A Titular Matter

When this blog was started, back in January 2004, I had given it a name. Unfortunately, I don't remember it now, so anonymous was it. I can guess that it would have been an effort to display my knowledge of either science fiction or academics or high flown literature. Then in January 2005, as an impoverished graduate student, the blog was renamed - "Poor Indian Graduate Student". I had less than 500$ in my bank account, and graduation was nowhere in sight. Fortunately, I bailed out in May 2006, and so the title had to become "Poor Indian Graduate Student ", with an additional line of "In the US of A", by way of further explanation of my status. Now, as it turns out, in a few weeks "In the US of A" might need to be amended to "In the US of A UK".

They own the night

Mr. Family Orientation has been driving for the last 30 years. Enjoys talking to and observing the variety of people he meets. Will retire in 4 years and head to his newly constructed home in Puerto Rico. Plans to run his own little rickshaw company there, importing bright yellow rickshaws from India. Loves to watch discovery channel. Knows about the Bombay meal carriers. Told me among all the people he has met, he finds Indians to be the nicest. He likes them because they are family oriented. Feels happy that Indians in the US are going out a lot more than when he started driving; they are better integrated into society. Thinks Indian girls are very pretty, especially when they free their long straight hair.

Mr. Part Time has been driving a cab for the last 3 months. Brazilian who was traveling through the US and decided to stay. Has been working odd-jobs for the last 2 years while studying for his degree in art. Barely knows the routes, and very polite; not at all used to the ways of a cabdriver. Apologized when he missed the intersection, and offered to take 4$ off the bill. Asks me what I think of the United States. Thinks that Americans are too conservative and boring. Is learning to speak English, Portugese being his native language.

Mr. Chevrolet has roamed the city's streets in his yellow Caprice Classic since the year 2000. Came from Uganda. Thinks that there is good money driving a cab in the city. Loves cars. Asks me what car I like most. I say that the Audi is a car I like. He likes American cars. Thinks the Mercury is the best car. Spacious, big, fast. Also likes the Lincoln. Thinks European cars are too small - not good value for money.

Mr Big Shot has been driving a cab ever since he came to the US from Pakistan about 10 years back. Is a Civil Engineer. Owns a business. Drives a cab for excess money. Tells me that life is good in the US. Lots of money to be made. Asks me what I do. I tell him I work on a computer. Asks me how much I make. I tell him. Says that I dont make enough. Tells me I should change jobs or work as a consultant paid by the hour.

A post

It looks like the posts are becoming increasingly sporadic. Lets make a little market shall we.

What are the other odds:

1) The next 12 months will produce > 24 posts

2) The next 12 months will produce >=12 and <=24 posts

3) The next 12 months will produce <>

At the end of 12 months, all those who bet over the mean would pay those who bet below the mean. This would be "AR's BlogSwap". I expect this product to take off so quickly and the speculative trading in it to be so reckless that the stability of the world economy will be in question.

Speaking of world markets in terrible jeopardy, have you ever realized how screwups tend to be highly correlated. When things are appearing to get bad, they usually soon get worse. Case in example, rental car broke down on Friday night right before a weekend trip to Madison, and as a result we had to wait 2 hours for the tow truck, and then spend another hour taking the train to midway for a replacement car, which gave us the opportunity to be bumped by the attendant there who had no spare cars, and which in turn had one of the guys bailing out, which in turn increased the likelihood of a sucky trip. However, the trip turned out to rock. Upstate Wisconsin can kick upstate New York's ass (note content of previous post.). Rolling woods, lakes, hiking trails, fall colors - yellow, violet and red, long winding roads and quaint towns.

I have come to note that increasingly, people I know are either married, engaged or in the process of getting engaged/married. I am growing old. When I finished undergrad and entered graduate school, the senior graduate students looked OLD. It felt like it would be eons before I would be where they were (like never). Though I am not currently in graduate school, many of my friends are in the last legs of their phd. Another sign that indicates the passage of time. Another even more shocking sign is the fact that I have come to accept that I will be old one day. Brilliance at its most lustrous.

Thank you for your time. Now go do something more useful!

Labor day holiday

I had a nice 5 day break for Labor Day. Breaks are good. Most breaks are to a good extent characterized by fun and frolic. Mine was mostly confusion and mayhem. However, it was interesting. In the end interesting is what matters.

On Friday evening flew into Rochester, NY to visit my friend Arrvindh. We planned to drive down (or rather up) to the Adirondacks for a spot of trekking. At the outset, our plan was quite ambitious. We would set out from Rochester on Sunday morning, reaching Lake George in the Adirondacks by lunch. We were to join KP and Rajesh, who were driving up from NYC, and who would be there at about the same time.

After a shockingly early (atleast by my standards) Saturday night we set out to Lake George at the unearthly hour of 7 in the morning. I get a call from the dynamic duo at 8:15 informing us that they have just woken up. They were supposed to have left a 8:00am, to compensate for the 60 less miles they were driving. So, we kill time at a gas station, getting breakfast and set out again. Then at 9:30am we get another call. The front wheels of their car had just decided to part ways with the main body. The car had ripped through some spikes on the road. They were stuck at the New Jersey turnpike, waiting for the tow van. At this point, we decided to stop waiting, and drive on straight to Black Mountain, the hill we planned to hike up. We reach there at 2pm. We wait till 3pm, and head out. We shorten our trek and come back by 6pm. We find out from the departure register that the other two had arrived at 3:10pm. Bad luck. Why couldn't they have arrived 10 minutes earlier? This little mishap unleashed a chain of events of such fury and complexity that in ancient times the skies would have parted and demon lords would have wreaked havoc across the lands.

Since they left 10 minutes after us, they should arrive 10 minutes after us, we think. We decided to wait. Most deceptively simple arithmetic in real life usually tends to be flagrantly wrong. There was no sign of them at 7pm..7:30pm..8pm. I tried to call. I heard a phone ringing behind me. KP had bravely decided to leave his phone and wallet behind in the car. Brilliant!

