Want To Become A Pilot?

A woman fakes documents (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Woman-pilot-faked-papers-for-licence-after-failing-test-7-times/articleshow/7583939.cms) to get a pilot license. Apparently there are people available in Delhi who can "get you the license". Reminds me of what I mentioned in an earlier blog (http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2011/01/capitalism-at-its-best.html).

I wonder how many such spurious pilots are there in the system. With people like these piloting our planes, god help our planes and our passengers.

Ice Cream From Breast Milk

Ice Cream from Breast Milk (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360225/Shop-sells-breast-milk-ice-cream-London-restaurant-Icecreamists-Baby-Gaga.html) on sale in UK.

Hmm. I thought of a name for the brand: Breastkin Robbins.

What next? What else will we sell now?

Additional reading:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2017/07/25/i-donate-my-breast-milk-heres-how-and-why/?utm_term=.26d39c738726

Sri Lanka Vs Pakistan World Cup Cricket Match

I was watching the Sri Lanka Vs Pakistan World Cup cricket match played at Colombo tonight. I was hoping it would be terrific and so it was when Pakistan was batting. Then the Srilankans came in to bat chasing 270 odd runs. The run rate dropped to a trickle and at 30 over into the Srilankan innings, the hosts needed a run rate of about 10 runs an over. 

I thought it was all over. That Pakistan had won the match. Then I saw a series of misses. Stumping chances, catches. A bunch of them missed by Pakistanis. What should have been a cakewalk for Pakistan turned out to be a tough match. 

Eventually Pakistan did win the match with about a ball to spare. If Pakistan continues to field like they did today, they might as well go back home.

Middle Class India In The 1970's

I read this today (http://www.funtoosh.com/jokes/indian_jokes/472) and thought how true. This is how it was across India for the middle class with small variations.

There was not much of a variation in the lifestyles of you and your neighbor and your cousin. It was pretty much the same.

I still remember the day I visited my uncle's place. They had a TV and there was a large bunch of neighbors who had gathered around in their house to watch some popular program on TV. I was standing at the door. My aunt didn't recognize me. I had not seen them for 6 years and they were not expecting me. My aunt asked to come in and watch the TV program.

Life has changed a lot today. There is a vast difference in lifestyles between the lower middle class and the upper middle class today.

Target Verification

The other day I had an argument with a friend. She was explaining that when you are trying to achieve a target, you start with the target and go about with your plan of achieving the same. You should not question/revisit the target.

I strongly disagreed. I said the target may be incorrect. Maybe it was not thought through. She hmmm'ed and haaw'ed. But still was not convinced.

I gave her an example. Let's assume I told you my target was to get married to Aish (ex Ms World). Would my friend take that target to be gospel truth and work on the means to achieve it or would she prefer to negotiate with me on my target and change it?

Now I have to tell you something about my friend. A smile doesn't come to her too easily. The last time she smiled was about 30 years back. But then on that day when I explained about the target she burst out laughing. Not only that, she gave in immediately to my idea of a target verification step.

She could have shown a little more grace and empathy and not laughed like that. At least she could have made a show of working with my target and trying to make it happen.

But the way she burst out laughing and capitulated completely...

Needs And Wants

I came across a nice story on needs and wants. I usually don't like to paste content from some other place. I prefer to provide a link to the source. I search for the content in google and i usually get a (or a lot) reference. 

Like this particular story that I read now seems to find its place in a lot of blogs.

• http://akssara.blogspot.com/2010/09/postpone-what-i-want-to-do-for-what-i.html
• http://www.shayri.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71690
• https://prafulkr.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/postpone-what-i-want-to-do-for-what-i-have-to-do/

And possibly many other blogs also. I am reminded of a story titled "A=A+1" which used to do the rounds 20-25 years back. It was a nice catchy story how a typical middle class engineer from India goes to USA and then goes through a series of milestones in life (finishes graduate program, gets a job, buys car, gets married, has children, buys a house, wants to return for good to India but each year he has a problem (a new car loan, drinking water in India is not good, huge mortgage for house, children are too young, children are too big etc), so he promised himself "Next Year. I will definitely quit and go back home to next year". The return to India for good never happens. 

