Best picture to explain the recent Bailout announced by US Treasury.

I thought only we, Indians, are moronically paying lakhs of money as Tax (that too deducted on source) without seeing much use of it! US with its all rescue efforts and this recent bailout has made me laugh at my own perception!!



Still, there is one concern pending though, from a personal perspective!



This year beginning, from Investment Banking perspective, there were 5 Huge Pillars in Wallstreet - Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns.

And these were the main banks which constituted the Bulge_bracket.



So, for any MBA grad, who has signed the dotted line for an educational loan for an amount anywhere above $50,000, who is willing to cut his/her throat, shed blood, sweat and sleep, Investment Banking was THE DREAM, GOAL, LIFELINE, MOKSHA and so on…(these guys are good at GMAT Verbal as well, so obviously many more twisted lines can be seen!)



Now, as per today (should note time as well ;) afterall these are volatile times!), 3 of the above banks are no more(May their soul rest in Peace!) and the remaining two banks are in their deathbeds from I-Banking perspective!!

Because, both these companies have decided to take the path of a traditional bank. This means there are lot of regulations, lesser profits and inturn NO Bulge_bracket!



So, I-Banking industry has lost all major pillars leaving only minor pillars in US and few pillars in Europe for all Shrewd MBA grads to fight it out.



What’s in store for me?



Well, long ago, i decided that some people,which included me, are not cut out to become bankers :)

One’s strengths seems to be more inline in giving Strategic advises to all the Industry Giants than looking at the money matters! (hey, nothing wrong in having ambitous dreams ;))

But the issue now is, as the I-Banking jobs are reduced, the competition and bloody war will get shifted to the next lucrative avenue. This is not so in favourable lines for me and it is quite upsetting! So,”how long will it take for me to increase the probability and what needs to be done” is something that got to be worked out!!



Meanwhile, one of the gmatclub links where few guys who are apping this year seem to be having second thoughts or atleast gauging the situation.

Some people seem to be saying that at any time, all that matters is an individual’s strength.

I beg to differ though. Timing is everything in life.



Because, i have seen how 2001 dotcom crisis crushed few of my friends ambition of career in VLSI engineering and forced them to become a yet another software engineer. Also, it is just not possible for one to go back and become a VLSI Engineer. It’s a lost dream, all due to bad timing of graduation and lost opportunities.

I am sure, after an MBA, when the stakes are so high, lost opportunities would cost a dear!



And here is another interesting discussion in my favourite freakonomics — If not i-banking

And there were quite a few comments which made me laugh so much that i understood the real meaning of ROTFLOL :) :) Here are those…now, if one doesn’t find this as funny as i thought, i guess one is not in so happy mood ;)



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Comment x : I think the ad has too much chaos.

Comment y : too much chaos? ever been in a busy Indian street?

——————-

Comment x : Just curious… Are all Indian cities so run down, dirty and overcrowded? Even the bus looked like it was about 150 years old. If that’s not normal why portray it in such a bad light?



Comment y : ooh yeah thats the way India is, we have elephants takin an early morning walk along the road… even though the add was taken in the 90s its still the same way… don’t go to India its a bad place for retards :D

——————-

Comment by pakizaaa: trust the indians to get an elephant involved!! hahahaahha how comes there was no cows?

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Comment x : i’m in awe of the f**kwits that have posted messages here! Have I just walked into the dark ages?

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Comment z : Also I think a great thing about it is that there is an elephant in it and you barely see it, it’s soo subtle!!



Comment x : u “barely” see it, any one who only “barely” sees the elephant needs to get his eyes checked!!

——————-

Comment x : Nike wasted it’s money on this stupid ad?on a stupid sport?soccer is the real thing,try it u indian morons!



Comment y : soccer, the sport where u score 3-4 times a game….o yea real tough compared to bowling a hard ball and slamming it and scoring in the hundreds, or american football where you slam people to the ground. yea soccer is soo much more exciting….