Finally at 8:30pm we get a call. For some completely incomprehensible reason, Rajesh's cell phones had found reception. It turned out that the two had made a wrong turn, and were stuck 6 miles away, in the woods, right by the Lake. Notice that these are two nice Brahmin boys (very marriagable, to any girls who are reading this) who do their Sandhis every morning and take their coffee hot every afternoon at 4 sharp. Snakes and bears? Ayyo ayyo. It began to get chilly. I wanted to suggest that the boistrous boys should kill a bear, eat its meat and wear its skin as a coat.

I was ahead of myself. It turned out that there were some boats by the Lake. Though the occupants were quite intoxicated, they were not sufficiently enough that they couldn't call the Rangers. Rangers ride (glide) to the rescue. The poonaled payyas were loaded onto the boat and duly tranported to the nearest spot of land not inhabited by bears and snakes. Unfortunately, this spot of land was 50 miles away, it was 11 in the night, and we were driving a 2 seater. We did what we had to do (not really, but since we did it, one might as well take the credit). The two were parcelled into the back seat. I suggested that the one who had forgotten his wallet and phone should be put into the trunk, but my friend Arrvindh had been weaned on the milk of kindness.

Now the keen observer would note that if the wallet and phone were in a parking lot 50 miles away, so would be the backpack and clothes. Thus not only was my evening ruined, but my clothes were too (due to forced donations). So concluded my Sunday.

Monday was spent driving to New York City with Rajesh and KP. Arrvindh had decided to return back to Rochester. Such is the busy schedule of a Ph.D. student.

As is life, troubles tend to multiply. In NYC, not one, not two, but three friends bailed out on me. Is there something about me that is intrinsically undesirable? One was busy with work, another had a gf's birthday and the third had to visit parents in New Jersey. My moping was partially saved by Rajesh, who offered to continue to tolerate my existence in his apartment. His roommate Arun I found interesting, mostly due to our shared interest in coffee and tennis.

I found NYC to be too crowded, expensive and noisy. However, I did fulfill my newly found interest in Finance by visiting (externally) the headquarters of every major financial institution - Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stears, BlackRock, Citigroup, Bank of America etc. . The list is very long. Outside the Bear Stearns headquarters I tried to imagine which were traders who had lost a lot of money. Since I hadn't checked on the market that day, I let my mind run wild with all the things that might have happened. Maybe the market had crashed, and all these people were leaving, never to return. They looked that way anyway. I was to be disappointed, the market was up 20 points for the day. That was my Tuesday.

On Wednesday morning, after a late coffee (with Arun) and an even later lunch, I go down to Greenwich Village and Soho. Most overrated. I certainly wouldn't pay a million dollars for a 1 bedroom apartment there. I think NYC would be a good city to live in if you make a couple of bucks a year, and can afford a good standard of life. Otherwise it is all about small apartments, crowded trains, and long commutes.

What I do love about New York though is Central Park. It is the little patch of green and peace that counterbalances all the madness. All of New York comes there, be from Harlem or the Upper East Side. I saw Steven Tyler listen to a some roadside bums explain their decoration on a mosaic that said "Imagine", obviously a tribute to John Lennon. The running paths: I could run forever, what with the skyline in the background and endless stream of interesting people to look at. I wanted to run a quick 5 miles, but I hadn't brought along my athletic shoes.

I also love the Metropolitan Museum (Met). It is one of the most carefully designed museums I have been to, and trust me I have been to many. The arrangement of the Egyptian temple in real scale, as it would have been 4000 years ago, is something I have seen nowhere else. It also has a great collection of Roman and Greek artifacts. I was so enchanted that in my 5 hours there on Wednesday I barely managed to finish the Greek and Egyption sections. Very disappointing. It is something I have to get back at a later date.

Late on Wednesday, I take the bus out to La Guardia to catch the flight to Chicago. As luck would have it I forget the name of my flight, though I did remember the departure time. I have a harrowing and highly embarrassing time trying to figure out the name of the airline. Thus is too much choice. India is good that way - Air India and Indian Airlines. It was that way at least. Capitalism, competiation and choice have descended there as well.

I return home late Wednesday night, and head out to work on Thursday, my traditional hatred of Monday mornings temporarily shifted to Thursdays. All in all a good holiday, a lot to write home about.

Summer Update

Dont you find it funny that only after much of the summer has slipped away do you start thinking about things - the things you did, the things you could do but did not do, and the things you wanted to do but could not do. In any case, I had a good time, and look forward to the fall and winter. Winter however cold, wind swept and bleak you might be - I am not scared.

Interestingly, I did vigorously cram as much as I could into the summer because the winter is boring. If summer extended all year long (as it does in Madras), I am sure I would have planned out far less.

In other developments, the past few weeks have been quite the learning experience. As many of you may know, and may not know, there has been much tension in the markets. Spurious NINJA (No INcome Job or Assets) housing loans over the last few years are coming back to haunt many a lender. There has been many a default, leading to many a loss of money to those wise people who lent the money. Summing up, hedge funds who bought these loans have been blowing up left right and center. It doesn't help if you borrow 10 bucks for every buck that you have and buy stuff that then goes on to lose 50% of its value over 4 weeks. When a fund loses big money, it gets margin calls, and to meet these margin calls it has to generate cash, and to generate cash it has to sell other parts of its holdings that are doing just fine. So, the whole market crashes down because there is a mad rush to sell and get out of positions before they fall in value. It is like a game of musical chairs; when the music stops the last one standing is out. At times like these one is thankful that one is an Analyst, the lowest kind of life in the Financial pecking order. As an Analyst, you aren't really responsible for anything, and consequently get paid nothing. However, you do get a birdseye view of the proceedings, and observe all hell breaking loose without actually being tarred and feathered.

