Moving on to the next phase
Marathon = over;
Physical activity = Must be Kept (still true);
Need = Goal;
Otherwise = Sad state of sedentary lifestyle;
Activity = Pleasurable, worth the time, in my bucket list;
Ergo, Goal = Hike Kilimanjaro;
Time line = will keep you posted (moved from Summer 2010 to indefinitely due to the knee surgery I have to undergo in Spring 2010).
Training = Weekly hikes to mission peak;
Times completed since training started = 2;
Total times completed = 23 (Actually 24 now but that aint much)
If you wanna join me = Welcome.
Peace,
sai
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Marathon training
I am training with TNT to participate in the Seattle Marathon in June 2009. Until that is over, I am blogging my tryst with marathon at
http://saismarathon.blogspot.com/This is also a fundraiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. For more details about LLS and on how to contribute for the cause, please visit
http://pages.teamintraining.org/sj/rnrseatl09/sgopalakrishnanPeace,
sai.
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What a joy! what a bliss!!
Shivani is now 9 weeks old, weighs 11 lbs and measures 23 inches. Hard to imagine that this little bundle is a source of infinite joy.
If we let her, she sleeps for 8 hours in the night.. So, we are not awake on her account. Nevertheless, the silly work makes me still burn midnight oil.. Hopefully, I can get the EC for my project done by end of January and then abscond for a couple of weeks!
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Getting ready for a new chapter
The ETA for Shivani was 11/6 and she has kept us waiting till now. I guess she will make a good Indian politician. Keeping the audience waiting and making a grand appearance are important part of managing image for these statesmen.
It seems like November is a busy season for the labor and delivery. We had an appointment at El Camino hospital at 8PM for 11/11 but when we called in to confirm our arrival, we came to know that they were 'running behind' :-) But we will be starting in another hour or so. That brings me to the end of a chapter in my life.
From my previous experiences with these end of a chapter things, 2 things helped me transition well. They are 1) Having no expectations 2) Taking 1 day at a time. I am planning to go with the winning formula this time around as well. Will keep you posted
Peace,
sai.
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Top 5 reasons to have an offspring!
I am having one of those insomniac nights and uncharacteristically, I am at my cynical best.. So here goes.. "The top 5 reasons for having a kid" in no particular order
- Acquiring, retaining and exploiting the moral high ground
Let's say you get into an argument involving social issues and repercussions of some social policies . For instance, think about these following questions "Should the government send more troop to Iraq?", "Should candies be sold in school canteens?", "Is global warming real?". You can spend all day long preparing cogent and the most rational arguments based on scientific evidences like that freakanomics guy (Oh my god.. imagine sharing a dorm room with that geek!). All your preparations can be tossed aside if you answer the following question in the "nay" - "Do you have any kids?". In many of the roadside arguments (presidential debates inclusive), moral high ground is automatically bestowed if, say, you can anecdotally refer that your kid stuffed himself with candies and ended up running a temperature of 99.1 and hence candies should not be allowed in schools!
- Your career is going no where and you need an excuse for rationalizing your incapacity to climb the corporate ladder
If your corporate experience starts feeling more like a stairmaster than a ladder, you need someone to attribute that to. You can complain about the 'politics' going on in the big bureaucratic company, you can complain about some of the questionable 'policies' of not promoting people of your background (such as wearing red trousers and yellowish orange shirt to work). But it all sounds noble and better if you can tell that you are 'sacrificing' your career because you are focusing on the more important facets of life (getting hated by your kid for following him everywhere)
- A ticket to excusing yourselves from any unpalatable gatherings - for life!
This may be one of the best reasons for having a kid. Say you are socially awkward and you want to avoid every social gathering to the best of your capacity. An even more apt example. Say your brother-in-law (insert any other pretends-to-know-all, ignorant fool, kill joy, totally obnoxious loser epitomized by the aforementioned relation) invites you over to his place for thanksgiving. What is your best excuse as of today? "Busy at Work?", "I am afraid of flying?", "I am not feeling well?" See how it sounds.. It is all about you.. pretty selfish. Now try, "My kid's preschool will be affected by the travel" (or) "we are trying for a 100% attendance record in his day care"... How does that sound.. totally benevolent! Cant beat it.. There is no come back for that..
- An avenue for harnessing the talents which you never had
Say you dont have any talent for language.. You can hardly put words together in half a language.. But you have seen James Bon, Tom &Jerry for that matter, adeptly conversing in multiple languages without skipping a beat. Or music.. you are not only tone deaf but cant hold any instrument for good.. Or for that matter math, physics, sciences.. Now you have an avenue to actually stuffing all this on an uninterested mind.. And what more.. you can rant about how your parents were stupid and never supported you in exploring your passion (which is non-existent in the first place but you dont have to tell that) and how you are providing the opportunity for the kid and why he should show his sense of gratitude towards you
- A safe front for expressing your skepticism
If I do not have a kid and I write like this, I am a cynical loser.. But with a kid, I am one with a great sense of self-deprecating humor! I will take it any day !
Peace man!
sai.
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It's all over !!
We turned in our capstone paper on March 12th and that marked the end of a chapter in my life. Considering that I never would go to school again for learning, I might as well italicize this experience as the end of an episode. It was an experience as grueling as a strenuous day hike - rewarding but tiring nonetheless. To mark the end of this long voyage (3years for some, as long as 5 years for others), we named our Capstone team 'The Odyssey'. Everyone in my team has a different story, but it has the same underlying theme of hard work, sacrifice and managing time. While all the previous quarters were challenging, the final quarter was especially hard. If you have any friends from SCU, talk to them about Tammy Madsen's Capstone and they will go on and on like an energizer bunny. We spent 30 hours a week outside the class for this one course. That's like another job!
Whenever I thought I was getting the wrong end of the stick, I looked at my team mates, who were managing their MBA along with not just work but with kids, for inspiration. I bowed in their general direction, stopped whining and got back to working on the project. Being the ultimate procrastinator, I never finish any of my assignments unless I can smell the stench and feel the chill of the looming deadline. But I had the good fortune of working with an amazing team full of energy and focus. We pushed, taunted and challenged each other into completing a "close to turnin quality work" 10 days before the deadline. By the time we submitted the final paper, it had gone through almost a dozen revisions. I don't recollect any instance where I had time for more than 1 review before turning in the damn thing. Thanks to you 'Team Odyssey'.
So, what next? This is a very personal question and if you ask a dozen of my class mates, you will get a dozen answers. The implicit connotation to this harmless question is malicious indeed. The world expects an MBA to succeed dramatically and become a CEO of a Fortune 500 company over night (or) it expects him to fail dramatically and end up in a low security cell for committing some white collar crime. Rarely does either of these scenarios occur. But one thing is sure. The MBA changed me, my perception, perspective and aspirations, forever - mostly for good. Though the curse of the MBA - never feeling content and always thinking about what next, looms large, I am looking forward to setting higher career goals and achieving those aspirations in future.
That said, most of my focus in the next 12 - 18 months will be on the personal front. I have to get myself back in shape, get back in touch with friends, do the things I wanted to do but never have gotten time to do and get my personal life in order. My main objective is to fill the 30+ hours of free time a week with activities towards achieving the goals I've set for myself (some of them outlined in my previous blogs).
Right now, I am looking forward for the week long trip to Utah to decompress and to marvel at nature's splendor at Zion, Bryce and the arches national parks. The travelogues to follow.
Later,
Sai.
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Happiness !
Of late, I am trying to nail down an answer to the inflation adjusted million dollar question - "What makes me happy and what should I do to achieve and maintain the state of happiness"? I came across numerous articles from 'life coaches' to the modern day 'gurus'. 90% of the material I came across had lesser value than the nutritional value in deep fried Twinkies. The rest of the decent sociological researchers get a bad rap because of these phony gurus (Deepak Chopra anyone ?)
Out of the remaining ones, I extracted the following crucial information on happiness that resonated with my feelings.
Long range Happiness is a state of mind and is rarely altered by the context. Yes, we are happier if we get a promotion (or) get a salary hike. But after 60 days (mileage varies), we just get back to our natural level of happiness (or lack thereof). There may be lots of reasons for this. But they are all variations of the 3 basic reasons
- Hedonic Treadmill - You wish you'd $1000 more per month for a little bit more comfortable life. You get a $12000 hike, you spend all on home re-modelling. There are problems with re-modelling. You need some repair and you are worse off than you were before you got the hike. The premise is that your 'basic' needs increase to consume the extra loot.
- Endless comparison - You joined your corporation as an entry level programmer along with 10 of your classmates. You were the star, stood out from the rest of the pack, were diligent, didn't mind burning the midnight oil and your management recognized that and promoted you. You feel good, again for a short time only to recognize that your peer group is no longer the 10 class mates you left behind in dust but a whole bunch of new peer group where the competition is more aggressive. Now you know why the Peter's principle - that everyone rises to the level of one's incompetence, is almost axiomatic.
