So what was I doing all these weeks ? 

I was hibernating. I was trying to come up with some original fresh ideas for my blog. Bullshit. I just didnt feel like blogging. Now i feel like, i am back again. 

Of course some people did miss my blog, they even told me to start posting again. The ’some’ counts to five as of now. 

If you hadnt noticed the change by now, let me tell it to you, I started using proper Caps. I weighed out ‘originality and something different’ against ‘popular market demand’ and the latter won. You see people like seeing proper Caps, im giving it to them. Ive learnt from life that when people want something and you can give it to them for free, you really should. 

I am not getting any proper ideas for this post. I lost the touch, itll take some time to get back. I dont want to corrupt my blog. Besides, I am too sleepy.

i normally dont post stuff written by others on my blog, but i guess i am bending that rule now. the content really appeals to me and i thought it would be good to share it with others. these are excerpts from the websites and blogs i normally read. thats it , enjoy the wow moment

1. Mark Cuban, blogmaverick.com 

These investors, including myself, know what you don’t, and they are not telling you. The minute you ask for money, you are playing in their game, they aren’t playing in yours. You are at a huge disadvantage, and it’s only going to get worse if you take their money. The minute you take money, the leverage completely flips to the investor. They control the destiny of your dreams, not you.

Investors don’t care about your dreams and goals. They love that you have them. They love that they motivate you. Investors care about how they are going to get their money back and then some. Family cares about your dreams. Investors care about money. There is a reason why venture capitalists are often referred to as Vulture Capitalists. The minute you slide off course from the promises you made to get the money, your dreams fall in jeopardy. You will find yourself making promises to keep investors at bay. You will find yourself avoiding your investors. Then you will find yourself on the outside looking in. The reality of taking money from non family members is that they are doing it for only one reason, to make more money. If you can’t deliver on that promise, you are out. You will be removed from the company you started. You will find someone else running your dream company. If this sounds like a scene out of the Sopranos or an episode you would watch on TV about a loan shark, you are right. The only difference is that it’s all legal.

There are only two reasonable sources of capital for startup entrepreneurs, your own pocket and your customers pockets. I personally would never even take money from a family member. Could you imagine the eternal grief and guilt from your mom, dad, uncle or aunt because you blew your nephews college money or the money for grandmas last vacation… I cant.

You shouldn’t have to take money from anyone. Businesses don’t have to start big. The best ones start small enough to suit the circumstances of their founders. I started MicroSolutions by getting an advance from my first customer of $500. The business didn’t grow quickly in the first couple years. We didn’t grow past 4 people in the first couple years, and we all worked dirt cheap.

So what’s wrong with that? It’s OK to start slow. It’s ok to grow slow. As much as you want to think that all things would change if you only had more cash available, they probably won’t.

The reality is that for most businesses, they don’t need more cash, they need more brains.

2. Also from blogmaverick.com 

At no other time have their been 3 financial news networks and thousands of websites providing so much financial information and opinion. The sum of which  has definitely lead us into a situation of  “Paralysis by Bullshitalysis”.  Everyone is afraid to buy. Everyone is afraid to sell or short.  Sales forced by de-leveraging is the catalyst for the market.  However, there are so few buyers, the de-leveraging sales are taking forever.

Who knows what the new normal is. No one has any idea what is going to happen in this market. NO ONE.  Personally, I am completely hedged. I bought puts, sold them. Sold Puts, bought them back, then decided to hedge every long dollar and then some with big puts on the market. This allowed me to be protected on the down side, and tip toe on the long side. As stocks go down, my hedge allows me to buy more of the stocks I like. If the market takes off on the up side, hopefully my longs will more than cover the cost of my puts. If the market does nothing. I’m stuck right where I am, with my puts losing time value every day.

Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t.  What I do know is this, everyone is a genius in a bullmarket. The last 5 years, that wasn’t a stock market. THIS is a stockmarket. This time it is different. This may just be the new normal.

The impact of tax rates on productivity and development is something economists masterbate about,  enterpreneurs don’t waste their time thinking about it. We have business to do. 

