How to kill time...

Indian Economy and Superpower

2007-01-22T09:42:00.000-05:00

The Indian ecomomy is growing at the rate of 8% . Compare that number to a country that India often compete to become or supercede. US reported a economy growth rate of little over 2% not so little when compared in dollars. 8% of India's GDP of ~ $750 billion is $60 billion and 2% of 12.5 trillion of US economy is $250 billion so we still have a long way to go.

I read an article couple of days ago that said an average Indian had a pay raise of 15% last year while an average American received around 5% but the comparison also said it will take an average Indian 32 years to match an Amerian's pay assuming that the American doesnt get a pay raise in that 32 years. And there is already news that the logistics in developing countries like China and India are not upto the standards that the outsourcing countries are planning to pull back their outsourced jobs. Mind that this is for predominantly manufacturing. So maybe its about time that the Indian economy starts pumping some money into improving logistics for the jobs that are coming into the country.

Source: Bloomberg & Jim Jubak, MSN Money.

The Guys' Rule

2006-10-27T09:05:00.000-05:00

I have no offense against women but this one is just too good that I wanted to have it on my blog just so that I can see it all the time :)

The Guys ' Rules
At last a guy has taken the time to write this all down

We always hear " The Rules "
From the female side.

Now here are the rules from the male side.
These are Our Rules!
Please note.. these are all numbered "1"
ON PURPOSE!

1. Men are NOT mind readers.

1. Shopping is NOT a sport.
And no, we are never going to think of it that way.

1. Crying is blackmail.

1. Ask for what you want.
Let us be clear on this one:
Subtle hints do not work!
Strong hints do not work!
Obvious hints do not work!
Just say it!

1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.

1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That ' s what we do.
Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a Problem.
See a doctor.

1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument.
In fact, all comments become null and void after 7 Days.

1. If you think you ' re fat, you probably are.
Don ' t ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one

1. You can either ask us to do something
Or tell us how you want it done.
Not both.
If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.

1. Whenever possible, Please say whatever you have to say during commercials.

1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.

1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings.
Peach, for example, is a fruit, not A color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing," We will act like nothing ' s wrong.
We know you are lying, but it is just not wor th the hassle.

1. If you ask a question you don ' t want an answer to, Expect an answer you don ' t want to hear.

1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine. Really .

1. Don ' t ask us what we ' re thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as baseball ,Cricket , the shotgun formation,
or golf.

1. You have enough clothes.

1. You have too many shoes.

1. Thank you for reading this

Baby born on air!!!

2006-09-27T13:51:00.000-05:00

An Egyptian lady with an U.S Passport, traveling from London to Boston on a British Airways flight, gave birth to a premature baby on air because of which the flight landed in Halifax, Canada. Now which country is this baby a citizen of?!?!

Well lets see the rules, according to United Nations recommendations, a baby born on air should be given the citizenship of the airlines where the birth took place. So in this case the baby is a citizen of England. But the U.S law states that if one of the parent is a US citizen then the baby gets a U.S citizenship. So the baby is a citizen of US too. Way to go baby!

But something that's more funny is the Texas rule for babies born on a inbound flight to Texas. While filling out the birth certificate for a baby born on a flight inbound, these are the rules

"For the location of the structure where the birth occurred (which is typically the city and county of a hospital), the county should be "In flight," and the city should be the name and flight number of the aircraft and the latitude and longitude coordinates of the point over which the child entered the world."

Talking about how hard it is to get one citizenship at a time, how lucky is that baby :)

Source: Smeagol (Ref: 1 & 2)

How do you say that: Zzyzx ?

2006-09-25T07:47:00.000-05:00

"Zzyzx" does that combination of letters make sense to you? Or did I forget how to type?!?!

Well there is a settlement in California with that name. If you dont believe me click here

Its pronounced "Zeye-zix" how weird is that?

The Human Pendulum...

2006-09-06T08:41:00.000-05:00

One of my recent hobbies that I would be working on from now till the end of my life is Golf. Its a rich man's game is what I thought about it till I started playing myself. But what I figuredout is that the game needs discipline more than any other I have played. It is a game where you learn to love it even though you would hate the way you play.

This morning one of my colleague sent me a link of Tiger Woods taking an incredible swing. To have the best swing in Golf, the body should act like a pendulum and the hand with the clubs should act like a string of the pendulum. The man does it with ease.

The shot was taken with a camera that can capture 4000 frames per second. The shot is unbelievably taken from 6 different angles. The music that plays in the background is perfect.

Check it out...

Source: Tiger Smeagol

Google and eBay

2006-08-28T12:10:00.000-05:00

In the recent past Google came up with a new form of online checkout called "Google Checkout" and introduced it to many online sites. I dunno how successful the project was but the first blow Google had was the online auction giant eBay turning it down.