- You handled money in a way that it brings more problems than happiness: In the landmark movie 'Ab Thak Chapan', Nana Patekar gives an oration on the difference between 'strength' and the 'nuisance value' in his characteristic dead pan style. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to watch the movie and savor Nana's delivery. This scenario is usually encountered by guys who inherit a windfall - which brings all the unnecessary attention, unnecessary friends, unnecessary habits, unnecessary stereotypical and publicized failures.
So, what can we learn? The lesson is neither intuitive (more money more happiness) nor a cliche (money does not bring happiness). The truth - as always, is somewhere in between the two simplistic extremes.
Money does bring in happiness, but only when it is spent to acquire 'experiences' not 'possessions'. This was the point that hit me on the spot. When I spend the money on a 2 week outdoor camping trip, to learn to play a game better, to acquire new skills, to watch an astounding movie (Go Coen!), to acquire a Teaching Company of America DVD, it just feels right. And at the end of it, if I do it right, carry it all the way through, I come out as a more enriched person. On the other hand, if I spend the money on _Fill_the_name_of_a_possession_, I am just the same dumbass with one more possession.
So, what's my take? I value life. From the bottom of my heart, I appreciate the opportunity to walk on this Earth at a time where a RTW ticket is within the reach of a college hobo and more than 75% of the world is living in relative peace. I don't know what I was before I was born, neither do I know what the heck awaits me at pearly gates. What I know for sure is that Here and Now is real.
Looking back, if there is one topic that naturally intrigued me when I was a child, it was the literature on lands that are foreign to my immediate surroundings. There was a mystic aura when I read about the glaciers in Patagonia, curiosity when I read about the island continent of Australia and how the provinces where neatly drawn with a ruler, the vicarious pleasure I experienced when I read about the train from Vladiovastak to St. Petersburg and the inexplicable reverence when I watched the documentary on Leshan Buddha. I didn't do good in the classwork on Geography. But that subject remained as a topic that made the most sense to me. It still remains. As Mark Twain said, "you learn things not because of school but in spite of school". School is a devil's parade ground where parents send their kids in a masochistic fervor to numb their feelings. I am lucky that I survived the ordeal and most of my feelings are still intact. While my health is good and my brain is functioning, I will take a round the world trip for an year or more without bothering about the continuity of my employment.
That, in essence, is where my happiness lie.
Truly,
Sai.
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Management insight !
This is a verbatim quote of what Shareholder activist Carl Icahn mentioned in the 'Avenue' magazine:
"I have my anti-darwinian metaphor: The CEO is the fraternity brother type who is great to have a drink with. He's a survivor and maybe not all that smart, but he works his way up the ladder in the corporation. And if you are a survivor you never have someone beneath you who is smarter than you. So you eventually work your way to CEO. You have someone a little dumber than you underneath, and eventually we will have morons running everything.. which we are getting closer to."
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Back from the Aggieland!
I was in College Station - Home of the Aggies, XII man, fighting Texas A&M football team and home to million other sobriquets, last weekend for university recruitment. It is 6 years since I had been to Texas A&M University. So, I was looking forward to visiting all our favorite hangouts, to meeting my Professors and my colleagues. More importantly I was preparing to eat the hell outta Freebirds Burrito! For the uninitiated, "Beat the Hell outta _fill_your_university_here_" is the official slogan for all the Football games in which TAMU partake. This slogan is displayed in any and every LED scroller all over the campus. Freebirds is a burrito shop that twisted this slogan shrewdly in their commercials. You wouldn't have a burrito like Freebirds burrito anywhere else on the planet - I guarantee :)
I flew into Houston and drove from there to College Station. I forgot about the toll in the Sam Houston Beltway. I got only 20 dollar bills and the toll was just a dollar twenty-five. 
I practised my sorry face and mentioned to the toll collector about the fact that I dont have change. "No problem", the toll collector said and while he patiently counted the eighteen dollars and seventy five cents change to give back to me, I tried reading the name from his name tag to thank him. The name was hidden under his collar and so I asked him what his name was. "Saym sir! Like Haym with green yeggs! Not that I particularly like green yeggs.. but the name is Saym". I thanked Sam profusely and drove on. Used to paying the highway thieves in the Bay area close to $3 a gallon, I was so glad to see $1.90 a gallon in the pumps. It is good to live in the land of the President. There were banners on the highway advertising 4000 square feet homes from the lower $200 thousands. Hmmm.. Man!!!
I wandered through the campus taking snapshots of all the off campus residences. Lot of memories rushed towards me. The road I used to walk - in winter, in rain and in simmering summer, Nagle Street, still looked the same - with the potholes and all. I drove all the way till the only desi store in town - Aggie Kwik. The cigarettes, cheap liquors and the books of questionable reputation were all in the same place as they were 6 years back. Surely change is not the only constant in this hamlet :). Northgate - the downtown College Station, is always mired in controversy. While this is a neat little place where students congregate to hang out and quench their thirst at places like Fitzwilly's, "Hole in the wall" and more, th
ere is always a stigma associated with Northgate. This is where the international students get beaten up - with bare hands and beer bottles. That situation hasn't changed either. I talked with the current students and they mentioned that a couple of similar incidents of that nature happened in the previous semester. I also felt stupid seeing the Northgate Parking garage. When I was in college, we held the placards and walked in protest against constructing the garage in the 'historical' Northgate
area and the garage now made a mockery of our attempts :)
I visited the memorial constructed for the 12 Aggies fell during the Bonfire of 1999. I was in school when the incident happened and I lived through the sad days in TAMU. 12 doors are erected in the general direction of the young mens' home towns. There are several other thoughtful motifs in the memorial as well. From there, I visited my Professors and the office where I used to work. The familiar smell in the Blocker Building - a combination of roasted coffee beans, the stuffiness of old upholstery and the various cleaning chemicals, triggered a wave of nostalgia. Then,
I enjoyed the sunset @ Lake Sommerville. Ofcourse, it would have been much more pleasant to enjoy the sunset with friends. But, I surely would take this next best thing.
The whole of Tuesday was spent on interviews and I rushed to Houston airport after the interviews were over. While doing the 2 legged 8 hour flight back to San Jose, I can't help but feel that I am leaving a part of me back at good Ole' Aggieland. Good bye TAMU, Good bye College Station.
Signing off,
Sai
ps. For the slideshow of my TAMU trip, please visit my picasa web album.
Labels: aggieland, memoirs, nostalgia, school trip, tamu
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ZMM - Confusing people since 1957
I tried reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance during my weeklong vacation to visit family. It started good - there was philosophy, pathos and road trip. I even got inspired to get my own cycle because I am a road trip junkie and a wanderlust. But boy-o-boy did the author lose it or what? What the heck does he mean by 'Quality'? I thought it would just go away after a couple of pages. Little did I know that the main theme was 'Quality'! I would extend an invitation to the author to visit a software firm to understand what quality is. The word itself is very pejorative in the world of fast paced technology. "I am working in quality", is translated to "I am the one who work with the auditors and make Engineers' life more miserable". Thankfully I carried another book - "The monk and the riddle", a venture capitalist account of a start-up business plan. That book was well written and the crux or core of the book was well supported by an interesting context. In ZMM, I liked the context - the roadtrip and the cabin near Yellowstone National Park but the core was amazingly convoluted and went no where. I also despised the author for dismissing one of the finest national parks in the world as some place where he did not find anything to do. Sorry, Mr. Pirsig, Your book aint for me. You neither understand Zen nor motorcycle maintenance.
So Long,
sai
Labels: philosophy, rambling
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Sweet revenge of the wanderlust
Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.
- Edward Abbey
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Operation Efficient Breathing!
I am at home now enjoying Priya's pampering following the Septum correction surgery (and for the millionth time this is not nose job!) I underwent this morning. I was under General Anesthesia and didn't feel a thing. I saw no tunnel, no light, no rushing of all my past events. GA is a total anti-climax. When I entered the theater, my Doctor (Dr. Patrick Fann, Otolaryngologist), the anesthesiologist and some one else were elaborately discussing about where to hold a birthday event for one of their kids.
My surgery was more like an express Oil Change for them - I guess :)The nurse patched something in my body (Giggle...Oooh...Tingly!) and that was the last thing I remembered and then I woke up to a beautifully etched glass on the ceiling (No! I didn't ask "Where am I? How did I get here?")
Priya drove me back and I was still under the influence. I didn'
t feel any pain and I enjoyed the traffic in 101-S under a hazy consciousness. Is this how you feel when you DUI? Scary! When the influence started disappearing, I felt a mild discomfort. Kind of nose blockage under a very bad cold. The stents inside the nose started feeling funny. If you want to feel the same, take a plastic wire and insert into your nose ;) I hope this won't start me sneezing when the pain killers' effect disappear. I can't afford to experience the simple satisfaction of sneezing for a week!
I discovered 
one more interesting fact. If you don't like the groginess associated with the pain killers, try chocolate bars. Dont bite but treat the chocolates with respect as the Hershey bar advertisement says. I found that a 5-star chocolate bar, 4-5 Petit Beurre chocolate biscuits and an ice cream reduced my pain and I feel alive as well. I am sure my Physician - who has put me on Cholesterol watch, wont think of that kindly but it really worked for me.
