Worth a thought

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. -- Albert Einstein

There are two types of people- One who categorize people into two types and others who dont.

Things are the way things are only to the people who see them that way.

Be careful of your thoughts, they may become words at any moment.

Happiness is a path, not a destination.

The 50-50-90 rule:
Any time you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.

Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror.

Love is not finding a perfect person, it is seeing an imperfect person perfectly.

Its not Flight or Fight - Its FRIGHT

The flight or fight response, also called the "acute stress response" was first described by Walter Cannon in the 1920s as a theory that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system. The response was later recognized as the first stage of a general adaptation syndrome that regulates stress responses among vertebrates and other organisms.

An example:Suppose that you are out on a picnic with your family and decide to go off on a hike by yourself. As you come around a bend in the trail you suddenly see a large snake that is coiled and prepared to strike. You will probably recognize this as a threat and your body will go into a stress reaction. You feel your muscles tense as your heart rate and breathing increase. You body is preparing you to act by either fighting or running away.

Our body is made to respond to every single situation in life with either flight or fight reponse. But, I think our mind is more motivated by FRIGHT than fight or flight. I have been motivated to fight or flee away from a situation because of fear of the consequence. When I was young, the fear of my parents' bickerings made me study hard and always be the first ranker in the class till it became a habit and I was fully motivated to be a winner in every exam . If my Mom had cajoled me , showering all her love and asking me gently to study hard, I doubt if I would have shined in my studies as I did. There are many teenagers who behave strangely , sometimes even harshly just because of the fear of not being accpeted by their community . At the same time, for the same reason, some of them change their characters to be better persons just to get accepted.

Yes, we all know that exercise is good for our health. But, till we see a high cholestrol in our blood report, we are not motivated to join a gym or reduce our intake. It is the fear of a heart attack that motivates you to improve your health. The fear of losing your job makes you work harder at work. Imagine a workplace where everything is very leisurely ..there is no way you will be able to grow in such an environment. Once you know a layoff is on the way, you can see every Tom,Dick and Harry at work .

Ultimately, it is the fear of death that motivates life. The only sure thing about life is death. But, we are all afraid of it and it motivates us to become better, braver souls and enhances our fight responses . It might feel good to say that LOVE is the most intense force in this world . I agree, love is definitely a strong one but in my opinion, FEAR supercedes it as being more forceful.

Neat freak

There’s a cost to being finicky, or as some would say “neat freak”. That’s exactly what I have become. And many times I pay the price. It pains me to see clutter. I cannot seem to ignore what’s around. That would be ideal, of course, to go about unruffled even when there is chaos and a total lack of order. But, it drains my energy, if I try to ignore it. I deal with it by quickly setting things right, by putting articles back in their place.

But, I realize everyday that it might not be the best way to deal with things. One has to learn to be neat, but I think one has to learn to manage disarray and mess. After all, things are not always under our control. We have no right to put things back in order at a friend’s house. What if hurricane tosses things around my house, I must make sure I don’t get a cardiac arrest before I have a chance to rebuild!

Recently, a kid visited my kid-less house. Things took a quick re-ordering to accommodate the child’s pranks. We don’t have toys around, except for a little stuffed dog called Kethu, a bear called Ballu, and a pair of tortoises called Tipu and Rocky. Anyone who has kids, know that these 4 toys are just enough to keep the child’s attention for roughly 1 minute and 20 seconds. It turns out I was wrong. There are many more toys in my house than I had imagined. Coasters and potatoes were rolling, baking dishes came out of the oven to see daylight for the first time in months, rolling pins, spoons, forks, bucket, stepping stool, the list is endless.

The kitchen had stuff all over the counter, tissue paper and newspaper, crayons, toys strewn all over the floor. The living room was like a battlefield. Kethu and Ballu lay injured, Kethu’s neck was arched backward in a position I haven’t seen before. There were peels of laughter and the fun had just begun. I spent as much time away in the least cluttered room. My energy was draining, I couldn’t stop what was going on and I couldn’t clean the mess. And I wondered why I have become so uptight that I cannot enjoy the bigger things, such as the joy on a child’s face? I remember the joy I had when I sat on the window sill in our 14^th floor apartment blowing bubbles outside the window, as I chased around my brother for the tricycle, the joy I experienced drumming empty Bournvita cans.

I wonder where that kid in me is. I have to learn to filter out the things that are not in my control, to adjust with status quo, to let thins be, and to find and enjoy the little things that are all around me. I realize I should try to turn things around to where I can ignore the external interruptions to my sanctity without trying too hard. Anything else is too costly for me.

Got to have Faith. Got to have Tolerance.

What is Faith? There are multiple definitions in the dictionary for faith. My favorite one is "firm belief in something for which there is no proof ". From faith springs Religion, Miracles, Confidence, Love etc. Religion is faith in god, Miracle is faith in something beyond our control, Confidence is faith in oneself, Love is faith in others. When people develop uncritical devotion to their faith it can assumes a darker shade. Faith becomes fanatism. Many lives have been lost right from the crusades to anti-hindi agitation due to soem form of fanatism. What do we need to prevent fanatism? Where should we draw the line?.

I believe that every human being has right to believe what they want to. At the same time we should not expect others to believe in what we believe. This is tolerance. we should learn to co-exist in an environment where everyone can pursue what they believe in. The first place tolerance should start is at home. This could start right from choosing the movie you want to see with your family to deciding on what car to buy. We should learn to adjust to the choices that others make. Tolerance starts building when we expand our social circle. The more we interact with others, we start learning how to be tolerant. At the same time when others question our belief one should have enough confidence in themselves to hold on to it strongly. We should however not be blinded by our faith that we cannot see the faults in it. If these simple(??) rules be followed with faith, the world will be a better place to live in.

PS: Mindframe we seemed to have touched on similar subject. But since we have a different perspective I thought it would be interesting. I swear I did not read yours before I wrote mine.

Coexistence

Coexistence has always been a very controversial concept to me. Let us look at it from the scope of the earth. Humans, Animals, Plants, Bugs, Sea Life etc., coexist in earth. That makes us all some kind of unified system. If you scope it back to the divisions of each entity in the system, we know that coexistence is more of a territorial problem than a sharing problem. Ofcourse, plants dont do much to defend themselves. But, most entities that have life defends for its territory. After all, survival and reproduction are the two major commonalities among all living things. Now, let us scope it just to the extent of the humans. We all have our own territories (countries). We usually dont allow people from one country to another without a properly authorized mechanisms. Reducing the scope further, we have states and regions and what not. If you reduce the scope of it all the way to an individual human, what do we think about coexistence is a question to ponder about...

I always wanted my space. There have been trade-offs when I lived with my parents or shared rooms with my friends in college or elsewhere. But, I always wanted my own territory...:) Well, then, I got married..:).. Territory now took a different dimension. I had to share my space with someone else too. Since I was fortunate enough to get married to someone whom I knew before, it became a lot easier. But, coexisting is a lot more than just "knowing each other". All of my habits had to somehow adjust and align with the other person and still keep us in "balance". Given the uniqueness of human behaviour, it is very difficult to characterize what "adjustment" really means. But then, miraculously, we got adjusted to each other's behaviour. I guess, time takes its own course in balancing the coexistential requirements.

Now, I am at a point of life where I have to let people to coexist with "us". Either my parents or my wife's parents visit us on an average of once in a year. The problem is, all models of coexistence that had existed between me and my parents have changed. Also, I am introduced to a new set of people (my in-laws) with whom I had to coexist. I hope you all agree to the fact that meeting people at a dinner party and sharing a "hi" or travelling with someone on a vacation is completely different from "living" with someone. Here, there is an added condition is that I should not screw up the relation, especially while they are here. What do I do?