Weird

I got this SMS on my office phone today :
"Tilly and me would like to invite you to golf today at ridgemoor 2pm."

a) Whoa! Hold it there buddy! You are inviting me to golf?! Are you insane ?! FOBs don't play golf. They wear running Nikes, buy 14$ 50c racquets and screech up the neighbourhood Tennis court.

b) Since you are bringing Tilly, I really need to rush to the pet shop nearest me and take Collie, my newly acquired pet dog.

c) Now since it is on the office phone I really need to be careful. Wit might lead to bit of bother. See everyone has the same first 6 digits. Its the last 4 digits that differ. So a misdial would lead to an office colleague (most likely senior as I am the lowest form of life). To explain how scarily well this works, I once had a friend who got robbed blind while on vacation. He got in touch with me (to go through his apartment and retrieve identification documents) by dialing random digits on the last 4 and asking the person who connected to look me up on Outlook!

Over the last few weeks I have been feeling really stupid. See, I am not a great techie. I can use a computer well enough that people who know nothing about computers think I know what I am doing. I suck at math. I know more math than the average social science major but can't hold a candle to anyone who knows what they are doing. And my interpersonal skills? Ha! Lets not even get into that. One might argue that a combination of these skills might be worth something even if each of these skills are worthless individually. But then comes the principle of comparative advantage. It just restates that there is little point in being the Jack of all trades and the master of none. Or that Roger Federer is better off playing Tennis than Golf. Why didn't I believe in worn out cliches?!

To be honest, the basic reason why I feel so blah is that I am going to be a quarter of a century old pretty soon and have squat to show for it. There were so many things I thought I would be when I was 25 (when I was like 17) - let me not embarrass myself by delving into my adolescent aspirations but just say that there is a disconnect between reality and past expectations. Lets try here, what can I show? Can I show you my biceps? I know it isn't going to make me mister universe but who are we kidding? All we need to kid is myself!

The worst part is I really have nothing to complain about. I find my job reasonably interesting, I have a varied group of friends, play Tennis, Soccer (terribly) and Swim when I can, and eat in nice restaurants and travel to nice places. Its the general sense of blahness in life that is getting to me, the sense I am missing what I really wanted at some point in my life.

That makes me wonder...How did you feel when you were going to be 25?

Artic

I have been visiting the the Art Institute of Chicago for the last few weeks, for the most part because it is free on Thursdays and Fridays. It has been a fun learning experience.

I have come to be more open to different styles of painting. Its quite interesting to see the transformation of painting style from the precise and picture perfect in the 17th century to the increasingly stylized and abstract today.It is not so surprising that much of the move into abstract representations came with the influx of photography. The change in the end consumer of the art is also quite evident, from churches to rich old men to modern 20th century folks who need something to decorate their steel and glass homes.

However, what I don't get are those morons who do something inane (3 stripes green, blue and black or put a shark in a tank or mix random colors, splash and waste good canvas), throw a convoluted uber-intellectual spiel onto it and pass it off as art. To distinguish between skill and idiocy I propose a test. If a painting cannot be made by a 4 year old kid under instructions from his/her teacher or through complete randomness (splashing paint on canvass), it must be art.

In a museum there are 2 types of visitors, no make that 3. People who know nothing about art and would like to impress Uncle Silvio/Chen/Al Haj/Kumar back home. People who know nothing about art but find it interesting and a good substitute for staler forms of entertainment (e.g. movie at AMC Cinema), and those who know their art and actually have some artistic skill. Its quite easy to distinguish between varieties 1 and 3 though 2 is a tough one. Anyone belongs to category 1 if the first impulse on sighting a painting is to go as close up to it as possible and squint at it. Those in 3, first capture the overall effect of the painting from a healthy 10ft and then move in to take in the micro technique employed by the painter. The ones in 2 come in multiple hues, starting of as 1 and ending up somewhere close to 3. In any case, let me make my case why it is not beneficial to look at a painting as if one were examining a bacterial infection.

For example,
This conveys little or no information to you while this

is most striking. The shades of blue emphasize the sadness and loss felt by the old guitarist. This is especially true for impressionist paintings where the overall scene conveys a larger visual effect that one misses by close staring.

For e.g.,
The very specific effect of the light and the rustic coarseness of the scene comes to you only from a distance.

What I find most shocking about the Museum Shop, are not the prices which by the way are a complete rip-off. As a matter of fact, high prices are a good idea. It allows the re-distribution of capital from the inept to the deserving, from bone headed tourists to talented but impoverished artists. What I find shocking is the kind of material that the museum attempts to sell. The available prints are the same old set of "famous" paintings that have been publicized for eternity. For a museum with a most impressive impressionist collection, it really does not need to make one more copy of "Sunflowers" by Van Gogh which is not even part of the collection.Who really needs one more copy of Dali's melting timepiece?

There are a number of things I like as well - the breadth of the collection, the care that is taken to preserve and promote art, the ambience, the list goes on. It is a great way to spend an evening. Part meditation, part education.

Terrible Ditty for Dear Kitty

I know it has been quite long,
And you might think I am gone,
But it is just not true
I will be back to rescue you.

I shall bring you back once again,
Into a world full of double clicks,
You will be bombarded with comments,
And very numerous site hits.

Horrendous verse it is,
But little do I care,
My silly blog of 3 years,
You will not be left threadbare.

Visa Raj

An enlightening article on the new "visa raj" that has become fashionable in the US - a backlash against the shipping of US jobs to India and China. Little do they realize that this is going to add nitroglycerine to the fire :

1. Software companies will face an even more acute shortage of talent due to all the visa restrictions.
2. Pay will bloat in the US, making it even more un-economical to keep jobs in the US.
3. Go where the talent is. Lets go to India!

If things continue the way they are, all the H1B types are simply going to go to India and continue what they were doing in the US, for close to the same pay. Not a bad deal, I think.

I think..

I think that life is one process that is constantly reverting to -inf. In the sense, its a random walk where if you were to go down, you are more likely to go further down than go up (think about it, in the end you die, the boundary condition). Its also one you have no control over as there are too many free floating variables. You cannot control your birth, race, ability etc. etc. You cannot control many of the random events that come to affect you. You can only try, and that can only help so much. Its also memoryless. The future has no memory of your past successes. If you dont get through the next stage, you are basically back to where you started. It doesn't care how many stages you had made it past earlier. Interesting. Does anyone have a good model for this?