3. Paul Graham, paulgraham.com 

For example, initially I thought maybe this principle only applied to Internet startups. Obviously it worked for Google, but what about Microsoft? Surely Microsoft isn’t benevolent? But when I think back to the beginning, they were. Compared to IBM they were like Robin Hood. When IBM introduced the PC, they thought they were going to make money selling hardware at high prices. But by gaining control of the PC standard, Microsoft opened up the market to any manufacturer. Hardware prices plummeted, and lots of people got to have computers who couldn’t otherwise have afforded them. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect Google to do.

Microsoft isn’t so benevolent now. Now when one thinks of what Microsoft does to users, all the verbs that come to mind begin with F. [3] And yet it doesn’t seem to pay. Their stock price has been flat for years. Back when they were Robin Hood, their stock price rose like Google’s. Could there be a connection?

You can see how there would be. When you’re small, you can’t bully customers, so you have to charm them. Whereas when you’re big you can maltreat them at will, and you tend to, because it’s easier than satisfying them. You grow big by being nice, but you can stay big by being mean.

You get away with it till the underlying conditions change, and then all your victims escape. So “Don’t be evil” may be the most valuable thing Paul Buchheit made for Google, because it may turn out to be an elixir of corporate youth. I’m sure they find it constraining, but think how valuable it will be if it saves them from lapsing into the fatal laziness that afflicted Microsoft and IBM.

The curious thing is, this elixir is freely available to any other company. Anyone can adopt “Don’t be evil.” The catch is that people will hold you to it. So I don’t think you’re going to see record labels or tobacco companies using this discovery.

4. Steve Jobs, stanford.edu

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

…..

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

…..

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

my blog completes 1111 hits. 

i thought this was a moment of reflection, atleast a statistical moment ! 

thankyou very much for reading my blog, for appreciating, arguing, commenting, criticizing,  discussing it. (i wanted the ings to be in alphabetical order.) 

keep coming back. 

warm regards.

i look at myself, at my room, at the world around, its people, its cultures, its systems , everything. i feel disturbed. i am in bad shape, my rooms a mess, the world seems to be crazy, nothings in place, the people are bad etc etc. 

i wanted to put things in order, why ? i think, and then, i think again. 

order is a creation of the mind. the obsession with order is hardwired into our psyche. we like arranging things, giving ranks to people, arranged books, neat ipods, decent hair, perfect clothes. 

and then, i remember robert frost ! 

i have two roads, 

1. fight the system, struggle hard and change things. try to bring ‘order’ in the nature around you. 

2. accpet stuff the way it is, see ‘order’ in nature around you.  

you have been reading philosphical, unrealistic stuff all your life, so you’ll probably expect that the first option will be chosen. wrong. lets be real, life is too precious to be spent for things like these.  

instead of trying to arrange things in the way you see fit and bringing about some order and sequence and saying ‘wow’ , now this feels good ! 

why cant u simply change your ‘ordering’ and ’sequencing’ in your head and then say ‘wow’, now this feels good ! 

instead of changing the world, change your mind, its lot more simpler, lot more effective. also, the mind is much closer to you than your hands.  

talking about the mind; well,you see understanding the mind is something science has been struggling for quite sometime now. to me it appears weird. a mind trying to understand another.

reminds me of m.c. escher.

have a look !

few things about life i’ve found to be true : 

• character building is important. 
• money is not everything, but it is a very big thing. 
• character, culture, ethics and values are important, but if you expect people to love you, like you, respect you for these, then its lame. 
• credentials carry more weightage than the ‘person’. 
• every secret keeper has a secret keeper. 
• when you feel like shouting, you must. 
• constipation is bad. 
• moderate continuous efforts generate better results than a one time fiesta. 
• the more you work harder, the luckier you get; not necessarily. 
• you are in full control of your life- untrue, true only when taken in an empirical sense. 
• philosohphy and psychology are modern man’s voodoo. 
• you cant always be positive, sometimes be real, run !
• theory very rarely is same as practice; not rarely- never. 
• people stink, dont poke your nose everywhere and dont be disappointed.
• everyone thinks everyone else is a fool. 
• in his mind, he is never wrong.
• the road to everyones good books often leads to the making of a loser. 
• personality is a direct function of confidence is a direct function of knowledge.
• if everything is good about somebody, he is faking it. 
• know your flaws, dont accept them, never. 
• people love being miserable, there is nothing you can do about it. 
• when advised, follow. 
• you are too insignificant to claim honour, dignity and self respect, let go off it. 
• very soon you’ll die and your friends will forget you before they get their next toothbrush, stop gving a damn about self respect, ego and your fashion statement. 
• be selfish, stay that way, smile at others. 
• save the environment, not the cheerleaders. 