When it comes to living with parents or in-laws, following are some of the common issues that I have faced. There is a generation gap which tends to create differences in the definition of what is rational or rather irrational, their perception that Indians living in US think that India is inferior (arguments comparing US with India and the talk about culture, tradition, values, relatives and all that... ) and the third issue, especially from my parents is that I have changed. I dont know why change is wrong... Anyway, I think, for some reason, they all like to argue and win. I have tried my own strategies to get around/through that. But, most strategies have been difficult to implement and almost always it failed at some point of time.

Based on what I seen and heard and experienced, I have realised one thing, coexistence is all about giving up one's "self". It not only applies to long-term coexistence (as in living together), but short term coexistence as well. I think, the moment you start talking to someone, there exists a coexistential cloud between those two. There is always a careful balance as to how much one can give-up their "self" and at times it fluctuates either way and thats what causes most of the confusions or lack thereof. I think our mind needs people with whom we are comfortable. So, it is all about giving up our "self" for the greater benefit of accomodating the other person in our mind or vice versa. As long as I dont have any long term negative impact, I am usually prepared to give up my "self" anytime...the key being, right set of people.

Peter F. Drucker - Paradigm for Excellence...

I dont know how many of you have heard about Peter Drucker. He is hailed as the "management guru" of the century. He passed away on Nov 11, 2005 at age 95. I had the oppurtunity to be in class with a professor who once studied under Drucker. This professor idolised Drucker's principles throughout the course. But then, I am the kind who doesnt take other's words unless I know it myself. Especially, I always considered the concepts in management to be "glorified commonsense". So, I couldnt possibly perceive the fact that someone could be a visionary on that topic. But, when I studied more about Drucker, I realised that he was a great human. Though some of his principles sounded very basic from a higher level of abstraction, I found them to be extremely helpful in reality. Since it is beyond the scope of this blog to summarize all his sayings, I would like to point out a couple of things that influenced me.

One of the major question I have in managing my career is, what do I do next? When I talk to more and more people, I only hear more and more of the same answer. Earlier in life, the choices were laid on a platter and it was very easy for me to pick a choice. In some cases, I didnt even had to make a choice. When I did my 6th std, I knew that I was going to be doing 7th, 8th-- +2 and then a college degree. There was very little ambiguity. But, the same is not true now. The most common perception is that, if one does their job to everyone's satisfaction, they will progress. This is true only to an extent. If it was true in your case throughout your career, then it implies that you were one of the fortunate few who had a very good set of managers. In reality, it is not true. Drucker talks a lot about managing oneself. He says that, the key to managing oneself is to identify your strengths. He says that, one should capitalise on the strengths and continually improve than trying to improve on their weaknesses. One should constantly seek for oppurtunities where their strengths match a given requirement and show how one can perform. He also says that, if you are a "knowledge-worker", you should reinvent and revitalise yourself with knowledge. This is the way I see it. If you are selected for a job that you do very well, 4-years from then, if you are doing a similar job with not a whole lot of productivity/skills improvement, you could very well be replaced by someone 4-yrs younger to you without much difference in output, and that too, for a lesser salary. The company is not there to educate you for future market needs. They only use you for your current expertise. So, you are responsible for formulating your career. Another key ingredient to doing this is to manage your boss successfully, even if it takes flattery..:).. Simply put, the answers to most problems lie within you.

Apart from his philosophical outlook, the thing that inspired me the most is his life itself. He lived for 95 years. During the time, he has published 38 books and numerous articles in the field of management. He was a liberalist from the beginning, in that, he wrote articles against Hitler. He identified the importance of managing people and was one of the first ever to formalise management as an academic topic that needs to be taught. He constantly learned throughout his life and enlightened others to learn as well. He strongly believed that future oppurtunities are nothing but current oppurtunities. That said, he was able to predict the state of management and its impact on people, well before it happened. He predicted globalisation and its impact dating as far back as in 70s. He was undoubtedly a great visionary. He pursued his passion and never got tired of whatever he undertook. That is one good example to live life by.

References:
1) The Daily Drucker <- Book
2) Managing Oneself, Managing Your Boss <- Publications in Harvard Business Review
3) Latest Business Week Issue cover page article on Peter Drucker

What's in a language?

As we all know, it is very tough to be without thoughts while meditating. Usually, my thoughts wander everywhere while I am in supposedly deep dhyanam.Last week, my half-hour meditation with my perceptor went something like this:
8:00AM:Meditation starts.
8:00 - 8:05AM: Trying to get into a comfortable position and start meditating.
8:05:05AM:I am trying to get into a trance when few thoughts pass by.I started wondering about what food to cook that day .I finally decided," Pesama verum rasamum , beans currium pannidalam .Simple-a mudinjidum".You see, the key to meditation is to finish your thoughts and slowly set them aside so that you can concentrate on meditating.
8:05:06 - 8:10AM:Getting back to Meditating...
8:10AM:Oops! Another thought. I started thinking about the argument I had with Suresh the previous day.Since I was meditating,my BP did not flare up but I started thinking,"Maybe I should have just kept quiet. But, still how could he have said something like that".
8:10:05AM:Then , for no apparent reason,I was thinking about the Murukkus sent by MIL.I started thinking,"Pavam Aunty,kashta pattu avalvum senju anuppuchirukanga". I guess Suresh formed the link to my MIL.I forced myself to set aside my thoughts.Back to meditation.
8:10:06- 8:20AM: Deep meditation.
8:20:01AM:There I was ,experiencing levitation, when out of nowhere came this thought that I should not forget calling my parents that night. "Maridhe Ammange Call madbeku".
8:20:02 - 8:30AM:
I was totally out of meditation as I started thinking about writing this blog. Have you ever wondered in what language you usually think.People are supposed to think in the language that they are fluent with.For most of us, it could be our mother tongue.Since I am not fluent in any language, I found out that I think in almost all languages known to me except Hindi.It also depends on what language I usually use to converse with a particular person. If it is mostly in Tamil, then I tend to think about them in Tamil etc.If I am angry or frustrated,my language invariably switches to English regardless of whom I am talking to. If I am thinking about my office work, it is always in English . I have to admit though that I never think in "C,C++,JAVA". Just so we are clear about that.Next time, when you are deep in your thoughts, note down what language you are thinking in. I am sure you will find it interesting.

Intolerable Cruelty

Well, if you had watched the movie, this blog is nothing about it...:)... I have a question for you. From childhood, how many bacterias, fungi, and similar micro-organisms have you killed ? Expanding the scope further, how many ants, mosquitoes, spiders and such small insects have you killed? Expanding the scope still further, how many dogs, cats, chicken and the like have you killed? Think about it...

My educated guess would be, the answer to the first question should be in the order of billions, the answer to the second question should be in the thousands and hopefully, the answer to the third question should be zero. It is interesting to think that, we, as humans, irrespective of whether we boast about eating vegetarian food or not, kill a lot of small bugs and not even think about it twice. Sometimes, we even take pride in it. However, we have major protests and animal rights activation group when the size of the animal gets larger. When it comes to humans killing humans, we even sentence the killer to death. Are we as a society, okay with killing innocent creatures and are against the killing of bigger animals. I just dont understand. My guess is that, it is probably the suffering that we cant tolerate. If we were able to see how an ant or a spider suffers, through audible sound and action, we probably wont kill them again. But, thats not an excuse...is it? Hold on a second... I just hit a spider that crawled under my desk.. I rest my case...

How Funny is Funny ?