Guess...

Guess who we had coming into work today - Barack Obama! As you all know he is running for president, and to be elected president you need to win the presidential elections (no kidding!), and to win the elections you need to campaign, and to campaign you need money to pay the bills, and what can be a better place to find funding than in a financial firm. It was the weird that I went. Firstly, I am not American so I cannot vote. Secondly, it is illegal for me to contribute to his campaign funds (do you know people what people who accept such funds are called - traitors!). In my company an easy 25% of the populace is non-American. Weird that everyone would go listen to him talk. He came in at about 4 in the evening, gave a short 30 minute speech and then took questions for another 30 minutes.

He comes across as a smart well educated guy. He a a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and an editor or something of the Harvard Law Review. He is well poised, self-effacing and articulate, much unlike George Bush who has the grand prescence of a gerbil with a speech defect. I am pretty sure that 75% of the female population is going to vote for him. One manifestation of this fact was that I didn't hear him say anything that approximated to - "I am the President of the United States, my job is to help you so that you can do your job. If, I do my job well than you can do your job and I will save you from all the evil terrorists who want to drag your wife and children from your home and burn them at the stake. Bah. Bah. Bah.".

In America there are 3-4 main topics that get everyone heated up. Barak covered most of these topics , and proposed quite reasonable solutions I would think. In decreasing order of importance -

- Iraq War : Fund for now. Withdraw in a phased manner, without causing chaos. This is kind of the line that most Democrats tow now. Disagree with the whole war idea without alienating the troops.

- Social Security and Medicare i.e. entitlement programs : This a big problem in the Western world because the population is aging - this means you would need to pay increasing pensions and medical bills for the old people from money from a smaller working population. This is not as much of a problem in the US because the population is still relatively young. However, expenses have spiraled. Barak wants to trim the pork by streamlining the whole thing. Would be a hard thing to do. Historically success rates have been quite low. Lets see if he succeeds.

- Taxes ! He is going to pull out the freebies that Bush Jr. doled out to richest 5% of the population. Not surprisingly this 5% also pays 70% of all tax.

- Education. Wants to reform schools. Improve school teacher pay. Trim red-tape. Make the system more accountable and performance driven.

He has made the promised what every politician promises - change! Drastic change! A whole new world. Prosperity. Happiness. Lets see how much of it actually comes to fruition.

I know I keep repeating myself, and am running myself thin, but you know what - he comes across as a fresh open guy, practical, action oriented and free of ideological rhetoric. Has a natural sense of humor.

As you know April 17th is the day when all us humans need to pay our dues to the IRS. Not so shockingly, one of the first questions that came up was the changes he was going to make to the tax code. He said that he is going to roll back tax rates to Clinton administration levels (read increase taxes.) Then he said, "However, I am one of those unfortunate people. My book did well this year, and I earned just about enough to be at the highest tax rate, but not as much as K (the ultra big boss) to actually have fun with all the money." That broke the tension (and lost votes) from nervous professionals into a roll of laughter (and won votes + admiration.) Nice personal touch.

There were also some questions about the Iraq War (fielded by a veteran) and a couple of more mundane things I forget.

I feel that one of his biggest problems in getting elected is going to be the fact that he is too well educated and articulate. Will he be able to rouse the rural populace? Simple unadultrated emotion might go down better with them than sophisticated arguments. This is a problem that has plagued the Democrats in general I feel. By Democrats I mean, Hillary Clinton. Additionally, she appears to be a stuck up and I am not sure how many people want a re-run of the Clinton dynasty for another 4 years. She lacks the "breath of fresh air" factor.

Lets see what happens. I think he would make a nice President.

Vengaya Bajji

I have been reading a lot lately. No not anything that vaguely resembles good literature. After staring at a screen all day, the last thing you want to do when you come home is spend another 3 hours looking at some scrawl in size 9 font. However, its this new thing called "guilt adjusted relaxation" that I have begun to do at work. I feel too guilty to just slack off for a couple of hours and take a walk or get some coffee or something. So, I sit at my desk and visit random websites, that are sort of intellectually enlightening. So it is guilt adjusted. While I am wasting time in terms of adding to the codebase and coming up with well converging numerical solutions, I am growing in my knowledge of the universe.

I mostly to stick to Wikipedia, its an encyclopedia you know, lots of knowledge, which means it has the best "guilt adjustment characteristic". I know all about Nazi Germany. All the evil guys and all the stupid things they did. Its kind of funny how all these neo-Nazi white supremist groups use the ancient religious symbol (Swastika) of a bunch of brown guys. Then there is chaos theory. I know a bit in a fun anecdotal bullshit way. I even learnt some esoteric sounds like "diffeomorphism".

A month or so back I spent about 20 mins a day over a week tracking down Tam actors. "Kaptaaan" Vijay was the most fun. Must go to his website I say. It epitomises all the key things you should NOT do while putting up a bunch of pages. God knows how many tatas got coronaries looking at that stuff. Also, do you know that when MGR is almost 31 years older than JJ. So he basically married one of his daughters friends. It was also his 4th go at the marriage deal. Another intersting factoid is that he is not MGR but Dr. MGR. He got a Ph. D. from "The World University" in Arizona. Wonder what he got it for? Running around trees with sundry girls?

Another website thats got me is this blog called dealbreaker. It is to financial reporting what "The Sun" is to current affairs reporting. It is classy, well balanced and suave...NOT. Interesting gossip about payscales, who got hired and fired, and links to Craigs list profiles of well to do but super lonely i bankers. One of the funnest episodes was when some college kid came up with a 20 minute video of why he would make a great banker. Hilarious! I would be inclined to think that he didn't get so far with this particular self promotion technique.

I also read a lot of blogs. It is interesting to see how, like in real life, where similar people are more likely to hang out with each other, similar blogs link to each other.

