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