Job Searching

Maybe I want to be a security guard too (link)

The Next Leader

Is this the face of our next prime minister?
(Who cares?)
Link

Executive v Judiciary

The Executive comes up with a trump card against the Judiciary in the form of this. So now unlike the politicians, each judge would be answerable for his decisions, good or bad. It should have been implemented the other way around, but well who makes the rules?

Hey Dey, Whadday, Badday

Even before I've completed the first few paragraphs, I know this article was written by Atanu Dey. Mr Dey, please tell me why is everybody an idiot? (link)

The only problem is that the bugger makes sense. (The listen to daddy link)

Closing Bell

Have you ever had a chance to watch Closing Bell on CNBC anytime? Well I see it everyday, and not because I am really interested in what is going on in the market, but becuase it has a hot anchor.

I find it quite breath taking to watch a beautiful woman rant about bulls and bears, and other convoluted financial terms. Like the other day she was grilling some bald, ugly, middle aged financial expert on why some stock he had chosen was going down. I couldn't really make out (umm is this the wrong way of saying it) what they were talking about, and I was asking the rest of the people what was that hot woman doing there?

Anyways, it might seem odd, but if everything goes to plan, then someday I would be the bald, ugly, middle aged expert. (No I am not working on being bald and ugly. I am trying to become the expert, the rest would automatically follow).

I believe in talking shit

Sheila Dixit wants the tax payers to pay for the supposed misfortune of the owners of the illegal shops. Why not ask Bangladesh for aid too? Link

First of all, please ask them who is going to pay for the DTC bus they burn everyday.

From the moment they started constructing it, they knew it was illegal. This isn't a new rule, this isn't a natural calamity. This is your own mess.

Besides, all this talk about traders misfortune, and the traders power, the stock market seems to be shooting up, so nobody will real money thinks that the sealing issue is of much importance.

Anyways, the government is going to pay for it now (by losing their much beloved seats), and they deserve it. Though they are also trying that the babus too pay for it (link). But who is going to check if the babus are declaring assets, more babus maybe. Atleast it would provide an equal black income to all babus.

Career Planning

In one of his latest posts, Gautam Ghosh declares that career planning is a waste of time. He rather suggests his eight point memo for furthering your career.

Now I'm no big shot management consultant, but I do have 24 years of experience and I can tell you this: Planning of any sort is a waste of time. Why? Because 97.23% of your plans do not work out at all, 2.76% of your plans go astray after the first minor milestone. The rest of them go beyond that level, but there are no statistics to prove anything after that. So basically all plans are destined to fail.

But then why plan? Because it's all in your mind. Planning helps you convince yourself, even though it is just one big illusion in the head. It just makes you feel well prepared. It's selling your ideas to yourself, which is why it is absolutely necessary.

(link)

Desi Big Brother

Big brother was a big hit in Australia back in 2005 when I was there and since reality TV has a history of going round, the next logical thing after the Indian Idol was a desi version of Big Brother. Sony Television, hoping to lead the way, has started Bigg Boss on the same lines. (Rakhi Sawant is in there too, if Mika is there too, then I'd watch) Anyways, if you ever had a chance to watch Big Brother in Australia, you would have known how absolutely useless the show was, but yet managed to draw audiences or pseudo audiences called TRP's.

All that is fine. But the interesting part is 'Big Brother Uncut', the part of the show which was edited from the prime time show, to be showed later on national television as free porn for the poor as it consisted mostly of people having sex on the sets. CNN-IBN supposes that it could come to India too, which is an interesting idea for sure but in a place like ours where channels pay huge fines for showing videos, I doubt if we would ever get as lucky.

Anyways, even if 'Big Brother Uncut' came to India, can you guess what would it be called??
India Uncut. hehe.

Link

It's a kind of magic

Here is a cool magic javascript that I found via indiapad. It makes the pictures go round. (link)

The way to see it work is this.
1. Open Ma, I Shot Something, or any web page with photographs.
2. Enter this code in the address bar.

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.getElementsByTagName("img"); DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=(Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+"px"; DIS.top=(Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+"px"}R++}setInterval('A()',50); void(0);

3. And press enter.
4. Lo! and Behold!!

Jeev Milkha Singh

India is a land of few sportsmen, but there are a few men who have known no boundaries. One of them is Jeev Milkha Singh, the golfer son of the charismatic 'Flying Sikh' who has recently taken the world by storm, after winning the Volvo China Open and Volvo Masters. The victory, which came at the end of the season, brought him up to the 16th position on the order of the merit.

Life hasn't been all rosy for the man though. After a career best 50th place on the order of merit in 1999, Jeev suffered a wrist injury which took away his form for years. But six years hence, he seems to be coming back. Currently, he is one of the only two Indians who have won on the European circuit (The other being Arjun Atwal).

Currently, Jeev stands 73rd in the world golf rankings, and 2nd in the Asian rankings. (link)

Hindu

Followed

She seems to be following me everywhere. First it was Pune, now she's even coming to Delhi. (link)

I don't think my mom would like it very much if she came here, but well is there anything I can do to stop her.

Bad for the nation?

Scott Adams, justifies why electronic voting machines are good for the US.

There’s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?

