Washing clothes is therapeutic

I am never too sure exactly how much detergent should we use for a bucket of water.

Staying in the hostel away from home, I have learnt that I am not good at something- adding right quantities of things like sugar, detergent, milk powder, salt, etc in water/milk. Its an art only some people possess.

Anyway, I got some interesting fact. Washing clothes can actually positively affect you psychology. This is because when you see dirt come out of your clothes as it is getting cleaned, you feel good about it. It send a very subtle impulse to your brain and you feel cleansed.

I got this information over a coffee chat at work. For some reason my friend had downloaded a Korean movie previous night where apparently one of the actors was a psychologist and happen to wash his own clothes. I was very concerned about one thing.

"By Korean you mean South Korea or North Korea?"

Mr Bush called North Korea axis of evil. As a democrat, how can I believe in what any North Korean say. Karl Marx would never build a nuclear weapon but only fight for the rights of the workers building it.

What would North Korea know about washing clothes?

No man can ever think of himself as non-existent

I have many useless thoughts including this specific one.

Are my thoughts really useless? What is the primary objective of thoughts?

Annie Besant (she is truly the master of fundamental thinking) said it was about defining yourself. All that is is defined by all that is not. So self can be defined by not-self. This not-self is in turn defined by thinking of things as all what I think, are merely thoughts. Thoughts cannot be thinkers.

To sum up knower is not the known by definition.

Knower, knowing and known are different. Thats how I define myself. Thats how I find my separation. Thats where my search for identity ends- by having useless thoughts.

Annie Besant made a very redundant statement-

"No man can ever think of himself as non-existent, or formulate himself to himself in consciousness as "I am not". "

Probably thats why I will never meet my death.

A crisis and a game of monopoly

I remember playing monopoly. It was buying and selling land with made up money.

To quote Marge simpsons- "The game's crazy enough ..... How can an iron be a landlord?"

Its similar to the sub-prime crisis. People created false money to buy and sell lands. The money could either be traced to a loop of creative financial instruments or US Dollars which in turn would lead us to Fed Reserve's overworked dollar printing machine. Everyone felt good for some time. Then, the game got over.

Then they put the money back into the box, and closed it.

Maths can explain why Gabbar laughed so loudly

Hindi movies are more than we give them credit for.

There are always reasons why things get famous. I am talking sholay.

Everyone remembers this scene. He took a six bullet pistol and put in only three bullets and tried shooting his fellow dacoits one by one. None of the first three tries were a hit. Then all of them burst out in uncontrollable laughter.

Why did all of them laugh?

Lets see the probability implication of this evet. The probability that first fire would be empty is 3/6. The probability of second fire being empty is 2/5 and the third fire is 1/4.

Total probability= (3/6)*(2/5)*(1/4)

The probability of that happening was only 5%. Gabbar found humour in the probability trying to protect them from his terror. He laughed at the laws of the universe which thought could defy him. Then he shot them anyway.

Einstien agrees for a completely different reason. To quote him-

"God doesnt play dices."

Cycle seller

There was a boy who wanted to sell his cycle.

I wanted to write a play on him. It was a story about a boy who wanted to write a play about a boy who wanted to write a play about a boy wanted to write a play about a boy who wanted to write a play.......

I think this play can only be acted out in black holes, where circular loops of light are not necessarily connected. Where things travel faster than the speed of light, making time travel possible. A place with no design.

So much for the cycle seller.

Zimbabwe declared inflation illegal

What about the fundamental rights of the economists?

Inflation is a natural occurring economic phenomenon. How can it possibly be declared illegal? They actually arrested some company officials who increased prices.

The inflation of Zimbabwe was so high, the company that printed Zimbabwe currency refused to do so anymore. Government promoted using currencies other than Zimbabwe dollars. Even so, that Zimbabwe's National postal service started charging people postage in US dollars.

It took me some time to count the zeros in their economic numbers. 231000000% is not a very appreciative inflation figure.

This is what a real crisis looks like. A land where probably the cost of paper is more than the denomination of currency printed on it. A land of starving billionaires.

People in Zimbabwe are still not sure how to react-

"I just bought a chicken burger which cost me 30 million Zimbabwean dollars "

And we call what happened in US a crisis? I am not a pessimist, but lets all stop printing dollars.

