Decoupling and all that!

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of talk about decoupling in the worlds economic markets and how Europe or China or India are not going to be affected as much when the US goes down.  And now, as the whole world catches a cold, there are more comments of how that is not true. To me, both of these versions are flawed. It is obvious that it is neither black nor white. Anyone in the world can not claim to be not affected when the US economy goes down, but, what we can definitely say is that businesses are on the whole far more “insured” today as compared to 10 years ago. On the one hand, every market in the world will swing wildly when the biggest FIIs start pulling money out of investments, but on the other hand companies (especially in India) will still march onwards to stellar growth and results. It is the panic of the domestic investor that is causing them to lose money. I’ll write more on that in another post, but basically my point is:

a) Decoupling is true, and more so for India than most others, in the sense that we are not so export-dependent as China. The biggest companies in the sensex will go on doing amazing business and keep growing in spite of what happens in the US. Of course there are some export oriented segments or US oriented companies which might suffer in the process. The fact that stock prices have gone down does not mean that the companies have just become unprofitable, or not-so-profitable or anything else. Its just a case of demand and supply of the shares – it’ll change again soon enough.

b) Decoupling is NOT true in the financial or equity markets. Today money flows almost freely from one country to another. But of course we are going to see a fall in Indian equities if the institutional investors are all pulling out money. Moreover, this decoupling will never happen and more in my next post.

Price of property is too high…. NOO..OOT

The price of property is just never high enough. In my short adult life, I have always thought that the price of property is just too high whenever you find something that you actually want. The first (out of 1.5) apartment I have ever bought was bought at a price of INR 1750 psft. This was to change to 1900 psft the next day itself. Whew, so thankfully I went ahead and booked it and closed that transaction. WOW, I look back at that transaction and wonder why I did not buy 5 of them then. It is another matter that I could not sleep that night and wondered if I had made the right decision. Today, from that price of 1750 in April 2004, the price is roughly 5000 psft. Thats a return of 185% profit in 4 years. And trust me, its not too good if compared to the peak performers.

Looking for property in Dubai, it is impossible to believe that there is nothing to buy that you think is wirth living in for less than INR 20000000, or about AED 2M. And that would be a 1 bedroom. Not so long ago, this was maybe 1M and people thought it was a bubble then!!!

Old age wisdom says – Property seldom lets you down. Of course there can be bubbles, and of course there can be wars or bomb blasts… but in the long run, or on an average – if you can qualify for a loan – then buy a property.

At the same time, unwise and purely speculative positions are something that I would now stay away from. As noted in my post earlier, TDI Kingsbury at Kundli seems right now to be quite an unwise move, especially considering they DID charge quite an amount for the vision they showed. Now god only knows where they will take us, or more importantly – WHEN!!

Indiatimes.com

As the weeks go by, I notice that Indiatimes.com is going down a slippery slope pretty fast. Its sad as it is when TV channels make a mockery of a news channel by having breaking news every hour that involves flying cows and trapped children but Indiatimes really does take the cake. The photo galleries have now pretty much gone degenerated into the “topless and hiding assets” mode and are definitely soft porn for the Indian masses. Not that I am into forcing morality (haha! yeah I know) but an organisation so big! I mean rediff could have gone into the porn business decades ago if thats the way forward for a responsible news corporation. What is wrong with Indiatimes. Just doesn’t smell good and I had to say so! Do go and check them out. I don’t know if Indiatimes is going to sue me as it is or not for my opinion (though they will definitely get a stick from a number of fronts if they try to rake this up), so do not want to post some pics from there as well.

Oh, I do so wish I could put some of them up here, but anyway – being in Dubai, my blog will probably get banned if I did that. 😦

Cocky Ozzie and his ramblings

My previous post about the ongoing India – Australia series was a monologue on the standard of umpiring and how it needed to improve. No matter, our friend Ray Dixon at the Alpine Opinion has gone and made some senseless comments on my blog and then goes on and on and on (ala duracell) about the issue on his own blog. Now that’s what gets you really bugged. It’s funny, sad, irritating and exasperating all at the same time of you read his replies even to the sanest comments made by others. For example, you will soon see a cocky reply on this post too…. and he thinks he is so smart. Like for example when I wanted to keep it simple and point to him that he was going on senselessly, I wrote on his blog – “you don’t quit, do you” to which Mr. Cocky replied – “No, and neither does the Australian Cricket Team”

Oh, someone please explain to him that a few things we are definitely good at are:

a) English

b) Talking and writing (So stop acting smart-alecky…. two can play at the game)

c) Numbers… dude we got more in a city than you got in a country. Wrong war to fight!

I just thought I would point one or two more people to his blog that he can busily fight off and prove how great the Australians are. He really does forget that its not going to last forever and that being friendly is a much better attribute than being bossy. But I guess its THEM being racist at heart that forces this i’m-better-than-you mentality. Just go through his brilliant comments on his pages to see what I mean. Maybe a generation or two down the line, these whites will know their new place in the world order 😉 This is also racism?? You whites should see the way a white behaves when serving a brown, whether in a restaurant or an airplane.

Edit on 20th January 2008

Our man has since commented a number of times on this blog, to which I was replying for a bit, but then I realised my friends will chastize me  once again for petty fighting, so have removed his comments and mine from this blog. Apparently, this is highly unjust, but thats the way my blog goes, and since I refuse to visit his blog, I hope this ends soon.

