Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Karunashraya


Karunashraya, on Airport road in Bangalore, is perhaps one of the most noble human gestures that I have come across.

This is a joint project by Indian Cancer Society and the Rotary club of Bangalore. Their mission is to provide care to the terminally ill from Cancer absolutely free of cost. For those who have seen this disease from near and far, will know how devastating it can be. And yet at no time, should the afflicted lose their right to life and hope. Karunshraya is housed in a beautifully architected single floor stone campus and a very alleviating ambience. The infrastructure for care is very good and for a while and after you will think that in this age, within concrete towers and unrelenting wealth seeking, there is a quiet chunk of humanity right within.

I will strongly recommend Bangaloreans to take a small weekend detour to this place, see for themselves and help in some way possible. Its located about 2 km from the Marthahalli Outer Ring Road junction towards Whitefield on the Airport road (1 Km ahead of Spice Garden Restaurant). Has an obscure shrubbed entrance but quite noticeable.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Word of mouth advertising some

Over last few days over a mix of work and domestic I came across some interesting websites that I will recommend,

For those looking for some good, tutorail and encyclopaedic education on finance, capital markets and investing www.investopedia.com

I had been long searching for a website, in fact at one time even thinking of setting up one to integrate all the restauranteurs in town on a single portal where you can order a mix of chinese from Mainland China and Afghani from Samarkhand on the same day. Well! as with tons of ideas getting stacked up the dusty shelves, this one went there, but I found www.hungrybangalore.com , a good, seemingly comprehensive listing of restaurants, with a map to indicate which where and importantly an online menu to choose from. They also organize parties and am trying their service soon, so watch this space for feedback.

Another want of mine had been a utility which can take in all your financial details, bank balance, euqity, funds, assets and advise you real time on what your net worth is and suggest on what you should be doing to optimze your portfolio. I think I found something close at www.moneycontrol.com , a tool called Portfolio manager.

Well! while I find these, perhaps am still like a gleeful little kid, doing an Alice in wwwonderland, but deserving services deserve a bit of word of mouth advertising :)

Wednesday, November 08, 2006


There is this quite milk revolution that has been happening in India for the last 30 years (or more i think). http://www.nddb.org. A small initiative that started in a small village called Anand (means Happiness), to collect the surplus milk collected by farmers from the 1-2 animals in their keep. This went on to feed a whole nation's requirement of milk and milk products.
At present NDDB covers over 300 districts, approximately 110,000 villages, and hold on...some 15 million farmers!
The attached picture shows milk collection at a village society a routine every evening at 6:00 PM.

This one for case studies across social, agri, management, NGO and well milk of course!

50 first dates

I saw this movie yesterday. In a way if we can learn by pushing out the burden of the past, thanking for what we have, and living each day as a new day, it would make it that much more pleasant for all. Only thing, that as a bread-winner, one might have to figure out what to do...
Adam Sandler has done a good job, and the comic act of Rob Schneider is kindof similar to our Mumbai film industry goofs. A good movie all in all, is a Hindi director looking for a retake..

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Wordy tastes

I have wondered at times if it possible to induce taste through writing. let me try.
Imagine a hot cheese dripping crisp bread, with luscious tomato and anchovies, liberally sprinkled with sour lemony juice. Does the taste hit you?

Or lemony lemony lemonade, made from the sourest yellow-gree lemons, and 6 cubes of ice in a yputall blue glass...and the freshest light green you've seen in times...and suddenly you've never felt better :)

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Value of Money

Ever wonder how more money gets created if resources stay constant.I think I had a brief insight today that may make sense. In sum it is that a forced supply of financial instruments, increases spending power, increases demand, and hence valuation of limited resources - and hence backward justifies the value of increased money.

To illustrate with 2 parallel examples. 1) Paper money and 2) Equities traded on a stock exchange. For paper money, there is an invisible hand of the federal government churning out notes and currency that the banks dispense with. It is not suddenly that people get higher wages, or everyone seems to have more money to spend. What happens then? Everyone wants a little more iof limited resources then, and no wonder the little resources become more expensive.
Money is issues against gold, but as you put out more money, sooner or later the gold too becomes expensive, and justifies the additonal liquidity.

Likewise with equity, every now and then companies more visibly split their stocks, issue bonuses and the like. The re-valuation initially spreads across the increased equity base. At the same time. the price per share falls into the buying power range for more investors, and suddenly people are buying more. With a little usual demandonmics, the value goes up again.

Applications of this insight - guess different for different people,
1) someone will keep churning out more cash to make the asset valuable, so buy more assets
2) there is no asset comparable to blue chip equity, as you can keep increasing liquidity there theoretically forever, which not the case with land, gold, diamonds or carbon emissions for that matter.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Pre-Proof of Destiny

When things go wrong there is a reason, when things go right there is a reason. Civilization has defined what are constructive activities and what are not. Peace, hard work, patience, kindness, truth are all cited as noble goals. But if there were to be peace alone would we know its value? How do Scandinavians with 18 hour light and dark feel about it...is there a coincidence that there is relative peace and tranquil in those countries.

There are many facets to everything, and the self alone knows all those facets. What is wrong with doing something which many people will say is not good? Do it and often you will have a profound realization... What I am saying is that everything is a natural process, and even our attributions of the same are natural and even rejection is. Attempt to seek freedom is natural and so for bondage. When the girl ran away with her paramour it was bad, when they returned home in a successful family avatar it was good...a balance that did not necessarily come about the regular prescribed way. Am I saying its ok to challenge yourself. Yes and no, both are good and bad. If you were to search for text that tells what its is good to be and what not, both conformist and rebellion text would show up in any great numbers ...a google search of "good" and "bad" yields equal search results.