While the story by itself was interesting, what was really funny was the number of acquaintances who claimed that it was their brother-in-law (who was the original Chetan Bhagat, "a bright middle class engineer from IIT who made good") who wrote it! Wonder why most people chosen a "brother in law" as the person who wrote it.

Coming back to the article on needs and wants, it seems quite similar to the article on Adam Khoo (http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2009/12/inspirational-share-with-children.html). And well written.

Cathedral Picture: Before And After Christchurch Earthquake

I saw a picture of a cathedral in Christchurch after the recent earthquake and a picture before (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12554732).

Click the "Before" and "After" links to see the two pictures.

Pictures Of Jalani And Her Co Workers, Finally

I have been asking Jalani for her picture and those of her boss and his wife etc. Finally I got them. Here they are http://www.funtoosh.com/jokes/office_humor/156

(Guess which one is Jalani).

Strange Incidents In And Around Calcutta

I read a couple of stories about life. The first one was about a man A who shot another man B because A believed that B had taken A's wife (C) away. (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata-/Bigamy-case-leads-to-murder-in-court/articleshow/7552894.cms).

Now it seems that B and C were married with a child. How come A believes that B had taken A's wife from A? Hmmm. And the shooting happened in the court. Hopefully it should not take the court years to figure out what really happened.

In another incident a lesbian couple in the state of West Bengal committed suicide. (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata-/Lesbian-couple-commits-suicide/articleshow/7543306.cms). There are a few interesting points that struck me.

• One of the girls Sucheta was 18 years old and married and lesbian. Wowowowow. Quite a lot for that age. I mean how come you get married at that age? How come you got married (to a person of the opposite gender) at any age if your sexual inclination is different?
• And "an activist lamented that homosexuals are hounded and killed". Is the activist saying that this suicide note is a hoax? Or is he saying that suicide not or not, he always believes that homosexual people are hounded and killed. Because most people hate the idea of man being with man and woman with woman. And so these two girls were kinda forced to commit suicide? So it HAS to have been a case of murder?

Bengal is strange.

Corrupting The Mind

I read this (http://www.funtoosh.com/jokes/life/198) today and I was fascinated. How interesting it is to corrupt a clean mind. You have to know the right spot to "touch" - which in this case was avarice through 99 gold coins.

Guruji fondly calls me Ellsworth Toohey. Toohey is a character from Rand's novel "Fountainhead" who has a keen perception of people around him and goes about corrupting them. He is superficially a nice person but deep inside he is out to control people and create a negative impact on them. I wonder why Ayn Rand created that character. 

Different Perspectives, Sex

I read this and loved it. http://www.santabanta.com/jokes.asp?catid=10390.

Made me think. How different our perspectives are and how two of us think of the same event so differently.

The Law

I had long wished for cleanup in our government and in our politics and in our industry. The impunity with which we (in India) circumvent laws is difficult to digest (read: http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2011/01/capitalism-at-its-best.html).

And the DMK office was searched by CBI couple of days back. I doubt if CBI found any incriminating evidence connecting the ruling DMK party with kickbacks received for its (shall we say friendly) disbursement of 2G telecom licenses.

Nobody is above the law. Not the two pieces of s*** that have been the heads of state in this state for the last so many years. Not the industrialists like the Ambanis. Not the religious/caste minorities (with their "you cant to do this to a minority, we are entitled to misbehave. Bombing is our birthright") nor to the perpetrators of the Godhra.

We are on the right track. But, we need to speeden the verdicts. The way our processes and our courts work now, snails and tortoises overtake us. We should aim to settle the biggest of cases in about 6-12 months (as against 15-20 years now). That would mean improving the infrastructure for the legislative process, handle conflicting objectives of being provided with a lot of power while still being incorruptible. We need a mechanism for learning from our mistakes and incorporating the learnings.

