Tuesday, December 02, 2008

EASY MONEY



There are many ways to make money. The best jobs in the current world are not always easy to get into. Many jobs require consistent effort and hard-work from us to get through the day, for the amount of money we make. But there are some ways to make money that puts the person at ease, settling his life for the long term. I am listing some of these which occurred to me in random thoughts, in the first part of a multiple-post series

1. Analyst jobs:

There are different types of analyst jobs. But you know about the ones I am going to talk about.

Now, there are TV channels on business news. Now, we usually see these financial experts talking a lot of bullshit which is quite interesting because so much of it is just jargons and the rest is either simple common sense reiterated or gross manipulation/interpolation which the college students are usually familiar with. Let’s see for example:

“The growth rate (of India) might slip from 7.85% to 7.79%, looking at the situation prevailing in the last few weeks.”

Wow! First this guy isn’t even predicting anything. If he at least says that growth rate will come down from 10% to 8% it makes sense. A mere 0.06% is nonsense. Then he adds a “might” to his sentence. And if there is some brave prediction that someone really makes, its nothing other than a pure extrapolation/reference to the past. If the share price for example has climbed from Rs.330 to Rs. 340, Rs. 350 in last 2 days, its safe to say:

“I think we can expect the share price of company X to reach Rs. 355 at the end today.”

Of course, the Rs.355 is to play safe rather than say Rs. 360. Smart, eh?

Now, the weather analysts aren’t far behind either. Probably the Indian weather predictors have the time of their lives predicting just by extrapolating stuff from satellite images, wind speed, moisture content etc. which are regular measurements. Especially Mr. S R Ramanan, who comes in all the tamil TV channels to predict rain and cyclones (He happens to my 2nd degree relative btw). Just chk out this apt comment on him: CLICK HERE. If asked about the heavy November rains which flooded Chennai, he probably would have replied,” I have been saying for a year that it is going to rain but no one listened to me”.

2. Marriage Hall

The situation in Chennai and probably in other cities in India is that marriage halls are overbooked, overpriced and unavailable. If you have a piece of land in any upcoming area, likely to be urbanized/populated in the near future, construct a marriage hall immediately. I have been to halls which have the worst facilities and poor maintenance, but still run to packed house. People don’t really mind marriage halls which are a bit away from the city, but rather they prefer a place which is accessible and is decent enough. Unlike other commercial investments with land like Apartments, Restaurant, or Theaters that are very much dependent on various factors such as location, market trends, finance etc., marriage halls constructed even in bizarre locations in the city are a massive hit. Totally worthwhile investment for the long term with constant money inflow!

If you are really considering constructing a marriage hall, you can consider this next step too: construct marriage halls across India and make it a branded chain of marriage halls, and importantly having an ISO: 9001, 9002…and all certificates for extra brand build-up. More importantly, marriage halls are very good prerequisites for shining in politics and popularizing yourself through marriage posters popularly seen everywhere in Chennai. Check this page on related stuff: CLICK HERE.


3. TV Astrologer

An astrologer needs to establish himself properly to make his business run, with good fundaes on whatever he does. But a TV astrologer seems to be a totally shady dude who just blabbers the most easy-to-say things for astrology, that too predicting the week ahead for you. Now, the dude who does the daily astrology is even worse… he can say anything and get away with it. Now, with the amount of new channels coming in, and especially if your relative or your childhood friend is opening a new TV channel which desperately needs programs, jump into the bandwagon and start an astrology program. Of course, the innovation factor for the program can be very high. Let me list some of these:

1. Use permutation and combination of various free flowing astrology website material to decided the content of daily prediction in the most intelligent manner.

2. Introduce the “raasi-of-the-day” concept and say that raasi XYZ will have the highest strength for next 24 hours. Prediction of this raasi will determine the actions and predictions for all other raasis. Saves you lot of thinking and makes everything very consistent.