Dr. Patrick Fann of the Camino medical group was awarded The Best Otolaryngologist of Silicon Valley and the award proudly adorns his consulting room at the Camino Medical group hospital. I couldn't agree more. The websites which talk about septum plasty and septum correction mentioned about constant bleeding soaking the swabs every hour. But for me, So far, the bleeding is very minimal. I have only the discomfort of stuffy nose and minimal pain (touch wood). All the inhaling through my mouth has given me sore throat. Apart from that, I am doing pretty good on the first day.
Priya is exteremely wonderful and is taking good care of me. I am entertaining her with my non-stop unintelligible gibberish and miscallaneous blabbering - which I am prone to do when I have cold or fever. I am avoiding any sound that has a nasal tone (m, ng etc.,). I am going to read some books, organize some photographs (long pending) and do a lot of introspection in the next couple of days before I get back to work.
So long,
sai.
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Boston Trip - Eventful but Pleasant
The original title for this blog entry was "Will missed baggage and crashed laptop spoil what-was supposed-to-be-a pleasant R&R trip?" Prudence prevailed and I changed the title. But to the original question posed, the answer is, "a resounding NO!, if you are surrounded by good company, good food and a kid whose energy is highly contagious." That is our Boston trip - in a nutshell.
We took a week off and visited families (plural) in the last week of August. Priya's 2nd nephew (Sujatha/Uday's 2nd son) was
born in July and a trip to Boston was in the offing. We waited for my Summer quarter exams to end and we started the Friday following the exams. Since there was a carry-on restriction for liquids and Gels, we had to check in a luggage (Read: Priya's cosmetics;)). We had a layover in Dallas and I had the hunch that for the first time in my flight travel history, the checkins are going to be messed up. That hunch turned out to be true. The 'Meet the Parents' debacle was precluded because Priya had the thoughtfulness to pack our carry on with all the unmentionables and the works. We did not receive our checkins on the next day as well and the American Airlines 'up-to-the-minute' status on baggage situtation kept repeating the same status - "Your baggage was scheduled to be picked up at 3:00PM on Saturday", endlessly.
I also had 
carried some work with me to be completed over the weekend. My laptop started behaving funnily and crashed in a moment. No blue screen - nothing. Just black screen. Priya helped me out with setting up a web-ex conference with my colleague's machine. That worked but was painfully slow. Thankfully the assignment got transferred to one of my teammates with the help of my managers. I had a feeling that this vacation is not starting very well. I wanted to have a good rest and relaxation trip with my nephews and instead I am spending countless minutes brooding infront of this screen which is mocking at me. I took an oath that I will never ever count on finishing tasks by logging in remotely. It seemed to me that Murphy's law was more powerful than all the technological accomplishments of 21st Century. But once my manager helped me to reassign the task, I got a relief and put the bitter experience with my ugly black laptop behind me.
On Sunday morning, the same message was replayed on the American Airlines baggage system.We decided to take things into our hand instead of waiting for the baggage to arrive and Uday drove me to the airport. The missed baggages alley was not unlike a refugee camp minus the refugees. The chaos that prevailed there would have beaten hands down, the situation in Indian Railway Stations. There was one guy with one trolley who was doing the unenviable task of clearing out these baggages. Looking for our baggage, I annoyed him with my impudence of
disturbing his carefully arranged trolley. There was a baggage which looked exactly like ours and I took it out of the trolley only to notice that it was not ours. He vented out all his frustrations on me (Red Sox just got creamed last night by the Yankees, he had to clear all the baggages in a non-conducive weather and a Brown guy is messing with all his bags this morning - that was his last straw).
At the end of whatt seemed to me an endless barrage of expletives, he screamed, "Where the f*** are your baggages destined?". I tamely answered, "Boylston, MA". Those magical words put a smile on his stern countenance. "That changes everything", he said. "I think I have only one baggage in my office destined to Boylston; if you can follow me to my office, I will verify if it is yours". I wanted to seal the deal. "So if I understand it correctly, my picking up the baggage from your office will obviate a 50 miles trip for you", I slipped in a reflexive question his way (Thanks, Prof. Corio). He demurred but eventually conceded. "Man, Don't get me wrong; This f***ing airlines guys are morons and they cannot handle the increase in check-in volume and I am the one who gets punished because of their incompetence. I was delivering lost baggages non-stop for the past 2 days", he explained his churlish attitude. I seconded his opinion that the airlines guys were morons. With congeniality established, I followed him to his office - a thatched broken brick building to be precise. The baggages were strewn all over the place. Some baggages were kept outside in the rain. Inside the building, in a corner, my bag was patiently waiting for its salvation. Had we left the delivery to be done by the pick up service, we would have lived out of our carry-on for the entire duration of our trip. "Normally we pick up 50-75 badly routed baggages per day. Yesterday alone I delivered 500 baggages", mentioned the weary pick-up 
guy. We thanked him and drove back to Boylston.
After these very eventful 2 days, the trip took a very pleasant turn. On Sunday evening and Tuesday Uday, Priya, Arvind -the elder one, and I took long walks in the nearby park. We talked about all and sundry in these walks. Priya was on a roll and I have never seen her talk so much! We reminisced about our school days, good old friends, not so good old peer pressures, bad old sibling pressures and the pranks we used to pull on fellow students.
It was pure fun from Sunday afternoon. Arvind was full of energy. Watching him move like a tornado from hither to thither made me feel tired.
Taran - the
younger one, was very silent. He was sleeping most of the time and gets cranky in the night when his tone pops out. Otherwise, he minded his own business (eating, burping, farting and sleeping). Priya had good fun with the 2nd one. Being a male, my bias was more towards things that move, jump, fly and make noise. So, I had fun watching Arvind in action. Uday's parents were there and we had authentic Tambrahm food - Conjeevarom Idli, Aavakka oorugaai, arisi appalam and what not. The very thought of these would
make my mouth water at any time.
What started as a disaster evolved in to a very delectable trip and closed with a lot of heavy hearts as all good things have to come to an end. Uday drove one last time to the BOS airport to see us off. We bid everyone farewell and headed towards my brothers' in Chicago. Bye bye "Walking City".. Hello "Windy City".
Peace,
Sai.
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What would I like to do?
People who get stuck in the elevator during black-outs talk about what they would do once they get out of the elevator. Half way through the MBA program, I have a similar feeling. On one hand I am learning all good stuff but personally I feel like I have lost a part of me - the one who is carefree, with the devil-may-care attitude, the one who waits for parents to turn the other way to skedaddle out to spend time with friends playing Cricket.
I was musing what I would do if I am out of MBA. I would suddenly have 14 direct hours and countless indirect hours. How am I going to use these hours? Hopefully I will get back to my Pre-MBA shape before I finish my coursework. I am intending to attend Tennis camp by end of Fall 2006. I would take up Swimming by mid 2007 and make it a life long hobby. After I finish MBA, I also would join a Cricket club to play for simple fun.
After I walk, I will take a couple of weeks off and get my PG-2 certification. If I dont break a limb, I want to go all the way till PG-4. Lot of money and time. But hey!, I will be flying above everything. As a quote goes, "To fly a paraglider is to hold God's hand". How can you put a $$ limit for that?
I would get into a language program. Spanish is my favorite. But that is for later. My main aim after MBA is to get out there and explore. I would hike to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Shasta. Once these 2 are accomplished, I will learn rock climbing and take a course in Alpine climbing. Before getting out of the US, I will climb Mt. Denali.
Ok that's about it for now. I will get back to my homework now!
So Long,
Sai.
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States and Countries I have visited
Saw this pretty cool page and I thought of listing the countries and states I have visited. Now, 'visited' is surely a stretch word for passing through the place @ 70 mph or worse having a layover at God forbidden airports ! So, I decided that I would list only those places where I have spent atleast 1 day visiting friends/camping.
When it comes to countries, with that criteria, I ended up with only 2. So, I adde
d Malay and Singapore even though I simply slept through the 12 hours I was in these countries. Hoping to see many more red.
For doing it yourselves, visit
here.
Rgds
Sai.
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An ode to "José + 10"
José + 10 is an advert that is run by Adidas during the FIFA world cup soccer 2006 as part of its "Impossible is nothing" campaign. Purely from a marketing mix point of view, we are still long ways from judging the efficacy of this commercial - assuming that we can measure it. But, from a sentimental perspective, this advert has caught the imagination of millions of adults. You can watch this promo at
google video. In short, it is about 2 kids who are selecting a dream team to play for them and the moment they selected their hero, he comes to life and joins them in the dusty make-shift soccer field.
The way the emotions were captured were right on spot. Inside every adult there is a latent child. Especially for men, there is a dormant rebellious kid yearning for fufillment of a dream - conceived in childhood, fabricated against the backdrop of his favorite sport. Two kids challenging each other on a lazy afternoon, the seriousness with which the toss is handled, the macho mind games, the larger-than-life authoritarian disposition displayed when dismissing players and bringing the backups from the bench and the million dollar argument on whether it was a 'goal' or not - the producers had nailed the psychic excitement of an afficionado right on the money.