One of Google's popular shopping search engine Froogle always lists eBay items while executing search for products that customers are looking to purchase. eBay turned Google checkout down just because it has not been around long enough.

Yesterday morning Google struck a deal with eBay for selling international text based ads and to develop "click-to-call" technology where eBay's "Skype" and Google's "Google Talk" would come together so that when a customer wants to buy a product from Google's ad of an eBay product all they have to do is just hit "click-to-call" and the products customer care center will be dialed via one of the online voip services.

Whats so interesting about the whole deal is the Google's relentless nature to work with companies to grow in all possible ways. The other market that Google is stepping in is Enterprise Software where Google will host enterprise applications online. I really wonder how long Microsoft is going to last the software battle with Google... :)

Source: Smeagol!

Math: The Monty Hall Problem.

2006-08-17T11:49:00.000-05:00

This past Tuesday couple of my colleagues at work asked me to solve a math Problem(Everybody is starting to think that I'm smart :)). The question went like this..

"Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say #1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say #3, which has a goat. He says to you, "Do you want to pick door #2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?"

PAUSE. Try solving the problem before reading further.

Smeagol: No, I wont cos the chances are 50-50.

Colleagues: No! Your wrong.

Right answer: You switch so the probability of winning is 2/3.

They tried to explain why I was wrong while they themselves did not understand the answer.

The answer is quiet intriguing cos when you pick a door in the first place, you think it has the car behind it. When the host opens the second door(knowing whats behind all the doors) which has a goat, you knock it out of your probability of winning and think you only have two doors to choose from. But the fact of the matter is when the host had to open one of the two doors that are left, he knew exactly which one to open so the goat shows up. So the other which he did not open holds the highest probablitiy of having the car behind.

The person who actually solved and proved the answer to be right is Marilyn vos Savant. It took me two days to realize that I was wrong.

The topic was much debated among Ph. D holders from all over the country but it has been experimentally tested in many schools to prove that she is right.

She is in the Guinness book of world records for the person ever recorded to have the highest IQ of 228. She was 10 years old when she scored 228.

They didnt test my IQ when I was 10 :)

Source: Smart Smeagol!

Try this: Sudoku

2006-08-15T09:03:00.000-05:00

Couple of weekends ago I was at my friends house chilling while one of their kids handed me a Nintendo game console and wanted me to check what was the actual age of my brain...:) (The kid actually thought I had one!) The game tests your brain by displaying a word say "Yellow" on a black font while asking you to say the color of the font. So it actually confuses your brain...(It did confuse a wholelot of mine!) I did get a decent score and the test displayed my mental age which for security reasons will be kept confidential.

Next in line was the game that I have never played before "Sudoku". Seeing my mental age from the previous test the kids were curious to test my brain on this one. The game uses pretty simple logic of numbers in a 9x9 matrix with 9 3x3 inner matrices. You have numbers 1-9 to put in each of the 3x3 boxes without repetition in itself and also in the rows and columns that the numbers go in. Its pretty tricky and your allowed only 5 mistakes.. With 4 curious eyes watching me, I started the game and in little(How little is little?) time, Bravo! I finished the game with "0" mistakes.

The kids were amazed to see the irrelevance between my mental age and my uncomparable ability to solve sudoku puzzles... I really liked the game and did play it online many times after that. Its an interesting game to kill time.

It seems that USA Today has a new Sudoku Puzzle on their website every day! Check it out.

Source: Sudoku Smeagol!

Debt Based Economy...

2006-08-08T08:09:00.000-05:00

I always wondered how the US economy had the highest GDP as a single largest nation even after all the spending every year. In order to statisfy my own curiosity I started reading on some articles and bumped into one called "How The Fed Works?".

It actually comes down to the money that you and I save in our accounts. Every time we save say $1000 on a bank giving X% APY, the bank has the right to save 10% of that amount as reserve and lend the rest of the money for an higher interest rate Y to another customer. So the difference in interest is actually the money that the bank makes to keep itself running. So if $900 of the initial amount is lend to another bank, the second bank can again give $810 to someone else. The money keeps rotating inside the economy giving potential for people to afford new things.

This is something very interesting as to how monetary rules are setup in this country by The Fed. This is just one way how the economy is running, but me a layman not having anything to do with finance or numbers, fascinated!

The economy is called "Debt Based Economy" and The Fed is an independent body that controls it. But here is the rub, if every person who owes money or has a loan goes to the bank and pay of their debt tomorrow the entire economy would crumble.....

Source: Smeagol

Opinion: The Myth of New India

2006-07-13T14:36:00.000-05:00

Our economy (India) is a booming economy as we all know, with all the major companies in the western world outsourcing jobs to us because we have excellent language proficiency and skill sets that sets us apart from our competitors. But are we really using all this wealth to become a better country?