This is a question which I always think about. We all talk about being funny and being sullen. Is funny funny ? If you think about it, you will find that funny need not really be funny. The same argument holds the other way as well. Is sorrow really sorrow ? Once again, it is all context dependent and if you dig deep into it, you will find that it is rather ironical.

I was watching "America's Funniest Videos" the other day. They show all kinds of home made video clips which are supposed to be funny. An old lady trying to get out of the boat and falling into water, a kid beating up his father with a stick, an animal getting scared about some event, an ice-skater/roller blader skidding and falling out of balance, etc., Are these events really funny? Do we all smile at it because we have a group in the TV audience to back it up? Not only that, the title says it is funny. So, it is supposed to be funny. So, does that mean that, if one's sorrow can cause a lot of people to be happy and elated, it is funny ? And if one's sorrow causes a lot of people to be sad, is it sorrowful? Being funny always has its cost. Almost always, someone's happiness needs to be sacrificed, isnt it? What if that somone feel's bad about the fact that their act turned out to be funny? There is nothing they can do about it. Even if they act serious about it, they will be considered morose... is it how it works ? Now, is funny really funny ? I dont think so...

Naguthar Porutandru Natpu

There is a Thirukural which starts as the title. Here is the summary of what it says.

Friendship is not only sharing fun times but also you should point the mistakes and/or provide correct advice to the friend.

So many times I thought about this and wondered about its implications.

Could or should we say/advice a friends if we think they are doing something wrong?
How much of that is very subjective thing?
Are we so perfect that we can advice or point mistakes?
When is the right time to point issues? And when is the time to keep quiet?
Will I be open to criticism from my friends? And what if I think they are wrong?

Questions, Questions and more questions!

Being a diplomatic person in general, I am scared of pin-pointing others problem or probing others to give my thoughts on what I perceive to be their problem.

I feel it is also character dependent and how friendships are built. Some people point your problems without you getting hurt while if I try the same logic, it will come out as condescending. (Or so I think)

Kushboo M.D vs. Thangar Bachan M.L.A

Except for couple of blogs I am involved every blog which is remotely related to India have written about this issue. So, I thought of bringing this issue to our blog too.

Well for those gossip/rumor mill illiterates among us, here is the issue.
India today surveyed people all over India for AIDS awareness and asked some celebrities about their opinion on the matters surveyed. One of the issues was pre-marital sex. Since, survey said (co-incidentally, Kushboo’s program on Jaya TV is Tamil equivalent of Family Feud, in which every thing decided based on survey – well I digress) pre-martial sex was happening thing around, she said, it is not uncommon. But people who have pre-marital sex should use proper protection. And she added some more along the lines that it is very common these days.

Latest update: There are around dozen cases put on Kushboo stating that she insulted Tamil people all around TamilNadu. And court after few sessions issued a Non-bail able arrest warrant against her. (All for expressing her opinion about some issue)
In yesterday’s news they showed that women’s liberation group throwing eggs and tomatoes. (I wish they threw omelet instead! – Oops! Did I say that aloud?)

When this 15 minutes (or days) time was over, Suhashini said in one of the speech that Tamils should be ashamed for what they did. And now the entire group started chasing her instead. And when you thought she will stand up and take the fight, she apologized immediately.

And all this issue started with Kushboo actively getting involved in making Thangar Bachan (director of movie called Azhagi – which was critically acclaimed) apologize for his comment that any actress who have only money in her mind is like a prostitute.

Now, Thangar Bachan is from a same caste as Thiruma Valavan. This Thiruma valavan and Ramadass (Yes, The same guy who said naming movies in English was NOT right) were the key political figures behind Kushboo episode.

(Hmmppph! I left so many smaller threads just to stay on core issues.)

Lots and lots of questions and comments come to my mind. But let me open this for others to comment. I will certainly add my comment and another retort I read in web later.

Undiscovered Mind...

I am a very lousy reader. Some might join me in saying, lousy writer too..:)..I can never read a book, especially story book. I tried it several times...But, it just doesnt work. I can read, may be 20-30 pages at a time. So, reading a full book is almost an eternity for me. Recently, I mustered all my energy to read this book which I bought almost 3-4 years before. The book is titled "The Undiscovered Mind" by John Horgan. I bought the book since the title and cover was attractive and it was available for a reasonable price and also that I have some inclination in understanding brain. I havent completely read the book. But, I read some interesting things that I thought were worth sharing...

The book is all about how neuroscience is lagging behind and where is it heading towards. The author has interviewed some of the eminent scientists in the world to make it more informative. It makes up for a great read if you are interested in the topic. There are some key problems facing neuroscience that still remains unanswered. One such thing is the controller.. People have done research to find out how each section of the brain is associated with a particular activity. The left brain is associated with logical/analytical/objective thinking whereas the right brain is associated more with random/intuitive /holistic or more subjective thinking and in synthesizing things in entirety. There are also researches which points to specific sections of brain dealing with a specific activity. The million dollar question is this. If brain power is spread across the whole gamut of different regions, how does human brain work in unison. What/Where is the controller ? No one has answer to this question. One possible theory is that, brain has a portion called the "working memory". It is almost like RAM (random access memory) and is volatile. So, one can view it as a scratch pad where all temporary information reside. This gives the integrity of thought and continuity of context. When you start speaking, you should constantly and cumulatively remember the context and the content that you are talking. If not, you will have a serious discontinuity. Apparently, having less of the "working memory" leads to neurological problems. This, to some extent seems to bridge the gap of the controller. But, it is not complete.

Another thing that was quite interesting was about emotions. There is no logical way to explain the concept of emotions and consciousness using brain. They are considered as random noise...:)... Again here, the million dollar question is about the distinction of mind and body and how are they interrelated. Interesting discoveries have been made as a byproduct of research, though it hasnt lead to the understanding of the "big picture". For example, research has lead to how certain portions of the brain respond to chemicals. In other words, some of our regular tasks, in turn produce/consume certain chemicals which in turn is produced/consumed by other portions of the body. So, adding those chemicals artificially into the system to simulate such characteristics have been studied. Most of the anti-depressant medicines are built around that. In the future, we will see medicines which can, "really" make a person smarter. Already, different kinds of medications that fix certain neurological abnormalities have been invented. But they all seem to have long-term side effects.

In essence, there is currently no unified theory to explain the operation of brain and it is still at a very very primitive stage. I will keep you posted as I read more. My guess is that, I will keep posting for eternity...:)

Ideal Teacher...

I was watching Prudential Health's latest advertisement. If you havent watched it, they show videos of different animals during their sleep. A Koala sleeping followed by a monkey followed by a tiger and then a polar bear and so on. It just reminded me of my Chemistry Master from school. He was a very wise man. Not that he or I slept during the class...:)... When he taught about Ideal gases (remember PV = nRT), he used to say that, in reality, nothing is ideal. He added that under certain conditions, you can envision ideality. For example, no humans in society are ideal. But, imagine them when they are sleeping. Look at it from an observer point of view. We dont harm others, we dont lie, we are not jealous and so on. My extra fitting...:)...Similarly, imagine a person in prison who doesnt have any other human contact. Under this condition, he is ideal as well, provided ideality is measured by impact of one's "harmful" actions on others. If we think back, this would mean that we could be considered ideal unless we interact...sounds strange..isnt it? Is that why a lot of saints choose places where there are no mankind ? Trying to experience idealism ? Next question would be, should we be ideal ?