When will this happen?

Cases pending in Supreme Courts: https://newsstand.google.com/articles/CAIiELzLeHnM-90FG4hLXGvuRuoqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowzrL9CjDC7vQCMK2y1gU

Oh My God, Obama Is Out

I was reading an article today about a royal wedding in England. Beckham and his wife, the bride's ex boy friend (and his ex girl friend and her ex boy friend etc) have been invited but not Obama.

Wow. They do have a way of deciding whom to invite and whom not to.

I remember when Charles got married to Diana almost 30 years back to the day. The event was celebrated in a grand style then. There were commemorative coins then. But the bride of that day is no more.

And now we have another marriage coming up. Don't we all want to know who has been invited and who has not? It's such an earthshaking event. And the millions of pounds of tax payer's money that the government (or royalty) will spend on this event should be juuuuust fine.

And then a friend sent me this article
(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Man-held-for-raping-teen-daughter-for-two-years/articleshow/7550645.cms). A man repeatedly raped his teenaged daughter in Mumbai. I have read a similar incident in the same place Govandi (a slum in north east Mumbai) about a year back.

From marriages to rapes nothing seems to change in the world.

Make Money Online (Or Offline)

A friend who is worried about my financial state gave me a link (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/How-to-rake-in-more-Mistresses-go-online/articleshow/7544451.cms) today which she thought would be useful in my business.

And people today are more net savvy and they have more disposable income. Husband and children are not home most of the time. There is a huge market out there.

This gives me conviction that it is possible to make money. One day I will be the best there is in this business, way ahead of Salman, John, Ranbir etc.

Thanks Jalani.

High EQ

A friend sent me this and I liked it.

http://www.citehr.com/317497-just-think-about-man-his-pant-avs-s-desk.html

Comments On My Blog

I don't publish comments on my blog. A reader(s) left some comments recently. I thought why not.

I have started publishing comments that are impersonal and left anonymously.

Subsidies To Air India

So Air India has a debt of Rs 40,000 crore (about $9 billion) and seeks another $500million loan from the government (http://in.news.yahoo.com/vayalar-ravi-cracks-whip-on-air-india-top-brass.html).

While the article in the link above doesn't talk about the P&L of Air India, it is quite likely that they are making big losses and having a huge cash flow problem.

Now we have other carriers like Singapore Airlines which perhaps is doing much better. We have our own Jet Airways which is doing ok.

Why do we need to pay 1crore/annum (approx $250,000 annually) salary to people and still have this mess? The government is firing a few of these employees. How about firing a chunk of unproductive workers? Whatever loss the government is making comes out of taxpayer's money.

But then we have a trade union. And it's a sacred cow: giving guaranteed jobs. One of the government's objectives is to help the poor. Are we helping the poor better by running this airline or would we help better by divesting off?

Probably the best thing would be to take the Airlines through an IPO and hand over management to someone else and get rid of this monkey(s).

Large Family

Today I read an article (the link doesn't work now). It is about a man with 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren, all the family living under one roof in the north eastern state of Mizoram.

Wow, if there were some great grandchildren, his family would be larger than European states like San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Vatican etc.

I wonder how all the wives live in the same house. And the children. And whether the man will remember who is part of his immediate family and who is a neighbor.

Sikkim: Kanchendzonga And Bhutan

I came across this article today

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/life/article1465236.ece

It looks so pretty, doesn't it? Sikkim is an amazing place. I have seen pictures of the capital Gangtok. It's far cleaner and more beautiful than equivalent places like Ooty in the South.

It has the countries of Bhutan, China, Nepal, Bangladesh (and the Indian states of Assam, Bihar, West Bengal) within about 250km. By Indian standards, 250km is a very small distance. North to south India is about 4000km and east to west it's more than 3000km.