3. Include the special section of “bhoomi-raasi” which predicts the weather based on the astrology of Tamilnadu state. It’s too easy because all you have to do is contradict Mr. S R Ramanan’s prediction and get done with it. CLICK HERE if you have missed my previous commentary on him.

4. Avoid making illogical statements like “colors red and blue are favorable for the day” or for that matter other conclusions and correlations at this level of intellect. People have gotten smarter and thereby make simple common sense statements for fillers (however obvious they are).

5. Insert day to day healthy living advice along with astrology in a very subtle manner. For all the varieties of yoga exercises, allot one exercise for each raasi daily. For example, introduce "pranayama" for them to get rid of the "maha-kali-yuga-vayu-dosha". Keep rotating the exercises to make it mutually exclusive on a daily basis and completely exhaustive on a weekly basis.

6. And last and most important: Make sure that the program host is 50+ and looks very religious and stud like the picture shown below. The nama is very important indeed.


MY candidate for the show host if someone wants to start a TV Channel in 20 years:

Monday, November 17, 2008

Chennai Police


This post is about the creativity of our Chennai Police. The Tamilnadu police, renowned for employing the largest number of hard working pot bellied officers, had been rated some time back as the world's No. 2 Police Organization after Scotland Yard. I really thought this was a joke until I confirmed it through several useless and unaccountable web pages:


Anyways, this post is about what police people do other than their usual police duty. After becoming sufficiently able to solve all crimes, the police force is now trying to use its creative power in crime prevention through public awareness. This picture which appeared on The Hindu is a proof of that:


I couldnt stop laughin the whole day after seeing this. Even the stupid mascot at the bottom right is parodying their own people's appearance.

Is the poilce trying to say that walls and doors should be strong so that theives can enter from roof? Can someone please tell me what this means?

Thursday, September 18, 2008

The Dream

This post is a tribute to Captain Vijayakanth and his movies showing the war on terror. Well, he is one man who has tried his best to make people aware of the terrorist activities of the Pakistani militants through his varied and theme based movies. However peaceful the times were, his constant motivation to emphasize the importance of war on terror in his movies has puzzled many experts because of the amount of flop movies he churned out eventually. Of course, after the connection to SIMI and Pakistan which everyone sees in all the bomb blasts in various cities of India, even U.S. acknowledges Pakistan as the breeding ground for various organizations openly. We all now understand that our Captain was much ahead of his times, and the govt. got his message too late. No wonder he has decided to join politics. Chk this out:

Anyway, coming to the main story, I wanna tell you about the dream I had last night. Don’t throw stones at me after reading this, but it was just too funny when all this happened. To be frank, when I was having the dream, I was laughing my ass off and when I woke up I couldn’t control my laughter either. Well, during the day time I had seen the news of bomb blasts in all the news channels and in one channel I saw our Captain giving a speech before a huge crowd about his electoral plans. Probably it was the mix of these two that gave rise to my dream. Just get drunk or high and read this to enjoy it even more. The dream:

I am watching Captain’s latest movie which, as it unfolds, shifts from the theater screen to my own living room. Captain is a big shot in the military intelligence and uses unconventional techniques in his daily duties. In his personal office, we see his assistant who works on the computer like how a Linux geek does. I am supposed to understand that this is Captain’s gadget guy, just like James Bond has one. Except for the fact that the gadget guy is supposed to be this dude who comes as a rowdy in many movies and has appeared even in many of Captain’s movies:

Ok, so he has 6 spy crows in his office and he takes attendance of all the crows everyday. The 6 crows are perched on two rods one behind another and they are in formation of 2 rows of three. The crows in fact look rapt in attention during the attendance. The attendance is so funny.

Gadget guy: Rakesh (the crows have names)

Crow 1: CAW!!

Gadget guy: Ramesh

Crow 2: CAW

And so on…

This was the part I was predominantly laughing about the whole time.

