Today I lost my cool while talking to someone and then felt bad about it later. I still need to learn to be more patient and relaxed while dealing with any situation. There is a long way to go.
July 19, 2004
The weekend was great. Did I tell you that i bought a car. I drove the car and pushed it to above 80mph and enjoyed the drive.
Reading "Seizure" by Robin Cook
July 16, 2004
Today I read a statement made by Richard Gere. It essentially meant that the money being spent on wars can be used to find a cure for AIDS. I feel sad that although some of us live in relative comfort there are so many people who are living below the minimum acceptable standard. Even after conquering the moon and the deep seas we cannot provide mankind with the basic necessities. We spend billions on nuclear warheads or better fighter jets but do not want to support the poor of the world.
We feel priviledged to have been born in a particular family, country but we could have been born to anyone in the neighbouhtring country or the neighbouring slum area. And then why this difference? Why is someone's life more important than someone elses life?
Am i being a socialist? I don't know but I sure think these are pertinent problems. And my heart goes out for kids who are infected with AIDS. What wrong did they do to get this disease? Why does God Almighty want to inflict pain on them for something that they have not done?
Lots of questions and I am sure i will be thinking about them during the weekend.
July 15, 2004
I don't know what I am going to do after i reach back home. And that is not a very good feeling. I will while away my time and see television. Now that I am thiking about it, I feel that I should work on my vocabulary and try and sharpen it. Just like those GRE days. Those days were a lot of fun.
July 14 ,2004
Went for a game of tennis today. felt good.
Today actually got fed up with not getting a High yield index constituents. I felt helpless and cursed all these big bond firms for not letting people know the constituents of their index freely. For a brief moment i wanted to make my own index.
Meesa bought a car for myself. It is a beautiful Mitsubishi . :-)
July 07, 2004
Suddenly things have started looking bright. Though there are still a lot of complications,I feel that there has to be a way out of any situation. Reminds me of the dialogue from the film "Philadelphia" . Tom Hanks says to himself "Every problem has a solution". I want to believe that this statement is true.
Read this article on coding theory. Very interesting use of what i like to call the "self-generating-keys" 1
Please note my new cell phone number
July 01, 2004
The month of June went by with lot of activity happenning. I have been kind of not keeping up with my uploads and I will try to be more prompt in July.
I think life is a big teacher. I have still trying to learn about being selfless. My friend yesterday made a seemingly simple yet profound comment. "To love is to love unconditionally". One should not expect anything in return.
Infact one has to learn that one has come into this world alone and will go away alone. Making too many connections here in this life will make separation all the more difficult. It is a thin line that everyone has to walk. I for one always falter. I start expecting a bit too much. I feel that I will be able to learn and walk that thin line.
June 26 ,2004
Am planning to go to the Wisconsin Archipelago today. Should be fun.. The title song from Hum Tum is good.
June 25, 2004
I have changed and am struggling to survive under an onslaught of a lot of ideas. Some mine, some alien. Boy, i thought there were other things that were important
But one thing that all this has taught me is that the statement "You can be sure of two things , Death and taxes" is only partially true. I feel the statement ought to be "You can be sure of three things, Death, Taxes and change"
Like everyone, I too resist change. I do not know till when to back off and then make a line in the ground and say "We are not going to go behind this line".
June 22, 2004
It took someone to tell me that "I look tired" to shake me off my lethargy. So from today onwards I need to go to the gymnasium regularly and also need to cut down on sweets that i am consuming daily.
June 21, 2004
The weekend was good. Went for some canoeing and dry slides. The exercise was good for me. I had almost slid into a routine of doing no exercise for the part one month. Consequently all joints in my body are aching.
Was thinking about life in the US versus the life in India and could not come to any conclusion. I was probably thinknig like an economist. One the one had and on the other hand. Obviously i could not come to any conclusion and remembered what Roosevelt once said "Give me an economist with just one hand"
I feel my thoughts changing. I am myself changing to adhere to my new beliefs. Change is the only constant. If I look back, i have changed so much from what i was just a few years ago.
The local indian Mapquest. Mumbai Navigator from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai tells you how to get from one place to another in Mumbai.
June 18, 2004
The weekend is here. And there are so many movies that I have not yet seen starting from Shrek 2. Hope to catch up on Tennis also from this weekend onwards
Read this article in the Harvard Business Review on why healthcare costs in the US are rising so much.
"In healthy competition, relentless improvements in processes and methods drive down costs. Product and service quality rise steadily. Innovation leads to new and better approaches, which diffuse widely and rapidly. Uncompetitive providers are restructured or go out of business. Value-adjusted prices fall, and the market expands. This is the trajectory common to all well-functioning industries�computers, mobile communications, banking, and many others.
