Rules not meant to be broken

Rules not meant to be broken ( Read on the net..)

1. Give back
2. Play nice
3. Define your special sauce
4. Don't waste people's time
5. Brag (but don't believe your own hype)
6. LOVE WHAT YOU DO AND DO WHAT YOU LOVE
7. Have a personal slogan
8. Have a plan and alter it as work and life evolve
9. Be relevant and stay relevant
10. Create and use a support system
11. Stay in the loop
12. COOL IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT
13. Follow up
14. Offer service with a smile
15. Be a superhero, super-doer (if not, a rock star!)
16. Find a nemesis
17. Stay on people's radars
18. One for you, one for me
19. Pay attention and be consistent
20. Be genuinely enthusiastic
21. TRUST YOUR GUT
22. Do the right thing
23. Say THANK YOU!

A nation of Billion spectators and a total of 20 Olympic medals altogether!

India

at 2008 Beijing Olympics

Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	0	2	3

Just browsing around the internet, I have read plenty of columns and analysis about India's participation and performance at 2008 Beijing Olympics, just presenting some of them for your thoughts..

In the Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_at_the_Olympics

India is credited for first participating at the Olympic Games in 1900, with a lone athlete (Norman Pritchard) winning two medals in athletics. The nation first sent a team to the Summer Olympic Games in 1920, and has participated in every Summer Games since then. India has also competed at several Winter Olympic Games since 1964.

Indian athletes have won a total of 20 medals, mostly in field hockey. The men's field hockey team was dominant in Olympic competition, winning eleven medals in twelve Olympiads between 1928 and 1980, including six successive gold medals from 1928–1956.

in Hindu http://www.hindu.com/2008/08/27/stories/2008082755601100.htm

First: building a sporting culture in the country. Each of us has to play a role in this, you included. When was the last time you played a game, or swam or cycled or ran? Last year? In college? In school? We are a cricket crazy nation but 99 per cent of us are spectators that too, television viewers — but we are the first to shout at Sehwag, Tendulkar and Dhoni on the screen, telling them what they should do.

What should the government do? Make sports/physical education a compulsory subject up to class 10; encourage schools to provide exposure to the sports pyramid in a structured manner to the students; delineate a sports and fitness policy and execute it relentlessly;

in Asia Times http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JH08Df03.html

Well, the auguries don't look too good. For one, a nation of a billion-plus people - the world's most populous democracy - has dispatched a small squad of 57 athletes (and 42 officials) to the Games. In other words, with a total of 28 sports and 302 events to compete in, only a meager 57 Indians athletes are qualified participants.

Contrast this with the United States, which marches into Beijing with a powerhouse contingent of 596 athletes. China has 639 and even tiny Estonia has 47 representatives. In terms of the total Olympic medal tallied, India ranks even behind Nigeria, a country whose economy is one-twentieth of its size.

About half the money from India's outlay will be channeled towards administrative expenses and the salaries of officials and bureaucrats. In other words, much of it will be gobbled up in administrative expense rather than the crucial training of athletes

Many feel that the first step for India would be to loosen the tight control of politicians, bureaucrats and administrators over the country's numerous sports associations - at the Athens Games in 2004, 227 officials accompanied 75 athletes.

and If some of you want some consolation, you can read this in Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/25/india.olympicgames2008

"The Chinese have built their success strategically by concentrating on diving, gymnastics and table tennis. We need to do the same in shooting, weightlifting and boxing. It's entirely possible to win more medals. Many more."

and Some wrote like this,
Well we had a Bronze in 2000, and we had a Silver in 2004, now we have 1 Gold and 2 Bronzes in 2008, doesn't it look like progress?

Is that true?

Dasavatharam - review.

Dasavatharam review:

This review is my personal opinion of the movie. Have made an attempt as how Dr. Kamal Hassan would have conceived the movie. There could be flaws in my interpretation, but have made a sincere attempt to be honest and had to watch the “full” movie second time to get clear understanding of the movie.

Prelude:

The movie is based on ‘Chaos Theory’ and the screenplay has been adopted just to prove it. Ironically, Mr. Hassan has used Lord Vishnu’s ten avataram to prove ‘his belief’ about Chaos Theory, that’s the gist of the movie.

