Federer versus nadal

I am a great fan of federer and had to move ass on a sunday evening to Vinays cousins house to watch the match! 6-1 vs nadal and i thought it was one of those easy wins for feddie. But then he lost:( I was so disappointed but nadal won because federer played badly so this was no where comparable to the Federer Baghdatis match in Jan.

It was a sporty weekend with F1, footie, tennis and cricket. I thought the test match would be a draw but looks like India will win! And of course some stats will sure come out first win in WI after some many years blah blah etc:) Just hope we win the series as well.

Footie is not a game I follow very keenly because most games are goal-less but forunately this year day 1 had 8 and uptil now there have been about 27 goals! way to go! I am rooting for australia! no not really but i surely dont know the game that well to say who will win!

F1 was a little boring with Alonso leading from the beginning. I am not sure why MS had to do what he did in Monte Carlo. No one knows whether he did it deliberately. I dont see any need for him to do it deliberately. He probably dint. I am hoping the championship gets more interesting and its not alonso all the way.

Belf

Job interview - Dilbert:)

Sometimes this can be true!

First rains of Bangalore!

Yday was one of the first summer rains in Bangalore. Though I did not manage to get drenched yday(not that i tried), I did get drenched today. Bangalore is about the weather mainly even though its about every thing else but all this i think hinges on the weather. If bangalore were as hot as chennai or delhi in summer then it would not be fun. And its about the short showers in the evening. Bright sun at 1, showers at 2.30! just defines bangalore. Was fun to get drenched in the rain after a long time and should probably be a little more careful. Already feel feverish. and a bit of cold too i guess. Bangalore rocks again.

Scale works!

Had been to the infy campus yday. This is my third visit to the campus I think but this time managed to take an entire tour of the campus and a lot of things have changed at the campus as well. The campus is huge and its beautfiul. One thing I like about the campus is that its only 2 floors per building each. India is not an US and Infy should have more floors per building and try to build vertically.

But what amazes me is the fact that the scale of operations matter more than anything else now at infy. This is another example of the scale at work coupled with brilliant execution. When you have so many people and recruit the best talent you just have to ensure that you have the right processes in place for execution. I just scalable companies and these are the companies that provide long term growth. Companies like Microsoft, Google, Infy, Wipro, Reliance are purely built on the scale model.

Scale works! and how!

The Search/The Joy of Work

Yday met sweety at oxford chai bar along with Vinay and Priya (Sweety had some one too, but i dont know whether i can disclose who it was publicly without gaining the Tata Ire). He was having a couple of books- The Search, a book about Google and the Joy of Work by Scott Adams. Combine the two and it can describe the state of most of our jobs today! Now I am off to what I enjoy most these days - Swimming! or rather learning to swim!

Belf!

Google Finance:)

It was actually one of my dreams, that google should have a dedicated site just for finance.. yahoo finance is good but somehow not great. yet the beta of google finance(finance.google.com/finance) is still nothing great but I am hoping the next version is much better!

PAT (I know what the fin guys are thinking) for honesty

While there has been a lot of debate about high IIM salaries http://dhoomk2.blogspot.com/2006/03/are-mba-salaries-worth-it.html, i found this comment from my diro damn honest and straight forward. I have worked with him a couple of times and he is that kind of a guy. It was nice to hear this from him -

On the performance of students at the final placements, the IIM-B director said, "There is no competition between IIM-Ahmedabad and Bangalore. It is just media hype. Sometimes IIM-A students get higher offers and sometimes our students get them. It is all linked to the general economic conditions. The salaries are higher this year because the Indian economy is doing well and the market is expanding."

Another honest post was an interview from Warren Buffet, read along. Found this at http://radventure.blogspot.com
He was honest enough to admit he doesnt understand technology firms!

Warren Buffet on:

Career advice
If you want to make a lot of money go to Wall Street. More importantly though, do what you would do for free, having passion for what you do is the most important thing. … A few months ago I was talking to another MBA student, a very talented man, about 30 years old from a great school with a great resume. I asked him what he wanted to do for his career, and he replied that he wanted to go into a particular field, but thought he should work for McKinsey for a few years first to add to his resume. To me that's like saving sex for your old age. It makes no sense.

Investing
When making investments, pretend in life you have a punch-card with only 20 boxes, and every time you make an investment you punch a slot. It will discipline you to only make investments you have extreme confidence in. Big money is made by obvious things. If using a discount rate of 8% vs. 10% is going to make or break an investment idea, it's probably not a good idea.
When Berkshire acquired a 90% stake in NFM in the 80's, Ms. B and I shook hands and signed a two-page agreement. There was no audit of the books, no due diligence, I trusted her integrity. When Wal-Mart sold me one of their operating units, their CFO came to my office, I gave him a price, he called Bentonville [Arkansas - Wal-Mart headquarters], and that day the deal was done. I know how Wal-Mart conducts business [very well], and when we took over the division, it was exactly how they described it. So integrity is a requirement. One of Berkshire's businesses is FlightSafety, the founder is dedicated to preventing deaths, he's not motivated by the next quarter's numbers.