Anyway, my chemistry master was quite a character and I still remember some of the classroom incidents vividly. I used to have a class mate who often slept in class. One fine day, as our master started talking about catalysts, he saw our class mate sleeping. He told my class mate, "Get up Senthil...Please dont sleep. Not that I have trouble seeing you sleeping. But, sleeping has a catalytic effect on others. I am worried about others sleeping because of you. Now, someone tell me what catalysts are meant for...." [As we might remember, a catalyst speedens the reaction without undergoing any chemical change by itself..I thought to myself, what a great analogy]. On a different incident, I told him that I had trouble understanding a particular principle. He tried explaining me and when I felt like I "kind of" understood it, he told me this, "If you dont understand something. Read it again and again till you remember it by heart. By then, you would have understood it". Once he met with an accident and everybody in the class decided that we were going to get a new chemistry master since his right hand was fractured badly. In just 2 days, he came back and guess what, he started writing fluently in his left hand. I heard from my friends who went for private tuition with him that he practiced his left hand for the past couple of days before he came to class.

My favourite pick among his sayings goes like this... There are many times when students ask him something that doesnt make sense or outright silly. He used to respond as follows..."Why is 'Kaka' (crow) called Kaka...The answer from a typical student would be, because it Kaws with the sound of 'Kaka'. His reply would be... If that is the case, does 'Kuruvi' sound 'Kuruvi Kuruvi'...". To give some of his background information, his credentials were impeccable. He was a gold medalist in both in B.Sc and M.Sc (Chemistry). He worked at IIT Madras as a research associate and quit his job because he didnt make enough money. He scored 99% in physics, chemistry and mathematics in his high school and didnt join Engineering because one of his class master told him that the demand for engineers didnt exist at that time. He is someone whom I still adore for his creative thinking...

Greed...ier....iest...

I was just watching the program 20/20 about being greedy. The first part of the serial focussed on the greedy aspects of Walmart and how Walmart only gives very low wages to their employees and how they dont offer good healthcare options. It also had comments from Walmart employees and managers who contended that, if Walmart is so unjust, why would people be willing to work there in the first place. They showed an employee who was once a homeless person and now has a reasonably good job with two assistants reporting to her. Extending the concept of greediness, they showed how some of the richest people in America spent their money. Then, they showed some people who did "extreme charity". One person gave away all the 45 million dollars that he earned during his lifetime. Another woman donated all of the 3 million dollars that she inherited. Yet, she stays in a 250 sq. ft. apartment with her boyfriend. The third person is a math teacher whose only aim is to donate upto 1 million dollars in his life time. To optimize his efficiency in achieving his goal, he lives in a very small place to maximize his charity out of his salary. On top of it, he volunteers for a charity in their construction of housing for poors, during his weekends. I was very moved by the episode...

The major contention is this. Are business people greedy? Any business person comes up with a new thing to sell and they market it and solve people's "problems". When Ford or GM made new cars, they revolutionised the automobile industry. In the process, they made money. Also, we know that any business person tries to optimize on the invested money to make the maximum gains. And it is obvious, as we have seen in the past, that new inventions and finer technologies almost always reduces the cost of an existing scheme. If Microsoft or Intel hadnt come out with a personal computer, we would have been stuck with IBM mainframes or other such expensive machines. Similarly, Walmart reduced the prices of items by optimizing on low-cost laborers within and outside the United States. Assuming that we all shop at Walmart, have we ever thought about how Walmart is able to such lower prices? Most probably, no. Because, as long as we get stuff for cheap prices, we are happy. If someone gets benefited, let them be...Isnt that true ?

Interestingly enough, we all feel bad when we hear unjust happenings and share a word or two to others as if we care. In my dictionary, there are only 2 kinds of people in the context of looking at something unjust. People who do something to change it and the others who dont. There are no intermediate people. There is no distinction between people who "want" to do something about it and people who dont, since it doesnt make any difference either way...

If you have ever filed your taxes, you must have gotten to see the column corresponding to Average Charity Contribution by people belonging to your income? I was surprised to see that the average charity contribution was of the order of 15-20X more than what I contribute. I dont know about others. But, to me, it was rather an eye opener. It just tells me that I am greedy too. Suddenly, it dawned on me. What rights do I have in criticizing someone else as greedy. I am a mini Walmart in my own respect. I am another one of those person who tries to optimize my gains. Out of curiosity, I tried to calculate the percentage of income that I spent on charity and compared it with the published numbers. It wasnt even 1% and I think that applies to most (almost 70% of people in US) of us. Think about it...The thought by itself had a great impact on me... But then, looking back at my earlier definition, I want to transform my impact to some real quantifiable action. I hope this blog has similar effect on you too...

References:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=1300757
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/csls/Cooter%20&%20Broughman%20paper.pdf

FY-money

I went to lunch with a group of friends. As usual, we talked a whole lot about office gossips and rumors. Suddenly, one of my friend said that one of his old friend has got f**k-you-money out of his start-up (will be replaced by FY to conserve language etiquette). I initially smiled along with everyone else as if I understood what FY-money meant. Then, I slowly (with a lowered voice) asked him what FY-money really meant. He told me that FY-money meant that, if you crossed ~50 million dollars in income, then your threshold is such that you dont have to give a damn about what your company or manager says. Basically, you dont have to care too much about managerial BS.

I started venturing to find if FY-money is all you need. Is FY-money the only thing that can get you to not give a damn about what others think of you. Other important things could do the trick as well. One can have FY-attitude though they dont necessarily have FY-money. That was interesting. Invariably, the question would be if FY-attitude wouldnt cost him his job. The response is that though an FY-attitude without FY-money is not good, it is still okay if you have FY-connections. An FY-connection can build a lot of FY-attitude in you. But, FY-connection by itself may not help you under all circumstances. So, building an FY-network is critically important. So, remember that it is all about building network. If you have a fool-proof FY-strategy, you can easily create an FY-network and thus make your way to FY-money... The other way or rather the hard way would be to start your own company...:)

Fairness ?

Sometimes, the way we think is purely gated by how a given problem or issue is presented to us. If we take time to wonder how we all fit into a complex network of society, it is just amazing how it would look for an outsider to envision the way we operate. In order for a complex society to thrive, I guess some amount of fairness needs to be distributed across it. If not, there will only be chaos. This is not to say that the world is a fair place. But, on a macroscopic scale, I believe fairness prevails. This brings up the important question, what does the term "fairness" really mean? I believe that fairness is a context dependent issue which has different meanings in different contexts. Also that, being fair to everyone is impossible. So, where is the trade-off? This blog is an attempt to characterize a queuing problem for different facets of fairness, just to see how fairness is influenced by various schemes. If you think about it, all schemes discussed below do acheive fairness of some sort. If you think otherwise, it is probably because you did not do a lot of thinking..:)

Assume a parking lot with "m" columns (c1,c2,c3,..cM) and 1 row. The 1 row being the one through which people exit a parking lot (c1 is closest to exit). Each of the m-columns join with the exit-row only once. Let us assume for this problem that no new cars are entering the parking lot and that all cars are trying to exit the parking lot. Also, assume that the exit row is already filled up with cars trying to exit. Now, the question is, what strategies can be used make the process of exiting fairly?

In approach1, the condition is that you cant exit from a column until the ongoing traffic in the row exits out of the parking lot. So, if you are in c1, you will not get to the exit until there is no ongoing traffic in the exit row. This would mean the person in column c1 will get to go only till all cars from c2 through cM have left. Now, let us consider that at each junction point, each person in the column will only wait for one oncoming car to pass through and then gets the right of way. This would mean that a car in column 1 will get to go out for every 1 car out of all the remaining columns. But, this would be unfair across the different columns since car in column 1 gets 50% chance of getting out and the car in column 2 will get 25% of chancing of getting out and so on. If you want to establish fairness, one can say that a car in column 1 should wait for, let us say 4 cars before it can go out. This would distribute fairness across the different columns.