This link (http://www.answers.com/topic/thimphu) gives a good insight into Thimphu. Bhutan is quite clean (in every sense of the word) and quite expensive also. It costs upwards of Rs 10000 per day. The rates are usually all inclusive (hotel + food + jeep + driver/ guide + permits etc), meaning you can't book into a hotel separately, hire a car separately etc.

Death Of A Neighbor

Today I came to know that a lady, a neighbor for many years, died of a cerebral stroke. She was not very old, must have been in her 60's. She was a very sweet woman and very nice. Rarely have i seen her angry or yell at anyone.

While she and her husband were not wealthy and they had there own financials troubles, she was invariably generous and polite (it's difficult perhaps to understand what I say unless we have seen the average person in these parts). There used to be a time when they were well off but then they had fallen on troubled times. 

I admired the way she handled those crises times in her life. She was a lady.

Our Poor Prime Minister

How does it feel to be henpecked and playing 2nd fiddle all the time? How does it feel when you are basically good and talented and you have muck around your family?

I feel our Prime Minister (PM) Manmohan Singh is in such a position. I think he is basically a decent man. I wonder how he feels everyday when he sees a new scam, each one bigger than the previous one, when he has to put up with people that he wouldn't touch with a barge pole.

It must be awful to see the series of scams from Commonwealth Games to 2G to Adarsh Housing Complex to Antrix to god knows what next. How does it feel to be confronted with a new one each day because of nincompoops around you, who neither have decency nor the sense to listen to better counsel? Don't you feel like cringing? Or just vanish?

Blogger

Blogger is lovely. But it has its own quirkiness. The stats provided by blogger while using chrome includes my own pageviews even if I set the option to No. Rather, I think the option can be set but it's set only for a session. But in Safari it works fine.

If I try to edit my profile from the blog page, i get an error message "We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request." with error code "bX-y67gro". This has been happening for the last 2 weeks or so. I can still go through the design and make changes. But it's strange.

Almost the whole of yesterday and a part of today my blog was inaccessible in Chennai. I tried to ping my blog. I couldn't. But i could edit the blogs, view stats etc. But if I clicked on "Don't track your own pageviews" the popup window did not bring up the two options. I couldn't view other blogs either. It was accessible in at least one other place in India. There was no access problem outside India. 

Hmm. Wonder what went wrong.

Twitter

I read this article 

(http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=ETNEW&BaseHref=ETBG/2011/02/11&PageLabel=1&EntityId=Ar00102&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T) today which mentions that Twitter is valued at about $8 billion. I think its revenues are about a $100 million (http://en.mercopress.com/2010/12/21/in-less-than-a-year-twitter-s-value-has-soared-to-3.7-billion-usd). 

I wonder why someone would pay a price of 80 times its revenues. Mind you, we are not talking about earnings here. We are talking about a valuation of 80 X annual revenues.

What is the investor chasing? Where is the intrinsic value? The investor would make money only if he can unload his investment to another investor who is ready to pay an even more exorbitant amount. 

I wonder if the investors haven't gone crazy.

I Am In Business

I am in business. I have always wanted to be on my own. At last. I have a friend (Kiddo) who has a job and who is a also freelance photographer. I persuaded her to take up a job with me as my photographer. She would visit places and take pictures and show them to me.

She loves taking pictures and walking me through those pictures. We discuss the photos, where they were taken, when, why this particular angle and so on and so forth. It is something we both like. 

The only thing that had to be finalized was the pay package. She wanted to do it free. I refused. I said I had to make a living. She asked me WHY SHE should pay me. What a silly question. Do I have the time to go through so many photos and discuss each of them with her?. My time is valuable.

So we ironed out a package for me which was within her means.

I am in business..

India And Tourism And Other Things

India is becoming attractive by the day. Spain tourism board is spending money to get more Indians to travel to Spain

(http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/tp-corporate/article1328191.ece).