Of course, now coming to the plot; the movie moves so fast that the movie has come to its halfway mark where the plot takes a U-turn. The ultimate terrorist that our Captain has been searching for is revealed after the morning attendance of the crows. However, this time only Rakesh, Ramesh and 3 others are there. Captain finds out that his gadget guy is the Pakistani terrorist and he is simultaneously puzzled as to how that is logically possible. But our Gadget guy laughs in the usual villain like manner and tells our Captain that the 6th crow was not absent during the attendance because it flew to Pakistan and took the bomb across the border to Chennai (apparently Chennai is on the border with Pakistan). And the bomb is none other than a big gas cylinder, which again confuses the Captain. (This was probably because gas cylinders are on a shortage that they couldn’t even find one to set a bomb with, so the bird had to fly to Pakistan). The bomb is in Captain’s house ready to blow up anytime. So what if there is a bomb in his house? Captain is in his office.

And of course, it is now revealed for the sake of logical consistency that our Captain’s office is inside his house (whatever happened to the military area). Captain has a pet monkey at home to detect such bombs. But the monkey is shown to be sleeping as the crow which set the time bomb gave the monkey sleeping pills to rest.

And the dream is over.

Monday, July 21, 2008

The Cascade Effect

This incident happened after I moved to our own house in Pallavaram (old house was at Korattur). To go to college, I started from home at 9 in the morning, fully prepared to embrace the consequences of taking the public transport at the peak of the rush hour. Anyways, since the train station was near my home, I took the train to guindy where I would get down to take a bus to collg.
Picture of Suburban Train in Chennai

At the morning rush hour, the govt. tried some innovative stuff. Since the long distance train traffic was quite less in the morning the train frequency was doubled. Now, today happened to be the first day of this experiment. However great the planning may be, the steps to counter the drawbacks are never ever taken into account by the Indian govt, until the point that the drawbacks themselves start to ruin the plan. With this incomplete planning, the train frequency was doubled. But the signal system worked only for alternate train. So if one train is inserted between every two trains, this would mean that when the first train leaves the station, the 2nd train arrives at the station and it would leave only when the signal goes green, originally intended for the 3rd. So the 3rd train would leave the station only when the signal is green, originally intended for the 5th train and so on... (remember the sequences and series we learnt in school?) .

However, I knew nothing of such a plan but I was merely skeptic. First, the train which arrived on station was fully loaded that no one got on the train, and a second train arrived the moment this train left the station. However, this 2nd train left only after 5 min. It was kinda indicative that this was an "inserted" train. Kinda getting bored with the train journey, I worked on the above mentioned theory and hoped that there were no other "inserted" trains ahead of my train. And lo! The train stops just before Meenambakkam station and what do we see? There are 2 trains ahead of my train and 2 trains behind my train waiting for the track to get cleared. A cascade effect that was too easy to predict. (f@%! the govt...)

When all the people abandoned my train as well as other trains behind/ahead me to take a bus/auto/taxi at the highway nearby, what a sight it was! I have never even seen massive crowd (may be woodstock video crowd beats this, not my collg rock concert crowd). It just looked like a massive cross border refugee movement. I really wished I had a nice mobile phone with a camera to have taken this pic.

So my point really is that if you like to present me with a birthday gift, please do so with an Apple iPhone.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Hospital Blues


I somehow feel proud gaining good experience in visiting a variety of doctors and hospitals as compared to the normal populace, but none of them on the grounds of illness. However, this whole situation arose for me in my institute hospital for all the wrong reasons and all the more convincing circumstances.

It was at the end of first year, with the final exams due in a couple of weeks and was looking forward to it since I had done the quizzes quite well. This however, wouldn’t be the case for a long time to come in the rest of my life in IIT. Anyways, I had got rashes all over my body and didn’t feel quite well, though I didn’t develop a fever or anything. So I went to my institute hospital wanting to check it. And what a drama in real life it was.