Who takes care of HR needs of an HR manager?

Agnes has done it again. She took all the trust and Loyalty for her company and back stabbed her immediate boss with it.

But what did she do? She accidentally applied to work for Bharti. So? Little did she realised she was already working there. I don't think her boss would have appreciated it very much.

"What are you still doing here? Dint I fire you last year?"

Think about what her previous boss would feel if he ran into her in one of the office party. People get inspired to grow in an organisation internally. She found a shortcut. As an HR manager, she decided to recruit herself.

We can blame the system. No company takes care of the HR needs of an HR managers. They should have a separate department for the HR needs of the HR department. The separate department will also have HR needs for which another department would be required. And this can go on.

There is no solution. But we cannot blame Agnes for the cosmological problem of the eternal need for circular loops of HR managers going on till infinity which if you think about it hides some answers of life and death.

Congress sent two elephants to Japan

I do not understand diplomacy.

Imagine this. Japanese officials went to recieve the Indian diplomats at the airport. They find two elephants standing next to them. The Indian diplomats insists that they should take home these elephants as gifts from their side. How would the Japanese feel about it? How would they react? (Appearantly in turn the Japanese sent two blue sheeps to India)

Nehru started all this. He forgot that people dont use elephants these days. We have cars and heavy duty vehicles. Now elephants are only used in South Indian temples. Also, forest conservationists do not mind elephants destroying trees as itz supposed to be natural.

Indian human right activist folks objected sending elephants for diplomatic causes. They called it inhuman. Nehru had more things to worry about. Japan had just got out of second world war, they needed some break.

Seinfeld has made a very good point. Human right activists do not care about insects.

Feng Shui Masters see calm stock market in the year of ox.

"You would rather become a fortune teller"
I met a very interesting person. He opined that Fundamental analysis not only dint make sense, but was morally wrong.

The Chinese Feng Shui had better predicted the markets in 2008 than any fundamental analysts. They somehow knew about the meltdown. They called it a year of rats. But good times are expected to come now. The water elementals will somehow cool the stock markets and then in the year of Ox the markets would eventually calm down. Ox is apparently linked to Earth elemental which is relatively calmer than elementals in the year of rats.

I have eventually got some directions. Fundamental analysis without following up with the five elementals of the universe is irresponsible investment advice.

I urgently need a teapot.

I was making a list of things people have gifted me in the last two years-

1. A deodorant
2. A black shirt with words written on it (which is not only offensive to the reader but female gender overall).
3. A pen.
4. A bright red cargo pants which makes me look gay.
5. A mini picture of Sri Aurobindo (the gifter thought it was a picture of Tagore)
6. A music CD with extremely abusive lyrics
7. A half burnt candle
8. A yellow plastic duck.

9. A second hand book.
And yes, someone has promised to buy me a celotape from her first salary.

Now, can someone please buy me some real gifts? Something I can really use. Like a teapot. I dont have a teapot. What should I do when I have to drink tea?

How embarassing would it be if I had to pour tea directly into the cup.

Axis is not an imaginary line

Anil Ambani removes Mukesh from his facebook friend's list, Sensex down 200 points.

I read this in one of the funny news. Anil realised this in a Texas Poker room where his wife could chat with Mukesh, while he could not. Indian stock market got sentimental about it. Its surely funny but also something to think about. We are not even sure how to pronounce finance-

Is it pronounced /fainaens/ or /fInaens/?

The underwear index. The US analysts came up with a new index to measure the economy. They found the sale of underwear in US had fallen due to recession. This was unusual as underwear has always been considered as a necessity than a luxury. They figured that although people still wore underwear, but now they were more dirty.

Is it just me or are we really missing a point here????

Warren Buffet would bank on Earth's axis and buy stocks selling Air Conditioners when the axis running through his part of the planetary hemisphere is away from the sun. As long as we rotate, there will be a day after night and the world will completely turnaround everyday.

There is a reason why Warren would buy sweaters only in summer, because Earth's axis is not an imaginary line.

Horse's latitude

Would anyone buy numbers?

We can call SBI a risk taker. They took two core marketing students from LIBA and gave them core finance job. How creative? What can a marketing guy do with all those numbers.

I partially believed in communism before I met Sherwin last week. If you take a view from the top, you will see mortal remains of what was once a fully flourished hair of young hearted man. Whatever SBI did to this man from middle east.

