Business Line : Today's Paper / INVESTMENT WORLD : Towards a set goal

Business Line : Today's Paper / INVESTMENT WORLD : Towards a set goal

Sure-shot ideas for winning medals at the Olympics

India, my home-country is looking up in the sky for some divine ideas to strike it rich at every Olympics. But, alas, the effort does seem to be lacking on the world-stage. Often, the common refrain being that being a developing country, we lack resources to train world-class. So, the question now is how to mobilize resources to fund world-class coaches.

There are some ideas which spring to mind.

1) Raise an Olympic fund and provide tax exemption for people who contribute to this fund(Similar to the emergency and disaster relief funds we have).

2) Conduct national lotteries and contribute the funds collected to build world class facilities( I guess, this idea is easier than the first.) When people splurge on movies, they should be more than willing to part their money to try their luck and support a national cause. This is found to be succesfully working in UK now and they are currently No 3 in the medals tally at the currently happening Bejing 2008 Olympics.

3) This idea is entirely mine and there-in lies my genius. I hold all patents for its succesful implementation. India has enough stray dogs. Starve a few stray dogs and pelt them with stones. They will come running madly at you. In your effort to save your lives, you will effortlessly train and surpass all existing world records. When it comes to saving your lives, everything else including World records take a back-seat.

Stray dogs are far cheaper than foreign coaches. Stray dogs will be happy to be contributing to the nation in their own little way.

So, this is a sureshot recipe to win 100, 200, 400 and 800 metres for both men and women.

Add a few hurdles in between and we will end up getting 10 gold medals and definitely a place in the top 10 countries. I am already seeing PT Usha ruing why she did not read this post 20 years back.

What to do.. Just like, every dog has its day.. Every post has its day...

I dedicate my idea to this song.

What goes around.. .comes around..

Today marks a few landmarks in my chequered career.

I complete 3 years as an IT consultant in the US ( phew.. time does run really fast.. doesn't it..). It also marked the 5th anniversary of my work experience in the IT industry. I joined a reputed IT company straight from campus on July 21st, 2003. In that company, its a practice to acknowledge those who worked for 5 years with a "Long Term service award ".

I have had the experience of working as a Consultant on an assignment in a fortune 500 Insurance company where it was a fairly common sight to see people with more than 25 or even 30 years of experience.

If 5 years is Long-Term, I am at a loss of words to term a 30 year experience with a single company. I really admire companies who have perfected the art of retaining employees. But with capitalism sweeping the world furiously, these companies will be more of the exception than the norm.


Now coming to the title of the post and its relevance..

Yours truly attended his first campus interview 5 years back with a company which is famous for "Applying Thought ". I still remember that day when my interview was scheduled at 3.45 AM ( yes, its AM) and I managed to barely talk coherently leave alone answer technical questions as part of the gruelling interview. The interview result was consistent with my performance and expectations.

The first interview being special still had the charm and excitement which made me to eagerly go to the placement notice board to see if I had by some miracle, managed to impress and get selected.

History records the fact that I continued to attend more tests/interviews and did not manage to get placed in any of the reputed companies that came to our campus.


Fast forward 5 years ( August 2008)...

I am madly being pursued by the same company to join them on board. I have a kind of "walk-in " offer and the HR of this multi-billion dollar company calls me every fortnight to remind me of the offer and care to see if I have made up my mind to join them.. Wow.. Thats the sweetest revenge of sorts...

What goes around comes around... ( A Justin Timberlake song last year with the same title was a chartbuster remaining popular on the top playlists for a long time.. The music video of the same is here).

That connects this post to another of mine where I contend that the " World is round " and not flat as Tom Friedman argues.

Parle G biscuits and Prada Sunglasses

This is yet another favorite topic of mine. Brand valuation.

How does one ascertain the price tag for a given product. Or put differently, how does the market agree to the price tag of a exotically priced product ?

Parle-G biscuits have a glorious history of serving the masses and hence served at the lowest price point. In other words, its a volume based product with negligible profit margins.

Prada sunglasses start retailing at around 200 US dollars and go all the way till even 1000 US dollars.

How does one feel happy shelling out their hard-earned money for getting a pair of cool sunglasses ?

I guess, the emotions people take( or maybe fake) after wearing a Prada sunglass is engineereed. People act with confidence, feel that they need to walk and talk as if they have dropped in from heaven. Maybe that's a good reason why people buy these products ( for the " feel-good " factor).