Recently, I have started admiring him more as a official/unofficial director(Hey Ram, Virumandi and Alavandhan) than as an actor and this movie is just another example. This movie has lot of flaws, which I am sure he would have very easily avoided on his own, but could not. The reason, I guess, is just the opposite of what people commonly believe. It is a common belief that he interferes with his director’s work but this film clearly shows that the director and producer have interfered in Mr. Hassan’s script, if not it would have clearly catered at least one set of audience. The director and producer, must have insisted Mr. Hassan to spice up the script by adding few commercial ingredients. The end product is “neither for the class nor for the mass audience”. A lot of stuff seen in the movie have put Vijay/Rajinikanth movies to shame. Example, Patti running over people’s shoulder to put the veil under the statue, the bullet getting rid of Avatar Singh’s cancer tissue, Christian Fletcher jumping down without any tools from the fifth-sixth floor of a building, Govind Ramaswamy jumping from a high bridge without knowing what is going to happen next, only to find him cushioned on a vegetable lorry, over use of Asin in the second half etc etc., Such things could have been VERY EASILY avoided. Quite naturally, the producer must have been scared about the commercial success of the movie and hence the director/producer’s influence is clearly seen in such scenes.

Regarding make-ups, a lot of hard work and effort has gone into it, from that aspect he has done at great job even at his age. However, the end product reminded me of the fancy dress competition that we used to have in my school, nothing more than that.

In my opinion, if Mr. Hassan was bold, he on his own should have produced this movie and should have made it like the Lord of the Rings. This movie had quality contents that could have been filmed for a minimum of 8-10 hours. I am sure it would have been a class movie if it was done that way.

Review:

As said earlier, the movie is about Kamal Hassan’s belief in “chaos theory “and “butterfly effect”, according to this theory what it means is

“systems whose state evolves with time – that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory.

According to this concept, the happenings of a system(here world) are highly sensitive to the initial conditions, that is the reason he goes back to the 12 th century, where the heavy statue of Lord Vishnu falling on to the sea bed has a small effect on the tectonic plates, slowly causing a chain reaction, which later develops into a Tsunami after 800 years. He also intelligently uses the Nambi character from the same 12 th century as the fore-father of Govind Ramaswamy’s character to tell the story. Excellent story telling technique.

Secondly, a lot of people criticize the use of ten characters, he surely has a valid reason to it and has done it very neatly and each character has a meaning to the chaos theory. If Bush had called the plane back to US, the story would not have progressed, had the Japanese character not been there Christian Fletcher would not have been killed, had Patti not dropped the veil into the statue it would have gotten into the hands of the villain, with Kaifullah, Govind character would not have escaped, without Vincent Boovaragan, Andal(Asin) and the statue(which had the veil) would not have been saved, a lot like these, and the list goes on and on. All these things happen in a unpredictable chaotic manner and had a effect on the final happening, in short chaos theory.

Kamal Hassan has VERY NEATLY attached(he could have done it more effectively) each of the ten characters to the ten avatarams of Lord Vishnu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishnu_Avataras

1. Shingen Narahashi – Narasimha avataram – Not just the name and the makeup, also the characterization. In Narsimha avataram, Lord Vishnu was a guru and he was neither a man nor an animal and had to kill Hiranyakasipu without any weapons and hence the martial arts thing and the weird makeup.

2. Vincent Boovaragan – Krishna avataram -Was a Dalit, Saves Andal(Asin) from the Sand quarry villan while her cloth is being stripped and gets killed by a steal rod poked on his leg. Exactly similar to what Krishna was and how he died, Krishna died of an arrow being hit in his leg and saved Draupathi while her dress was stripped and he too was suppose to be a Dalit.

3. Kalifulla Khan - Vamana Avatar – This is the avataram where he takes the vishwaroopam and hence this character.

4. Christian Fletche - Parasuram Avataram – Referred as Rama with the Axe – Christian Fletcher has an iron axe in his hand. This is one avataram where Lord Vishnu gets into killing spree and kills and kills 21 generations, and so does Christian Fletcher her, he gets into a killing spree.

5. Krishnaveni Paati – Varaha Avatar – Her makeup was very horrible, plus if you look closely, the character’s makeup resembles like a pig, mouth protruding and also she plays that character of a pig in the Mukundha song……

6. Rangaraja Nambi - Masya Avatar – This character was tied to the statue and thrown into the sea, loosely depicted character of Masya Avatar.