Lame graduate students link to other graduate students.
Crazy ranting chicks (CRCs, different from Cyclic Redundancy Check) link to others CRCs , CWCs (Crazy Whining Chicks) and some CDOGs (Crazy Doped Out Guys).
Writers link to other writers.
Technojunkies link to other junkies.

The age group, region, language and background also remains quite consistent across all the blogs you click through too. Delhi types link to other delhi types. Bongs link to a bunch of other bongs. And of course, Tam Brahms link to other Tam Brahms. Sriram links to Sivaram. Debonita links to Purohita.

Another interesting phenomenon I see is in blog activity. All the blogs within a "click radius" tend to be active or in-active all together. A blog which is frequently updated and well commented upon is more likely to lead you to another active blog than a dead blog. Of course, this doesn't count those blogs that link to like 200000 blogs just to get a lot of hits. I can see it in my own set of blogs too. I started blogging kind of regularly in May '05 mostly because I was alone and quite bored during an internship. I become part of this community that had a round of posts coming up every week. Then it died. Now there are these synchronized bursts where 2-3 blogs put up a post in the span of a few days, and then it dies out again.

I can keep going on but one must stop somewhere. That kind of sums of my foray into "guilt adjusted relaxation". See, it has enabled me to present you with this fascinating information.

Snow

Its snowing in the middle of April. How messed up is that?

You should..

- See "The Namesake", its a great movie. If you have had family/friends who have lived in another country for a while you will know what I mean.
- Stop reading "current affairs" magazines and watching stupid news programs i.e. Time, Newsweek, CNN, CNBC etc. etc. . They are full of shit. The worst are the so called "city news" reporting, which can be simply summarized by "some stupid guy got shot on the south side." Without as much as a glance, it is possible to guess 80% of the content. Obama. Elections. War On Iraq. Weepy article on war widow. Some fantabulous article on the latest in cancer treatment. Any good exceptions you know of? Some people think the "New Yorker" rocks, but I don't think so. Its one of those cases where some so called smart guy said it was good, and everyone else had to agree to not look stupid.
- File taxes by April 17th. I filed mine today (prompt as ever).
- Check out You Tube. Its all about the right keyword. You can find pretty much anything there.
- Read about Paul Lauterbur. He died recently.

Bah!

The never ending grind is getting to me. And the cut-throat competition! You never know who is setting you on fire. Bah!

I have been a little too anxious and disturbed of late, for my own comfort. Nothing catastrophic. Just a lot of small innocous things which all add up and cause the mind to wander.

After much contemplation, I have decided I would anyday be lucky than smart (as if..). In the roll of the dice, if you hit 3 sixes, do any of the other specifics really matter?

----------------------------------------------------

You know what? In a state of boredom, nostalgia, homesickness, and missing my grandfather, I googled my great-grandfathers name. I was amazed to find this.

N Sundaram Iyer, who successfully ran the City Motor Service in the 1940s, was a multi-faceted personality. He taught mathematics at the Loyola College and later at the Vivekananda College, Chennai of which he was honorary principal for a few years. He was considered a great teacher of complex variables.

Sundaram Iyer used to persuade many applicants for an undergraduate course to persue the the B A (Hons) course in mathematics. Reason: due to his love of maths and perhaps more to his love of business. The maths course, unlike other science UG courses, did not call for expensive laboratories. All that were needed were blackboards and a few pieces of chalk. And he had an abundance of good teachers, including the dedicated T R Raghava Sastry. The intake for the post- graduate courses was a liberal 40 plus.

The practice was similar in several other colleges. In the land of Ramanujan there was a natural flair and interest in mathematics.

My grandfather actually went to Loyola College and was taught by T R Raghava Sastry. How a 65 year old man would remember the name of his favorite teacher!

The City Motor Service was the pre-indepenance pre-cursor to our beloved moving Leviathians, Pallavan Transport Corporation. Sundaram Iyer was quite the businessman-academician. While continuing to teach, he built up the business from a single second hand bus that he had accidentally come to possess. I used to be enthralled throughout my childhood by my grandfather's tales, tales of important people, grand houses, many cars, servants and a most nice life. Sad that some disastrous business decisions later on in life would cause ruin.

This reminds me of another time when I was transitioning from the 10th to the 11th. I had to start up on the IIT coaching classes, and coming from a not so competitive school, I was late on the whole game. Going to the right tutors and being with the right peer group is all important you know. I wanted to join a retired professor, KS Ramachandran for maths. I went to meet him with my grandfather. My grandfather was my willing handy man, keeping track of the endless details necessary for "successful engineering entrance".

KSR as we was fondly called was quite the old-fashioned type, didn't like kids landing up at the last minute. We tried our best to get him to change his mind but it just wouldn't work. However, as luck would have it, oldish thatas were on my side, as they always tend to slide into small talk and reminisce of times passed and faded. My grandfather asked him if he had heard of N Sundaram Iyer. At this, KSR left out a whoop of amazement. A B. A (Hons) Math scholarship 50 years ago. I did go to KSR.

In my family, my great grandfather came to symbolize everything in life that you should and should not strive for. Academic achievement, goodness of character, business canny, over-confidence, poor judgement, and failure.

Goldspan opens his mouth...

..and the market drops. Or was it the 8% move in China? Or was it the Yen carry trade * ? Or was it the sub-prime meltdown ? Predictability is to finance what coyness was to Anna Nicole Smith. You can try as hard as you want, but it just isn't there, and is never going to be. Every guy has his own pet theory which predicts the state of the economy out to 20 years, and weirdly if 1000 guys come out with their theories, in the end someone is going to be right! It is impossible to distinguish skill from luck! Better be a lucky fool than an unlucky genius! (Think about it, why do you need to be smart if you have rich parents?! Not the paavam middle class boy I am.) Anyway, most of the trouble comes from it being this weird cat and mouse game, where all your time is spent double guessing the joe across the street.