Last but not least, all this drama comes to a premature end when the one adult - his mother in this case, whose decree he cannot veto calls it a day with the death knell, "José!!!!!, Aa Casa!" with no respect or sympathy for the kid's dream. That is an absolutely brilliant end to this already excellent short film. As it happens in real life, when the kid who owns the gear goes home, the game is over. No one resists, calls him name or disparages his mom. An absolute melancholy congeniality prevails and other players empathize with José as this premature end is an unavoidable externality.
Hats off to you Adidas for touching me and the million other individuals at a personal level. Hopefully along the way you also will make some good shoes that I find worthwhile to buy from your outlets :)
Peace out
Sai.
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Geography bee and a dose of reality!
I watched the 2006 National Geographic's
Geography bee contest hosted by
Jeopardy! game show host Alex Trebek. I liked this twist to the bee better than the spelling contest. The kids were amazing. A 4th to 8th grade kid has more geography IQ than I have and that's humbling.
After rounds and rounds of elimination, when Bonny Jain from Illinois scribbled 'Cambrian' on his card for the question "Name the mountains that extend across much of Wales from the Irish Sea to the Bristol Channel", he won the $25,000 scholarship prize and the national champion title over the other finalist Neeraj Sirdeshmukh who took home $15,000 in scholarship prize. Alex Trebek was very professional and he did not make any comment on the fact that the top 5 participants were all of Indian origin. Call me ethnocentric - I dont mind. I was as proud as their parents when I saw the top 5. Inspite of the fact that I didn't know the answers to 3/4th of the questions asked, a strong current of euphoria swept over me!
That euphoria lasted but for a few moments until the kids started getting eliminated. While these kids answered stumpers like "The Kikuyu, who led the Mau Mau uprising against the British, are the largest ethnic group in which country in East Africa?" with such poise and ease (Ans. Kenya), 3 of the top 5 made atleast one mistake on simple questions about India. "A religion which is a hybrid of Hinduism and Islam requires that its followers wear head turbans; which religion is this?" was the question and Suneil Iyer responded "Buddhism". Even the hate mongers in Arizona who shot the Sikh cashier at the seven-eleven shop would know the answer now!
"Onge tribe is native to which chain of islands that are part of India but close to Burma" (Ans. Andaman & Nicobar). Yeshwanth - the 3rd place winner blew it up. These kids are brilliant. They might have used focused preparatory materials for sure; but brilliant nevertheless. But it would be a huge mistake to identify them as Indian kids. The similarities cease to exist beyound their names and color of their skins. Apart from these superficial similarities, they are just akin to other highly competitive bee participants who passionately memorize any curios factoid and data without internalizing the passion. Again, call me mean, narrow-minded or provincial - I dont mind. But the euphoria was no more when the competition got over!
Parochially yours,
Sai.
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End of quarter!
My spring quarter MBA exams got over last week. I have only a week's breathing space before the craziness starts all over in summer. Not much of a splash; but enough time for some retrospection. 1 year spent on finishing the core courses has been really fruitful. When I started MBA, I ne'er thought I had any interest in Finance. A combination of good professors and interesting content made me rethink about my position and I will be doing my concentration in Finance in addition to Marketing and Managing innovation and Technology.
That means, preparing myself to brace for extra time in school. I need to get more organized so that I can have a personal life after school and work. I have forgotten the directions to Gym and have not pursued any activities of my passion such as photography. Paragliding has been relegated to the bottom of my todos list for quite some time now! Ok! that's enough lamenting in one blog entry!
We spent the weekend meeting friends and watching world cup football with them. I am glad that - unlike Olympics, we get a chance to watch football live. Nothing beats the feeling of waking up early to catch a glimpse of the action that is happening exactly at the same moment. The pleasurable inconvenience is part of the whole fun.
We went to the Bayland park to watch airplanes take off and land. Felt like we were kids again. We watched 'Swades' - may be for the 20th time, at Ragu's place. Then, we watched 'The Ring' movie at Kedar's place. The reporter's son creeped me out more than the Ring girl. As Kramer says, the girl is just "a normal, mischievous, rambunctious kid" :). I couldnt help but cogitate the fact that what would have been easily dismissed as 'time-pass' when I was a kid now qualifies as quality time with friends. I like it this way. The older one gets, the simpler life becomes :)
Two weeks to go before we take up the week-long camping trip to Yellowstone. Looking forward to checking out the Big Audacious Hairy Grisly tete-a-tete! I will post the travelogue as usual unless the super volcano blows up when we are there :)
So long,
Sai.
The splash photograph is the work of professor Davidhazy. Many thanks to him for allowing me to include the photograph in my site. You can view his site @ http://www.rit.edu/~andpph
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One man's quest for happiness
In today's NPR forum, there was a discussion about 'happiness'. There was a good quote there. Happiness is about 'having something to do, someone to love and something to hope for'. It made a lot of sense at that time and sounded good but can I use it to advance my daily life - I havent still got an answer :)
Darrin McMahon, author of "Happiness: A History.", mentioned that money is not a source of happiness. I have heard this rhetoric earlier in college and other forums. But this author qualified his claim by saying that money is a source of happiness only when you were in abject poverty. Other than that, the effect of extra money will only linger for so long before you reach your original level of happiness and he quoted examples about lottery winners. 5-6 months after they hit the lottery, they are either at the same level of happiness or worse when compared to the level of happines before they got the lottery. I can be a guinea-pig. Does anyone want to do this experiment on me? $10 million is a good start. Call me back in 6 months :))
Yours truly
sai
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Gods and Prophets - Are they relevant today ?
This is a follow-up of my previous blog "Principles, Values, Whims and Fancies".
I will not categorize myself as a totally rational person. I take comfort in a power which is beyond my scope. Though I am not a fatalist, I humbly believe that I cannot totally determine the outcomes of my effort to the utmost degree of accuracy. I believe in destiny but also believe that destiny is not handed over a golden plate to me; rather I have to work towards my destiny. Before you conclude that I am a confused nit-wit, let me just assure you that all this prelude is just to set the stage that I believe in a supreme power.
But I do not believe that that supreme power would ever ask for a human sacrifice to test your faith or that that supreme power would condemn you to the darkest corner of the netherworld if you pray to anyone else or that that supreme power will poke your eyes if you do not wear a yellow dress to her temple. Frankly, the supreme power is not interested in these trivias. The fact that most of the world's religions bank on fear tactics does not tell a lot about the supreme power the religions believe in but it tells a lot about the people and the timeliness of the scripture - primitive, barbaric and ante-diluvian.
Agreed! we cannot judge people- who lived in a different time and in a different place, based upon the values that are currently deemed 'acceptable'. A thousand years ago, even civilized kings considered the practice of demolishing the figure-head statues kosher and within the confines of the rules of conquest. But we cannot equate them to the current day barbaric Taliban who destroy the historic Bahmani Buddha statues just because they do not like those idols. Not too long ago, sharp minded people believed that narcotics enhanced their minds and consequently geniuses (including the famous Sherlock Holmes portrayed by Doyle) took large doses of narcotic. We cannot categorize those geniuses as the same as today's pot-heads.
The corollary and a more subtle but important point is that we cannot really exalt all the behaviors, whims and fancies of people - however "noble" they were, who lived in a different time and a different place as virtues in today's world. Though that seems so simple and common sense, if you think about it for a second, you will find that this common sense is not too common. People rationalizing their meaningless gestures in today's world - fasting for political purposes; weaving clothes from the charkha (spinning wheel); drinking goat's milk, just because Gandhi did it and I have not even started ! It is very easy to misconstrue my position here. Gandhi is a noble soul and a great leader but he has given us much more valuable thoughts to ponder about than these silly practices. If it is a touchy matter to talk about Gandhi, my follow-up point is even touchier. Let me see if I can straddle the thin line.
"347 people got killed in Hajj stampede"; "100 killed in deadly stampede in Kumbh mela". My thoughts and prayers are with the near and dear of the deceased. News of this type has become common not just these days but almost annually or cyclically every time the event happens. Normally the media covers this as newsworthy for a week. Some people console themselves that it is just fate; some people say that since this tradition is one of the pillars of the concerned religions and since religion is one of the pillars of the society and society a pillar for the world, these traditions must go on inspite of the tragedies and even radical some say it is better to die in God's place rather than live in a Godless place (material world).
This is where I have problem with mindless religious afficionados. There are numerous other places to think about and thank the Supreme power in which you have faith. If you are particular about the place, there are numerous other times to visit these holy places without getting caught dead in a stampede. Why this place - why now ? Yes, a noble prophet, a good soul walked this place thousands of years back and preached a religion a long time back. But why make a mockery of all the good preachings by the noble man by mindlessly following millions of people to a death trap just because some contemporary wizard says that approximately this was the time two thousand years ago this incident happened? Why do we forget all the good things these prophets taught but hold dear all the trivias? Is it because the latter is easier to follow and demonstrate whereas the former too difficult? People have come to believe that just these symbolic gestures purify their souls and it does not matter how they live the rest of their lives.