So you wanted to know what exactly is happening, in plain english. 

the thing has been switched on, were all safe, we were not gulped by the black hole. As a matter of fact even if we were gulped and have become antimatter and emerged in a parallel universe through a white hole, would we be able to know? 

FYI, the real experiment is in october, the thing just got switched on. 

heres something interesting, 

a CERN spokesman said: “It will not be producing anything that does not already happen routinely in nature.”

So, these dudes spent billions to do something that happens routinely in nature. i thought this was a moment to ponder about.

a series of events that happened in my life and around made me decide to write this post, if you are keen on knowing what happened, then please buzz off, i am not letting out any of that. this post has been dancing around in my head for like a week or so now and i find time for it only now. 

here we go, i wanted to define ‘love’. 

‘a meaningless gush of emotional adrenaline which the subject induces in himself/herself over another person, thing, place or idea which often results in the loss of logical, mental and resoning faculties of the said subject.’ 

we have been born and brought up in a culture which escalates love as something great, we are told to look for ‘the one’. this is a crooked ideology and does more harm than good. it should be banned. now. 

love as such has a great destroying capacity. it is a weapon of mass destruction which the victim somehow likes. it is not even like a drug, in the case of drugs, atleast you realize later on that you were a fool once. here you dont. 

if you’ve been thinking about all what you read above in the context of another person, then you are probably in your teens or mentally that much. 

we’ve all known people who did a lot of weird things for the sake of love, it turns the smartest of men into morons, remember the iloveyou virus. remember that neighbour of yours who used to clean his rotten worthless car every sunday and never use it. i always think such people could’ve spent threir times a bit more constructively, or atleast with their families. remember that model who loved her body so much, she starved it to death. 

on the contrary, love as such is not such a bad thing after all. it’s no crime to block yourself of all sanity and enjoy it. its a good thing if you indulge in it once in a while, not always.

had it not been for the love of recognition, money, power, country, group or even an idea, there would have been no civilization. thats something which separates us from animals. love as such is great if the lover has a control over himself, but the problem is we dont, most of us cant. 

i claim no immunity from the above discussion, as i write this i totally agree that i love money and power(ive not known anyone who love money and power more than me, yes you can call me characterless), i continue to love girls with fat arms, and if ‘fat’ is uncultured, then yes ‘hillaryduffarms’.

i conclude with an assertion that love is more of a curse than a boon and that tomorrow is not going to be the doomsday, hopefully. 

PS: to those who ask why i dont use capital letters, i think its an unnecessary complication.

to those who feel that i write nonsense but still love my blog, i love you too.

to those who feel my blog sucks, you have no idea about what sucks and what doesnt. the doctors are open 24 hrs. 

PS2: i strongly suggest you to click on ‘doomsday’ and read it, its hillarious, and yes: this is not a Sarah Palin post.

after being kicked out of the class for the fourth consecutive week by the same teacher for coming five to ten minutes late , i was forced to conclude that -

“females have an unnecessary repertoire of nonsensical emotions which they exercise on innocent and vulnerable males thereby deriving immense pleasure and satisfaction from the same.”

most women, and men who are trying to please these women, and the feminists might not agree with me and would plan out a protest with pink flags in front of my house. pink- because women like that color.

two decades of serious third degree encounters with women have taught me that aliens are way more simpler and compatible. it is seriously preposterous that we spend 94.3 % of our lives trying to please this very species. man, you must suck ! . 94.3 % – because i like that number.

my second conclusion follows the first (obviously!)