Of late, I have been following the market quite closely. A bit too obsessively you might say. I can tell you what the SPX did on each day over the last 2 weeks. A 2% move is actually life event, and a quite a talking point. (That would also provide generous hints as to the quality of my life). Its not that I have a stake in whats going on. As a matter of fact, I do, in some vague general survival of the universe sense, but not enought to get worked up though. However, if you are surrounded by a bunch of people whose lives print tick by tick you cannot but help.

One result of this is that my "GK" a.k.a "General Knowledge", that thing you knew to do quiz contests in school and college, is better than it has ever been. See, I have heard something about anything and everything that can move the markets. Democrats vs. Republicans. Obama vs. Clinton vs. Mc Cain vs. ?!. Iraq war. Will US declare war on Iran ? (Well do you want to pay $4.00 a gallon? In that case you might have to. ) Medicare. Medicaid. Social Security. The imploding housing market. Ford and GM. The wreck that is the American car industry. Cheap money. Takeovers and mergers Happy times ! Lets get hitched! Arcelor and Mittal. Tata and Corus. (Even Indian companies have joined the fray. Brothers to the rescue! ) And who can miss the skyrocketing and exploding (like fireworks) markets of India and China. And I follow the non business section as well. Britney baby, to the rehab, one more time! Life is busy but interesting.

* Any trade tries to buy something that is cheap and sell that is expensive, thus making a profit. People lose a shitload of money when they interchange the cheap and expensive part. ( Not very hard to figure that one out, but hard to carry out in practice.) So, the Yen carry trade borrows in Yen (which is cheap as interest rates in Japan are zero) and buys stock in India (which gallop up and down, so you can net 25% if you get lucky). In other words, borrow money from the bank and bet it all on horse or two.

** A month or two back a couple of friends of mine were giving me heat about my largely sceptical view of the crazy run up of real estate prices in India, US and elsewhere. Well guys, take a look at whats happening in the US now. The piece of shit is exploding. Finally, its a good time to buy a house. Palm it off some bankrupt dude in foreclosure. Heh.

*** Spring is back. Hells yeah!

*^4 Remind me to get my camera out. I go on Flickr and see such brilliant photos. I like taking photos! I need to take some! One underestimates how hard it is to capture the perfect moment. Once you have it, it all looks so obvious. Hindsight is 20/20.

Gravity

News! News! News! Breaking News! It's just unbelieveable. When you finally come to accept that pigs could fly this comes along.

John Mayer.........discovers.....and whines about....* drum rolls *........Gravity!

Gravity *Whine*

Gravity is working against me What?! It is?? How dare it!! How could it be so cruel?
And gravity wants to bring me down Bawwhhhh Bawwwhhh life is soooo unfaaairrrr

Oh I'll never know what makes this man Ah ok. So Mr. Gravity it is then. Not a Mrs or a Miss. Not in a pretty flowing floral skirt.
With all the love that his heart can stand Oh so love it is. I guess everything is straight now.
Dream of ways to throw it all away And kaput it was. How shocking that you would fall out with Mr Gravity ?!

Oh Gravity is working against me Bawhh!! Life is soooo unfairrr....Wahhh...Bawwhh..Sniff
And gravity wants to bring me down How hateful! That heartless beast!

Oh twice as much aint twice as good You want less of it? Sure! Lets shoot you out into space.
And can't sustain like one half could Translation still awaited from John-Mayer-gobbledegook-touch-feely-adsgkj-speak speacialist.
It's wanting more More?! Didn't you want less 2 sentences back?!
That's gonna send me to my knees Sadism is cool.
(repeat) (ouch ouch ouch)

Oh gravity, stay the hell away from me And you want it go away?!
Oh gravity has taken better men than me you see now how can that be? Make up your mind!! Maybe its you and not 'him' who has caused the relationship malfunction. All the moodswings you know.

Just keep me where the light is Now you want light?! Ah! So you want the gravity to lead you to light. Let there be light!
Just keep me where the light is Gravity + Light => General Relativity. The effect of gravitation on the shape of space and the flow of time!
Keep you me where the light is Relativistic string theory!
Just keep me where the light is Photons! Gravitons! Manifolds !
Ohh… where the light is! D-branes! Supergravity!

As is apparent, Mr. John Mayer is at the cutting edge of thought on some of the most intractable problems that have puzzled humanity for thousands of years. Not surprisingly Mr. Mayer is currently in the company of Madam Jessica "Chicken of the Sea" Simpson. Amazing how a nice voice and a melting look can get away with something so inane and ridiculous.

Another week goes by..

The extended weekend in Utah was a lot of fun. We went skiing in Park City, a little town a few miles out of Salt Lake City. It is apparantly one of the top skiing destinations in the world. The winter olympics were held there a few years back. It was called the Salt Lake City Olympics, but Park City it was. Details, details.

There are primarily 4 types of slopes. Green, Blue, Black Diamond and Black Moguls. The Greens are the baby slopes, while the Black Moguls are those psycho slopes were these lithe visions writhe and glide through the snow. As this was my first time, I was stuck on the Greens. Most of the other folks in my group were these hardcore veterans that being unsatisfied with the Black Moguls, trek up random ridges and ski down jagged mountain sides. I actually wanted to do the Moguls as well. You know, break some bones and get a couple of months off. Alas, the others would have none of it. They refused to call 911 if I flew off a cliff.

Skiing is very hard because you instinctively tend to do the opposite of what you are supposed to. It is like how we tend to handle most things in life. So, they key to success is to do the opposite of what you think you should be doing. Thats probably how you should not be handling most things in life though. Anyway, it is like being on a continously slipping Banana peel. The reason why you slip and fall is because you panic, flail your arms around and lean back, allowing the peel to zip forward, propeling you back. The key to skiing well is to keep your arms well ahead of you, and your weight balanced ahead. That would ensure that the banana peel is pinned under your foot. Weight distribution. Weight distribution.

Anyway, as obvious as it may sound, the first step to skiing well is to not crash. I cannot empasize enough the not crash part. The key to not crashing is to not fly down the slope at 200mph, and the key to doing that (not fly that is) is keeping your speed under control. And, yes, you got that right, the key to keeping your speed under control is to be able to 'carve', i.e. cut left and right, against the direction of the slope, and bleed speed. Now carving isn't easy because as you weave, you could catch an edge and take the aerial route. You are caught between a rock and a hard place, carving could make you end up with legs twisted on the snow, and crashing could leave you decorated on the slope like christmas lights on a christmas tree.