Eleanor Roosevelt said “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people”. There is a lot of truth to it. How often do you hear the Christian proselytizers talking about peace and love taught by the noble Christ compared to how often they talk about "Christ - the person"? verdict: Small minds. How often do you hear the Hindu fanatics talking about the virtues of doing work ethically and diligently - values taught by Lord Krishna, compared to how often they talk about "Krishna - the person"? verdict: Small minds.. Whether it is the Hajj or it is the 'yatra' from Kashi-Rameshwaram, the idea of pilgrimage is to demonstrate and personally feel the physical and mental strenght that is needed to undertake such an arduos venture. The idea of pilgrimage is to understand that inspite of all the differences we have, the color of the skin, hair, geographical allegiance, the disparity in wealth, we all are brothers and sisters; and we read that the fellow pilgrims stomped over the dead brothers because they will be delayed for a symbolic gesture ceremony. None of them that did that understood the idea.. All they can think of are 'event' and 'people'. verdict: Small minds.. Even without any twisted interpretation of religion - as done by Taliban and Al-Qaeda, even with the most straight interpretation of religion, I feel the religious world filled with small minds. More importance is given to whose God is better than whose God without even considering what principles the religions teach.
To the point of the topic - Are Gods and prophets relevant today? A resounding yes in terms of timeless principles and values they taught us - universal brotherhood, love, peace, sympathy and celebrating life. These are eternal principles and they will never fade and neither will we have any strifes and contentions. But if all we are doing is to simply dress like them, blindly imitate what they did and visit the place where they were a long time back, then I cannot differentiate this behavior from that of mindless teens trying to imitate what their favorite rock artistes do.
This is a fad and ephemeral and it MUST fade into oblivion when the next fad comes along.
Peace Out
Sai
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Principles, Values, Whims and Fancies
For discussing the concepts of faith and religion, we need to establish some fundamental vocabulary. I found the following words pretty useful for taxonomy.
Principles: This is the universal truth - a moral compass. The principles are universally common for every homo sapien for sustaining a society - Dont steal, Dont kill in a non-war situation, Dont commit adultery etc., While these are pretty basic, it is hard to imagine a society which can survive without these principles. Every decent human being should follow these principles and there are no 2nd choices.
Values: While they are as important as the principles, there is no one universal value. My personal value can be different or even diametrically opposite from another person without either one being right or wrong. Eating habits for instance. The 'values' form the root of the family tree and gives a strong foot hold in the world personally. Hence it is mandatory and expected that one should communicate those values which they found important on to their children and progenies especially when they are young when they would listen to you(watch little TV, eat vegetarian, pray to Vishnu etc.,) But it is insane and unethical to impose these values on any and every stranger that comes on the way. An analogy would be every mother is important for her kid but it is childish if we compete 'whose mother is better than whose' It will only result in some peeing competition.
Whims and Fancies: Very self explanatory. You like red color dress and let that whim stay with you. Dont even bother telling me why you like it or why I should like it even if I am your kid :)
Now with the vocabulary set, religion, mother tongue(s), eating habits etc., I see as mainly 'values'. It is important to educate your kids about those 'values'. You gotta tell your kids their values may not be the same as someone else and why it is still ok. But in immigrants (whether it is tamils living in Bombay or Indians living abroad), it is despicable to see how mostly people try(unsuccesfully) to avoid standing out. They want to just become one of 'them'. Starting from naming the kid with mono-syllable names just so that they can be addressed easily by Americans to not educating the religious values for the fear of being labeled as 'uncool' by the kids, you can see these attempts conspicuous in Immigrant families.
While these values MUST be taught to their kids, it is equally annoying when some one tries to impose his/her values on others. If there is one thing I am proud of being an Hindu, it is the fact that we do not have any formal procedure for proselytization. I find it despicable when the religious fanatics accost strangers in the name of Christ or Mohammed or whomever to talk them in to changing their religion. They truly believe that their faith is a 'principle'not a 'value'.
Even worse is when people mistake their 'whims and fancies' for 'principles' and try to impose that on people. I have heard people saying that they dont like people because of the way they look or how they dress.. Stupid they may be, one can never underestimate the potential of a group of idiots especially if they own a gun ;) Next time when you like or do not like another person or an act ask yourselves whether our inclination is due to 'principle', 'value' or 'whims and fancies'. Likewise when you hear anyone preaching, ask yourselves what they are preaching 'P', 'V' or W&F'. I have found much easier to segregate the content once I understood this classification.
All right that is the sprinkling from my side. Have a wonderful new year !
Ensaai
sai
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A road trip to remember!
'Twas december and the ho-ho-hos were all around. It was time to be rewarded for being good and this year Santa thought that we were very good and gifted us with 4 days of paid time off - which means we had 10 calendar days to cherish. What better a way to spend time in December than to hit the asphalt and to head the way where Mother Earth has carved herself for the amusement of the mortals? So, we decided - Grand Canyon it was!
No snow, no storm, no flood. An added bonus was that we would be taking a travel not just in space but also in time. We decided to visit Petrified forest national park, Arizona where the
memories from 220 million years ago are preserved for ever for retrospection. While Arizona has inherited all of Mother Nature's wealth, its neighbour - Nevada, is a pauper in terms of natural beauty. A lot of lip stick was needed for this pig and lip stick flowed aplenty to build a dream - that is Vegas, in the heart of a barren God forsaken land. So, a trip to the sin city was in the cards as well.
I will let the pictures tell the whole story but a couple of tips for 
people visiting the neighbourhood. Bellagio and Wynn has the best indoor decors especially during xmas; if your better half is artsy-partsy, they will ooh and wow the entire time and you will score a lot of brownie points :) Try staying in Rio, Gold Casino or Palms all of which are the closest to the heart of the Strip - the happening places like Bellagio, Caesar etc., If you are planning to stay in Stratosphere, make sure you are not staying in the Regency Tower extension of Stratosphere. You are better off staying in a Motel 6 for a much lower price. Last word of advice - beware of those hawks trying to woo unsuspecting tourists into wasting a couple of hours with a sales staff in return for a pathetic show and a crappy buffett. It is a complete waste of time.
If you are planning to visit the Grand Canyon, get away from the tourist hot spots such as Mather point, Yavapai etc., and head to calmer places like Hopi point and Pima point which are
at the west end of the South rim. These places provide a better view of the River and the Canyon and a lot of privacy and an opportunity to spend a lot of quality time (ahem)! Taking a small hike in the Kaibab trail (not all the way to the floor) and visiting desert tower are very enjoyable. Food at market plaza near Yavapai lodge is excellent and very economic. Road trip east of Desert View Tower in 64 North is highly recommended. A lot of off the beaten path opportunities abound in that area - little River Colarado Gorge for instance allows you to see the gorges from very close distance. When AZ64 hits Cameron take AZ89-S to visit Sunset Crater. That whole area offers great vistas and is always free of flock of tourists.
The best part of our trip was a visit down the memory lane to the Petrified Forest National Park near Holbrook, AZ. Just the fact that this arid desert once was the bed of a river as wide as the current day Amazon was startling. The number of petrified trees with magnificent colors left us dumbfounded. Looking at the well preserved fossilized fishes, molluscs, dinosaur eggs, tropical leaves and dinosaur dung (fossilized silly) evoked a new found enthusiasm for geography within me all of a sudden. A walk along Blue Mesa in the middle of this park where the Chinle formations were shaded with Pastel colors was worth the whole trip. For those
interested in semi-precious stones such as Amethyst, Blue Calcite, Obsydians this place is an absolute Mecca. We bought a lot of memorablia in the nearest museum outside the park - collecting any petrified wood or crystals inside the park is a punishable offense; so next time you visit our place, be prepared for a little Geology lesson from us :) Finally, we visited the petroglyphs in the desert left by Puerto Indians - antecedents for current day Hopi Indians, and the Painted Desert part of the park around sunset and marvelled at the hues and colors the desert sand reflected off the sun light and b
id adieu to the wild wild Arizona and to a well spent year 2005. We reached the bay area late evening on the last day and welcomed the new year 2006 from the cozy premises of our home.
As always more detailed photo tour at my yahoo photo site. There are around 400 hand-picked photographs for your viewing pleasure; so take your time :)
So long,
yours truly
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Mission peak with Priya
Last evening, the weather was so beautiful that I ditched studying for my finals and went for a hike to the mission peak. After Priya's ortho surgery last year, her physio had told her not to do mission hike as it would strain her knees. She threw that caution to the wind and braved the arduous hike as the weather was irresistible.
It is one of the pleasures of being in the Bay area - year around outing possibilities with a T-shirt. We started around 3 PM and as expected the parking lot was overflowing (why can't people enjoy a good day staying indoors?). It was pleasant hike all the way to the top and we reached around 4:50 right about sunset. We saw a couple of turkey vultures enjoying the blissful sunset by stalling in the air - may be this is where Jonathan Livingston got his inspiration for his name-sake Seagull. At the top, I 'Bravo'ed Priya; we sipped tea that we brought from home, took some summit photos and vow
ed to come back during spring when the peak gives a green carpet welcome. On our way back, we enjoyed the the rise of the Orion and the Pleiades. Everytime I view the Pleiades, I cannot help but think about the mysticism associated with that constellation - Did we really come from there as cosmic dust?, Are Edgar Cayce's prophesies real? Truth or mindless fiction, the Libran that I am, I have the license to indulge in some fantasies. At the end of it, we witnessed the early night moon.