Health care could not be more different. Costs are high and rising, despite efforts to reduce them, and these rising costs cannot be explained by improvements in quality. Quite the opposite: Medical services are restricted or rationed, many patients receive care that lags currently accepted procedures or standards, and high rates of preventable medical error persist. There are wide and inexplicable differences in costs and quality among providers and across geographic areas. Moreover, the differences in quality of care last for long periods because the diffusion of best practices is extraordinarily slow. It takes, on average, 17 years for the results of clinical trials to become standard clinical practice. Important constituencies in health care view innovation as a problem rather than a crucial driver of success. Taken together, these outcomes are inconceivable in a well-functioning market. They are intolerable in health care, with life and quality of life at stake." 1
May 21, 2004
whoopiii .. a very long hiatus indeed. my blog is angry with me and shuts down the computer whenever i try to upload the blog.
well the story has been that have been busy all this time. But i did follow the indian rupee and election scene closely.. Wow!! Mark Tully rules again. He was the one who said that Indian elections are like wives" you never know which side they will turn"
May 5, 2004:
Work is showing some unexpected challenges and some great opportunities as well.
The weather has become pretty nice and should be warm over the weekend as well :))
May 1 ,2004:
It is saturday morning and I have so much work to do in my aptt. Clean it, Cook food so that i do not have to eat pizza and eggs for another week.
My tennis buddy has gone to Texas, so no tennis for the weekend. am listennnig to Kal ho Na ho songs again. Someone rightly said. The music is haunting.
Apr 28, 2004:
I have been guilty of neglecting my blog for so long. Well the past week was OK. Nothing much was achieved in terms of learning new things. It was a kind of stagnant week with lot of boring work to do.
Is my drive to keep on learning fading away? I know there is so much out there to learn but why am i not pushing myself to learn that? Sometimes small things keep on nagging me.A case in point being i am annoyed by my nails. I need to cut them. But I did not cut them yesterday because of some silly superstition and today in the morning i forgot to cut them. Why do such small things throw me off track.
I guess I need a timetable to keep me focused. I need to write down what am I going to study on which day!! I need to hold my self-accountable. Personal accountability. That is it.. gotcha
The dollars is strengthening day by day and that is boosting my savings :) I guess it will fall again after the May 5th round of polling, after which it might be clear that the ruling coalition in India is again going to get majority in the lower house. I feel that the rupee dollar exchange rate will stabilize at 42 Rs a dollar. The Federal Bank will try and stop the slide below 40 as it will irreparably hurt the exporters. Well that is my feeling..
Reminds me of Bentley's second Law of Economics: The only thing more dangerous than an economist is an amateur economist :)
April 16, 2004
It is Apring time again in Minneapolis and I am spring thawing :-) . The weekend is here and i hope to do some good stuff over the weekend.
Have been generally reading on Credit Default swaps and this wednesday attended a lecture on Asian options. So i guess i will read up on that. And I promise to myself , No TV this weekend.
Blog: do you know you always make such promises only to be broken in less than 3 hrs. So you will go home and first thing you do will be to switch on the TV. Haah so much for a resolution
Meesa: No Believe me this weekend i will not see television
Blog: even the action movie on saturday or the Meg Ryan movie.... Forget it you are a looser
Meesa: OK OK i promise no TV. Wanna have a bet, Just a total of 4 hrs in the weekend
Blog: forget it you will loose hands down.. OK if you loose you will have to blog every day for the next week and promise that you will not browse from monday until Wednesday... haah serves you right
Meesa: er.. ummmmm This is inhuman
Blog: see i told you. you cannot do it
Meesa: Look i will do it..If i do it you will stop bugging me and I do not want to have this conversation with you again
Blog: Done
Meesa: Done
Apr 10, 2004
Today i was supposed to read about Credit default swaps but i got so caught up in work that i could not take out the time. And then this blog took away the remaining time. I am waiting for the original Star Wars (digitally edited and Special Effects added) version on DVD. It will be fun to see Luke Skywalker fighting and Darth vader again. there is this lovable character in Star Wars - The Phantom menace called Ja Ja Bings. He seems to be half human and half animal and has the intellect of a moron.
Well well well. A biometric ID card for all residents in Britain. 1 I think it is a cool idea. I feel biometrics should be incorporated in the passports as well. Then one does not need to carry a booklet along with oneself and torture the immigration clerk to match the photograph in it with ones face. I am sure that every one, sometime or the other would have faced those asking looks. The immigration officer thinking "The man infront of me was at some time this young .. Beats me.. Sir, Can you please step aside and meet the immigration official in the other room " And there go your 2 hrs down the drain. You could have been peacefully sleeping in your cozy bed but here you are answering questions to a bugged immigration official. And the reason for that is that so much travelling has made you age the equivalent of 10 yrs in just 3 real years.
