Friday, October 26, 2007

Surprise gift

How do you define a gift as surprise? Atleast, I define it as follows.
If I receive any gift from some one, or at some time when I did not expect. Even if I am expecting some gift, but, if I get one which is very valuable to me (not necessarily in terms of expense) than I had expected.

If somebody says, they would give me a gift, I expect a normal gift. But, if they say, they would give me a surprise gift, I would expect a bigger gift. But, if they give me a gift, when I don't expect, then it would be a surprise gift.

It seems Chief Minister of Jarkhand, Madhu Koda does not even know these basic things. When Dhoni's team won the Twenty 20 world cup, he announced the very first "Jarkhand Rathna" award to Dhoni, and he also told that he would give a surprise gift to Dhoni when he comes to Jarkhand. When Dhoni came to Jarkhand, he presented one luxury car to Dhoni (as surprise gift). Is this a surprise? Atleast, for me, it was very very below expectation.

He announced the very first "Jarkhand Rathna" to Dhoni, and he told that he would give a surprise gift to him. Giving the very first "Jarkhand Rathna" is very big gift, and it is a surprise gift. If he is saying, he would give another surprise gift to him, the expectations would be much much higher. But, he gave just a luxury car as the gift. I agree, that car is very expensive. But, cannot Dhoni buy that himself? He is paying Rs.4 crore as Income tax this year. Cannot he buy one car like that? He can easily get one without any problem. But, He cannot get the very first "Jarkhand Rathna" that much easily. That Award is really a surprise gift. If he had announced car immediately after winning the match, and announced "Jarkhand Rathna" as the surprise gift, it would have been really surprise. But, he did the other way.

By the way, Is there anything that the CM can give bigger than "Jarkhand Rathna" to Dhoni? I doubt it.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Joel On Software

After a long time, Joel Spolsky wrote an article about software. As usual, another wonderful article by him, that every developer/manager in software industry should follow, but 95% do not follow.

This time it is not posted on http://www.joelonsoftware.com/
You can read the post from

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071101/how-hard-could-it-be-five-easy-ways-to-fail.html?partner=fogcreek

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Love Marriages

If you have read any telugu news paper today, or watched any telugu channel in the last 24 hours, you must have heard this news.

Megastar Chiranjeevi's second and youngest daughter Srija (19) married Sirish Bharadwaj (22) secretly in Arya Samaj temple in Hyderabad. Srija says that, she has been in love with Sirish for the last four years, and her family does not like this. So, they stopped her education also. That's why she married him without the consent of their parents.

Allu Aravind told media that, she told about him only few days back, and they are still discussing about that, and she suddenly did like this.

As a person who just reads/watches the news in websites/news papers/TV Channels, we cannot comment on what is correct and what is wrong, because there are many things that are internal to them which lead to this, and we don't know about those.

I am not talking about specific to Chiranjeevi, but, in general parents. If something is bad, but inevitable, then probably going ahead with that bad in a better manner is a good option rather than making it very worse. In this specific case, if she had married him in a traditional way similar to any other marriage of any big personality's daughter, it would have been a news as a celebration. Now, it is a news in other way. If they had married traditionally, nobody would have bothered about what the bridegroom is doing, how much wealth he has etc. But, now, everyone cares about every damn thing.

I think the main reason for this type of marriages is, parents take it for granted that, their daughter will not do like this. Even after hearing news like this, still the orthodox parents say that, my daughter will not do like this, because, we are not like that big personality, and we are taking care of our daughter very well etc, and they will tell like this till their daughter does like this. That is the generation gap.

Let's hope all the parents take care of their daughters very well, and do things needful so that, nobody would be unhappy at the end.

Sensex

The base value of sensex was 100 on April 1st, 1979. In July 1990, it reached 1000. And in early June 2005, it was less than 7,000. By Oct 2007, it reached 19,000. Such a big spike in 2 years 4 months. But, still I am hearing comments from many people saying that, economy of india is very good. That's why we are seeing this growth. It will grow, or it may stabilize. But, it won't fall that much. I am not an expert in stock market, so cannot comment on it. Just for food for thought, these are the two charts for US, and Japan stock markets.




