Financial Management

A beggar to another beggar: I had a grand dinner at Taj yesterday.

How? The other beggar asked.

First beggar: Some one gave me a Rs 100/- note yesterday.

I went to Taj and ordered dinner worth Rs 1000/- and enjoyed the dinner. When the bill came, I said, I had no money.The Taj manager called the policeman, and handed me over to him.

I gave the Rs 100/- note to the police fellow, and he set me free.

Friendship Day

Just few hours before the end of this friendship day ... latest friend added .... by the way she happens to be my 200th friend on orkut and one of the two persons who had sent a personalized Happy friendship day message. Other one was of course my child hood pal who happens to be the oldest friend of mine to date .. don't mistake his age ... it is the age of our friendship that falls short of our age by probably 7 years.

If one has to value something over oneself it is friends..... and I feel friends are the people who ensure that one grows as a person and develops a personality. You need them to take you through difficulties and cheer your achievements. They are the only ones who knows all about you and still like you. And I think it is the day we honour all the friends who had really helped us to discover ourselves and understand our strengths and limitations.

I am happy that I have a small set of good friends and this very feeling makes me proud. By God's grace I hope I make a few more friends in this lifetime!!!

Love Maths

Math tells us of the 3 saddest love stories:

Of parallel lines, who were never meant to meet.
Of tangent lines, who were together once but then parted forever.
And of asymptotes, who could only get closer and closer, but could never be together.

Traffic jam ... Houseful

Wow... Reached home !!! But daily I reach home why the wow? As usual we left office and reached Churchgate to catch the return local to Andheri. But today the scene was different - motormen went on strike for reasons known to all from ages. And this is a completely new situation - never seen Mumbai without local train. Then the option was to travel 40 km by road in the heavy traffic of mumbai and this journey will definitely as big as Hum Aapke hai kaun or Jodha Akbar. Wait are we talking about the length of the movies? Now why not watch a movie.... nice thought .... four of us went to a movie theatre and watched Houseful ... Came out of the hall after some 3 hours and took a cab back home and reached home in less than the time a hockey match is played with a sense of truimph over the challenge posed in front of us. While, many of them would have experienced a big time chaos caused by traffic jams in Mumbai we had a good time laughing at a mindless comedy made and reached home easily. But now its too late for today and I hope that we need not go to work tomorrow and take a long awaited break.

Trains, Rains and Drains

Sea change is one word I can say when I moved from Serene Campus in Garden City to the most busiest city on the coast of Arabian Sea. Coming to the city for the third time probably for a longer stay this time and a tougher time this time. Induction to the city life is no less than first week at IIMA ... Daily travel of 40 kms from quarters to office seemed to be even longer due to the traffic and rains. Rains did not waste any time in greeting us. .. From the day one they are there to ensure that I have no illusions about the toughness of life here ... Trains never fail to remind the population of the country and apart from crowded trains one more common thing is potholes and drains on the roads.. Wait did I call them as roads ... should I really call them roads ... till I get the definition of road right may be I can call them so.

So next few days it will be trains. rains and drains. In for a challenge!!!

Subtle difference

This is a story from a great person. Once a devotee went to this great person and asked him to explain the differences between Lord Rama and Lord Krishna. The great man thought for a while and replied as follows – “Lord Rama always smiled before saying anything where as Lord Krishna smiled after saying everything – if Rama’s smile ensured that the person does not really bother to listen savoring his pleasant smile Krishna’s smile ensured that the person forgets what he actually listened before this ecstatic smile. Another difference is Lord Rama always told that he is a common man and was always away from the masses where as Lord Krishna always said that he is God and has always been with masses. Lord Rama ensured that he lead the people by example as a great leader in the final battle with Ravana where as Lord Krishna has managed the entire Kurukshetra war without actually participating in it”. The devotee was amazed by this answer and was happy to understand the subtle differences through this great person.

300

Yes I have crossed the 300 hurdle last weekend in the game of free cell after losing the very first game of the season - over taking my second best streak of 276 - but this post is not about that and yes this is not a review of the movie 300 either.

India scored a comfortable win against Sri Lanka to secure a spot in Asia Cup final (not sure about the viewer ship of this tournament) and has a chance to go at the title and win the fifth cup playing against the same opponents that they defeated today who also have three titles to their name. In the course of victory India had scored above 300 which is the 300th occurrence in the history of the One Day Internationals.