I had quite a few fairly nasty crashes early on. That was nothing as bad as what my friend had. So, we decide to go down this slightly tough Green that sloped down while turning left. These slopes aren't hard to do, as long as you keep your speed under control. Unfortuantely, we can barely even turn, let alone carve. My friend heads down the slope. As he goes down he gets faster and faster and faster, and the turn approaches. Not making the turn would mean flying off a little bit of a cliff into a nice messed up ditch. Since he has no clue as to how to turn, he gets panicky, and somehow manages to turn, but overcorrects. It hasn't helped his speed all that much. Instead of risking flying off the right end of the slope, he is about to fly off the left end. He barrels on at 40 mph at a crop of trees. Gets shell shocked. Drops his poles and falls back. As he result he flies on even faster and has this spectacular crash. It was like watching a car fly off a bridge into a brick wall. My experience was a little better. Fell down a lot more times, but nothing too dramatic. After all this initial anguish, we did get better at it.

So, my super-boss has a little condo in Park City. He also rented us a little condo, with hot tub and all. Ski all day, drink beer, get stuffed and soak in the hot tub all evening. These traders love playing games that resemble trading in some way, essentially gambling games that involve an element of skill - poker for e.g. However, I would advise you to avoid playing a gambling game with a bunch of derivatives traders, if you care about your money. I lost a bit, and wisely decided to sulk and stop playing. They are a pretty nice bunch though.

All in all it was a fun experience. Once in a while I do deserve a bit of a break from my good old 75 hour weeks. Entire companies go out of existence in 2 weeks. Lets not even speak about individual people. I do deserve a bit of a break. Do you think so? Or, do you think I need to be smacked on the head with a cricket bat?

Oh btw, in case you didn't know, in about 15 minutes the most cliched, overused, commericalized piece of shit day ever, Valentine's day, is going to come to an end. Thank god for kind mercies! I read on the BBC website that companies in India expect to make about 200 crores exploiting poor kids with no pocket money. And, whats this thing about women wanting to being treated on par with men? Do they really wan't that deal ? No more days like this then. Super sexist no? I have also been noting that increasingly, women wear engagement rings that are as big as a brick. I sometimes pity the poor finger that needs to keep carry the entire weight of the ego. The poor fellow must have slaved 5 months to pay the first instalment on that thing. Do you know that the diamond market is super manipulated? Do you know that diamonds would cost a fraction as much as they currently do if the few suppliers weren't controlling supply? A bit like oil (OPEC and all that). In any case, general crap shooting ends. Pardon. Merci beaucoup. C'est bon. Au reviour. Monday is President's day. 3 day weekend. Heaven!

Ca va?

Life is sucking a bit. Lets just say that it is sometimes challenging to be in the company of extremely smart and experienced people, who know what is going on while you dont, while you need to get things right and they don't.

One can never tell how much money a trader made or lost that day. Ha! Me?! I will probably get taken out in a stretcher in a week. Whining. Whimpering. Screaming. :).

You know what? I am going to Utah on Thursday. 4 days. Ski Trip. Not bad huh? Life doesn't suck at all, except when its sucking. I don't even need to take days off. I am officially on work. As you can see my group treats me quite nicely. Doesn't leave one as badly fried as the guy who left in 1.5 years to start teaching his own cooking class.

I must seem like one of those crazy super moody people, who keep flipping their outlook on life every 24 picoseconds. As a matter of fact, I am psychotherapizing myself with the whole sunny outlook deal, instead of paying some bloke 150$ a hour to do the same. Heh. That reminds me - did I tell you how much these dentists in the US charge ? You might have a better smile, but nothing really to smile about. You might even bare your teeth for a quick snarl. Thats when you are not scowling bitterly. Having been subject to money being sucked out me at 600$ an hour, I estimate they loot over 1.5 million $ a year. Ah! There I go again!

Bah!

-4F. -20C. #$%@$#^%$$%@^#$%@! The coldest day in 11 years, 2 weeks after the warmest winter day in 50 years. Global Warming ? What might make you think so?

Fun continues..

So, a lot of people gave me flak over my previous post. "You mean insensitive Grinch! You mongoose, bandicoot and rat! All you care about is money! Che you horrible person! Che che che! You animal of a man! Go talk to him and make the fellow feel better! " I attested that it was a bad idea for me to do so. Now in this episode I shall defend myself vigorously yet humorously. Endlessly.

In my very high opinion (not that high because I am not drunk), getting fired is something similar to getting dumped. While the woman (i.e. the dumper, assuming you are the guy) was the tap that filled all your emotional needs, the job is the hose that fills all your financial needs. Actually, it is a far more dramatic life change than just getting dumped. Love cannot buy you a plane ticket home for the winter. Love cannot pay the rent on a nice apartment. Love cannot buy that Nikon Digital Rebel that you so bady wanted. You get my point. However, on the other hand, if you have enough money you can buy the woman you love (your mom basically), a plane ticket, and in essence buy yourself more love and admiration and some most wonderful vendekkai curry. So, in essence getting fired can make you lose a whole bunch of the funky things in life, and thus can cause much stress and anguish.

Me having been the unwitting witness to multiple dumpings, have come to decide that the problem with dumpings is not the actual event but the crying and moaning and whining and complaining and ranting that comes after it. Though the actual interaction with the woman would have lasted for all of 32 seconds, the melodrama after it just goes on and on and on. Much of the trauma is due to blatant overdramatization of events that probably would never have occured in the first place ; sunset walks by the beach, hand in hand (she was 2 feet shorter than you, oops) , soft evenings on the couch watching tv (yeah right, and fighting over the remote), long drives through lush, undulating hills and valleys (and she bitching endlessly about everyone under the sun). There is this totally pointless mis-representation of reality in your head that leads to all kinds of problems. Thus, a true master keeps this trash out of his cranium, and focuses on what needs to be done next.