His legacy
I think an example is the best thing you can leave behind. Obviously, you want to leave the right example. I mean, Wilt Chamberlain's tombstone may say, "At last, I sleep alone," and that's probably not the example you want to leave. If what I've done with Berkshire Hathaway - running a unique and independent company in true pursuit of shareholder value - persists and people learn from it to improve the way they invest and run their companies, that would be a fine legacy to leave.

His aversion for investing in technology companies
Technology is clearly a boost to business productivity and a driver of better consumer products and the like, so as an individual I have a high appreciation for the power of technology. I have avoided technology sectors as an investor because in general I don't have a solid grasp of what differentiates many technology companies. I don't know how to spot durable competitive advantage in technology. To get rich, you find businesses with durable competitive advantage and you don't overpay for them. Technology is based on change; and change is really the enemy of the investor. Change is more rapid and unpredictable in technology relative to the broader economy. To me, all technology sectors look like 7-foot hurdles.

Tagging along!

Got tagged by Dips, so

Seven things to do before I die :

Learn to cook - reducing core dependencies:)
Do something entreprenurial - Take one of my ideas to execution.
Travel around the world - Esp australia and South america.
Work at/for/with Google - Simply love that company.
Direct a movie.
Lose weight.
Change the world.

Seven things I can't do:

Lose weight:)
Meet Bill watterson.
Stop eating corner house ice cream!
Leave my friends.
Be a sportsman.
Be extremely organized.
Be less interested in the markets.


Seven things that attract me to Europe:

Prague.
Anti-americanism.
The history.
Different cultures.
Rail network.
Eastern europe.
French vineyards.


Seven excellent books:

Golden Gate - Vikram Seth
Midnights children - Rushdie
Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor
Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
Argumentative Indian- Amartya Sen
All the lonely planets!
Calvin and Hobbes - 20th Anniversary special


Seven good movies:

Cinema Paradiso
Motorcycle diaries
Y tu mama tambien
Shawshank Redemption
Nayagan
Rang De Basanti
Swades


Seven people to tag - this is tough, not many people i know are blog savvy! so some of this will be already tagged people and still i might not end up at 7:)

Bee
Kau
Ravikiran
Dibyo
Chitra
Anand

Unravelling travel plans

Its been a while since I travelled to see, the last being turkey around may last year and after that most of my travel has been to chill out with no intention to actually see a place.. I am hoping I can travel to eastern europe sometime this year focusing on Czech, Poland, Hungary and Slovekia in about a 15-17 day period including weekends. I have heard a lot about prague and krakow which are supposed to be europes loveliest cities. The trip depends on a lot of things including finding company and some cheap fares. Otherwise, I plan to do a trip to India's north east.


Meanwhile homo (my wingie Srikant) tells me that my pictures with his explanations won a lot of applause at a recent Mocha backpackers club meeting in bombay. He even has increased his fan following by three more women, though we never know the actual cumulative number at any point of time:) I am thinking I should get a fair share of this particular accumlation with due respect to my photographs. it will be a good idea to have such meetings in Bangalore too, atleast u can easily meet enthu travel junta!
Belf

Yet another Baby

I finally had pictures of a friend's sisters baby. The one thing that gets me wondering whenever i see a baby is - were we all this small when we born! How do we (me in particular) grow this big. Imagine the suff we should have eaten:)

-VEnergy

I always assumed by default that people will be positive about things and will react negatively depending on circumstances. For ex: If you get mugged in a particular street, you might fear going in that street again. But of late, I have been beginning to realise that people by default are negative, atleast to me. I think one of the easiest things to do in life is to see the negative side of things, point out fallacies be it personal, professional or societal. the difficult part is to see the positive things - somewhat like the silver lining in a cloud( I have never understood whats wrong with a cloud though!). I always believe if you want to do something, people will give you 100 reasons as to why one should not do it but as long as you have one good reason and you believe in it, you should go ahead and do it!

Like DJ says in Rang de basanti - There are two kinds of people in this world, one who just take the life as it is and dont do anything about and the ones who take responsibility and change the world. I think there is a third kind as well, those who just take the life as is but blame everyone else in the world for it rather than taking responsibility!

Unfortunately there is no calvin strip on this one! I am hoping I can write a blog for every calvin strip sometime, relate it to something thats happening around us.. Will atleast make the blogs more interesting;)

Who controls whom?