7. Balaram Naidu – Balaram Avatar – The name and action clearly imply this avatar and he was fair skinned as compared to his brother Krishna and hence the makeup looks pretty close to Vincent Boovaragan.

8. Avatar Singh – Rama Avatar – Who believes in love and one man/one woman theory, and hence he was willing to sacrifice his voice for his wife….

9. Koorma Avatar – Probably Bush –for being slow to act, the character even says funnily, “if it is complicated then don’t say”.

10. Govind Ramasamy – Kalki Avatar – Who is yet to appear and is suppose to appear to the current world.

He has clearly weaved a very good script, with an excellent storyline and clearly interlinked it at each stage to chaos theory with the help of the above ten characters. He did not make an ordinary rags to riches or love story that we see today, he has given a very brave attempt.

To make it class movie he should have cut all the commercial contents and made each of the character elaborate, and made it a 10 hour movie, but will people accept it ???

If no, he is not running a charity, he too is running a business, from that aspect he has done an excellent job.

I might or might not agree to his concept of chaos theory, keeping that aside, he surely is a RARE and TRUE genius in Indian cinema a class apart. We should be proud of unearthing such a treasure, we should encourage him and people like him for their on screen activities if we need to take Indian cinema to the next level.

Rotten American Banking System (let me coin a name and call it “RABS syndrome”)

Rotten American Banking System (let me coin a name and call it “RABS syndrome”):

I have tried to present this article in pure but simple English that way it benefits anyone who reads it. This is an attempt to lay a picture of how rotten the American Banking system is and mainly how dysfunctional its governing bodies are. This mismanagement will have a significant adverse impact on the financial stability of this beautiful country and essentially the rest of the world. When will it happen ? no person/organization can predict but the current practice cannot sustain. RABS, I can say is the mother of all financial problems this county has faced and will face for the foreseeable future, the mortgage crisis is just a drop of water when compared to this RABS ocean.

My trading knowledge in derivatives segment (option trading) has helped me understand this mess. I accidentally started this research when I first read about the Countrywide-Bank of America merger, the deeper I got into this the scarier it became. Again, this is just my understanding of what I saw, I am neither an economist nor a Finance guy, this gives me a 'comfort' that I could be wrong (considering the implications of RABS based on my findings, will be more than happy to be wrong).

Let me put forth a few definitions before I can start using these terms in the article

Comptroller – A comptroller or controller is a person who supervises accounting and financial reporting within an organization (wiki definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptroller )

Derivatives – A Financial instrument/contract, whose value is, derived from the value of something else (usually an underlying asset), will try to explain more about this later in the article. Some common examples of derivatives are: Option trading(Calls and Puts), Futures, Commodity Contracts and Interest Rate contracts, see wiki definition of derivatives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_%28finance%29

The US treasury/Government/Fed is the Comptroller of all US National banks – called as the Office of the Comptroller of the currency('OCC'), they have an official website, see the proud statement at the top which says "Ensuring Safe and Sound National Banking System for all Americans" (please visit this site before you read the rest of this article, even if it is just a click to read their statement, it is fine: http://www.occ.treas.gov/index.htm )

They give a 'Quarterly Report' on the Bank's Derivative activities ( http://www.occ.treas.gov/deriv/deriv.htm ). They have all their reports since the fourth quarter of 1995 published for everyone to see for free, I guess it should be because of the Freedom of Information Act(FOIA).

Getting back to the derivatives, the biggest advantages of derivatives trading is: Leverage. If you have traded options, you know what it means. For people who are new derivatives trading, let me very briefly explain what options are(for others please skip the following para).

