our newsfeed reader app should be able to make avail of this information.
Will write something over the weekend and see what I get.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Converting to New Blogger.
Damn this new blogger, I converted to it and typed a long post on That 70's show it got lost.
Well anyways the summary was that its the best sitcom ever and Eric's mom is probably the coolest.
ahan han han han han.
Well anyways the summary was that its the best sitcom ever and Eric's mom is probably the coolest.
ahan han han han han.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Happy 2007
2007 is HERE! Smack in the face! For some reason, this is different than new years earlier. Earlier the crossover used to be blurry. The last year would melt into the new one surreptitiously. At the yearend, I would find myself thinking for a split whether it was the current or the next year. But 2007 seems to be having its own personality, it hid under the covers completely and wham! came out with full force when it did.
2006 for me was a pretty dismal year, every which way you look at it. I havent been living it up. Never been more confused. As much as I try to run away from it, the urge to do something meaningful and impacting tightened its grip further on me like a voodoo spell. Yet I have no clue how to go about doing it. Part of the problem is that there are so many open avenues at this juncture, I have a hard time which one to go down. Yes, I want to go down one of the less traveled ones, but which one dear Frost?
For 2007, the plan, besides visting the dentist, is to narrow down the canvas which hopefully will give a sharper focus. Traditionally my problem with this is that I am somewhat of a happy-go-lucky person. A part of me rebels against attempting to plan out the whole of my life. Or to make a long term goal for which I strive for tirelessly. I would like to take each step in its own stride and then forget about it. I guess I am one of those attention-deficit, life-is-journey-syndrome nincompoops.
The flip side to being a rolling stone is that .. you gather no moss! And sometimes I wonder if I will catch myself thinking of ... ummm ... moss later.
2006 for me was a pretty dismal year, every which way you look at it. I havent been living it up. Never been more confused. As much as I try to run away from it, the urge to do something meaningful and impacting tightened its grip further on me like a voodoo spell. Yet I have no clue how to go about doing it. Part of the problem is that there are so many open avenues at this juncture, I have a hard time which one to go down. Yes, I want to go down one of the less traveled ones, but which one dear Frost?
For 2007, the plan, besides visting the dentist, is to narrow down the canvas which hopefully will give a sharper focus. Traditionally my problem with this is that I am somewhat of a happy-go-lucky person. A part of me rebels against attempting to plan out the whole of my life. Or to make a long term goal for which I strive for tirelessly. I would like to take each step in its own stride and then forget about it. I guess I am one of those attention-deficit, life-is-journey-syndrome nincompoops.
The flip side to being a rolling stone is that .. you gather no moss! And sometimes I wonder if I will catch myself thinking of ... ummm ... moss later.
Venturing into Apple Land
I saw some deals on refurbished apple products and I am now very tempted to get one of Mac mini, iMac or macbook. I like the Mac mini because its so portable, I can take it to my living room and hook it up to the TV and work with a wireless keyboard, record TV programming and burn it off on DVD etc. Cool, huh. The iMac is cool because it has more bang for the buck, faster HDD (7200 RPM), integrated monitor, larger disk etc. Also the whole thing just requires only ONE cable, the power cable from the monitor to the socket, wow! Of course assuming you connect with a wireless keyboard and mouse. The macbook is a laptop, but as with laptops, you get portability at the cost of slower resources and higher price. I already have a laptop from work that allows me to sit infront of the TV and work (and surf, email etc).
All of these of course are very quiet, which is a big issue with me. I want them to be running 24/7 in my bedroom and be as silent as possible. Normal out-of-the-box PCs dont give you that.
All of these of course are very quiet, which is a big issue with me. I want them to be running 24/7 in my bedroom and be as silent as possible. Normal out-of-the-box PCs dont give you that.
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