Which comes to getting fired. No point crying about something that has already happened. Just move on, and make sure you do not repeat your previous mistakes. Getting all self-piteous is a recipe for disaster.

Fun

I came into work on Monday and noticed that my friend why sits a couple of desks in front of me was away. His desk remained empty into the afternoon. That was way too long for a meeting. He couldn't possibly be on vacation. The 2nd week of January! Duh! After all the carnage of the holiday season, you should be insane to take days off now. I wondered for a bit and left it at that. Later on, someone told me he had been fired the previous Wednesday. Apparently, he had been called into a meeting with HR on Wednesday morning. Soon after, he took his jacket and left, never to return. So much for heart rending melodrama.

He was towards the end of trading, and had to find a desk to work in permamently, and no desk wanted to take him. He had done pretty badly in the tests. He was super enthusiastic about whatever he did, but had no idea what he was doing. Its one of those cases where too much energy and enthusiasm actually work against you as you go from one blunder to another. There really wasn't too much of a choice.

Frankly, I don't feel the least bit sympathetic or sorry for him. He had joined the programme that would eventually make him a trader. If you want to make the shit, you better be the shit! Don't expect mama to kiss you on the cheek each time you get into a bit of hot water! He had better been prepared for the reality of the business he had chosen to enter. Also, I am sure he would get a job elsewhere in a week or two. He has a fairly funky looking resume as well, so getting into grad school would be a breeze. And his brother took out the bank with a private equity firm. Its not like the poor guy with a family to support who got thrown out on the road after 20 years worth of blood and sweat.

I should probably speak to him though. Maybe sometime near the weekend.

India Etc.

In the London subway, there are more escalators going up than down. Why?

Its because people trickle into a train station in one's and two's but exit all at once. The distributions are different. Cool no (yeah right!).

India has changed a lot over the last few years - it is finally competing in the global marketplace, international firms are taking opportunities within India seriously, creating jobs and pushing money into the country, and the standard of living has improved substantially for the middle class. (It can be argued that all this development has done little for the poor, the people who most urgently need upliftment. I agree to a good extent.)

India is the fastest growing market for mobile phones in the world. It is expected to have atleast a couple of hundred million handset in a few years. I do not doubt it. A mobile phone costs about 2500Rs over its 3 year lifetime. Thats less than 100Rs a month, or 3 Rs a day. Very affordable.

Median salaries have shot up over the last few years, atleast from what I have got to observe. When I joined college in 2000, just after the technology bubble burst, the best job on campus was with ITC. I think it paid about 6 lakhs. Then came McKinsey the super high-profile consultant job paying about 7. That was around 2004. At that time I thought the scene was good. I had no idea! This year I found out that Deutsch Bank recruited for their NY Office, paying 100k+USD. Lehman Brothers, Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs came as well. I know for a fact that this is beyond the range of most of those recruited even from the fancy pancy Ivy League schools in the US. (This heartens me much. Wait till some of the Princeton and Harvard schmuks I work with hear this. Ha ha. To get you to understand my antagonism, 2 of them actually asked me if I had failed my training exams.) Even if it is argued that these are just some numbers out in the tail, the median has gone up to about 5 lakhs as well.

I drove down Old Mahabalipuram Road the other day. The amount of development is simply awesome, inspite of the road being a total wreck.

Though I feel there has been a lot of real growth, there seem to be some signs of a speculative bubble. I am quite the novice, and might be wrong, but do allow me my opinion.

The first thing that comes to my mind is the self-congratulatory rubbish that is filling the media. They make it sound like the only direction prices can go is up. I saw this flash across on NDTV Profit :

40% of Analysts Bullish on the Market.

A little common sense will tell you that if 40% are thinking that the market is going to go up, 60% think that the market is going to stay put or go down. The latter would be the more relevant albeit unpopular piece of information.

Real estate prices have doubled over the last couple of years. A 2 bedroom flat in Kalakshetra costs about 1.5 crores. Thats about 400,000 USD. It used to cost about 70lakhs a year back. In a reaction to this, the Association of Industry(..blah) said something to the effect that this was just the beggining and there is much more to come. I am sure the Seths behind the chamber have quite a few flats to sell.

The whole thing smells suspiciously like the hoopla that surrounded the technology bubble. Though the dot com revolution indeed revolutionaized our lives, it was nowhere near what it was made out to be. It ended up making a handful few absurdly rich (through selling their stock at absurd prices), and very many poorer and much disillusioned. A similar phenomena is going on in India, I feel.

Much of the price increases seem to me to be fueled by speculative buyers - people who buy hoping to sell it for a good profit a few months later. It works like this. Looking at the price go up, many people feel bad on having missed out on the bonanza, and enter the market. This pushes up prices further. This increase attracts more people who want to make a quick buck, and so on, and so forth. Eventually, the prices become so absurd that even the moneylust deranged back off. The bubble bursts. The guy who bought last is the biggest (and poorest) fool. The investment banker from Goldman Sachs and Mr. Behari Singhania, the first to buy, and the last to sell, are left much enriched. (Its called the bigger fool theory. There is some good material on the subject by Robert Shiller, and Charles Kindleberger.)

I heard that Japan had this huge spurt in the stock and real estate in the early 1990's. All kinds of folks started speculating, and when the bubble burst, things got messed up. Japan has still not recovered in 2007. The Nikkei is less than half of what it was in the 1990's. The housing market in the US is also going through a similar blow up right now, after going up absurdly over the last few years. It looked quite invincible before shit hit the fan (atleast by how things were made to sound in the popular press.)

My point is that India is being made to look invincible, and like nothing can ever go wrong. Economic trouble in the US can shake up the IT and BPO industries, and make the money dry up pretty quickly. It is sometimes a little surprising to me how short the collective memory is. It reminds me of the Indian cricket team. All previous performances are promptly forgotten, and we root for victory in the upcoming match with breathless enthusiasm.