Econ Link of the day!

Yes, it is Laughing out Loud,Fed

The only profitable business now might be, creating an econ blog with a heavy dose of humor and online advertisements...

Meanwhile, last week one person told me this," India is going to see a massive boom of growth after 2011, say from 2012 to 2020, with growth rate even reaching double digits. That is the only period of hope when we can become hopelessly rich. So, we need to somehow survive these next 2 years..."

I asked why he thinks so.

He replied,"It's because once US comes out of this recession, it will rely heavily on India for its imports. US is a country which lives on debts by always relying on some other country to save. They first did it with Japan in 80s, then they did it with China till now. So once they come out of recession, they'll look for a new scapegoat which most probably will be India. Because by that time, China would've got the taste of spending and hence might not be an exporter as it is now"

I was quite intrigued by this line of thought as i was hearing it for the first time.

And today, read an article titled,"Chinese savings helped inflate American bubble".

btw, read one interesting article in "The Mckinsey Quarterly, Industry trends in the downturn : A snapshot" and this is my favorite one from Consumer goods perspective,



and just for the record, i am no Econ or MBA by profession, but a mere techie at the end of the day...there shall be no misconceptions on that fact :) :)

?

i can see my friend getting highly annoyed with the title... :)
this is going to be yet another rambling post.

well, the most important thing is, i haven't gone on the North India trip...
i am yet to be relieved from the current company...and the future company is in a dilemma to pay my non served notice period amount, while the current company told me that they are not going to waive the notice period for me...i am hesitant to shell any money from my pocket for the notice period...and the job market is totally dry.

maybe i am becoming good at ending up in a messy situation.

On top of that, my wonderful friend forwards me a link to see the prediction for Leo, which says we are facing totally bad situation and will be moving towards worse next year...thanks to the hindsight bias, i was able to quickly correlate all the bad things to this prediction...
yet another friend of mine criticizes me for reading that prediction and worrying unnecessarily...his logic goes something like this, anyway we have to face challenges, so what is the point in knowing it ahead...
good one, but hard to follow...

it's not that i firmly believe in astrology...it's just that any negative prediction casts a worry in the back of my mind...

On top of that, i am going to fall sick on friday to go home and rejuvenate myself by fighting with my brother...which in turn is going to cost me 1 day salary and 5k flight ticket. Apparently, in a fit of emotion, my brother replied something like this in tamil,"Has money become important for you? Isn't it important for us to be together at home? Don't worry about the flight ticket and 1 day salary...i'll repay you fully...".

well, this might sound highly sentimental...but it's highly unlikely that this moron is going to do any of that :)
also, it's not as if we are in some different continents...we are just in different states and it's a one night journey for him or me to meet at one of our place..still he ends up with this stupid senti dialog and i end up booking flight ticket which even if i cancel, i end up getting only Rs.750 refund.

btw, there is one easy solution for all this confusion...
if i agree to pay half of the notice period amount, then all problems are resolved.

What is stopping me?
--will that be a stupid decision which i'll regret later that i wasn't good in negotiating it out with the future company...maybe, i could've got another offer...
or maybe, i end up losing both and regretting peacefully while sitting at home...

i can still go on...but frankly, thats my current state of mind.
and one of the main attributes for this too much thinking is too much free time at hand which proves a point that "Empty mind is devil's workshop".

btw, the picture was listed yesterday in Flickr interesting photos, aptly titled "where do I go?"

Fresh Ho Jao!

Yet another favorite ad. Mainly because of the music and the childish concept!

Limca Fresh ho Jao commercial has been brought to life by Ravi Udyawar of Ravi Udyawar Productions and has been conceptualized by Anindya Banerjee of Ogilvy and Mather. The outstanding soundtrack has been provided by Anandh R with lyrics by Swanand Kirkires. The singer is Cara lisa Monterio.

And the male model is Niketan madhok :)
Below video is cool as it plays the same ad twice...



Hindi version of Lyrics ---

fuharre.....
bochare......
nazare churalona....
kuch bunde churalona,
dabi si zindagi se,
ruki si zindagi se,
kuch lamhe churalona....
kuch yaddein,
aur sapne.. apne churalona,
rukhi si zindagi se,
thaki si zindagi se,
raftaar churalona
-----------------------------
And here is the English version ---

drizzles...
downpours...
steal these scenes...
steal some drops.

from this burdened life,
from this static life,
steal some moments...
some memories,
and dreams... ours - steal 'em too

from this burdened life,
from this listless life,
steal some pace

And here is a good writeup about this ad.

Is war the next option?

Few years back, i happened to attend a conference in ISB. It was about Indian governance. We went there with the main purpose of visiting ISB. In that panel, there was one individual from Loksatta and he raised one interesting question. He said,"Our knowledge about a place is indirectly proportional to the nearness of a place. We can name all the states of USA. But how many of you know about Pakistan? We know all colleges in USA. Do you know anything about Pakistan?".
My thought at that moment was,"Who wants to know about Pakistan? What's the use?" and when i mentioned this to my friend who was sitting beside me, he also echoed the same thought.
Infact, an ISB professor interrupted the Loksatta person and mentioned that ISB has a tie with Lahore Management School and it does recognize the importance of Indian neighbors. And the Loksatta person appreciated it.