Way back in 1975 when the ODIs used be a 60 overs a side affair England scored first 300 plus score against India. However West Indies was the first team to achieve the feat in a 50 over game against Australia three years later in 1978. India took the longest time to join the league - in fact it was the last of the top 8 cricket playing teams in the world to do so - in 1996 against the arch rivals Pakistan at Sharjah. From then on in the last ten years India crossed the magic figure 47 times winning 39 of them.

First twenty years i.e, the period between 1975 and 1994 witnessed only 31 instances of 300 plus scores where as last ten years i.e, from July 7 th 1998 to July 4th 2008 the game had 235 such instances. We already have 20 such scores in this year and it is just the half way mark of the calendar year.

Australia has surpassed the score more times(53) than any other team and India has been on the receiving end on most occasions(42). The details are shown in the graph below.

The game also had 43 games so far ( just two games before the 96 world cup) where both the teams playing the match achieved the 300 plus score India tops the list figuring in 18 such games and winning ten of them. More than 25 sides have lost matches after scoring 300 plus in the last four years or so and looking at the trend we might see more such matches and 300 is not a safe total anymore.

How I met my friend?

Disclaimer: If you do not have an idea of Delhi this post might not make much sense still a good leisure read

I was on a short break at Delhi and hence wanted to meet one of my old colleague from Wilco who happened to be working at Noida. I left my uncle's place at around 10AM in the morning and gave him a call and it so happened that he was on a city tour with his relatives and that point of time he was at Rajghat. I thought I can catch up with them somewhere on their tour and I asked him for his itenary. He told me that they were going to ISCKON temple - I had asked a couple of dozen people on where ISCKON temple was and none of them knew about it and hence I told my friend that I cannot meet him at ISCKON but can meet him at the next destination - he told me that it would be Laxmi Narayan temple - some how it got registered in me as Swami Narayan Temple. Took a metro from Uttam Nagar to Indraprastha and got down at Pragathi Maidan - took an auto and reached Swami Narayan temple at around 11:30 AM - gave a call to my friend just to find out the blunder I made while listening and told him that I would meet up with him before the end of the day - but this was a good mistake to make - I was glad to visit one of the architectural marvels - Akshardham in Delhi - my second one to a Swami Narayan Temple - the first one being at London four years ago. Visited the huge temple and had my lunch at the food court and moved on to meet my friend again - they were planning to reach the Laxmi Narayan temple in an hour from then may be after their lunch. On my way back I thought I will visit India Gate - a recommended place by one of my friends - on the way I found that Raj ghat was pretty close to Pragathi Maidan and could have met my friend at Rajghat well in the morning- reached India gate and had a long walk from India Gate to Central Secretariat and gave a call to my friend just to realise that they finished their lunch and were moving out of AP Bhavan which happened to be pretty close to where I was standing then and I was just kicking myself for not having asked him where they were having lunch then instead I was loitering on the roads of Delhi around the India Gate. Then I took a metro to Rajiv Chowk while my friend and finally at around 3:30PM I met him at the Laxmi Narayan Temple. I just managed to reach the temple while they were getting out of the temple. Visited the temple and got to spend some time with him and later in the day moved back home with a sense of accomplishment - Met my friend and saw a good number of places in Delhi and more importantly used public transport for most of my travel.

Don versus Don

While the campus is confluencing - I had an opportunity to watch a couple of movies from the LAN here - both happened to be Don, yeah the old one and the new one. Having not seen any movie since long time - I found both of them refreshing and entertaining. The first one was classic and Amitabh was too good in both the roles. I thought it would be difficult to resist Sharukh after seeing Amitabh - but to my surprise, the show here was run by Farhan Akthar - who managed to create interest by potraying the pseud image and the changed times - the global locations, hi-technology security devices, the diary was replaced by a small disk, police vans were replaced by helicopters and chartered flights and the list goes on. If the older version was all about showing emotions and anger, the newer one was all about displaying shrewdness. The director stuck to the original, scene to scene to begin with, but smartly hijacked the story in the second half. While, the original version followed the formula - Good wins over the Evil , the latest version chose to justify that "Don ko pakdna mushkil hi nahin naa mumkin hain"!!!