I wont even attempt to describe it. Though I cannot do justice to it with photography, I attempted to capture it which I have attached here for your viewing pleasure. Amidst layoffs, shrinking real wages, over priced houses and the exodus of tech workers from the Bay area, there are still reasons why we would pay the premium to live here and we were convinced of those reasons when we saw the glittering valley on the way down. The hike also reminded how badly out of shape I was - Time to hit the gym fatso. More photos at yahoo photos.
Next blog shortly,
yours truly.
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Thirties - here i come !
The nightmare atlast came true. Over the weekend, I walked into my thirties with immense fear, uncertainity and doubt. From here on, I impose a moratorium on birthday celebrations. Ok! I am exaggerating a bit. It was not all that bad at all. Infact, I felt pleasantly excited about exploring what is in store for me in future. Andrew Carnegie wrote in one of his private notes "In the first half of my life, I will create wealth; in my second half, I will give it away".
Neither did I create wealth in my first half, nor would I give it away even if I had! I will do my best to live well and enjoy the moments with my beautiful (and somewhat crazy) family - That I can do. While doing so, if I manage to create a global empire where my descendants' honor me with a life-size 'founder' portrait (which shows me 6'5", hands fold, large shoulders and bright eyes) in the entrance of our family palace 5 generations from now, that would be nice too. Sounds like a selfish megalo-maniac? Well, I was the one who became 30 over the weekend - not you.. Cut me some slack!
Peace out
sai.
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Eclipses, superstitions etc.,
I was reading
Dennis Marcus Mathew's lament that superstitions eclipsed the solar eclipse in India, and I could not agree with him more. It is a pity that such wonders of nature are feared rather than enjoyed by a great majority. But the problem, as is often quoted, is not with the common people. A culture that has survived many centuries will have flips and flops. As a society, we are cleansing one superstition at a time. My real disappointment is with the phony scientists who base their arguments on 'Faith' or 'Belief' in science rather than logical and rational progression of thoughts that lead to the result (or hypothesis or theories).
When Ganesh drank milk in 1996, there were hues and cries from the scientific community but not one scientist considered it was worth his/her time to demonstrate how physics made this work in a sandbox environment. Television was even then a popular media for people and it is a matter of convincing the powers that be to get a slot. But the scientists would rather write arm-chair commentaries on why this superstitious society was irredeemable than get out of the arm chairs and do something about it.
Even in economically advanced countries such as the United States, science is not such a popular hobby. Illustrious scientists such as Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking publish lecture notes and popular books - apart from doing research, to get science to the masses. Richard Feynman mentioned, "If we cannot explain a topic to a high school grade student, then we have not understood the subject properly". He did not complain that the listener was incapable of understanding. These scientists took their time away from their busy schedules to do the service of getting science to reach and enrich common people. An outsider would be surprised if he/she comes to know that the biggest argument going on in the US now is 'Evolution Vs. Intelligent Design'. How are the scientists - who want only Evolution not Intelligent design, handling this situation? Are they cribing that the society is going to dogs and sit in their arm chairs? May be a few. But mostly they are trying to hand out materials about evolution thereby reaching people who wants to understand evolution.
How many Scientists in India have attempted such endeavours? Either they do not grasp the fundamentals strongly or they are incapable of communicating any useful thoughts lucidly. Even worse, they are elititsts who think it doesn’t behoove them to communicate with the masses. In any case, they don’t have a reason to lament at the banes of the society. It is them they should be ashamed of - for failing so miserably.
Peace out
sai
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Retirement - Start early
This is a follow up to the presentation I gave at SCU Toastmaster club. Please check out the actual presentation
here. Vanguard - one of the biggest investment management company, in its survey found that the happies retirees were the ones that were married, had grand kids and left their last job voluntarily. So, in that list money did not figure high. But in my opinion, we cannot plan for retirement based upon the current retirees. For one, we wont have any pension, social security or any of those perks. In addition to that we are going to live longer than this generation of retirees. So, If we need to enjoy our retirement blissfully with our loved ones, a little bit of monetary planning is not out of line.
This draft was written under the assumption that we are planning to retire in the year 2035 and are planning to live until 2065 and that our investments grow at a YoY rate similar to historic S&P 500 standards (8%) until 2035 and that after retirement, we will invest in more conservative venues (4%). Even though mileage varies from person to person as to how much one needs for retirement, for simplicity we have kept one universal standard. I also give the calculations below, so that you can increase or decrease as per your requirement.
Objective: To generate a cash flow of $10,000 (in today's money) every month for 30 years (from 2035-2065). If we take 2% as the inflation, $10,000 today's money is $10,000*(1.02)^30 = $18,114 in the year 2035. So, our objective is to generate a cash flow of $18, 114 (in 2035's levels) every month from 2035-2065.
How much lumpsum we should have in our nest egg in the year 2035 to generate the cashflow mentioned in the last paragraph? FNCE 101 says,
PVA ($18,114, 4/12%, 360) = $18,114*[1 - (1 + 0.04/12)^(-360)] / (0.04/12)
This comes to $3, 622, 003. (Already mentioned that in retirement, we will have an investment that returns 4/12% every month (not the same as 4% every year) and we need that cashflow for 30 years which is 360 months.
Next question is how much one needs to invest to get $3,662,003 in the year 2035. If you start now (with no savings until now), you have 30 years with you. We can also assume that our money grows at 8% YoY in that period. So, to find out how much monthly investment we need to make @ 8% return for 30 years to get $3,662,003 in 2035, FNCE 101 again says
FVA (A, 8/12%, 360) = $3, 662, 003.
In other words,
A [ (1 + .08/12)^360 - 1 ] / (0.08/12) = $3, 662, 003
Solving for A, we get A = $2428 per month. So, we need to invest $2428 per month @ 8% rate for 30 years to reach our goal. This seems like an uphill task. Agreed, that we took the most conservative approach (i.e., no social security etc.,). Also, we have not accounted for the tax benefits in 401(K). So this investment of $2428 per month pretax comes to around $2000 effective money per month.
But the point I am trying to make is if you delay your start, the task is going to be phenomenally uphill. For instance if you start only in
2010, then the pretax monthly investment that is required to meet the objective is $3806 (Solve the same equation with 300 instead of 360).
2015, then the pretax monthly investment that is required to meet the objective is $6146
2025 then the pretax monthly investment that is required to meet the objective is $19793.
and you are losing on all the tax benefits for so many years. What are you still waiting for ? Follow the pointers in the ppt and learn more about retirement today.
Peace out
Yours truly.
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8 Queen problem
This is another age old problem. You have to arrange 8 queens on a chess board without resulting in any cat fight (Meow!!!). I have explained the statement of the problem better in the source code itself. So,
here is the source code and
here is the result.
Peace
sai
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Sudoku
Sudoku is a recent fad and I am seeing it in all the newspapers these days. After solving a couple of them by hand, I thought I will have a program to verify my answers before waiting for the next days' paper and
here is the C source code. If you run it in verbose mode,
this is the output it gives. The verbose log allows you to follow the method to this madness.
Peace out
sai
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Infinite wisdom from trucks
If you manage to read the infinite wisdom that is sprinkled on Indian trucks' rear, you can even start your own religion. That is you manage to stay alive from the Indian road experience :). Nachiket, a brave and noble soul, captured
these wonderful snaps.
Enjoy and peace
sai.
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Time for credit report
Take shower twice a day, Clip your finger nails every week, toe nails once every 4 weeks. Along with that add, 'check your free credit report once every year'. After reading numerous articles about identity thefts, I was thinking about getting a credit report done meself. But didnt know of where to start. Then, I became a victim of a credit card fraud (the dispute is still going on).
So, I desparately started searching a good place to get the credit report (without getting caught in their web - only $12.99 per month which will be automatically deducted from your already paltry bank account for the rest of your life). I was surprised to find about the federal mandate last year to help consumers spot identity theft.
AnnualCreditReport.com offers consumers free copies of their own credit reports. It was launched in December by Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, the three major credit reporting agencies in the United States, in accordance with the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003. The federal law aims to quell growing concerns over privacy and disclosure of sensitive financial data. Each site asks a series of questions to match credentials with your identity to verify if they are in fact giving the information only to you.
I did mine yesterday and it was painless - Give it a try :)
Make sure you click on the link (or) are not mis-typing the url because an independent privacy watchdog group has reported 200 impostors for this site. Some of those sites have been taken down but the others are still up and running
Signing off
yours truly.
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Life in phases and slices
"My kid is a honor student in 'Lincoln elementary school". The bumper sticker proudly adorned a Lexus which I almost fender bendered in a bumper to bumper traffic. I was stuck in the usual San Jose peak hour traffic and I started to lose myself in a chain of thought this harmless sticker triggered. There seemed to be no dearth for doting proud parents in the bay area. Currently I can only vicariously enjoy the pleasures of proud parents. While empathizing their pride, I could not help but ponder over some questions that went through my mind which are summarized below
. why some people who shine brilliantly in kindergarten end up as no ones in life?