Looking at the above notion of fairness, an engineering mind could add that, why not build more than 1 exit from the parking lot. This would simplify the problem not only by the number of exits, but also distribute some of the exponential delay factors in the problem. A business person's perspective would be to assign a cost based on the "unfairness" associated with a car to exit from a given parking lot. So, someone who pays more could get out much easily. A statistician could argue that, if the arrival distribution of people who want to take the car out of the parking lot is such that the low cost folks populate first and if there is a varying degree of cost distribution, then the distribution of cost wouldnt make sense. He might also add that, having a seperate parking lot to serve high cost customers and low-cost customers could be a good idea. A socio-economic point of view would be to avoid having a parking lot and offer a shuttle service to transport people to a different place where parking is distributed enough that they can all go out easily. Even if the parking lot is cramped up as in approach1, we can assume that the passengers in the car are uniformly distributed in terms of the positions in the parking lot and hence can get out fairly in shorter time span. Here, the size of the shuttle and its frequency of operation would decide the number of people transported. Also, the fairness of populating the shuttle would depend upon the arrival order, which sounds fair as well.

The list of take aways from this problem are, being fair to someone would not mean that you are being fair to everyone else, Being fair to everyone would mean that it is not an efficient system, in some cases money could buy you fairness, if you try to limit fairness to a small group of individuals it is usually quite successful. The discussion above is just glorified common sense. It is just that I wanted to glorify it my own way since I had "some" time at my disposal...:)

Someone's watching

I can't help but feel paranoia when I type a mail using gmail. Have you noticed how the side bar on the right reflects something related to the subject of the mail. Sometimes this might be helpful, but if I really want to know more about the subject, I could always go to their search engine, yes?

I don't know if there's a way to turn this feature off. I feel my privacy is at stake. "stop reading my mails, you twerp, that is rude", I feel like yelling. But I guess gmail doesn't recognize voices, so that would be a waste. I was wondering if some others had the same experience? And do you mind it?

From the Real world into the Reel world

Movies hypnotize me. I am oblivious to what goes on around me when I am watching a good movie. My sensory organs are receptive only to the visions and sounds from the movie. My better half could be screaming my name and I would have no inclination to respond. For the 90/120 mts I forget any event, sad or happy that is going on in my life. It makes no difference to me if a movie is good or bad. I have heard some people say that they stopped watching the movie half way through since it was terrible. I just don't get it! How can you say for sure that the rest of the movie is not going to be good? My tolerance level with movies are high. If I say that a movie is bad it has to be REALLY terrible.

Some movies are sooo good that I feel the emotions that the actors are going through. I cry, laugh, fall in love, dance with them. After watching the movie I have a feeling of riding an emotional roller coaster. Movies can also be an outlet for emotions that you keep locked inside. The cheapest way to get a therapy when you are depressed, get a sad movie. The other day I watched Viruddh which is about old aged parents avenging their son's murder. I wailed through the entire movie. At the end I felt light and refreshed. Instant private therapy for 2$. A movie for every mood.

I don't like to be disturbed when I am watching a movie at home ( a problem you don't gave when you are at the theater). Especially phone calls. Sometimes the phone ring manages to pierce through my movie shield and reach the ear. For a few minutes my mind refuses to accept it. If the caller is persistent enough I get to it and irrespective of who they are, I promise to return the call once the important work I am doing is complete.(survivor, I have never done this to you ). I should get a board reading "Please maintain silence Movie in progress".

For the same reason mentioned in the paragraphs above I don't have cable connection at home. Not because I don't like watching TV or a movie but because I like it so much that I will not able to be do anything else. Now I watch it only when I want to escape from the real world.

Hype about India !

I was digging for a file in my mail folder and I hit upon this uncompleted article that I wrote. I get into this funny mode once in a while where I think upon something really big and even go as far as putting it into words. This is one of them. It always gives me a smile when I look back at it.

Couple of years back, I had this urge to write a book and I thought it was a great idea. It was about outsourcing jobs to India. At that time, I had strong feelings about it and I still do, in terms of the success in Indian outsourcing companies. Since I didnt write the book..:( and the article is open-ended except the title which kind of has a negative connotation (I chose that title to stimulate interest and attention) about outsourcing, I thought that it would make up for one of those blogs where everybody can throw darts at.

Here it starts....

HYPE ABOUT INDIA !

It is human's nature to listen and hear things about the general phenomena that happens around us and formulate a quantifiable structure to a topic and believe it. Recently, the phenomenon of outsourcing has attracted or rather frustrated the minds of a lot of white collar employees. I couldnt stop but notice the plethora of perceptions about India and Indians floating around in every major meetings, forums and what not. Having brought up in India and having worked there for a couple of years, a lot of my Indians friends and I had mixed feelings and concerns about a whole range of topics that are being talked about in media, which are partly true, but as a whole, a little misleading. I have attempted to analyse the essence of what is happening in Indian Startups and established firms and present the snapshot of what is really going on in India. Is Outsourcing Real? and Who will Survive? I also discuss the potential ups and downs of the Indian economical structure as a whole and present the impact of IT firms in India. This book is intended for a wide variety of audience ranging from budding entrepreneurs who want to start a company in India, VCs who are eyeing around to choose the next best company to fund with, people employed in US to understand the impact of outsourcing and how they should position themselves and to the business community in general who want to educate themselves with more real facts than the generally presented numbers.

Chapters

1) History of Indian Tech Companies in pre-90s
2) US Migration Portfolio
3) Y2K, WWW and beyond
4) Optimality Equation
5) Work Culture in India and US
6) Services to Startups?
7) Success & Failure Stories -- Up, Close and Personal
8) Case for a good outsourcing/offshoring model
9) Fear of Jobs..Who shouldnt be concerned..
10) Planning for the next big wave

Dear Diary

As a teenager, I would always put my deepest thoughts or feelings in a diary. I always made sure it was hidden well from all other eyes. It sat camouflaged amidst the mountain of my books and notebooks of various sizes. I never found out why our schools made us buy and carry so many note books, maybe it was the school's idea of strength training. But, I digress. Nobody but me could find this secret vault and unravel my most personal views, not that it had a secret password or PIN, but because people got so disgusted at the mess of my shelf, they did not want to look any further.

Yes, the diary was my vault. Whenever I thought life was unfair or someone was unjust to me, my diary was my only confidante. When I didn't win in the running race, I went to my diary. When my parents punished me because I initiated the gruelling battle of both wits and fists with my dear (not so dear in those times) brother, and tears ebbed and flowed from my eyes, I went to the diary. The diary was my refuge in times of "sorrow" (even the tiniest things could drive me to sorrow-land then) and also in times of joy. I was as loyal and committed to it as it was to me.

It is strange, I went to weep on the shoulder of an object, rather than a person. I felt the diary would somehow rid me off my woes. By the time I finished writing what I felt, I'd already be much lighter and then I could move on. The diary was my closest pal, it would not judge me like other humans could. It would not tell others about me, simply because it could not. As, I remember it, keeping a diary not only diffused the situation and soothed me, it also improved my writing.

Once one of my aunts caught me in the act, there I was sitting and writing my diary. She thought it would hurt my parents if they read it and she quite frankly said that many pages were rude. I was already forming the para that would go in next "Dear Dairy, it seems it is rude to write your feelings in the diary, but somehow its not rude if others take your personal diary and read it?" But, I think the fact that I had grown in age by then, somehow must have affected my decision. I manually shredded my friend and never saw it again.

It seems to me that in life too, I pursue friends that possess the same characteristics. I look for people who will reciprocate my loyalty, who will listen to me, who will act as a safety vault, one who will not feel the need to judge my actions and behavior. And I have found quite a few of them and I am thankful I am blessed. I really don’t ever need a diary anymore!