This chart is for US Stock Market (NASDAQ), and stock market has not reached 2000 level till now.



This chart is for Japan stock Market, and the stock level has not reached the peak level in 1985-90, even after 20 years.

Most of the time, and from most of the people, I am hearing that this will not happen to india. I don't know what will happen. Time will tell whether it is true or not.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Bus Service in Cities.

I would like to see a city which has very good city bus facility. Atleast in Bangalore, and Hyderabad, the bus service is very bad, and because of that most of the people who can afford for auto/cab, would not use bus. Eventhough government can do many things to improve this, but, it is not doing it.

Bangalore - Ordinary City buses
Don't think of sitting at any time, unless you are getting in at the starting point. If you are travelling at peak time, then don't even think of comfortable standing.

Bangalore - Volvo City buses
Most probably you will get seat. But, buses are not frequent. Not all routes have volvo buses, and even the routes that have these buses, don't have high frequency. One may have to wait even half an hour to catch one.

Hyderabad - Ordinary City buses
Don't think of sitting at any time, unless you are getting in at the starting point. If you are travelling at peak time, then don't even think of comfortable standing.

Hyderabad - Metro City buses
At peak time, this is as worst as ordinary city buses. At non-peak time, you may get a seat to sit, or you can stand comfortably. Frequency is reasonable, but not very high.

The main reasons for a person to travel by auto or cab are
1.The bus facility is so pathetic that, they cannot afford to travel in that. There are few categories in that
1.1 The person wants to get into the bus, but cannot get in. (This happens very frequently at peak times in both Bangalore and Hyderabad).
1.2 The person wants to stand comfortably.
1.3 The person wants to sit.
1.4 The person wants to travel luxuriously. (We may have to ignore this category, because, they will not travel by city buses).
2.They don't want to spend their time in waiting.
3.They want to go from one place to another place and there is no direct bus facility.

There are many people who are taking auto or cab for the above reasons. If there are 50 people who are taking auto, because they don't want to stand in a bus, then, just by providing one more bus, all these people need not travel by auto. This will make one bus on the road instead of 25 autos (let's suppose 2 people share an auto). That will be a huge saving in terms of traffic, money, fuel, and pollution. According to the recent calculations, the no.of autos in Hyderabad is 1,00,000. (Yes, you are reading correctly.)

We can reduce the no.of autos and cabs by introducing more no.of buses in all the directions, and extra buses at the peak time. By that, we can save money, oil, time, traffic, and reduce pollution. If RTC thinks it will make losses by increasing the no.of buses, they can increase only metro, volvo, deluxe buses etc., with more ticket price. Those whoever is travelling by auto will not mind to pay half of that price for a comfortable travel by bus.

But, as usual government does not do things which will make people happy. If at all, any government wants to do things like this, there are few things called "Opposition parties", and they will opppose it. Some time back, when YSR government wanted to hire private buses, immediately the opposition parties objected and it became one big issue. The objection was RTC will be in losses, if they start hiring private buses. These politicians are forgetting that, government is there to serve people, and not that people are there to serve government. RTC is there to serve people, and it has to do whatever it takes to give comfortable travel. Not that, people have to suffer while travelling to give profit to RTC.

If people like Ambani, or Suni Mittal takes this idea, and starts a new venture in this, then there are people like mayawathi to stop this.

Let's hope, somebody (either government or big players) will do some thing in this.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

showmedirection.com

A new website www.showmedirection.com is started with the vision of how to get things done like, how to goto a place, how to buy something, how to get something done etc. This website is a wiki, and anyone can add/update/delete information. They have announced gifts for those who add/update information on their site. It does not have that much content now, but, let's hope that, it will grow.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

The Complicated Name

An Indian guy named "Anantharaman Subbaraman" arrived at the New York airport and ended up waiting for his visa for about 2 hours for the authorities to call his name.

He got fed up and went to them and asked why they haven't called his name yet. They said that they have been calling him for the last 2 hours as * * * * * "Anotherman Superman".