First, the doctor inspects the rashes on my body, checks my temperature etc. Then he asks a fellow doctor to come and asks her to inspect the rashes and confirms something. And they go on to have a minute of talk between them in a kinda low voice, which psyched me out completely since anyone in my position would have got the feeling that he’s got a rare intestine worm, found only in the deeps of Pacific Ocean. And then they break the news finally: I have got chicken pox/small pox, I don’t remember which one. And they show another guy from a different hostel who has got the same symptoms as me. They inform me about some kind of epidemic that is going to dawn on the whole student body, and that all the students who suffer from this are going to be admitted for week and a half. (Gulp!) This buildup of things was certainly the kind that people see only in X Files. And seeing such drama in real life was a bit too much for me, especially in my innocent fresher year.

They immediately command me to get admitted into the hospital. I walked out to the corridor slowly and then stopped. My legs were giving in… I couldn’t face the truth. And as I stood there in the middle of the corridor I saw three paths winding away from where I stood: One, which led back to the doctor’s room where I could go again and ask him whether he was really sure of what he told me; Second, which was the exit to the hospital which I could take and run back to my hostel and deny all that I had heard; The third and the darkest one which lead to the room where the patients were admitted which I dreaded taking.

I suddenly had the feeling that I was going to die, and I would see all my friends, studies, my precious IIT life snatched away right in front of my very own eyes. Another part of me told that I would be missing my exams and staying back for a year more.

What was going to happen?

Would I die?

Would there be the great epidemic to gulp everyone in a big sea of madness and misery?

Which path of the three was I supposed to take?


Part II

After all the options that I went through, my intelligence of course made me agree to take a bed in the hospital. And so I made some arrangements for my stay here. I had two more people staying in the dormitory that I was put in. One guy in 2nd year had a fracture in the leg and the other was a final year dude who was ill. I stayed at the hospital for the next 4 days and how.

I was skeptical of getting bored like anything, but fortunately these guys had some good books to read. Lord of the Rings is one book really suited for such an occasion when you take a long break with nothing much to do. And another book which I completed was: Surely You Must be Joking Mr. Feynman. The hospital had a brilliant service for the in-patients. We could order the type of meals we wanted and they would buy it from the campus canteen “Nandini”, which was extremely good at that time. What a brilliant time pass it was. It’s very nice when someone decides to put a full stop on life for you and gives you a 1 week vacation to read the nicest of books and be at peace getting a 24 hour service at your disposal.

Though I was ill, it wasn’t fever or anything. My rashes slowly disappeared and I was just a bit weak. I really started doubting what the doctors had said was true. Then I remembered some great hospital incidents which had happened earlier, and understood that I was just too hasty in judging these stupid doctors.

Once, my friend Aziz drank petrol from a plastic bottle thinking it was Sherbat. Well, he rushed to the hospital just in case some internal combustion happened. And lo… what treatment do they give him? They make him lie on the bed and put an Oxygen Mask on him!!! Another time, another guy goes to the hospital because he had a fever. They checked his blood pressure and sent him back. One of my friends went to hospital because he ran out of cough syrup and he needed one. These people check him for cough & cold and give him 7 sets of medicines including 3 antibiotics, brufen and aspirin. Hospital was such a great risk. But as they say… high risk, high returns. I guess I just took one and got nice returns.

What an idiot I was, to think that even doctors in our campus were equally well qualified to serve us and make great judgments on epidemics and alien landings. Only a freshie would think that way out of sheer ignorance. Even the other 2 guys laughed at me for believing the doctors. They said that there were more facilities added in the hospital than before. There were a lot of testing instruments, new pharmacy etc which were much better than before. I was told that the hospital earlier had only 3 sets of medicines available, and I was asked to guess which ones.

I thought it was paracetamol, aspirin and maybe brufen. But it wasn’t.

Take a guess…

Wanna know?

Ans: Red, Blue and Yellow tablets (ROTFL)