Who are THEY?

I was talking to my friend the other day about losing weight and she said ,"They say that you lose weight if you drink a glass of warm water the first thing in the morning".I tried following it too for a few days 'coz you know, THEY are usually right.If THEY say something, its done done. Whatever you say doesnot matter, whatever you feel does not matter..THEY have to certify it.

When I am arguing with someone, I always give my best shot by starting a statement with ,"But, they say...".You see, no one can question THEY.Its like,"Oh!!THEY said it..Really..Hmmm..All these days I was believing the opposite.Thank God you opened my eyes". But, if your nemesis is equally talented,he can make a counter argument using THEY. Beware!

I am still trying to know THEM. I hope I meet atleast one of them in my lifetime. THEY are invincible. THEY know everything.THEY rule our universe.I switched from picking bright red apples to light golden ones while grocery shopping because THEY said that golden apples are the sweetest. I started walking backwards for a couple of minutes everyday while exercising as THEY said that it strengthens my calf muscle. Who cares if others find it weird? I have THEM supporting me.I can go on and on about how much THEY have influenced me.But,the most amazing thing is THEY are always supportive.

Does anyone know THEM? If so, let me know !!

Blogger's Dilemma

I am a very confused person. When I asked one of my friends if her course was complicated, she said "One could complicate it if they want. But, I dont". I thought that was a great answer. Unfortunately, I complicate things hoping that I see through all possibilities.

To add to my confusions, of late I have got into this dilemma about blogging. When do I blog? and What do I blog about? Whenever someone adds a new blog to the list, I keep wondering, would it be appropriate to blog now... I thought to myself, may be a day would be a good time so that the person who blogs thinks that they got their share of time in being the headline subject. But then, if I have something that I think is very interesting, it is becoming increasingly difficult to curb my enthusiasm without posting it. But then, just about the time when I think it is right, and see someone posting a blog, it puts me back where I started...

When I add a blog, I feel like I steal the current headline. It is as if, the other blog is not important anymore. I have the headline now even if it may not be a very significant or an interesting topic. But then, should I care, or not? If I see an emotionally touching blog, would it be appropriate to write a funny blog following it or should I post some tutorial kind of blog and then post a funny blog. Kind of, a buffer to tune people's mind into something different.

I think that I have a lot of thinking to do... When I post a blog, should I care about the topic that I choose ? Should I care about the previous blog that was posted? Should I care about what relation my blog has with the previous blog? Should I care about others and their sensitivity to the non-sequitur ? Does writing about this whole thing make me a caring person, or not...I dont know...

To my Paatti

Grandmas & Grandpas are the most loving human beings. Well, I have heard and seen some who don't like to have any relationship with their grandchildren. But, there are some who are the epitome of love and sacrifice. My Grandmother was one such person. From the day I knew here, she was a slim and tall woman who ate a hearty meal and worked around the house like a superwoman. She seemed to know the answer to everything. Since she lost her husband soon after she gave birth to my chitti (my mother's younger sister), she was always with us. Since my mom was working my "Paatti" (Grandma) literally brought me up. For a long time I called her 'amma'. My mom told me that, before I was born she took care of many of her sister's kids too. Her name was Rajalakshmi but I shortened it and called her Raajathi (special one). She used to tell me stories about pre-independent INDIA. About how Gandhi came to Pazani and her dad took her along with her brothers and sisters to see him. She learnt car driving, when to school, knew to write in English and was very good at singing and playing the violin. She told me stories about how Sankaracharyar (religious leader) came to my great grandpa's house and she sang in front of him.
She had a Paai (Indian carpet) and a thin pillow. She strictly slept only on the paai during lunch time. During my vacation days I used to lie down next to her and ask her to repeat all the stories over and over again. She never got bored of entertaining her grandchildren. Every summer vacation my cousins came over. We were all under my Paatti's loving care. We threw caution to the wind and had a great time knowing that our paatti would prepare delicious lunch, tiffin and murukkus. She cleaned up after the mess we made. Ofcourse, after giving us a sermon on how kids should behave. She was very strict about girls not playing outside after 6:00 PM. Her saying was "Girls should not play when ghosts play" (Translated from "paye vilayadar nerathula penn vilayada kudathu"). I was expected to wash my face, comb my hair and say my evening prayers at 6:00 PM. I could go on and on about her.
Since I was her firstborn grandchild we had a special bond. My relationship with my paatti continued even when I left home for college. I went home every month to have a great time with my family & Paatti. I looked forward to the special dinner she cooked for me when I went home. By now she had lost most of her teeth and was wearing a "Pallu Set" (set of artificial teeth that could be removed). She removed her teeth before she went to sleep every night. She had this routine of soaking it in soap water to clean it which we found very amusing.
My life moved on, I got a job and started traveling. Since we moved closer to my chitti she spent equal time at both her daughter's house. I got to spend lesser time with her but she was still me darling paatti and I her darling pethi (granddaughter). I went for an 1 year assignment to UK and when I got back, my patti, brother & I went on a vacation to Ooty. We had a very good time but she had become old by then and could not stand the cold weather in ooty. Little did I know that it was to be our last vacation together. Soon after we came back I went on a business trip to Delhi. 2 days into my stay at Delhi, while I was meeting some clients, I received a "urgent" phone call from my parents saying that my paatti had a heart attack and was serious. In a split second it seemed like everything around me was in a standstill and I could hear only my parent's voice. I could not control my tears. My colleagues arranged for a immediate flight back to my hometown. When I saw her in the hospital she looked like a withered leaf. Here eyes widened when she saw me but she could not speak as she had the oxygen mask over her head. I sat outside praying to god to keep her alive. I wanted her to be around for my marriage (which was not fixed by then). I felt she deserved the right to see my marriage after bringing me up and taking care of me. But god probably felt that she needed some rest too. After years of taking care of her kids, grandkids and so many others, it was her turn to rest in peace. I will never forget my paatti who was & is the epitome of love and sacrifice.

To buy or not to buy..

For those don’t own a house, talking about buying a house is very frequently happening event. I had this discussion about whether to buy a house or not in near future for umpteenth time. This article sees this issue from slightly different point of view.

Note: Skip this section if you already know about adjustable rate and fixed rate. (For computer engineers among us, that is everybody, GOTO LIBOR)

You can get home mortgage for different interest rates. *

1) Adjustable rate: Current Interest rate + 2% (approximately) for X years (usually 3 years) and adjusted based on the interest rates after that.

• Lender has the advantage. After 3 years if the rate goes up he can increase the rate.
• Good to go into this kind of arrangement when the interest rate is high

2) Fixed rate: Current Interest rate + 2% (approx) + premium for X years (X = total mortgage years)

• If rate goes up after few years, Lender will lose and hence he will keep the premium to take care of the losses
  

LIBOR:

Here some of the statistics and assumptions:

Now according to unofficial (means, I heard it from an intelligent friend but did not verify on my own) statistics it is said that 82% of people in Bay area bought their houses using adjustable rate in past 2-3 years.
(Disclaimer: I am as surprised to hear this as you)

Mean prices of houses were ranging from 600-700K in Bay area (not surprised at all)

Given below is the LIBOR** rate or approximate rates that can be used in above calculations for past 6 years.

Year Jan Apr Jul Oct Dec

2005 2.958 3.415 3.924 4.215

2004 1.211 1.368 1.986 2.301 2.775

2003 1.353 1.290 1.151 1.121 1.219

2002 1.989 2.100 1.863 1.618 1.383

2001 5.361 4.231 3.694 2.173 1.983

In past 3 years (especially from 2002 end to mid-2004), the rates are very low.