"May I please go to the toilet?"

It seems he asks his manager in office everytime he needs to go. But then why is he smiling? And what is horse's latitude?

Horse's latitude (also known as subtropical high) is the region between 30 to 35 degrees North and South of the equator. Legend tells us that around this region sailors for religious objectives threw horses into the sea. Some now think it was to help the ships pass through the storms caused by high pressure around that region.

He knows in times of trouble, the Government will collect taxes from us civilians and pay him his salary. A private company wouldn't care less. As we saw in 2008 meltdown, completely useless companies firing completely useless people.

Government job may make you fat, but atleast you would never feel jettisoned.

Don't read this, or else you will get a little bit dumber!

Am I writing this? Please dont read this particular paragraph as it will prove a complete waste of your time and effort. I have nothing really to write about. So there will be no value addition whatsoever if you read this. So the next thought is that if I am writing about nothing, what should be the content. Its funny that the fact that I have nothing to write about is the content so far. Also, pointing out that having nothing to write about is a content, has used up another line and as I finish this specific sentence more content are added to the same. Now, I am a little confused. Lets take stock of whatever I have written. So far I have not written anything remotely informative or related to anything. I intend to go like this for some time now. Why should I write something without contents? It is making no sense, its a waste of time for both the reader and me and it shows my complete lack of interest for my office work. Then again, since I have started writing this, I should may as well finish it. Its a dilemma which I am reflecting upon as I am writing all this. We have an obvious winner. Finishing this would take some effort, as writing about nothing is not easy as it seems. But then again, how hard can it be? I can do it. I have done it so far and I think I have done a good job. Anyway, no one can be a judge of that. I am not sure if I have used the punctuation marks correctly. I believe punctuation marks are very important because it allows the reader to stop for breath. From what I remember, one breath for comma and two for a fullstop. So when I give a fullstop at the end of this para, please pause for two breaths. I am writing this sentence just to add another line in my paragraph. And this one also. I am tired of writing now, and a little bit bored. You guys don't have to worry about spellings in my paragraph. When I finish this paragraph I would run a spell check using the options provided by the blogger. It has a disadvantage. What if I have to use the word- colour in my paragraph and then run the spell test. Do you think I should separate everything I am writing in different paras? Also, do we still leave three finger space while starting a paragraph? I am not understanding. Is there someone who still continues to read this? What is the matter with you man? Don't you have anything more useful and productive to do? And believe me, its not a rhetorical question. Ask yourself one question and you would be surprised with your lack of reasoning- "Why are you still reading this?". Now that we have understood this, I think you should stop reading this. Stop reading this. Am I not clear with this? Why are you still reading? Am I not getting through you? I don't believe you are still reading this. Stop reading. Its amazing that no matter how much I try to convince you, you will continue to read. I just realised that there is nothing in the world I can type right now that would make you stop reading this here. Lets see what else can I write. Isn't reading this paragraph like something you do, and then regret doing it. I just thought of one and only one value addition writing all this has given me. Its has made my index fingers more flexible. I can type faster now. I shouldn't have written all that I have written and you shouldn't have read them. Its actually my fault you read them, I take the repsponsibility and apologise for wasting your time, although I had warned earlier not to read all this. I am getting tired of writing. I think I will stop now. My work is done here. Okay then, I will stop writing now. This will be the last sentence of my paragraph.

How important is the spelling of your name?

How much does the spelling of your name impact your identity? I don't know why some people are so touchy about their name.

I have a friend called Dibya. So? Its a guy. What a pretty name for a man! After 25 years of his life, he realised he was not happy with his name. He legally changed it to Dibyo. Now I think its against the Indian law to pronounce his name with that spelling in mind.

Dibyo? How is that better? Like his name was not bad enough. Initially it was only feminine, now its feminine and Bongish. Why did he do it?

He fought back- "The Y (why) is silent". I had to ask him further.

"So, do you think you will be able to live up to your name?"

He was confused. I was confused.

Is something similar to itself?

Is something similar to itself?

Making such a statement is redundant and unnecessarily time consuming. Amartya Sen argued that something is similar to itself is based on certain assumptions which may be equally considered redundant and unnecessarily time consuming. But the fact is that no statement can be made without assumptions.