Nice calvin strip. Was reminded of this when i read this - http://chitraaz.blogspot.com/2006/02/weekend-bonanza.html

Bill Watterson is god! He does leave you speechless. The strips I like most are the ones in which they are no dialogue and some of the sunday strips! Take a Bow Mr Watterson!

Latest reading: Akira

The latest book I am reading is the Autobiography by Akira Kurosawa called Something like an Autobiography. The book is indeed brilliant and is a must for anyone who wants to direct a movie. He gives beautiful anecdotes about incidents when he was an assistant director. He talks about how he learnt from his Guru - Yamasan. He does not discuss anything post Roshomon because he was hurt the way the movie was treated inside Japan. It ends with various discourses on film making by Kurosawa including why he used three cameras and the importance of not lying down and reading a book!

Paint it Yellow! Rang De Basanti

I like movies mainly on three counts- the execution, the content and the time pass value. I dont like movies to preach to me directly. I go to a movie to have fun, enjoy my time, not to get social education. I am a big Aamir-AR Rahman fan too. Mangal Pandey disappointed me badly. It was not well executed, there was no great content and it was surely not time pass value. So I was really looking forward to seeing RDB. The songs were far better than in Mangal Pandey and the promos looked good. I missed the first day first show for this one because I had planned a trip around the same time. I was keen to go on 25th night but unfortunately had no company. I finally managed to get tickets for the 29th night show.

I dont want to say anything much about the movie but in the end I was entertained. It scored on all three counts I like movies though people could have other ideas about the content but it was way better than other movies I have seen in the recent past. Go enjoy. Paint it Yellow!

Times Investment in Equities- Unfair?

I wanted to write something on my own on this, then googled to find this - http://readerlist.freeflux.net/blog/archive/2005/12/06/reader-list-the-press-distrust-of-india.html

I think the greatest benefit of google is that you rarely have to reinvent the wheel these days, whether its a document you yourself created (desktop) or some one else created (general search). There is so much time and cost saving.

Would google do something like Times? Offer ad space in return for equity? Would it be a fair way to do it? Google goes out of its way to ensure that the search results are genuine, similarly I think that BCCL should ensure that the news it reports are fair and stop making investments in companies in return for ad space. I think SEBI should take this up seriously and consider banning such investments in the future.
Madhu

Gandhi's death anniversary

Today is Gandhi's death anniversary. Most people remember Gandhi more as the person who got India freedom and in the process forget the means he used to get them. I think his principle of non-violence single handledy is responsible for people like Nelson Mandela, Marthin Luther King Jr to use it in their respective struggles. Unfortunately no one today is willing to use a non-violent way to peace and this is why I think the world is so much at suffering today. There is a beautiful ad on how Gandhi could have preached about his non violence using todays modern communication facilities. Am unable to find it right now. Will hopefully find a link of this and post it soon.
Madhu

Federer wins the australian open and how:)

Down 5-7, 0-2 and a break point, came back to win the match 5-7, 7-5, 6-0, 6-2 over Marcos Baghdatis(again a wonderful player). When you see matches like these, you wonder what you are doing in life doing the same old mundane stuff. I hope Marcos continues his dream run because he was one of the few guys who gave federer a run for his money. I would love to see more Federer - Baghdatis matches!

IITians form a political party! Yuva impact?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1384682.cms

Beauty and the beast takesover the Toystory

Ofcourse it is claimed that Disney's board of directors are worried about the ruthlessness of Jobs. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060124_959402.htm

Walmart is worried about the deal because if Disney/Pixar allow movies to be downloaded via the net to iPod Video, then DVD sales will drop. It has apparently sounded out to Disney on its worries. If its worried about this what would it do about google videos!!

Davos, Innovation and India

Good piece on Business Week. I like one of the comments at the bottom - India's innovation capabilities can help increase top line (but what about software?) where as China's manufacturing strenghts can help decrease costs.
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2006/01/india_and_innov.html

Long Way Round

Last week Discovery travel and living India aired the Long Way Round journey during the weekedays. It continues to air them on sunday evenings at 9 PM IST. The journey is really exciting and I loved the Mongolia part the best. The show ended this sunday (22/1/06) with Ewan and Charlie preparing to go to Siberia. Check out www.longwayround.com as well..
belf

Bollywood nights at Davos

The World Economic Forum concentrates on India this time around - Have a look at this

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2006/nf20060123_5900_db016.htm

Notice its kamat and not kamath:)

Ice Age is Back

Return to the Blog!
Anyway do not have enough time to write anything for now. But so basically doing information dissemination.

Mandy is back!

visit their official website - www.iceage2.com
Belf