Most normal buyers, who got adjustable rate, will already be paying at their maximum potential. Best case would be that they have some extra cash that they are saving after paying their home mortgage.

Now that their 3 year fixed rates are coming to end and current interest rates are well above 5-6%. They may have to pay twice or thrice the amount they were paying in the first place. And that may force them to either sell (if they are smart and sees this issue early) or force them into fore-closure (Bank taking their property and selling it).

In either case, if supply is more then prices are bound to come down. And which will its own spiral effect. (Well, one thing that may stall this effect is, if people who have more money keeps buying houses at the rate in which it is sold, then chances of the market staying stable for longer period is there.)

The real effect of these adjustable rates will come into effect starting mid next year and continue for 2 years after that at least.

Conclusion based on this is 2006 end and 2007 beginning would be a good time to buy, if prices come down because above mentioned effect.
(I must say, I felt little guilty about using other people’s bad time to my advantage. But again, this is simple analysis)

Here are some side notes which I could not include in any right places.

1. One of my neighbors bought a house in Pleasanton and he mentioned that he got the house 5K less than advertised price. Though insignificant, it is unusual to hear going below the price. Are we already seeing a cooling down period?
2. For new buyers the increased interest rates will mean extra dollars from their pocket.
3. People who can afford to pay (irrespective of adjustable or fixed) are not affected andgain in long run because of low rate they got.
   
   * This article is not trying to cover the basics of home mortgage and hence it is not accurate with respect to different options available
   
   ** LIBOR is an abbreviation for "London Interbank Offered Rate," and is the interest rate offered by a specific group of London banks for U.S. dollar deposits of a stated maturity. LIBOR is used as a base index for setting rates of some adjustable rate financial instruments, including Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs)and other loans.
   

Death Speaks

This is a short story by Jeffrey Archer and I have always loved it.Thought of sharing it with you all.

Death Speaks
Jeffrey Archer

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdadm for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

Money Money Money....Money

Unless you have a curiosity about how "money" evolved or how it works, dont read this blog. I forget a lot of things that I learn. For some reason, I have this unique habit of forgetting what I should remember and remember what I want to forget. Anyway, I have always wondered about what money is and recently had a discussion with a friend of mine (Sarin) about it which clarified a lot of things. This effort is to collate the thoughts and present it, hopefully, in a clear and concise format.

Well, let us go back several hundreds of years back, but not too back where bartering did not exist. Bartering just means trading by exchanging one commodity over another. Over time, the bartering system needed a standard way of dealing with exchange of commodity. Based on which civilization you look at, you will get pointers that people used shells, leather, silver and gold as a way to standardise the commodity exchange.

But then, there came the concept of a gold smith who would give you a receipt for the amount of gold that you have in store. You can go to the gold smith and deposit gold and get a receipt which you can later use to trade stuff. The assumption is that, the receipt is an entity which anyone can take back to the bank and get the corresponding worth of gold. Over time, the gold smiths realised that people rarely came back to them asking for gold since everybody started using just the receipts to get the stuff they want. Later, there were folks who did not have money and they needed some...who wudnt.. The gold smith figured that he can float receipts as a loan to an individual assuming that not everyone who has gotten receipt from him is going to come back and ask for gold. This is how money gets multiplied.

You should be able to map the gold smith analogy to the modern world as well. Here, the government is the person holding the gold. Banks are the guys who do money multiplication by giving away loans. The only criteria being, the fed controls banks in terms of how much reserve ratio that they should hold. Basically, fed sets the multiplication factor. To understand this better, think of a guy depositing $100 in a bank. Fed will say that 20% of the deposited amount should be paid back to the fed. In other words, the bank can do anything with the remaining $80. Now, if someone asks for a loan, the bank can give away upto $80. Let us say, the person who took the loan buys an item through which the $80 comes back to the bank through the shop. Now, bank gets $80 of which it should again give 20% to the fed ($16). This would mean that they can lend $64 back again in the market. This follows an infinite geometric progression and essentially, for every $100 start money, the bank can eventually give loans of upto another $500 (a/(1-r)). Sounds strange, but thats how it works. On top of it, the bank can get loans from the fed as well...think about that.

The next big question is how does government control money flow ? More money in market would make everyone rich, but the prices would increase proportionately, a condition called inflation. The other way would cause deflation. Controlling inflation is easier. So, most governments try and control inflation than let economy deflate.

Everything in the economy has a cyclic effect. This is the main reason why deflation is bad. If businesses dont do well, they lay off people which in turn would mean that people get less richer which would mean that they reduce spending which would mean that businesses wont do well... The common way through which fed solves this problem is to inject money into the system by relaxing the interest rates and reserve ratio requirements. By doing that, they create money which in turn would make the economy do better. At the sametime, when things go out of control and inflation sets in, they tighten the interest rates, reserve ratio requirements, and supply bonds to get the money out of the market.

In summary, money flows out of fed through the banks to the consumers in the form of loans. Money comes back to fed through banks by repayments and savings and bonds. Anyway, the juggling that fed chairman does is to look at both ends of money flow and make sure that balance exists (increase or decrease interest rates). Remember that if you save money in a bank, you are allowing the bank to multiply it by a big factor! So, having gold and other such immovable assets is not bad after all !!

Problems with Problems...

All of us read about how someone overcame their problems. I used to be proud about the problems that I have overcome in the past... But, now, thinking back, I am not as proud as I used to be. I can certainly understand that there is a sense of accomplishment in overcoming a problem and I do agree that its a good feeling. I also agree that it shows our ability to withstand hardships. But, is there any "greatness" involved ?

Do we experience a problem intentionally to overcome it and prove to the world that we faced it successfully ? In most cases, "no". We face problems because we had to. Not because we wanted to. I really admire soldiers, because, they know the consequences and still, they go for it. I am not trying to justify or appreciate war. But, I am just talking about the mentality here. Problems are a fact of life and let us face it, we go through them mostly because we have to. Retrospectively speaking, though the number of problems that we have faced defines our ability, I dont think there is anything "great" about it...

I am what I am

Of late I have started discovering the beauty and freedom one gets from realizing their true self. Until a few years back I had this urge to excel in everything that I did. Obviously this is not humanly possible. One can be good at some things, not so good at some things and bad at some things. But somehow I did not get this for a long time. I would start learning something and expect to excel in it quickly. I would expect my teacher to say that I am her best student and be utterly disappointed when this did not happen. In short I thought I was a super prodigy. I am not sure if I am the only one who felt like this or if I belonged to an unspoken club.

As I started growing up this changed with addition of each year to my age. Once I got past my mid twenties I started seeing the realities in life. My dreams became more practical. The mysterious guy who comes riding in a horse became my husband, I started doing grocery purchase and learnt how to pick the best veggies from the bottom of the pile, I started paying bills and working for it. Suddenly there is no mystery or element of surprise in life. Instead of hoping for my parents to buy something magical I know what I earn and what it can get me.


Soon after One gets to this stage you star realizing that what others think about you is really not important. At least that is what happened to me. I guess this realization comes to different people at different times and depends upon several external forces acting on them. Whenever it does, this realization is liberating. It keeps your mind free and gets your thinking to flow. Now you start concentrating in what you are doing without worrying about the outcome and what others will think about the final product. Invariably you will start performing better. And if its not the best it is OK because you are what you are.

Do we mean what we mean?

Its funny the way people use words sometimes. Speech patterns and expressions also differ regionally. I always catch a drift of the lingo and jargon of people I hang around with. I don't know why I do that. Maybe its because I want to feel accepted. I noticed this many times and now make my best attempt at resisting this involuntary habit of catching the drift of some funny applications of some common words..