There are two types of options: Call Option(you buy them when you anticipate that the underlying asset will appreciate) and Put Option(you buy them when you anticipate that the underlying asset will depreciate). Every option has an expiry date, which means your anticipation is tied not only to price movement but also price movement within certain period of time. Then there is a the price which is called Strike price, the price that you think is appropriate for your strategy. Let me try to explain with a small example: Say you anticipate Gold to close above $1000 by June 2008 and assume today(April 03 2008) it is trading around $900. You would buy a call option(say for $10) at for a strike price of $1000 that expires in the month of June and if the price of gold goes to $1050 before the expiry of the option, you gain $40. This is because you paid a premium of $10 for that option and that premium means anything above $1000 is yours to keep , now you are suppose to get $50 because the asset has appreciated to $1050 but you have paid a premium of $10, so your net profit is $40. The more the asset appreciates the more the gain you make. Now what happens if the asset falls down below $1000, all you loose is your premium – the $10. This is exactly how options trading can give you leverage. The following link however gives a very good introduction of what they are and how they function (http://www.investopedia.com/university/options/ ).

In here, with respect to the banking system a derivative or options is a “financial contract” between various financial/banking institutions. The contract usually has an underlying asset, the asset can be anything in this world, it can be peanuts (literally), it can be oil, it can be stocks, it can be mortgage backed securities, it can be anything, except you and me(might change soon !!). These contracts move based on the price movement of the underlying assets. What US investment banks (for various reasons they do not have the same restrictions that of the consumer banks have) do is control these assets by owning a fraction of them in the form of options, they do this just for their own leverage/profit. The Fed has to go by the terms dictated by them, if not these investment banks will fail and so will the economy and Bear Stearns is just one of them. I have made a decent attempt in the rest of the article to explain how it works and what is bound to happen.

Let us now discuss based on the latest report of 'OCC' (The third quarter 2007 report) – mind you this is an official government report, so it is not prepared by just you or me or any third party organization - http://www.occ.treas.gov/ftp/release/2007-137a.pdf

Read the whole report at your leisure, if you need quick info navigate to the 21 st page of the report you will see a very scary reading. The table says that the top 25 National banks put together just own around 4% of their assets that they trade. Plus they are NOT trading in Millions or Billions, they are trading in Trillions, yes trillions. In simple terms the top 25 national banks have a total asset of 6 Trillion dollars while they trade around 172 TRILLION dollars ! Remember the US GDP is around 12 Trillion. These banks are trading around 14 times worth of the US GDP ! and it is reported by OCC. Isn’t it atrocious ???? Plus if you narrow down it to the top three banks (JP Morgan + Citi + Bank of America) they trade around 157 Trillion – around 91 % of the top 25 banks but they own around 3.7 Trillion of assets. Look at how much these people are leveraged….

What happens when these underlying asset change in value(on the negative side) say by 2-5%, the hit that these banks take is unimaginable, they will not have the money to pay the loss that they will incur. That will eventually cause them bankruptcy, exactly what happened with Bear and Stearns. So the Fed has to go in the direction of where these banks have placed their bets, the economy cannot survive if these banks do not survive. The fed will even be willing to dump the dollar for these banks to survive(like it is doing now by lowering the interest rates).

Do you want to make any guess what these banks have been trading or what have they placed their money on ?

85% of these bets (I am sorry options) as per the above OCC report is on the “direction of the interest rates” !!! THE FED HAS TO(IT HAS NO CHOICE) TO CHANGE THE INTEREST RATE WHERE THESE BIG BULLIES HAVE PLACED THEIR BETS. If not they will fail. If they fail(like Bear Stearns did) the FED has to rescue, Alan Greenspan did it for Long Term Capital in the late 98( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management ), today Bernanke did it to Bear Stearns in 2008. Remember these are peanut companies that deal around 200-500 Billion(is 500 B small, of course relatively). Imagine what would happen if the giants like JP Morgan, who trade around 92 Trillions fail ???? Who can bail them out ????? What happens to the economy of this beautiful country ???

As a small scale investor, the best thing is to diversify your holdings to different types of assets: Gold, Oil, Swiss Francs, Euro and any other tangible asset that you can…..in short run for the cover.


In the meantime, this country is a very wonderful and blessed country, it has gone through a lot of hardships and fought through it bravely and has come out of it successfully, that is my only hope !!!

What is in a Religion ?

Some of our thoughts are 'confirming', we are 'extremely' sure about our beliefs, this extremity rejects suggestions and makes us insist that our beliefs are pure facts – the core concept of fundamentalism. This is vehemently followed by the fundamentalists of 'both the extreme', both, one group which CONFIRMS with 'extreme surety' that 'Religion is the ONLY way to go' and the other group which CONFIRMS with 'extreme surety' that 'Religion is the cause for all the problems in this world'.

