Bloody Inflation

My Starbucks Grande Latte used to cost $3.30. It now costs $3.70. Bloody agro-inflation and weak dollar.

I will stop sounding like a spoilt whiny child and point you to this excellent article. Major oil exporting countries (Saudi Arabia and other Opec members) have always subsidized internal supply while making up for it by yanking up export prices (by not producing enough essentially). This is now happening in food as well, thanks to the sky high prices and rioting. India has imposed steep duties on exported rice. Argentina has hiked tarrifs on exported beef. I think this is a good thing especially if consumers in the major importing countries (United Kingdom for e.g.) can afford to pay the additional cost of food at little cost to their lifestyles, while for consumers in the exporting countries the cost of a bag of rice decides whether they are to have a square meal or go hungry. Some of the poor sub-Saharan African countries which import food worry me though. But all in all, Mr. James spends 40 cents more on a Latte, so that Ganesh back in Central Madhya Pradesh can afford to feed his family. The world should not always be flat.

Suggestions

I am soliciting suggestions for the following things.

- Good books to read over the summer.

- Good 3-4 day vacation ideas which are relatively easy to plan, fun but different. Trekking maybe? Or a roadtrip?

- Good things to do over the summer that would aid my overall development and growth into a wonderful human being.

In turn I am going to suggest to you what you should not do:

- Do not try to read Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra. It is a bollywood style gangsta movie written as a book - gangsters, smugglers, pimps, prostitutes, murder, money, more money put into the usual set of semi-predictable plot scenes. It starts off promisingly but 100 pages in starts meandering, sounding cliched and contrived. It has another 900 pages after that, which I haven't been able to get myself to trudge through. If he had cut it down to about 500 pages and done away with the 25 side stories, I would probably want to finish it.

- A healthy sense of paranoia and circumspectness would go a long way in pushing up the mean and reducing variance on your life's happiness function. In non nerdy english, you would be happier if you did choose to follow my advice. This does not mean going crazy, but has more to do with keeping a langorous, relaxed but watchful and wary eye. Thus you should not be non-circumspect.

- In addition to not being non-circumspect, you should also not not maintain information assymetry. As a trader, information assymetry is all you want (in your favour obviously), but even otherwise it has its benefits. Information should be released on a purely need to know basis. Believe me or not but it leads to solutions that are more optimal for everyone. In Economics, the fancy word given for changes that make no one any worse off is "Pareto improvement" (you learnt something new today, but then you probably knew it).

Windy City

Re-structuring ( ;) , synonyms being cost-cutting, rationalization, re-alignment of business objectives, streamlining). New group. Back to the US!

Do you know why babies are adorable?

I think its because of how they look at you. Blankly, unblinkingly, without fear, anger or malice, completely trusting and vulnerable. I realized it when I was riding down an elevator with a baby in a pram next to me. I was quite uncomfortable, as I was almost automatically trying to figure out what the real deal was ! But, once I get over that initial phase of distrust, it was quite nice and caused much satisfaction and feel goodness. The problems start when they grow older and start talking back to you, or at least thats what my mother says!

Developments

- Summer is here.
- Winter is gone. Gone gone gone. Till November.
- 5 months in London have gone by most rapidly and have been most enjoyable.
- Where am I going to be in a month? London? Chicago? Elsewhere? I do not know. I cannot say. I am not trying to answer the broader meta-physical question by the way.
- Most importantly, I need to start making summer plans. Any ideas?
- Quite interestingly, today I spoke to one of the sharpest guys I have spoken to in a long time. British guy, from Oxford I think, Math, one of those people that make you question if you have really been doing anything useful with your life.