Recently, I have been hanging around with an acquaintance who uses the word “really” a lot. Of course in a many contexts “really” may not only be inappropriate, it may even be rude. “Really” is just an expression. We don’t use the word “really” in a real sense. Not that it matters most of the time. As a figure of speech its really okay. But circumstance should dictate when the use of “really” is not really warranted.

Some cases when the “really” response is okay.

A: “You know it rained non-stop through the night in my part of the town”

B: Really?

A: You know I had to miss class because my boss would not let me leave this evening.

B: Really?

Consider this:

A; I lost my mother when I was 10.

B: Really?

Not okay! I know that is just an expression. But it ticks me off. Of course” really”! Why would anyone lie about that?

In presentations, I have observed several occasions where people overly use the words "Basically", "Actually". Why, I wonder? The rest of the sentence following "basically" may not be all that "basic" after all (read fundamental). Or why would someone actually say something that was not "actual" while presenting to a group? Sometimes, I have heard this; “I guess what I am trying to say is……” Are you telling me you have to guess what you yourself are saying??

Language is just for communication, no doubt. But effective communication requires people to speak appropriately and respond appropriately to others' statements or speech. It shows when one is not listening or appreciating the gravity of what the speaker is saying. My point is, if at all we respond, we must respond thoughtfully.

Back to Basics...

After hours of looking at my microeconomics course material and graphs, something suddenly struck me. Most events in nature has a curve similar to bell curve. Things progress from 0 all the way to a maximum and then come back to zero and then it goes through the negative to a negative maxima and then returns to 0. For example, if you reduce price of a quantity, you sell more. If proportion of revenue increase is greater than cost reduction, you increase profit. But then, there is a limit after which reduction in price does not lead to increased profit and hence the profit reduces. I thought about some examples. Look at Sun, the light intensity slowly increases and reaches the maximum intensity and then wades off and reaches perfect darkness and comes back on. Look at humans, we start out without any clue. We learn and reach a point of maximum capacity and knowledge (or lack thereof) and then, we go back again to being like kids, needing help from others for our existence during old age. Think of a lot of things that way, you will see that this seems to be a commonality. If you replicate this curve back to back, you will get a sinusoidal curve...(suresh, engeyo poyitteda..) May be, this is the reason why most of the seemingly non-deterministic waveforms can be converted to sinusoidal equivalents*. I hope the above mentioned facts convince us that in a macroscopic view of things, behaviour of events are periodic and follow a definite pattern and usually, they dont tend to go in one direction or the other, but cycle along.

Now, let us look at human evolution in terms of what we as humans have learnt and how we advanced, at a higher level of abstraction. Darwin's theory about natural selection states that complex organisms derived their incremental intelligence through its ancestors and such intelligence passing happens for every generation. It would mean that intelligence of humans will grow over time. Intelligence adds value to a community, as we all know. But, can intelligence, when added more and more cause the value of the community as a whole to go up adinfinitum OR in other words, does the intelligence necessarily translate into a huge value proposition over time. I think that it is not true.

I think, humanity as a whole is undergoing law of diminishing returns by added intelligence and smartness. I get curious about questions like, are we better off than our ancestors. Another way to look at it is, what are our current goals, more from a lifestyle perspective than our ancestors. We all want to stay healthy (running, going to gym etc.,), eat good food (organic is better..:)), we dont want a lot of stress in our lives, we want to be peaceful. When I thought about it, I was wondering about the life of a farmer. One can do their daily workouts in the field, eat pure and organic food (garden fresh), can be peaceful, and hopefully, not a lot of stress inducing factors as well. One would think that Health care might be an issue. Yes, it definitely is. But, if there was no pollution and if everyone ate good food and exercised well enough, I would assume that natural remedies should take care of most problems than the humanly fabricated problems. Should we, as a community go back to the basics and slip ourselves from the maximization curve and stabilise ourselves with the better practices that we have inherited over time ? It makes me feel that people living in country side knowingly/unknowingly are probably better off without technological interventions. I dont know if it is politicians or just the inherited intelligence factor, but from a very high level, all I see is that nature's wealth getting increasingly consumed without anything being put back. In the process, we weave more and more strands which only complicates things than making it simpler. Look at all other living things than humans, it seems to me that they all serve some purpose to the ecological balance. But, I think humans dont serve any purpose other than just consume and deprive nature of all its resources and create a global imbalance, may be even destroy earth. Something to think about...or not ?...


* Fourier Series and Fourier Transforms just do that

The Bend-a-little routine

We were sitting in the classroom yesterday and one of the students was late getting in. The presentation was projected on the wall and the professor was engaging the students' attention with his fascinating real-world stories and his pronounced gestures.

One lady student who was late to class by a few minutes had to get to her seat. As she walked through the front of the class in between the presentation and the students, she bent a little, because she didn't want to rudely interrupt class. This is not the first time I have noticed someone wanting to be polite.

If you have had any conversation in a corridor or hallway and someone needs to pass through, you can notice they would do the bend-a-little routine. Please note that I myself am too sanguine to have a conversation in the corridor blocking other people's way :-) The same is true in movie theaters. You might have noticed people who left their seats in the middle of the movie to attend nature's calls or to refill their soda. When they return to their seats, they do the bend-a-little routine so the people behind them don't get interrupted.

While these people want to convey "I don't mean to interrupt you", it does not solve its purpose, because people take notice anyway! You might have been faster to just walk straight and walk fast :-)

If you think people won't notice a 5 foot 6 inches tall person who shrinks by a few inches (bend-a-little routine), you are quite mistaken. If you really don't want to be noticed, you are going to have to follow the bend-a-lot routine so you'll be only 2-3 feet tall head to feet. Then maybe you won't be noticed. This might have other ramifications, however, with you toppling over and pulling down everything and everyone around you. If your objective was to only substitute a verbal "Excuse me" with an unspoken gesture (bend-a-little routine), then that's fine. You are excused!

Not like my father

“Thanda choru, Thadi Madu, Mundam! You are not useful for anything”

Hello, if you are wondering about these then you are not from this area. I got used to this kind of yelling by now and my neighbors too know who it is targeted at. Without confusing you further let me tell you. This is my father’s day to day morning ritual. He is upset about me about something.

To tell you the truth, I am fed up of it now. I can tell you this, I HATE my father. If there is one thing I am sure of in life, it is that I am not going to be like my father.

Today’s issue started like this, he came home with a recommendation letter for me to get a job as accountant in a local farm. Can you believe that? Asking a B.Com student (with Honors) to be an accountant at local farm. I said NO of course and he is upset. He started talking about how son’s where during his time. And, how he was penniless and made it up slowly. Yada..Yada..yada!
My point is why is it so difficult for him to understand that I have my own life? I made up my mind that day, I am going to get out of this house and make my own life. It may be rough road, but I don’t have to listen to my father’s constant yelling.

I can’t believe it is been 25 years since I came out of house. Life was very fast and fun. I struggled and then made it up in a company and started 3 companies during these 25 years. And today too, we are starting our 4th company as it is auspicious day.

My wife just told me that my son has gone to play some stupid local tennis tournament, so can’t attend this function.What does he thinks of himself? He doesn’t know how difficult it is to come up in life.

“Stupid, Fool, Idiot”

This is a rough (bad) translation of my first short story in Tamil. It is called "Appa poll illai". I wrote this long back in 5 minutes and thought I have become a writer.

Never read any good short story till that point I guess. The more I read, more I realise about the problems. I could see it is jumpy and cliched to certain extent.

But again, it is my own and that gave an immense satisfaction. (Trust me it is slightly better in Tamil)