This is true not only for Prada sunglass, but equally true for other high end items like a BMW car or a Harvard college degree.

Being with the "masses" gives you a feeling of security ( a Eastern value). Being with the "Classes" gives you a feeling of being a celebrity ( a Western value).

Depending on the products people consume, we can observe and infer some conclusions regarding their value system...

Blog Readability Level..

Well, that's my intent too.. To reach out to the common man ( Aam Aadmi) who possesses a little bit of common sense..

Movie Reviews

Learning to count my blessings

This does seem to be an admirable skill trying to see the silver lining even when one is in deep sh*t.

I landed in US for the first time in summer when the weather was warm and pleasant. Lots of people land in peak winter welcomed by blizzards and snowstorms. Yeah, I too have the experience of landing in Michigan in January in a small-town accompanied by heavy snow-fall.!

I landed in Boston which had a pretty good public transport system(trains and buses) eliminating the need for me to buy a car which is the de-facto means of transport for the majority.

My car is currently in the workshop undergoing major repairs burning a big hole in my wallet but wait, it again has happened in summer and hence I am walking to office.

Walking to office implicitly means that my house is pretty close-by(less than 2 miles) which is a luxury for most Americans.

Walking to office also has an additional benefit of burning the unwanted calories in my ever-growing tummy as a consequence of eating yummy food.

Most importantly, it gives me time to ruminate and contemplate every day on various events. In short, I am having an opportunity to spend 30 minutes all for myself in the morning and evening which is a rarity for most people, these days. Hope the world envies me.

Minneapolis is a great place to be in summer. I am glad that I am not in Arizona, California or Florida in which case, I would be sweating and puffing my way to office.

Every dark cloud has a silver lining huh..

I have been hit by a thunderbolt.....

Wow, that was one nice whammy that wacked my head..!!

How did this thought not cross my head so far.. Anyway, better late than never..

Let me explain..

In the natural process of evolution, the world chooses the most hardiest and fittest species. Now all places in this world are not equal atleast from the point of view of opportunities.

Some places/countries have far few opportunities or looked at it another way, a ton of people chasing it. This breeds a few qualities unconsciously in those people.

1) Fierce sense of competition to spot and grab the opportunities.
2) Insecurity of missing the bus and a sense of feeling "left out "..
3) Greed to make maximum use of a given opportunity often ending up extracting maximum juice from a given chance to perform.

All this seems totally strange to others(those who are used to having less competition and more opportunities) looking at this spectacle from outside.

As a by-product of this phenomenon, people from highly populous countries like India and China end up being one of the most adaptable and hardiest of human species eligible to be the most probable subset of human species capable of surviving and excelling under the most demanding situations.

Coming to a unconnected but related point, "Chindians" can also hence be classified as the least sympathizable group of humans since they can survive under very compelling conditions.

I rest my argument.

Black and White...

Are Black and White colors in the true sense ?

Well, if you come to think of it, the earlier version of televisions were called " Black and White " while the later versions of the TVs were termed as "Color TVs". Which means Black and White are different from other colors !!!

From a scientific background also, black and white represent the two extremeties of the color spectrum, while other colors figured somewhere in between.

Black is considered a color of mourning in Western world with their predominantly Christian backgrounds while its white which is used to denote the same in Hindu traditions of India. BLACK also happens to be the name of a dramatic Hindi movie starring Amitabh Bacchan and Rani Mukherjee depicting the trials and struggles of a blind person in her quest for getting succesful in life.

White lies are really not truly lies but what one says to salvage him/herself from an embarassing situation. Black Money on the other hand is any currency that is hidden from the legal scanner.

Coming to colors of various hues, they are manifest in every possible material manifestion and makes life worth living. Life has definitely become more lively with a dash of colors. We even have a special festival dedicated to celebrate colors in India called " Holi". Colors represent another dimension of diversity which adds to the plethora of other choices which people get to make.

And so concludes our colorful analysis...

wow, my first post for 2008...

They say that people work till May every year in the US to pay their taxes for their entire year( the remaining earnings of 7 months is for them to keep !!).

Possibly, that's the reason why you did not see any posting for this year till May. I should surely resolve henceforth to be more active to capture my thoughts and freeze them in a blogpost henceforth.

So here goes a toast for the first blog of 2008.