The thought i had at that moment pretty much summarizes the knowledge i had about Pakistan till last year... Eventhough i used to read Dawn newspaper once in a while, my knowledge about Pakistan was very limited. And over the beginning of this year, not sure how it started, i happened to read a few pakistani blogs and started reading Dawn newspaper regularly. Even read quite a few things in wikipedia about Pakistan states.

In reality,many current generation indians pretty much have ignored Pakistan and in that process we have failed to understand the real Pakistan and its real problem. We have also failed to realize the importance of having a good neighbor. I think this ignorance is more dangerous than having an ill feeling.

This ignorance is the main reason which seems to force a few fellow Indian citizens to blindly favor a war against Pakistan.

And i was really shocked to see the possible war options discussed in 9pm news of CNN-IBN on 7th and yet another debate today.

War is not at all an option. Even any aerial attack is totally wrong.

1. India is not US...we are not hegemonic.
2. It will only escalate the amount of hatred over India among Pakistanis, as if there isn't enough between these 2 countries...
3. It will increase the idolization of the Pakistani Army among Pakistanis, which inturn will never be good for India in long term.
4. Our economy will not be able to take this war stress amidst the current global economic crisis. This will have a huge impact on our longterm growth.
5. It's time to clean up the house first before we start marching into others houses! So lets focus mainly on strengthening our internal and border security.

And here are the 2 interesting articles from Dawn. I very much liked the second article.

A bit of laughter amidst gloom.

A very big deal.

Regarding, Indian cricket team touring Pakistan, i hope it happens as planned. Probably, it might aid in creating a huge positive impact among pakistanis about India.

Reclaim your life

This post was typed on April 8th, this year...
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This is one of my fav ads...The dialogue lines are amazing..

I always wanted to quit on monday morning.
I always wanted to chase the rain.
I always wanted to swim with the whales.
I always wanted to take a one year trip around the world.
I always wanted to...



The real sad one is the pregnant lady...For a woman, life is changed forever after marriage and it is a rebirth after becoming a mother!
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And this is typed today.

Regarding myself, i think i just did the first thing now...and i am wondering whether i did an insane stuff :)
i do have one offer, but i haven't signed and sent the confirmation back yet.

and i have asked this friday as last day...because my friends are going on a 10 day backpack trip to Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and few more places, starting 14th evening. i want to join them.

so, i am not going to have 3 weeks of this month salary...i am going to spend quite an amount on this trip...i still haven't confirmed the job...i have to shift my location as the new job is in a new city...i haven't told my parents yet but my brother knows...

and now, when i sit and type this post, guess i am thinking sanely :)
see, this is what happens when one wants to do something so desperately but never gets to do due to all sort of reasons...one fine day, every single reason is overlooked and end up like this :) :)

So, in all this, i think i have followed the below line...

"Sometimes life is about gambling and the smart gambler plans his way out

before setting in"

Hope whoever is reading this post, wishes me goodluck :)

வழி மேல் விழி வைத்து...

The title says,"Vazhi mel vizhi vaithu" in Tamil. It literally means "Having your eye on the path" when it is used in a situation where a person is eagerly waiting for someone's arrival.

In this city, generally, many people take the Airport operated shuttle from airport to several destinations as it is a cheaper mode of transportation than cab. And the shuttle buses are available for every 30mts and it is operated for around 6-7 destinations. One interesting point is the tickets are issued only after the bus reaches the counter stand and there is no concept of advance booking. So even if a person reaches the counter at 8.05pm, one ought to wait for the arrival of the bus to get a ticket.

I happened to wait last week. I narrowly missed the 8.30pm bus and became the first person to be waiting for the next one. Slowly, people started trickling down. Invariably everybody went to the counter and enquired about the bus. Many were asking the counter guy to issue the ticket even before the bus came. He flatly refused.

Slowly the queue got filled up and every individual in that queue was turned towards the direction from where the bus was supposed to come from. Since i was the first one in the queue near the counter, when i turned towards the bus direction, i saw only these heads all turned towards that direction. Literally, everybody was eagerly looking forward to the bus and their attention never seem to be wavered off for the next 15mts. At that moment, all these grown up individuals looked like school kids waiting for their excursion bus to arrive.
It reminded me of the title line and was smiling, amidst the surprised brow raises from other fellows.

Quite a moment.

After a break

guess, it's been a long break from blogging for me in the recent past!

actually, there are so many topics to write about. but doesn't seem to have the time and mindset to sit and write any...
hope things get settle down over the next few days...

Regarding the mumbai attacks, it has revealed everything that is wrong from our security measures perspective. There have been plethora of articles written about this over the last 10 days. This is one article, i perfectly agreed with. Here is one article by ArunShourie.

And here is a reason why the sole surviving mumbai attackers name was reported different in different papers/channels.