. why some people who top their class relegate to mindnumbing mediocre jobs ?
. why most succesful CEOs weren't the 'most probable stars' in their school years?
. why do most people who were 'most probable star' end up as insurance agents and friggin' car salesmen?
I dont have much experience in life. But whatever I have learned, life is not one monolithic block of granite. Just because your life is slick and sweet at this moment does not mean that you are entitled to happines for ever; you have to work to make sure the happiness gets carried forward to the next phase in your life. Similarly if life seems to be one big sucker at this moment it does not mean it has to be the same way till the end - unless one assumes that way and takes one's life unable to cope up with current pressures in which case it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.
Life offers everyone different hats to wear - different roles and responsibilities at different stages of lifecycle. Just because you are miserable in the current role (especially if the role is thrusted upon you which is normally true when you are young) does not mean you are doomed to fail in your life. Try to cope up - if not possible just wait it out while learning and honing up the skills in the fields in which you have interest. Having a sense of humor and jotting down the ironies that happen currently will be very helpful when you grow up. This is best narrated in obe of the most interesting books I have read - JD Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye".
In my opinion (it may sound very simplistic), many suicides and homicides can be prevented if this fact of life is known to everyone especially to the kids who have a miserable teenage in schools. Consider the Columbine kids. There were 2 sets of troubled teenage kids from the same school district. Both the sets are skeptical about the events happening around them and cynical about the people surrounding them. One set - Stone and Parker waited it out, grew up and made parody of not only the people around them but the whole world and left behind an amusing legacy through their now famous South Park comedy. The other set - Harris and Klebold, did not know about the phases nor did they have the patience to wait it out and all they left behind were 15 dead bodies.
"Honk.... Honk...." "Move it buddy"; the weakest link in my chain of thought was broken by externalities and I started moving with the traffic. The car that went past me had a curious bumper sticker - "My son kicked your honour role son's ass" :)
Peace out
sai
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Knowing the math behind real estate
Have you attended any real estate seminars of late? To a widemouthed gullible audience, the real estate agent would be selling the American dream (which is basically to live the rest of your life in debt ;)). And he would be talking about some numbers and math and RoI and before you grasp his confounded logic, would conclude that "Hence, if you dont purchase a house now, you are losing $2000/week". Let's cut the crap out and take a look at how to exactly know if you are making any money out of selling the house.
The first thing you need to do is to calculate the opportunity cost of buying a home. i.e., the cost incurred because you bought a home ceteris paribus (everything else remaining the same).
For instance if by moving to your house, you drive more, then the marginal gas expense is the opportunity cost of buying the house. But if you have a new kid and there are expenses due to that 'life changing' event, even though you bear that extra cost, it is not an opportunity cost of buying the house.
Even though Mortgage interest and home equity interst are tax deductible, you cannot simply cut 30% from the mortgage you pay because your Alternate Minimum Tax (AMT) may kick in especially for double income families. So, for calculating the true saving on tax, (assuming T1 is the tax paid in the 'bought home' scenario and assuming T2 is tax paid in the 'did not buy home' scenario) one has to subtract T1 from T2. This is a huge difference from what is told to the consumers in the realtor expos. To take an example, let us say you pay $10000 in mortgage interest in the year, the realtor will tell you that the real expense is only $7000 because the mortgage is tax deductible. But using the above line of reasoning I gave, you should consider the actual expense as (($10000 + T1) - T2). In short, the realtor tells you that you can itemize the expenses when you buy a home. But what he does not tell you is that if you did not buy a home you still can get the standardized deduction.
If your home is big , then the utility charges are considerably more expensive, you have to add the differential to the cost of buying home as well. For full details of the elements in calculating opportunity cost, take a look at this presentation and feel free to modify it as per your needs.
The principal you pay towards your mortgage and home equity is not included in my presentation as opportunity cost as they build your equity in the house. But there is a hidden opportunity cost there as well. viz., the interest lost on the prinicipal. So one need to carefully include that loss of interest over years (because of the compounding).
In the slides, I have given the example that excluding the principal, you get an annual opportunity cost of $15000 and you paid $1000 towards principal. The opportunity cost on the principal is $70 (assuming 8% interest and $10 maintenance fee in well established funds such as Vanguard S&P 500 index fund). So, in that year the opportunity cost is $15070. Let's say you do the same for 2 years, then the opportunity cost is (($15070 * 1.08) + $15070). Let's say you do the same for 3 years, then the opportunity cost is ($15070*1.08*1.08) + ($15070*1.08) + $15070). You get the picture.
Let's now come to the fun part. If you sell the home for some sale price P, you wont get that in your hand. There are many middle men (wolves) in the way. For instance, you pay 5-6% of the sale price to your selling agent. The banks will want the unpaid loan amount (which is only fair). After all these overheads, if the money you get in hand is more than the opportunity cost you calculate in the above paragraph, then it means you had a lucrative deal. Otherwise you are sucker :) Note that if you decide to postpone your selling by a year to make the sale lucrative, the opportunity cost also goes up and you have to take that also in to account.
Peace out
sai
ps. Caveat: This part of the story is told purely from the financial point of view. It is not possible to quantitatively describe the sense of pride of ownership, sense of satisfaction in smelling the rose in your backyard and other such intangibles.
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Memoirs of a village life
“Sastha is coming this way”, the local village kid cried while running. That was not a shrilling holler. It was nothing more than a shout which a boy of fourteen can give while huffing and puffing his way through the alleys. But all the people in the village came out as if they were expecting someone to yell those words around that time. Sastha is the local deity which is believed to be the protector of the village. The priest, who does the rites in the small temple under a banyan tree 3 miles from the residential area, is considered a living deity on special days. And that day, lunar New Year was one such day.
Residential area is a stretch-word for the 300 something modest homes in Beemanagari, a village of around 1000 people at the southern tip of India. Two of those houses were rented for municipal offices and one was dedicated as the local post office. These offices were almost always locked up. The mails for the residents of this village came from the nearest town. Those mails are few and infrequent and the head of the local post office lived in the town. His wife could not handle the stringencies of the village and goaded him to make the move to the town. The post master employed the services of his home servant to dispatch the local mails.
In addition to being the New Year, that day, the village head wanted the priest to perform a special rite for saving his 15 year old from the hands of the death angels. As is the custom among the wealthy farm land owners of the village, the head’s son is educated in Madras, a metro known for good schools. He was a spoilt brat who is fit neither for farming nor for academics. His only claim to fame was being the only son of a wealthy man. He was often surrounded by head’s thugs and senile village council members who pampered him to get favors from his father. The son got into the village water tank armed with the swimming capability of a heavy lead ball. A farmer’s son who was around that area spotted him drowning and he dragged him out of the well. While the village head attributed this ‘miracle’ to the local deity and called for the ceremony, the reward the real savior got was a deep bite mark from the imbecile son. Not many in the village opposed the ceremony, as any occasion is good enough to please the local deity.
As was the custom in the village, while the rites were performed, the residents could not go near the temple. Only the priest could talk with the deity and hence the excitement surrounding the homecoming of the priest. For the next few hours, the residents had to treat the priest with at most respect as he is Him personified. In reality, though, the priest was an incorrigible drunkard who was often seen in the fields after overnight drunken orgies with the thugs of the village well-to-dos. The softer, humbler and more modest residents of the village with values attributed this behavior to the end of times. “The dark side is taking over” they would observe and would mind their business. Even they would treat the priest with reverence on those special days and get the sacred ash from the priest. It wasn’t an irony that was overlooked. It is the way the cookie crumbles in the village, except that there are no cookies in our village in India.
Even in this modest village the cuisine is very indigenous and rich. White Bread is considered as the diet of a recuperating patient and biscuits are something that the Englishmen eat because their lazy women don’t do real cooking. At least 5 vegetable curries are present in daily lunch with rice, sambar, rasam and thayir (Calling them lentil soup, tomato soup and yogurt is unconscionable and akin to butchering mercilessly, the carefully prepared food items). The staple food is rice and the village women would boast of 200 odd recipes using rice - coarse ground, powdered, boiled, half-boiled, par-boiled or fried. Somehow, the Atkins fad never caught up in our village. One would better not bring the topic of low calorie diet lest one be relegated as a city slacker. Even though the farmers live penuriously compared to the standards of the city, the farm products are aplenty. Rice need not be slow cooked with a special setting in Betty Crocker. The rice in boiling water fueled by burning logs can be cooked no sooner than 75 minutes for 4 servi
ngs. The women are all home makers and they take huge pride in their culinary skills. A typical day starts at 5 AM long before the men wake up and lasts until 9PM long after they hit the sack. Apart from the daily chores, there isn’t much time for anything and they seemed to care less of the fact. Sastha ceremony is much anticipated by the kids not for any spiritual reasons but for a more mundane reason – lot of different variety of foods. The whole village gets together in a public hall and the sumptuous feast is enjoyed almost in a manner identical to that experienced by the ancestors a thousand year earlier.