So basically what I am saying is that, can we get going on a logical pre-proof for destiny...before we start experimenting with the theories and some mathematics...

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Success and Failure...

Failure and success are 2 hypocrites and sometimes I wonder why at all do we need to fight back the pain or over-savour the success. They are just there, and its a dent on one's humility to hit adrenaline on a success and lick bruised ego's on a failure. Let both pass and there will be some sustained peace.

Both come in any number of flavours in a day, from the hidden joy of solving a puzzle to the frustration at not cracking it after hours together, from the argument well won to the put down, besides of course the more obvious ones.... I think success is only one of the outcomes, and a rarer one, failure is the more frequent one.

While we read many stories of success, we often do not contemplate what after that...IBM got successes through its mainframe and then failure with its desktops. Jordan trumped with Bulls but came short in comeback with Wizards. That's life, do we need treat things as good or bad. Everyone has a reason.

Smile without necessarily being happy and cry too without being sad. Someone may call you a fool, but what's the difference, someone will call you a fool for some or the other reason anyway.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Undulations of Roads and Mind

A gentle sloping up and down road, ambling along lazily through South Karnataka, surely the Bangalore-Mysore stretch SH-17 must rate as one of the best drives in India for the car borne. Mind the frequent cuts along the way and watch for the incidental tractor, truck nosing its way into your path. Recommended 5/5 for all road enthusiasts. Can surely relieve some of the misgivings against your local municipality for not doing the city roads well.

Took the trip to lighten up some, the heavy load of the year, and make some fresh decisions. But the typical hectic of a vacation starts the moment you land at your resort and then suddenly you want to do everything, with so little time at hand. So did I make my decisions, I did not quite, still in the process..

A dilemma - when you are asked to choose between peer pressure and self-actualization, what do you choose?

Peer pressure to stay in line with the game and have the license to blab about everything philosophical, without needing it as a relief. Self-actualization, the longer, tougher version, where success can propel to a new league but failure.... To think of it, if one has it in oneself to hit back hard after a failure then perhaps one should go for failure than for a small incremental victory. Perhaps the uneven string in life is that when we become successful in habit(I am quite far from there yet) we are afraid to lose, and nature doesnt mean it to be that way. .I think I saw this same hesitation to try in some very successful people, people I respect a lot, and that put a bit a bit of disbelief in me.

Returning to the question, self actualization or rat race. Which will it be? A bit of passion with a spot of imagination and a dollop of effort should do it, but that's a phraseology one might say. When I wake up tomorrow morning, I'll have to answer some questions to realist who doesnt go easy on easy-flowing spiritual answers until the late evening blogging hour.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

What would you do?

October 05, 2006, how some days are an antithesis and very fast crash from a smooth 60,000 skimming in creativity, and thanks in no less measure to a traffic situation that took 6 miles nearly 2 hours. Now before someone brands me traffic-philic I'll walk out of the conversation into things more routine and ask you a simple question?

If on your great show you were made to be captain of a football team by the school coach and then just as suddenly all the best players in your team were slowly pulled into another, you were left with a weakling of a team and even deprived of the coaching time what would you do?
A) Protest
B) Persevere and turnaround the weakling of a team despite odds
C) Be quiet and walk out

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Bangalore Bandh...or a chance to improve the place

Bangalore Bandh...and while the rest of India goes about its routine, here we are sweetly tucked in inside our homes ruminating this midweek island of a holiday. 1 day of work behind, 2 days of work ahead and then suddenly weekend ahoy...
So what is the Bangalore set up to, let me guess.
Category A - Like me, churning out intellectual stuff, catching up on fiction, DVDs and friends perhaps
Category B - Life as usual, kids below 3, grandparents, househelps, social set, only busier because, the workers are at home.
Category C - Work still it is, like time tested midnight oil burning techniques to catapult you to exalted orbits of sensex, corner offices, or well.. the blase onsites.
Category D - Sleep is a soulful friend, that given the right disposition and a dollop of lethargy can be by your side at the beckoning.

As a conscious citizen.. with just the amount of lethargy that prevents greatness from closing upon me(:))..., I have some advice for all those who fall in my category. Folks lets get together somehow and lets do something for the betterment of Bangalore that all of those who do not fall into our category will delight in tomorrow. 3 options there,

1) For Electronics City users - Put up a traffic light on Bomanahalli, Begur and Singasandra junction, that is timed in proportion to the traffic in each direction. So gone will be the days when 10,000 have to wait 30 minutes and 100 have to wait for 2.

2) Lets go talk to the city planners on why do they perceive Bangalore to be a Pizza which can only be radially bissected by roads with no semblance of internal roads anywhere within the slices. Case in point, outer ring road, Hosur road, bannerghatta road, kanakapura road, all these roads cut the Southern Bangalore segment radially however within the several thousands of acres within each slice there is precious little tarring, roads or connections. It is unbelievable the amount of land wasted in such poor planning. Leading to what I will call islands within the urban sprawl..
3) Or simply sit at home and launch a portal www.onewayupdate.com (I hope that doesnt exist yet), and update all the two way road to one way conversions across the cities of the world. Bangalore if not on the top will figure close and we can well through the right Public-Private-Police partnership ensure that we can convert a few more one ways to get the top spot.

I am sure with the right intent and spirit we can setup Team Bangalore, and get things movin just a lil bit further than they are now...,well at least till the "island of holiday" comes along and me or someone in my category gets into blogspace, for lack of more mundane things to do.