despite being very goodlooking and all, women will continue to be ‘used’ by men in someway or the other. all because of their extra emotionary glands. the irony is that women don’t know they are being used, in fact they feel that they are somehow ‘using’ men.

don’t believe me ? , then why don’t we have male cheerleaders dancing for women and air hosts serving women on flights?

you see i believe in equality of the human race irrespective of color, gender etc, but my belief or yours doesn’t change anything. now, that’s the sad part. i am totally against a fellow human being serving total strangers and running around getting muffins for them even if it is 40,000 feet above the ground, whatever be the pay. humans deserve more, let the bots do it, make machines which should do all the running around. a human life deserves much more.

warm regards.

reading about religion and spirituality over the net is an insane feat. the funny part about religions is that every guy claims his stick is the longest. everyone has their arguments, counter arguments, counter counter arguments et cetera et cetera. basically, we are all looking for peace and my definition of peace is as follows. 

peace comes through two things

1. to know all that is to be known.

2. to know that the unknown cannot be known.

when you fail to satisfy any of these two conditions, you just end up in endless mind gymnastics.

the funny part is there are millions out there who have no idea about the ‘known’, ‘unknown’ and the ‘cannot be known’ fundas that they end up croockedifying their lives. this is exactly why the soothsayers, astrologers, numerologists are in business and why we find funny amulets and lucky stones everywhere. 

still interested, click here.

billboards have always been able to catch my attention, this time i have a lot to say about the ‘Idea cellular’ billboard which proudly flaunts their new marketing tag line  “one school, all present” (or something like that). the underlying idea that is that Idea cellular is so cheap and has such a wide network that teachers will be able to teach number of students across the villages of india (through phones!!) thereby spreading literacy and developing the nation. sweet. very sweet indeed. BUT, what is this billboard doing in the middle of a city?, infact at every other corner in the city? Reliance communications made the same mistake (you cannot call it a mistake in the fullest sense) when they promoted their network as the common man’s network. they lost many of the customers in the cities to other networks. the mindset of the people metamorphosed in such a way that even those who were a bit affluent abhorred reliance.  idea is doing the same thing now. people from the cities do not want to associate themselves with those in the villages, not at least in india. even those who come from the villages do not want to associate themselves with the villages. funny, i know. (this is typically similar to the NRIs who come back to India and insist on mineral water forgetting totally the fact that a few decades ago they used to run around drinking water from borewells in short nickers, or even without.)

what i want to say is that the advertising should be consumer centric. the people in the villages would be able to connect to the idea cellular’s education campaign, not just in a small way, but in a big way. the ads strikes a perfect ten there. however, the city crowd has a different way of thinking.

if you take the KFC himayatnagar road, you are likely to find another billboard which shows the picture of an iphone labeled ’smart’ and then the picture of a maruti suzuki car labeled ’smarter’. now this is definitely crazy, my first instinct was may be they give you a free iphone when you buy the car or something like that, but no ! i have absolutely no idea why maruti suzuki is gone nuts. please come and have a look at the billboard for yourselves.

speaking about the iphone, all i want to say is that – it wont work. now, i know i am a total apple ‘loyalist’ and would love to see apple products everywhere, but logically thinking, we end up elsewhere.

1. the iphone costs a whooping 31,000.

2. there are two types of people who have this kind of money for phones.

a) people belonging to the age group 40 to 60. one thing we need to remember here is that india has this generation of people who have worked ‘their way up’. very few of this age group population would have inherited their fortunes. (FYI, india is still a developing nation and we didnt have proper roads in cities until a few years ago.) these people are definitely unlikely to shell out 30k on a phone.

b) the heirs of this 40 to 60 age group, this market sector would be in their teens or twenties and they’d love to have the iphone if only it had ‘forwarding messages’ and ‘video recording’ in it. there goes your youth market.

the iphone was designed keeping the needs of an average european or american businessman in mind, who, as per our research should be atleast a second generation rich. that will take another 20 years in india, until then people will still use phones which are good enough to talk and talk alone.

good night and yes, dont forget to excercise tomorrow morning, you look weird these days.