Force India in F1 and the issue of the No. 1 driver

There has been a little bit of a debate in places on

* Vijay Mallya’s acquisition of an F1 team

* Then calling it Force India

* Then getting non-Indian drivers

Just wanted to come out in support of this flamboyant personality who does what he does with style and also ends up making money in the process. As 1% of the 3 readers who read my blog would have noticed, I’m already ecstatic at this development. More so now, when Mr. Mallya has increased the budget of the F1 team from $70M to %120M. He says his aimis to be on the grid by 2010 when F1 should be coming to India. We’ll see about all that but the fact that he has this vision and that he can capitalise (I mean literally in $$$) on such an opportunity is brilliant. There are some people who have been commenting that calling it Force India and then packing it with International drivers makes it un-Indian. Obviously these people have little Idea about F1. F1 is a very intenational sport where teams are formed across nationalities. Yes, he calls it team India, and the ownership alone or even the name alone should be enough to make us get up and support it. If NK or KC were driving a McLaren any other F1 car I’m sure all Indians would support it as much and make it OUR team. Don’t go after Mr. Mallya, if he’s taking us another levl up on the international arena, let him do so in peace, if not with all our support.

Go Force India!!!

On the issue of the No. 1 driver – I really don’t know why people except for the teams at the top like Ferrari or McLaren (well – at the top by cheating) even think about the No. 1 driver. It’s not like it makes any difference if Adrian Sutil is No. 1 or Fisi… he should know enough that he’s not really No.1 at anything if all he could do was come to Force India after these seasons at Renault where Alonso made his career a goldmine. At all of these teams, people will anyway know sooner or later who the better driver is – its usually quite clear and then all this talk only comes back and bites you. So just drive, and stop this debate over who is the No.1 driver. If one is good enough, they will anyway get the opportunity to show it.

Bad bad bad umpiring decisions at the India Australia test match

I’m not too much of a complaining person, and of course shit happens in life, but what I do like to emphasize upon is accountability. Malcolm Speed has once again dismissed the decisions in this test match as a bad day at the office. There has been a decision made in a match once again which can definitely be put up for questioning. In one of the talk-back forums at rediff.com a guy has recommended that we write in to the ICC and express our displeasure. I think this should be made a huge campaign. I have just written to the email id given ther ebut if someone has more accurate info then it is most welcome. And this guy has a point, if the makers of BIG BROTHER can take action based on peoples feedback, then it is worth checking what the ICC is made of. Of course, the people giving feedback are not goras in this case. 😦

—–> The Catch the RP still insists he took cleanly, though finally given NOT OUT

An Illustrative article written by Prem Panicker can be found here.

Appreciate your feedback, and if anyone else is writing in too 😉

So here is my email sent to enquiry@icc-cricket.com

Dear Sir(s),

If in fact, the many errors being noticed nowadays, and in specific in the just concluded second test match between India and Pakistan, are just bad days at the office, then why are the non-performers not penalised for the same.

Whether it is a cricket player like Yuvraj or Ganguly, a CEO, a politician or even a servant in the house, all of us get penalised when we have a bad day at the office, and definitely so when we refuse to learn from our mistakes. What makes umpiring so different that the worker does not get penalised for working below the barest of acceptable levels???

Till when will we have to see decisions being made in favour of the same nations again and again. I admit that things went wrong both ways, but that is just not acceptable. Maybe it is the way media portrays it, but I am extremely certain of being convinced many a times that the decisions against India far outnumber the decisions for India. Of course I am talking about wrong decisions here.

Let the officers who make mistakes be made to pay for them. Whether dishonest or honest and incompetent. It is high time that some accountability come from the umpires as well.

As one person said in a forum, if the members of even a brainless show like BIG BROTHER in the UK can listen to petitions from ordinary people, I hope the ICC can too!

Playing with my SmartPhone

I have had a Dopod 818 Pro for some time now, maybe 9 months or so, and the experience has been average with a lot of good stuff fighting for supremacy with a lot of performance issues. Anyway, that’s not what I’m making this post about. My original phone looked like this:

It is a phone originally made by HTC (HTC Prophet), and sold under many different names like the Dopod 818 pro, i-mate JAMin, Dopod 830 etc. More details on the same can be found in the link wiki here

And one of the new phones from the same company, HTC, is the HTC touch incorporating Windows Mobile 6 and TouchFLO, which basically makes these Windows based phones operate a lot like the iPhone. The positive side is that these phones have a lot many features that the iPhone does not have yet, like OUTLOOK and Hotmail sync and 3.5G browsing which can make a huge difference for a lot of people.

What I have been able to do, using some guides from the wiki earlier linked, as well as brilliant threads on how to upgrade the firmware and software on your existing Windows based smartphones here and here, is to convert my old phone into the latest, newest technology. Anyone attempting, please note that they should go to the WIKI first and find out exactly what model they are using. Of course, one is responsible for their own actions and the results thereof. Finally, my old phone behaves exactly like the video below. Whew, WOW. And I am adding some more brilliant apps to it now. Like Yahoo Go! 2.0

Though the Video is made by someone else, Check it out:

Cribbing – an International hobby

I really don’t know if it is me going a little bit senile as I approach the thirties or whether the citizens of this planet have really started crying too much. There is so much in every sphere to be happy about. Whether it is India shining, job opportunities, working abroad, making money, owning property or just inter-personal relations and having fun in life.

I see people make some choices, and then just keep crying about them for the longest times. People will come to a new country and crib about this one. People will be in India and crib about India. People will crib about their jobs and then crib again when they join a new one. So on and so forth. If you don’t like something, then why not change it and become happier in life? Perhaps there is no other way for me to describe it unless I have an audio recording of the multiple conversations that give me this perspective. Maybe more some other time… but I hope you get my drift.

Most of us are doing better today than we were doing 1 year, or 5 years ago. Why don’t we admit it and feel happy?

IMAGE_00013

IMAGE_00013

Originally uploaded by abyjain

And the backside… wish I had taken a close-up. The rear window is a window the the huge engine casing inside. WOW!

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IMAGE_00012

Originally uploaded by abyjain

And here is another view of my favourite!!