And a Belgian and an Australian have taken it on themselves to market India as a tourist destination (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/tp-corporate/article1328188.ece). And why not? India has more of what Europe has to offer. And at vastly cheaper prices. And an experience that is truly unforgettable (uhhh at times unforgivable).

And IBM has said that it has 100,000 employees in India which is 25% of its global employee strength.

The Poet In Me

I had earlier written about my friend Jalani and the cooking disasters in the middle east (http://calmisc.blogspot.com/2009/08/cooking-disasters-in-middle-east.html). Three days back her mom left for India. And she as the temporary (fe)male head of the family has been given the additional portfolio of housework.

Of course the house is now in disarray. The cooking, washing, cleaning etc is not quite up to the usual mark.

She told me today that she had taken the day off and that her brother was sick and gone to see the doctor.

I was touched. I wrote a poem for her.

"

Haal kaisa hai janaab ka

Bhai gaya hai doc ke paas

Yunhi gaye kya oh oh oh

Pet mein dard hua ho ho ho

"

She loved it and I could hear her clapping her hands. I do feel good when I make someone happy. With due apologies to Majrooh Sultanpuri.

Ever since her mom left, I have made it a habit it to tell her the details of what I had for lunch and dinner (my mom is a great cook, by the way). Just so that she can have good food vicariously.

Despite all this, Jalani puts me down often. She has an attitude. She is arrogant and keeps taunting me about my finance, my job etc. She is perennially hungry and eats anything that she can lay her hands on.

I said to her:

"

Tumhare pas dhan hai daulat hai, job bhi

Mere pas MAAAA hai (aur unke haath ka banaya hua khana)

Hum dono ke beech mein jo deewar hai

USKO KHANA MAT

"
With due apologies to Salim Javed.

I feel relieved now.

Spend More Time Undoing Than Doing

Indians are getting more obese by the day. Considering how frequently we are caught with our hands inside inside the cookie jar, we must be spending most of our time in the vicinity of the jar. 

The latest cookie jar episode is about the ISRO spectrum scandal (http://in.news.yahoo.com/bigger-than-2g--cag-suspects-scam-in-s-band-allocation.html). This seems to be of the order of $40 billion. We Indians have really come of age. We don't seem to be interested unless the size is big enough. Till about a few years back a million dollars seemed to be HUGE money to us.

What was really heartwarming, when I read the editorial on this issue in the Hindu today, was that the CAG (Indian Government's Auditing department) had done a pretty diligent job last year on this ISRO issue.

While I don't know the details of what CAG did, it's lovely to see some government department in India being reliable. One hardly sees reliability, trustworthiness these days in anything related to government.

The Devas group, which is the party that is accused to have benefited from this deal, issued a hot denial of any wrong doing couple of days back. And the government is seriously looking at repudiating the contract with the group. 

And the government is looking at repudiating the contracts on 2G. 

What more will the government repudiate? If we spend more time on undoing things than on doing things, how can we go forward? What is the learning from all this?


Where is the Elliot Ness and his gang of untouchables in India? Will we ever have them?

Two Faces

Its official now. Mr MK (the chief minister around here) has denied that he has anything to do with Sun TV or Kalaignar TV or 2G or even anything to do with his children or his wife.

What I love about him (and others like him) is the way he shows empathy. The statement "God is in the happy smile of a poor man" is often said around here. And he has arranged for color TV's to be sold for about $60 each and rice to be sold at 4 cents a kg. And land given free. All to poor people.

Now the question is: whose land did he give? Who paid for the subsidy of rice and TV. Did he pay out of his pocket?

He is alleged to have been deeply involved in kickbacks of various kinds amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. The recent scam is the telecom 2G that he and his family are rumored to be involved in.

Its interesting to see a ruthless mind and heart with a facade of an angelic face.

I am reminded of a scene in the novel Godfather by Mario Puzo. Michael's wife asks him if he did have his own sister's husband murdered. Michael denies it firmly while at the same time his people are out on his explicit instruction to murder Tattaglia and other family heads.