Fannie and Freddie Mac are under scrutiny. But i am sure they will get away with it like always.. 40 bps are made by them and they pass off just 7 to the end consumers. That is a cool 33 bps of profit on 4 trillion dollars worth of securities. Now that is some amount of money. 1
Apr 09, 2004
Today was reasonably productive and I look forward to a good long run on the treadmill. Somehow watching "friends" while jogging is an interesting way to complete the 3+ miles.
Some beautiful lines from hindi films. 1
April 8, 2004
Sometimes i wonder why do films in hindi have wierd unbelievable love stories. I know some of the movies are meant to sell dreams and dreams are more fantasy than real. But shouldn't there be some films that show what will be the love story of a common person. A person who has to work for everyday for a living. A person who has to support ones family yet falls in love . How would this person juggle the two? This person will not be able to fly off to aforeign location just to follows ones love. This person will not be able to buy business class tickets when her / his love is leaving the country... How will a director marry practicality with this emotion of love. Someday when i have enough time probably I will write a story like this.
But right now reading about credit default swaps.. They are pretty interesting animals. 1 2
Also reading a book on development economics
April 1, 2004
Teri Justju mein ab hum yahi kaam kar rahe hain
kahin subah ho rahi hai kahim shaam kar rahe hain
main nazar bacha raha hoon
voh salaam kar rahe hain
( In your search i am doing just this
somewhere it is day and somewhere it is getting dark
II am trying to turn away from her and she is bowing in respect )
Jogged for 5 Kms and read about the rupee dollar conversion rate details on bloomberg. Nothing great!
Disturbing article on the mass murder in Rwanda. 1
Mar 27 ,2004
Today started as all my weekends start. I got up early and chatted with my folks back in India. But as the evening sets in I don't know there is some gloom around. It is past 11 pm and i am sitting listening to some old sound tracks.
I believe in God!
But then the question is if God made this world then why did He give pain and suffering.. What does He achieve by this. I remembered a line from a Ghazal by Jagjit Singh.
"Yehi hota hai ,to aakhir yeh hota kyon hai"
(If this is what happens then why does it happen)
I personally do not know why am I thinking like this. May be I just need some caffeine to shake me out of these questions. Am I thinking too much?
I guess if i talk to my friend in california about this, he will have a simple 4 word answer for me : "Dude, you need therapy"
Mar 24, 2004
Interesting article on use of statistics in sports. 1
India won the match!! cool
I simply had to add this article on the recent surge in dollar reserves in India. I found this article to be simple and informative. Economist.com rulz
1
Mar 22, 2004
And now Nanotechnology can also be hit be skepticism. I am still not sure if it right to pass a judgement even before one gets to know the technology completely. 1
Mar 21, 2004
Went to this site blockhead. It has some amazing cartoons
Am reading the live updates of the fourth ODI match between India and Pakistan right now. (0752 hrs CST)
Mar 13, 2004
Life is generally get back into gear. Right now I am sitting in my living cum drawing room listening to some good Hindi songs. India won the match in the morning and i surprised myself by actually waving my hands in the air as if i had won the match myself. For a moment I had become the kakul from 1993. I felt the same exhilaration as I used to feel after winning a game of squash at CME, Pune.
Life is beautiful and I want to enjoy life today.
Currently I am reading about the Ahmedia sect of Muslim relegion apart from the Mammoth book on Fixed Income securities.
Changed my photograph today.
Mar 03, 2004
The weekend was good. I tried to get back in to the routine. Today I am feeling better. Jogged for three miles and am ready to crack anything.. Life, it seems is getting back into gear. I am back on my vegetable juice now. (V8 rocks)
The festival of colors holi is this weekend. Again this yr I will be celebrating it alone in cold and wintry minneapolis. with my laptop and the home theatre system. I have been in the US for about 2 months now and I am not feeling homesick any more. I guess I have adapted to the changed routine. Like other indians i will also go once a yr and enjoy the Indian winter.
Read this saying from Joseph Campbell "Follow your bliss, the rest will follow"
Feb 27, 2004
Am back. the laptop that i bought had to be returned as it was too slow. I now have bought an IBM thinkpad. It is awesome.
Please note my new home number.
Weekend is here.. 2 juicy days...as I would have said in a mixure of Kannada and English .
Solpa Njoy maadi ( When translated in English it means : enjoy a little)
Feb 06,2004
Have finally moved to Minneapolis and have started on my new job. Just bought my new laptop and also my new internet connection. Life has become better after that. My new apartment looks so empty without any furniture.
But I think human beings adapt and so will I.
Jan 15, 2004
My month long vacation is coming to an end. I will be flying back soon. I will miss India more than ever.
As ghalib put it
Hazaaaron khwaishein aisi ki har khwaish pe dum nikale.
Bahut nikale mere armaan lekin phir bhi kam nikale.
My new address in MInneapolis will be put on my website shortly.