1+1=2

Is this a joke? Questioning this is not just a waste of time, but insulting to our grey matter.

This is true. Put 1 in your right packet and count 1 in your right hand. What do you get? 2!!! Its as simple as that. What assumptions are we talking about here?

If we use binary number system, 1+1=10. Why is decimal system the most Earthly excepted calculating system anyway? I don't worry about this assumption anyway because since birth, I have been told to think this way. All existence have similar assumptions which hides the essence of the unknow.

I am not an atheist, I believe in assumptions.

Lets not ignore Australian markets

No one cares about Australian financial markets!

The global financial community is totally ignoring Australia. Its kind of rude. They don't affect the international markets at all. Australian indexes are not that useless. I am sure they indicate something.

Think about the amount of money Australians can make selling kangaroo skin!

"But what about global warming?"

Richa rightly objected. She took a long term view. Because of global warming less people would be wearing warm clothes. Kangaroos are useless indeed.

Varun just finds it very funny.

"They have pouches..... how ridiculous is having a pouch...."

Who gives a fish about colours?

You can tell an artist by his eyes, or his excel sheets.

Some people will highlight in their excel sheets with the most ugly colours possible. If you vomit on those sheets, it would probably look neater. I understand. I am sure they have real things to worry about.

Are good presentations only for sheets without contents?

I had a business plan to sell new Power Point Presentation templates online. But then I thought again. Who gives a fish? I wouldn't buy it myself.

Appearantly black and white are not as much respected as colours. Its very rude of us. Why are black fonts so universally excepted professional font colour? Black colour fonts are only best for people who cannot see.

Once, an old lady at shop where colour TV was sold said-
"Red colour please!"

Penguines eating our society

Imagine penguines eating our society.

Please discontinue reading this blog!!! Its so impossible that its also gramatically incorrect.

At the end of two years of LIBA, me and Agnes made a list of things we had talked about in the last two years. It goes like this-
"1.The muffin man
2. Tail that wags the dog
3. Yellow submarine
4. Sky that is personally painted black
5. The black vertical hump
6. Frog with the quack of a rhinosaurus
7. "Have I began"
8. A banana that ate the monkey
9. The naughty eskimo who ate the yellow snow
10. Henry, the horse"

One would laugh and for a reason. One's logical reasoning would egoistically deprive his/her grey matter to think for itself. In daily life, we like to talk about only relevant things which can be back calculated and logically concluded. Like 1+1=2 or there is no UFOs as they havent contacted us Earthlings yet.

x1 = ( x0 * a + c ) MOD (2^24)

where:x1 = new value
x0 = previous value (an initial value of 327680 is used by Visual Basic)
a = 1140671485
c = 12820163

What does this super cool equation do? I wouldn't know.

While playing Solitaire, you might think- "How creative of my PC to distribute ramdom cards every time." Please think again. The equation is used by PCs to generate random numbers. Can you imagine? Random numbers generated by a logical equation?

Remeber, the clown is always really laughing at us.

The monkey at my office

A marketing guy and a finance guy can never have lunch together.

I realised that while doing my summers in a very well known company (Company's name purposely kept anonymous). The finance guys did not feel that respected. So one fine day they decided to do credit rating of their distributors. The Marketing guys thought the questionnaire was silly, abruptly irrelevant and too personal. They resisted. They did not consider that those finance guys just wanted to feel like a part of what was going on.

Personally, I couldn't care less. I had more serious things to worry about.

As I wrote to my friends describing my summers on 2008,

"I still cant figure out whom to report to. No1 pays attention to me. My project guide does not recognise me (he occasionally calls me by the name of Sarvesh). I think my project is over but I am not too sure. I generally hide in the library from The HR Manager. They have blocked orkut. The caretaker refuses to serve me coffee. The security guard (He is from SDB Cisco) refuses to share his pen for writing on the attendance register. I think someone tried to throw a magazine at me. They all hate me.

And yes, a monkey drank from the leftovers of my coffee (it did happen!!!) "

I am not a number!

I am not a number!

It is very insensitive to call me F07055. I disapprove of any digits assigned to me by educational institutes. Is my name that verbous? This is what Roger Waters called "The Wall".

Homer disagrees- "I've never felt so accepted in all my life. These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined."