In lot of ways, both these people follow the same path (extremism/fundamentalism) except that they are marching in the opposite direction towards a different goal. People who belong to both these categories fight against others to protect their 'belief' about religion (whatever it is, for or against). Human emotions are weak and can be easily manipulated and this could slowly pull the normal people to one of the extremes. The world will then be a war zone where the majority of the people are fighting just for their beliefs. I personally have a very 'little' sympathy over the second fundamentalist group just because they were created due to the persistence of the first fundamentalist group (who say that religion is the only way to go), but can never support their thoughts of fundamentalism.

Fortunately, a majority of the people believe that truth lies "somewhere in between", which is "Religion has to be used JUST to make people more disciplined and more human and has to be a tool used for peaceful purposes alone", this is again my belief that majority of the people belong to this group (I can be completely wrong), there is no statistical proof to this belief of mine, the reason I make this statement is because the world still exists.

However, the 'strong' argument of the people who belong to the second group is that 'When religion is still causing so many problems, when it is enforced on us at birth, why have it, and will the world not be a better place without it ?' Which might sound valid, 'To tell you the TRUTH', let us take a deep breath and answer the following question "TRULY", I mean "TRULY TRULY", putting aside our egos and the fear of my beliefs being wrong.

Will the world be completely safe after eradicating religion ?

The natural answer from the second group of fundamentalists would be 'the world will be a much much better place than NOW', there is no way to prove this, because a set(let me not quantify this set with lot or less) of people are still following religion for peaceful purposes alone, religion has enforced discipline in them. But, for argument purposes "I still take the point that the world will be a better place as answer whole heartedly". "Assuming" that eradicating religion has made this world a better place, I have a series of questions, is religion the only thing that is causing problem of 'this magnitude' ?

NO, there are lot of other things that have been causing problems of this magnitude, Land Borders, Money, Color/Race, language, even Freeways etc., Eradicating each one of them might make this world better place than NOW, will we then be completely safe ??? The answer is no, we still will have a lot of problems. We are humans, it is our nature to seek pleasure and displeasure in every aspect of life

How do we know which is the greatest problem humans are facing(say among religion, land borders, money, color/race and language and Freeway) and what do we start eradicating first and why ? There is no answer to this and there is no practical solution either……. There are people who believe that our Land borders have created a lot of problems, as a result, our Nationality was forced on us at birth, like it or not we have to live with it, can we change our nationality as "World" ?. A freeway too was designed to take people from one place to another but it too has created a lot of deaths in the form of accidents, can we eradicate freeways ??? Then why blame religion alone ??? Should we start to VEHEMENTLY eradicate or implement everything that 'we' 'EXTREMELY BELIEVE' as a problem/solution ????? If so who defines that we, who is correct ? who is wrong ?

BTW, we never tried to answer the questions what if our assumptions are wrong, the fundamentalists on the other side too will CONFIRM that their beliefs are facts and will enforce that Religion is the only way to go. They surely will have ample proof to justify their beliefs. Both these teams will not even get into answering the point 'what happens if their assumption is wrong', they will refuse to even think from that angle !!

Since both the fundamentalist group claim that what they say is fact and by the virtue that they are exactly opposite, one thing that is obvious is that one of them is wrong, for sure, or "possibly" both !

The point is, for the fundamentalists on either 'extreme', Human life is all about victory (for them) and defeat (for their opponents) in implementing their beliefs, they are least prepared to travel to find the truth. 'To tell you the TRUTH', Human life is all about living alive or being dead, as simple as that. If only the people at both the extremes try to start analyzing from that angle, they would agree that 'the truth lies somewhere in between these extremes'. They will stop complaining/acting (could even be killing) against each other 'even though it is compelling to do that'. There are a lot of things that could be done peacefully to improve humanity, that is probably a better solution…………..

Bottom Line: Every concept designed by us as humans has lot of potholes and disadvantages(for the fundamentalists who oppose a human concept), we also should understand that none of the concept is perfect(for the fundamentalists who enforce a particular concept as the only way to go). We should learn to look at the bigger picture and live with it and not try enforce it in "EITHER" way !!

The truth lies somewhere in between……..