So damn right I say. Maybe they should get those in India too. I wonder who will hack them in Bihar. More so, the litracy rate might increase, because the government will spend more on educating the youth so that they can hack the voting boxes to get them back in power.

This is just what India needs.

Smart Cracker

Cracker, an alternative rock band, was kicked off the label by Virgin Records in 2003. Now this year Virgin released a best songs album by the band, but the band saw it coming. So they released it independently and on the same day. The latest sales figures show that the independent release has sold around 22,000 copies as compared to 66,000 by Virgin.

I don't know if their music is any good, but these guys sure are smart.

Link

Sanjay Kumar Jailed

An Indian CA goes to jail for securities fraud. Here is the news from NYT.

The former chief executive of Computer Associates International was sentenced to 12 years in prison today for orchestrating a huge accounting fraud at the world’s fifth-largest software maker.

Sanjay Kumar, 44, was also sentenced to 24 years of supervised release and an $8 million fine in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Since pleading guilty to securities fraud and obstruction of justice charges, he faced 20 years in prison, though sentencing guidelines provided a maximum of lifetime imprisonment.

This guy had got a bonus of $330 million in 1998, and is also the owner of the New York Islanders hockey team.

Link

Preparing for CAT

The last time I heard, these guys were giving out free classes for CAT in pune. If you want to join them now, I guess you are too late. Hundreds of students seemed to be pouring in the first week itself. Anyways, if you like, you could make do with their blogs. The one on English is run by Ankur and Massey, and it's called Cat Verbalised. There is one on Quant called Cat Quant Simplified, which is written by Chandra.

Chandra, who is a 94 batch IIMC alumni, had quit investment banking to start teaching Quant. He has been at it consistently for the last 9-10 years, and has a huge fan following. Massey passed out of The Hindu College in Delhi about 5 years back, and has been teaching English forever. They say, he knows everything about English, one possibly could. Finally, there is Ankur Suryavanshi. A supposedly 2002 batch computer engineer from AIT, Pune, who defied the lure of software engineering to teach.

So if you are in Pune next year, and you want to take a good chance at the 1000 rupee lottery conducted by the IIM's, and you want personal attention for a not so personal fee, and you want a guarantee that you would be taught by the best guys so that you can get to the best colleges, join these guys. (no they haven't paid me yet, but I am hoping they would sometime). I know, I know, coaching classes for any exam are useless and I never go for them anyways, but if you are hell bent on going to one, then go to these guys.

PS. They call themselves takzhila (or something like that)

Also, for those who are not really interested in CAT, you might like to know where to find Charas in Manali.

Cross posted at Pune Bloggers

What say ladies?

I found this on India Uncut.

A study of the sexual habits, says that the age at which most people have sex isn't going down. (No they are not talking about horny people like you). But here is the interesting bit,

"A single woman is more able to negotiate safe sex in certain circumstances than a married woman," says van Look, who points out that married women in Africa and Asia are often threatened by unfaithful husbands who frequent prostitutes.

Any single ladies around, I'd be happy to oblige... (Married, I don't really mind)

Link

Child Labour

Shruti has a nice post about bannig child labour. Here is what I think about it.

A relative of mine teaches at a Government School in Haryana. If you ask her, she will tell you that on days the meals are being distributed, rather for those few hours, the number of kids at the school is almost three times the usual. The rest of them never attend school.

The Mid-Day meals have been there for quite some time, but Child Labour is still rampant.

You are right when you say that banning won't help reduce child labour, but the thing is that banning it is better than doing nothing. Your post for example, is nice, but doesn't give us any new answers, which is what we need.

I like Atanu's explanation on the subject.

The way out is to address the complex of causes which leads to the effect which is millions of children being denied a childhood. The rational solution would involve, first of all, implementing policies which prevent the birth of too many unwanted children. “Family planning” vigorously implemented. But then, no political party has the guts to do so. Next, make it a law that a child laborer has to be paid the same wages as an adult. This would give employers no reason to employ children when for the same wages they can have an adult worker. Third, provide schools and meals at schools (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for all children. This would make schools attractive for those children who are poor enough to have to work for food. Finally, provide very poor parents a monthly stipend if their children attend school regularly. This would help them make ends meet without having to send their children to work. THEN, and only then, pass a law banning child labor.

Even here, family planning is almost here, meals are almost here too. But one important suggestion is to provide a stipend to poor parents whose kids go to school.

Now where might all that money come from? From stopping the utter wastage of funds by our useless politicians. (link). Then the millions which are going to be spent due to increase of seats due to reservation.

It really doesn't seem like our PM is an economist. Does it? Hope he didn't flunk.

Don

Once upon a time I used to like his blog, but today I really think he is a jerk. Especially after this (him loving Don for Shah Rukh Khan) and adding it to the fact that this guy writes movie reviews (which is not bad in itself) for business-standard (but this is crazy). And by the way, he doesn't even understand what does one mean by 'style over substance'. If you try to remember, my boy, once upon a time, you had some of it (yes yes substance).

PS. He's even linked to the sardarji who teaches English. People say he's amazing, and well so do I, but these days he's just got too much time you see, even he's writing about Don.

Update: I'm out of a job sirji, ofcourse I have all the time in the world. hehe.