Nothing much changes in the village. The daily chores happen without the aid of electricity and the activities are dictated by the rising and setting of the Sun. Because of the proximity to the Equator, the days neither grow longer nor shorter. Beemanagari is surrounded by impressive mountains (~2500-5000 feet peaks). Because of the presence of mountain passes, we get very strong winds. People sleep out in the open enjoying the bliss of the pleasant breeze. To answer nature calls in the night, people use hand held torches - wooden log fueled by kerosene. That’s pretty much the technology used in the village. If you are a light sleeper, you can see a lot of Statues of Liberties walking past you. Occasionally you hear someone giving a heads-up on a snake that has creeped in from the fields. That didn’t discourage people from sleeping in the open. The village druid - more of a witch doctor, is a famous personality in the village for obvious reasons - the MBBS doctor is in the town and it will take 3 hours before a patient can be taken to the town. The Indian government’s goal of electrifying every village, town and city hasn’t reached this far and no one seemed to complain about that.
School is a luxury that can be afforded only by the wealthy or by the perseverant, with empathetic parents. The nearest school with higher secondary education is 8 miles away in the next village and one has to cover the distance by foot. If you are the son of a wealthy person, then you get the privilege of getting higher education in quality schools in the metro 300 miles away. A local majordomo is sent with those kids to alleviate their tribulations away from home. If you don’t take up education, the path of least resistance is to learn farming from the parents or become one of the thugs under the wealthy. Men also took up cooking profession and traveled many miles to cater to marriages and other functions. My family was very supportive in giving me education. I did my schooling in the next village and got into an engineering program in a city 150 miles from the village. I was treated to a hero’s welcome every time I returned home for the semester holidays. Now, after finishing my masters and taking up a job in the valley, I am even farther away from my village. But in one of those rare moments away from the maniacal deadlines imposed by my profession, when I have time to muse, my mind wanders and my heart yearns for the western breeze from the mountain passes, for the love of simple minded but big hearted denizens of the village. If I concentrate hard, I can even smell the rusticity of Beemanagari and the sacred ash from Sastha’s temple. If I concentrate harder, I can even hear my own voice, “Sastha is coming this way”, while huffing and puffing my way through the alleys years ago; for, I was that local village kid.
Peace out
yours truly
ps. I submitted this work for Cupertino Library Rural Scribe competition and am glad to say that they published this in their newsletter. I also got an opportunity to read the article infront of the Cupertino community audience in the city hall.
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Crescent city - A heaven on earth
Just got back from our 4th of July
trip. Priya managed to get some time off between her projects and we both explored the area around Crescent City, a sleepy north western Californian coastal city. The beautiful redwood forests adorn one side of the city and on the otherside is the adorable expanse of the Pacific ocean.
We pitched our tents in the KoA campgrounds and did a bunch of day hikes to the nearby riveria. Travel in any direction for 15-20 mins, you are in the middle of secluded redwoods. Those big ass trees are a sight in themselves. They are much bigger than the ones in the Big basin state park near the San Francisco bay area. The Smith river (north fork, south fork, central fork, north central fork and all combinations thereof) runs through the c
ity and we took 20 mins trip from Crescent city to see the place where it merges with the grand Pacific. Priya and I sat in the Pelican dunes beach, one of the many beaches in the area, for 3 hours (a lot of sunscreen) and we had the beach all to ourselves, well excepting the Pelicans ofcourse. If the redwood forests allowed me to experiment with a lot of shades and lightings and with taking photographs of elegant ferns, the beach provided a feast of sunsets. At the end of every day, when we were tired of er.. relaxing, we hit the beach near the Battery Point light house, which is a witness to the 22 feet waves during the 1964 tsunami that claimed the lives of 15 denizens of Crescent City. We bot
h concurred (ahem..) that this place is as close as it gets to a heaven on this Earth. Well... all good things will end and so came the 5th of July when we have to bid adieu to the north western californian redwoods and floor the pedal to get to the concrete jungle we so lovingly call the friggin' bay area ;). For a photo essay, please point your browser to my yahoo photos page and set the slide show to 'slow' mode.
Peace out
sai n' priya
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The Great Smokies
Since the end of June was the last week for Priya's stint @ RJR in Winston Salem, I took a trip to the gateway to the south :). While there, we both visited the Great Smoky mountains. We entered the park from North Carolina side through the Cherokee Indian village. The Smokies traverse NC and TN states.
The Clingman's dome in the park is the highest point in Tennessee (6,643 feet Duh! ;)). From the dome, we saw the beautiful Appalachian ranges. It was very similar to watching the Sierra Nevada ranges from the Morro Rock. The tallest waterfalls, Mingo falls, in the park is a short walk from the visitor center. We enjoyed the walk and spent a lot of time near the waterfalls. To signify that we are 
in the south, we saw a lot of confederate flags and graffittis that claimed CSA (Confederate States of America) will raise again. These things were a little scary but the people whome we met on the way were generally friendly. That evening we stayed in Gatlinburg, TN. This is a small German town which may be the most decadent city in the south :). No just kidding! There were lots and lots and lots of people. There were sky lifts, all the friggin' chain restaurants and even a Ripley's believe it or not. It was more like the Jellystone national park with Yogi the bear and what not. Personally, I despised the place especially because it was polluting the proximity of a national park and because I found the city occupied by a bunch of jerks who wont smile. May be people ge
t sued if they change their firm countenance. Now to the good part. Inspite of the heavily crowded outskirts, thankfully, I mean from the bottom of my heart, we didnt see many of them inside the park. A 5 min walk into the trail and we already lost them. The next morning, we hiked the Grotto falls. It is a fairly easy 1.5 mile hike. The waterfall was not magnificent but was pretty pretty pretty... We walked behind the falls which reminded me of our trips to Hogenakkal, a kick ass water falls in the border of Tamilnadu and Karnataka. 
We went in and out of the Grotto falls a gazzillion times and got drenched. The hike up was not eventless. We saw a huge mama bear with her 2 adorable cubs right on our trail. At that time survival was up on our minds more than photographing the bear family. Thankfully, sanity prevailed among the bears that the mom led the cubs back in to the woods.
For the detailed photo essay, please check my yahoo pages and make sure you set the slideshow speed to slow.
Peace
sai n' priya
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Postcard from the devil's belly
So... Priya atlast finished her assignment @ The Coach leather factory and is back from New Jersey. Before she gets into another round of job hunting, we took a trip to southern california... It is where hell looks beautiful. Death Valley - so called because nothing grows in the valley for it is too hot and receives too little rain fall, is a desert landscape and is adjacent to Nevada. Legend has it that many pioneers have died in the valley trying to find a shorter r
oute to Californian gold mines during the gold rush days. Rumor also has it that some of them resorted to Cannibalism to survive.
This valley is surrounded by 11000+ feet mountains. So, you can see snow on those mountains while you are in the desert sand. Also, this spring death valley received large amounts of rainfall that the desert bloom is supposed to be the best in some 60 years or so. We pitched our tents in Stove Pipe wells.
The first day we went to the regular tourist places. Badwater lies 295 feet below sea level and is the lowest point on the western hemisphere. It is so called because the water that is there - due to combination of less source and more evaporation, is so salty that there is rarely any life in that water. But this time around, because of the heavy rainfall, people actually had canoes in the bad water - an awesome sight to behold especially if one has visited Badwater during the summer days. There are sand dunes pretty close to the main visitor center not
far from the automobile roads. Some of the dunes had magnificent curves and shadows and some of them even looked like sand tsunamis. Then we visited the devil's golf course, where the landscape is totally different from the one at badwater. The course had a lot of crevices and traps that one misstep would end up in a bad leg twist or broken bone.
The next morning, we took a short hike to mosaic canyon where the wind erosion had carved a beauty of a landscape. Give nature enough time, pressure or both, it would do a wonderful job that would put famos painters to shame. After finishing the hike, we hiked the Ubehebe volcanic crater. Circa 300 to 10,000 years ago Ubehebe volcano blew her stack. So violent was this eruption that the entire volcano went
missing. What is left is a little hill with a very big hole. The top of the crater is nearly a half a mile across and is about 800 feet deep. The wind speed was enormous and all the exposed parts of our body hurt from the wind blowing at us.
From there we took the unpaved backroads (It was a good thing we rented a 4X4) to the racetrack. This is a dried river bed (playa) and is so named because the rocks on the playa move mysteriously leaving the tracks behind them(cannot happen if the rocks are moved by wind). We spent the evening there till sunset and dragged our rear-ends to the base camp.
After 2 wonderful nights (we always wish that our stay were one day longer), we tata-bye-byed Death valley and drove towards San diego where we are planning to have hot showers, drink morning coffees and enjoy the comforts of civilization.
For a detailed photo essay, pl. visit Priya's yahoo page and set the slideshow to slow mode.
Blue skies and starry nights,
Sai n' Priya
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Anindit in the SF Bay area
My bro, sil and my nephew were in the bay area during 2004 thanks giving day and this is what my nephew has to say about it :)
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