Well for one thing, we have 400 million professional workers of which ONLY 1.3 million or Information Technology professionals who really get to share the profit from outsourcing. Our GDP is fourth largest in the World but 380 million people out of the 1+ billion still pass every day with less than $1 income per day. So where is all the money going?

Our economy is growing at the rate of 6% every year but according to United Nations Human Development Report 2005 it would still take us till 2106 to catch up with High-Income countries which according to the same report is not a real boom for a economy as big as India. So I think the country as such needs to restructure itself to speard out the money coming into the country. The government needs to be proactive by taping the incoming cash flow and diverting it into building the nations infrastructure or by directly investing in public companies, which according to me would mean more money going into individual pockets.

I read an interesting article today which was about a U.S. bill called SKIL Bill which is being passed by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. The purpose of this bill is to retain all the Professional workers who earned a masters degree in U.S. by easily issuing them a Green Card and increasing the OPT period for students from 1 to 2 years. This comes in the light of the fact that more and more U.S degree earned professionals are leaving the country due to lack of visas.

If my memory serves me right I never heard India doing something like this to keep its own brains that are being given away to other countries or to stop other countries use them in its homeland(India). All this years we had the potential brains for which we lacked investment to be directed in the right direction but now we have all the money coming in and its time for it to be channeled for growth.

Source: Smeagol!

Poem: Cold Unfeeling World

2006-07-11T09:03:00.000-05:00

This is one of my favorite poems that got my attention sometime ago from a sermon by a man named Ravi Zacharias. I like the way the person (An unknown student from Wheaton College) has put forth his inner most lonliness in words. Some people might not know this but for some it may be the way of life...

Out in the cold I stand,
Looking on at the world sitting tight,
With its people in their nice little worlds,
And the friends who don’t even know me.
It really makes no difference to their world where I am.
If I'm there, it keeps going.
If I’m not, it goes on.
While I walk around, wandering, wondering,
My mind a mass of mixed-up machinery,
Clashing with conflicts and unanswered questions.
I don’t ask the world if it is real-
It sits up there on its foundations,
Secure, concrete, hard, stone and real.
But maybe I’m not real
Or if I am, maybe I shouldn’t be.
They answer, ‘Smile, God loves you’,
But I can’t smile.
I’m numbed by cold inside and out.
Even the heat in the square brick buildings
Would only warm my body, nothing else.
I’m alone in a world full of people,
Apart, shut up inside myself,
Cold, unfeeling, in a cold unfeeling world.

- Unknown student @ Wheaton College.

Industrialist: Lakshmi Mittal

2006-07-10T13:22:00.000-05:00

This is the shopping that one my favorite industrialist did in the last six months:

The World's Largest steel company is now called Arcelor-Mittal, Lakshmi Mittal the Fifth richest man according to Forbes 2006 rating is now the non-executive president of the company. The conglomerate came at the cost of 25.6 Billion Euro($32.3 billion dollars) for Mittal to control 10% of the worlds steel production with more than 100 tones in production each year. The company's annual turnover is expected to be around 55 billion Euro. The company now produces 3 times more steel than the worlds second largest producer(its closest rival) Nippon Steel, Japan.

What's the big deal?
Lakshmi Mittal was an Indian born billionaire. He was born in Sadulpur, in Churu district of Rajasthan, India. He was born in a very ordinary family in India and became a partner in a steel company. He started buying steel companies from Russia that were about to be shut down during war for cheap prices. He brought the production up in those companies by cutting costs and increasing output in his own way. The way he did it and he still does is to bring his own set of top level management(all Indian masterminds) put them in the company and completely redesign the infrastructure from bottom up.

His family now holds 43.4% of the shares in the new steel giant. It took him almost 6 months from his first bid on Arcelor SA of Luxembourg to finalize the deal which ended on June 25th 2006. His target company Arcelor dodged his hostile takeover bid once by stating that he is an Indian born with manangement policies that do not go well with European standards and again by trying to sell itself to a White Knight Severstal Steel, Russia.

Mittal pursued his merger deal with so much zeal that sets him apart as one of best Industrialist of this era. He revised his price for Arcelor three times from the initial bid. The Indian government supported his merger by writing recommendation letters to the countries in Europe where Arcelor is placed.

Mittal now lives in Britain in a palace that he bought for $128 Million. He spent about $65 Million on his daughter Vanishas wedding which still holds the title of being the most expensive wedding in the world history. His son Aditya who graduated from Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Economics, is the Chief Financial Officer of the company .

Did you know?

2006-07-08T08:45:00.000-05:00

The Wimbledon (All England Tennis and Croquet Club) keeps a dedicated streaker blanket in every Wimbledon Game! If a streaker happens to show up like in the Maria Sharapova game, they are COVERED :)

Why are Friends necessary?