I wonder if our man isn't doing the same. Who Knows.

Laughter And Crying

A friend sent me this. I loved it.

"

A wise man once sat in the audience & cracked a joke. 

All laughed like crazy. After a moment he cracked the same joke again and a little less people laughed this time. 

He cracked the same joke again & again, When there was no laughter in the crowd, he smiled and said 

"When u can't laugh on the same joke again and again, then why do u keep crying over the same thing over and over again."

"

Strange Family

I was getting sick reading about rapes across the country. A woman was raped in a train and then pushed out of the train in Kerala, she died subsequently. And a few women raped daily in Delhi/Ghaziabad etc. It was getting monotonous.

And this (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Woman-kills-brother-for-cash-father-helps-her-hide-crime/articleshow/7440141.cms) came as a breath of fresh air. A woman is married to A, has an affair with B, hires B's brother C to kill her brother D. C was initially hired by A to murder the woman. The woman falls in love with both B and C. 

Pretty mindtwisting. Everyone having an affair with everyone else / wanting to or being hired to murder someone else. Strange family.

Men Have Commitment Phobias

Every time I come across a cliche, I think of reasons why it may not be true. And when I hear someone disprove a cliche, I get excited. And so it was when I came across an article (link doesn't work now) that said men commit faster than women.

It isn't that I don't like our behavior to be modeled and predictable. I do. (A cliche is basically a model of our behavior or of how life is). But I don't like wrong modeling. What I am really curious about is: do really men commit faster than women? Is this data in the link correct ? And applicable across countries? 

Gender and Caste

I love our chief minister. I read this today

(http://news.oneindia.in/2011/02/03/dmkbacks-raja-to-the-hilt-karuna-plays-castecard-aid0126.html).

I have seen Indian women bring gender into a non-gender based discussion. I used to wonder whenever this happened. It's called the "Brahmastra" - the ultimate weapon. I consider this to be an extremely cheap tactic to bring an irrelevant point while discussing an issue.

Now, our man has brought up the caste issue. A very close parallel to the storyline in the movie "Mudhalvan" which I mentioned in an earlier blog (http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2011/02/our-parties.html).

This is a lovely way of side stepping the billion plus dollars that would have changed hands as kickback. The guy is amazing.

Won't it be nice to nail the people involved that benefited from the 2G telecom scam? But considering how fast we acted on Bofors, I doubt if we will see the persons bought to justice in the next 20 years.

Our Parties

Today I read in the newspapers that Mr Raja, ex-telecom minister of India, was arrested by the CBI. And that the congress and Mr Karunanidhi have been silent on the issue while Ms Jayalalitha and other opposition parties are claiming that this should have happened earlier.

While I do hear that Karunanidhi and his cronies do not touch any project unless there is a quarter billion (US) dollar cut for themselves, was the other lady any better when she was in power?

Why are we stuck like this? We have a state (Tamil Nadu) where there are mainly two political parties and each party seems substantially worse than the other. (And this is about the same across the country).

Why cant we have clean men who would shudder at the thought of stealing money, accepting bribes, being unfair, speaking nonsense?

What causes us people to vote for these parties? Don't we have the moral courage to say "we don't want people who are unclean?"

Why do we need them in the first place? Like Dagny told her brother Jim, can't we tell these people "we don't need you"?


Are there not such people in India? Isn't there an "Arjun" of Mudhalvan fame (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudhalvan)?


Will an "Arjun" ever stumble into our politics? Would he have the wherewithal to fight the goons that exist? Will India go through an "Egypt" phase of catharsis?


There is too much money floating around which can buy anything and quell any "disturbance". There is too much acceptance of shoddiness in our psyche. There is too little pride in ourselves.


Where do we go from here?


I wonder what would happen if we were to ask a private company like the Tata's or Larsen and Toubro to run India on a BOT (build, operate and transfer) mode?