Life Reloaded!!!

It came to my mind during a discussion with my friends when one of us was planning to buy a house in far Central suburbs. His arguments for buying a house were that it is for investment purpose, and that it is a good case for a guy looking for arranged marriage. This surprises me a bit. I agree that, just as it is expected to have good education, job and salary, it is now required to have your own house when you are looking for marriage. The main reason for this is the ever increasing prices of real estate. My dilemma revolves around the same point – is it prudent to buy a house before marriage or after marriage? Say, to become a better prospect, one buys a house. That means at current level of his salary, say Rs. " X ", he will be able to get a home loan of around 50 times " X " and accordingly he will have to buy a house. But had he bought a house with joint ownership and loan with his spouse, he would have got a house either closer to city or big...

Whoa!!! What a match!! I am really proud to have watched the last set of yesterday’s Wimbledon Final. Initially when I came to know that Roger was pitted against Roddick in the final, I thought it would be a piece of cake for the swiss master. But Andy played the best tennis of his life. He not only dragged the match into 5 sets, but also took final set to 14-16. In fact, Federer was not able break the booming Roddick serve till the last game. In fact, it basically came down to who loses his serve. Federer was coming up with Aces when he needed and Roddick was making those unplayable body serves. To be honest, Roddick has improved a lot in last few months. He even improved his record in French Open last month. He was regarded as a one dimensional player with a great serve. Even though I am a great fan of Federer, it felt a little sad to see Andy lose like that. He wasted 4 set points in second set. He not broken in the whole match till the deciding game. Hopefully, as Roger said, And...

I am really disappointed the way some news paper and their readers have reacted to the selection of Hindi Film Actors/ Cricketers for Padma Shri awards. For those who might not have read the news papers, Aishwarya Roy, Akshay Kumar and Harbhajan Singh have been awarded with Padma awards. Their objection is that these people have made no contribution to society so they don't deserve these awards. They say, giving awards to "bollywood" celebrities dilutes the integrity of these awards. I feel all this hoola-bulla over Padma awards is Bull-shit. I just check wiki for the Padma Shri awards. Wiki says, "Padma Shri (also spelt Padma Shree , Padmashree , Padma Sree and Padma Sri ) is an award given by the Government of India generally to Indian citizens to recognize their distinguished contribution in various spheres of activity including the Arts , Education , Industry , Literature , Science , Sports , Social Service and public life. (The word "Padma" ( Sansk...

It’s amazing how languages develop. Look at english. Even if it is originated in England, it now has spread all across the globe and has undergone multitudes of changes. In fact, every region which speaks English has its own specialties, its own words, its own phrases. To explain you this I will give two examples, both told to me by Sidscope, occured in Lehman Brothers. The first one is related to a phrase or rather “greeting”. Many people have a habit of saying,“What is your good name?” Sidscope’s colleague was chatting with his Japanese counter part and he started of by saying the same thing, “What is your good name, Sir?”. Well, the Japanese got angry and replied, “Do you think all Japanese names are bad?” His colleague had tough time explaining the Japanese guy that it was normal in India to ask this question as a symbol that the other person name, whatever it may be, is good. Second example was kind of shocker to me. It was about a word which I have used so many times in my li...

Two weeks ago I watched the latets Batman flik, i.e. The Dark Knight. Not the best of movies I have seen, but certainly one of the darkest movies I had ever seen. Most of the characters were protrayed with darkest possible way, especially the Joker.  I always liked the Batman-Joker rivalry, one too serious and the other so funny. In the earlier version of Batman where Joker was played by Jack Nicolson which was more of a "laughing Buddha" than the ever smart and brutal Heath Ledger's Joker. The amount of wreckage caused by him is unimaginable... the chase sequence... the bombs in the boats carrying people... bombing the city hospital... its just too much for any criminal. And why does he do it? money? Well, lets just say that money is nothing for this guy as he burns millions of dollars with Gasoline... He simply crazy!!! I also liked the movie for the importance given to the strong characters shown in film. Each of the protagonists have been portrayed with some dark s...

Some good articles on why India has not been able to win as many medals as it should have: 1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/25/india.olympicgames2008 2. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080813202631AAFWAsJ 3. http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/08/why-does-india.html Source: Marginal Revolution blog. My take on this whole issue is that it is related to Indian people psyche. I have expereinced with my own parents and my friends will also agree. People dont consider sports as a career option for their kids exception may be cricket. Not many parents want their child to be Swimming champion or a runner than an engineer or a doctor. That is where it start going wrong. The system obviusly plays a role, but since people really dont belive in sports, think it as TP or a school comtetion activity, we never excel. Just imagine, how can we expect our swimmers or runners to win if their personal bests are way below the wrold record. Yeste...

Currently, there has been a controversy over the admission process of first year Junior colleges in Maharashtra. This year the S. S. C. results were very good, much better than the previous years. More people passed, but the number of seats didn't increase with the same pace. Hence, the obvious question of admission. The state came up with 2 solutions. One with a district quota of 70 per cent which I think was totally foolish. If there are not enough seats to accommodate all the students then what's the point of reserving seats for locals. And how will you break the regions? Who are locals and who are outsiders? The second one, which I thought was a good solution, used percentile system to normalize scores of students of all three boards( SSC., ICSE and CBSE). The percentile will be calculated by finding your score with respect to the average score of top ten students of that board. It has been challenged in the courts. Personally, I thought it was a good move by state be...

My friend has told me one of his observation which I want to share with you, "Being more ambitious is more dangerous than being not ambitious." Its not that I completely agree with him, but I will remember this for rest of my life.

Its been a complete mess in Pakistan with the emergency imposed. As an Indian if you think that you live in better place, then think again. Look at the “state” of Karnataka. I mean, the way BJP and JD(S) have been functioning for last 2 months or so, its really a shameful chapter in Indian democracy. If you still what I am talking about then listen to this. JD(S) cheif Deve Gowda had established a coalition govertment with Congress 3 years ago. But 12 months in to power, his son decided that they had enough of secular agenda and went to BJP. Now, initially Gowda opposed this move, but later retracted his statements saying it is for the betterment of Karnataka. They had a power sharing “agreement” with BJP, which meant first the Janata Dal will have its CM for 18 months and for next 18 months BJP. Everything was going along nicely until, the time to handover the pwoer to BJP came closer. Gowda father and son accused BJP of trying to kill them and refused tranfer power. Now, in such ...