2006-07-07T15:37:00.000-05:00

Best out of the worst...

2006-07-07T15:34:00.000-05:00

THE WORST HIJACKING

We shall never know the identity of the man who in 1976 made the most unsuccessful hijack attempt ever.On a flight across America, he rose from his seat,drew gun and took the stewardess hostage."Take me to Detroit," he demanded."We're already going to Detroit," she replied.

"Oh ... good," he said, and sat down again.

THE WORST BANK ROBBERY

In August 1975 three men were on their way in to rob the Royal Bank of Scotland at Rothesay, when they got stuck in the revolving doors. They had to be helped free by the staff and, after thanking everyone,sheepishly left the building. A few minutes later they returned and announced their intention of robbing the bank, but none of the staff believed them.

When they demanded 5,000 pounds in cash, the head cashier laughed at them, convinced that it was a practical joke. Then one of the men jumped over the counter, but fell to the floor clutching his ankle. The other two tried to make their getaway, but got trapped in the revolving doors again.

THE WORST ANIMAL RESCUE

During the firemen's strike of1978, the British Army had taken over emergency fire fighting and on 14 January they were called out by an elderly lady in South London to retrieve her cat which had become trapped up a tree. They arrived with impressive haste and soon discharged their duty. So grateful was the lady that she invited them all in for tea. Driving off later, with fond farewells completed, they ran over
the cat and killed it!..

Entertainment...

2006-07-07T15:28:00.000-05:00

Credit Card vs Debit Card

2006-07-07T14:20:00.000-05:00

This is an extract from an article on MSN. It gives a good reason why Credit cards should be used even if you have a million dollars on your Debit card!!!.

Banks typically don't use software to spot suspicious trends. Most credit card issuers use programs, like Fair Isaac's Falcon software, that can flag transactions that don't fit the user's typical pattern. But few banks employ such programs to monitor checking accounts, Crooks said, although more are expressing interest as losses increase.

Banks often don't verify a card is real. The magnetic strip on the back of your debit or ATM card includes security codes that confirm the plastic was issued by your bank. But Gartner estimates as many as half of banks don't check those codes before authorizing transactions. A counterfeiter who dummies up a card using your number is thus very likely to be able to use it for fraudulent transactions.

Banks can blame the victim. Federal law prohibits credit card companies from holding customers responsible for unauthorized charges once the customers have reported the loss or theft of their card, and most issuers waive the $50 liability they could charge for fraudulent transactions.

The rules are somewhat different for bank accounts. When a fraudulent debit charge or automatic payment is reported, a section of federal law known as Regulation E requires banks to investigate within 10 days. But banks can extend that period to 45 days if they credit the disputed amount or $2,500, whichever is less, to the customer's account.

But a bank can decide there was no fraud, experts say, and take the money back as long as it provides a written explanation to the customer.

Source: MSN Money

How to put the right person in the right chair?

2006-07-07T13:57:00.000-05:00

Does your Company have a problem in recruiting the right person for the right chair? If yes, try this simple experiment.

Put around 100 bricks in some particular order in a closed room with an open window. Then send 2-3 candidates into the room and close it from outside. Leave them alone and come back after 6 hours, and then analyze the situation

If they are counting and recounting the number of bricks
- PUT THEM IN THE ACCOUNTS DEPT.

If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks
- PUT THEM IN ENGINEERING.

If they are arranging the bricks in some other order
- PUT THEM IN PLANNING.

If they are throwing the bricks at each other
- PUT THEM IN SUPPORT

If they are sleeping
- PUT THEM IN SECURITY.

If they have broken the bricks into pieces
- PUT THEM IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.

If they are sitting idle
- PUT THEM IN HUMAN RESOURCE DEPT.

If they have thrown the bricks out of the window
- PUT THEM IN THE MATERIALS DEPT.

If they have already left for the day
- PUT THEM IN MARKETING.

AND last but not least....

If they are talking to each other and not a brick has moved
- PUT THEM IN Quality Analyst Dept

How to treat a rude customer?

2006-07-07T13:53:00.000-05:00

An award should go to the gate attendant at Luqa airport. A crowded Malta-London flight was cancelled. She was the lone attendant in charge of re-booking a long line of inconvenienced travelers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said, "I HAVE to be on this flight and it HAS to be FIRST CLASS".

The attendant replied, "I'm sorry sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these people first, and I'm sure we'll be able to work something out." The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?"

Without hesitating, the attendant smiled and grabbed her public address microphone: May I have your attention please? May I have your attention please?" she began. With her voice being heard clearly throughout the terminal, she said, "We have a passenger here at Gate 14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to Gate 14."

With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the attendant, gritted his teeth and said, "F*** You!" Without flinching, she smiled and said, "I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to get in line for that too."