I thought I was grown up for all this when I was suddenly assigned an employee number. I guess I am still to make an identity where no one calls me a number.

I am aware, those classroom roll calls were never because the teacher misses you.

Blunt pencil

Is using pencils in office professional?

When I have the requirement of writing something, I reach out to the closest writable object I can find. (Just like I would keep a cd in the closest cd cover I find, and not the cd cover belonging to that particular cd). I am currently using a pencil. A blunt pencil (which is also not all that comfortable as blunt pencils make more noise while writing and each line is fatter than usual.)

What am I afraid of? Not that I am signing cheques with the pencil.

"Ewww, I repeat – ‘Welcome to 21st century!’"
Nidhi seemed quite concerned about the brand of the pencil. I always thought Nataraj was not one of those super looserish brand.

In two years of MBA, Agnes always carried two pens. She is comfortable with using pencils in office. Her only objectiong is something I had not really anticipated for.

Sharpening pencils in Irevna would be highly unprofessional.

An apple and professionalism

Initially The Beatles started a company called Apple Corps. (which obviously closed down extremely quickly as their ideas had no financial backing whatsoever). It is said, an apple a day also keeps doctors away (if aimed right). Apples are also declared by Christian Popes as the forbidden fruit. Even Hindus believe that we should not be attached to fruits (of our action). Newton had an unfortunate encounter with an apple (some people wish it was a coconut), and he came up with the three laws of motion. Captain Barbosa (from Pirates of the Carribean) always carried an apple with him.

As for my symbolism, I carry an ipod. Itz amaing how quickly your perception of the office decor can change if you listen to Roger Waters, even for an hour (Even the excel sheets get psychadelic).

Listening to music during office hours may not be professional, but it keeps me awake.

Correct Temperature Soup

What does goldilocks think of herself? She breaks into a strangers house, drink their soup, and is still complaining about the temperature of the soup. (Bart Simpson outsmarted her, he mixed the hot and cold soup, and drank it.)

When she was found sleeping in the baby bear's bed (apparently other beds were too big for her), she made another big mistake- she ran. Everyone knows we should never run when we see a bear. We should pretend that we are dead (not that we would be pretending for long). I guess that's why the story ended there.

By the end of 2008, we were introduced to the characters again. Goldilocks (bullion) and the three bears again (equity, debt and forex). When the bears were out, people made career decisions to sell gold. Now that gold is reaching new highs, I can safely say it was a huge mistake :P. No one has any clue how warm they wanted their soup.

Astrologers disagree. They call Earth, the Goldilocks planet- neither too hot, nor too cold). Perfect for existence of life. There is a quote in "The Simpsons" on a winter Sunday morning.

"Thanks to global warming, the weather is pleasant"

The training at Irevna has taught me a very important lesson- soups have no temperature.

Cellotape theory

I should buy a cellotape even though I don’t have an urgent requirement??? (for contingency situation). Or is it that only girls needs cellotapes?

But there are problems- which one shud I buy- thin or those fat ones? Transparent or brown? It is also difficult to find the starting point of the tape (specially if my nails are freshly cut). I might need those plastic boxes which help in rollin out and cutting the tapes.

Agnes googled it for me. I knew very little about cellotapes. Its not even one word. Cello is a company that manufactures tapes. Varun insisted its spelled Sellotape.

Eventually, I disagree with myself. Tape theory doesn’t work. What man would keep a torn piece of paper glued together by cello tapes? I mean how desperate are we to keep the paper? The paper is torn. Its time to move on. Write something new and better on a piece of paper that is new and better. Isn’t it what evolution is all about.

Darwinians don’t need cello tape. We prefer evolution instead.

Mastering laziness

Sir Homer simpsons said, "Anything that takes more than 12 steps isn't worth doing!"

Whats common between a saint and a lazy man? They spend their every waking moment to achieve nothingness or sunya. Israel Regardie wrote a book, lazy man's guide to relaxation (and I wonder why it was a small book with big fonts.) He explained how being lazy was not easy. Seinfeld agrees- "I am so busy doing nothing... that the idea of doing anything - which as you know, always leads to something - cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything. "

I gave laziness a chance at work. I tried pretending to work. I do not understand the concept of pretending to work. If I move my hands in a way it should move, while pretending to work, the work eventually gets down. Its frustrating at times.

I am still trying to master laziness.