Comment x : ok,what’s youre point?i think you never played the sport.cricket.hahahahaha boring!

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Comment x : i thought this commercial was really funny and i enjoyed it until i see the comments with all u mother f**kin retards bringing up racist remarks, honestly u people have no hope…

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Comment x : i do not miss the traffic of india. =)



Comment y : neither do the indians miss you Krzykuri !!



Comment x : lol i bet some indians do.

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Comment x : Maybe they should stick to playing on top of buses!

Cause they sure as hell can’t play on wicket!!!!



Comment y : LOLOLolololololololol

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Comment x : n btw, nybody else, the music is goan, so, how can u guys expect 2 understand it? the music is briliant n so is the ad……my opinion i guess….

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Comment x : they are speaking hindi language

which means there in india



Comment y : well that was obvious was it not - i mean why are there people wearing indian cricket shirts if they are not in India??

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Comment x : Considering the concentration of grammatical errors in your paragraph, you are in no position to call us illiterate. cheers

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Comment x : Man honestly speaking, You Indians make awesome adds. I have to give you guys credit for it man. I’m a Pakistani. This add was brilliant but the others are also amazing. Great work! Keep it up guys! I hope we also do something better for a change.



Comment y : yo dumb ass its an american who is making this add since nike is an american compnay but nice try

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Comment x : man india are crazy about cricket but they are crap at every other sport they play atleast australia is allround in everything they play and we dont have burning efergies of players when our team loses like people in india do see we are a sivilised people we play hard on the field its a game and when the game is over we leave it on the field



Comment y : yea…talk about “sivilisation”…nateollie first you Aussies should be educated enough to spell “civilisation” properly…lol!



Comment x : actually its “civilization” with a Z



Comment y : It can be spelled either ways!



Comment x : ok mr teacher do you go around correcting every spelling mistake on the internet i’d love to see that …… pfffft what else do you know about cricket?



Comment y : ok my not so dear student, I wouldnt have cared about the spelling if you had not questioned about the civilization of my country! My intention was to correct your attitude more than anything else!!



Comment z : its “effigies”… not efergies… man you guys do spell words all crappy

——————–



——————-

Comment x : i love my india.

espescailly hyderabad

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Comment x : it was great…..i loved the fact that they they used lorna’s song from goa…makes me proud to be a goan

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The truth is, i am not a great Youtube viewer…Eventhough,i consider it to be waste of time, the real reason might be the wonderful 75kps Broadband connection which i have…i know, many might wonder why i am using a stone age speed, it is part of measures taken to overcome my Credit crunch situation (although,my brother confidently proclaims that it is yet another “Penny wise, Pound foolish” act on my part!)

still, i am happy that it’s an opportunity to not get addicted to Youtube!

because look at these 2 comscore reports…27 million people watched Online video in UK and Americans viewed more than 11.4 billion videos for a total duration of 558 million hours during July. I think this is good in one way, because this might imply all their jobs are outsourced and they have free time :)



Now coming to the Topic, this is yet another amazing ad….









For the very few Youtube videos i have seen, i never read comments. But,i read the comments of this ad to know the ad details.

As per the comments, the language is Goan-Konkani.

The singer is Lorna and the album is called Unforgettable hits and the track is “Bebdo”.

And lyrics is,

Rav Patrao Rav - translation



Wait, partner, wait

I ask you to let me play.

If you don’t let me play,

I’ll keep bugging you (hit your head)



Our game is

Where we have no time to think

It’s a game of cat and mouse

That I love

And in the hitting, holding, and breaking

My destiny is entwined

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I seemed to have missed quite a few yesterday and couldn’t stop from posting the same today…

Of all the quips, the best as per me is,

“All the desirable things in life are either illegal, expensive, fattening or married to someone else…” how true… :)

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# Smile, it makes people wonder what you are thinking.



# I say no to alcohol, it just doesn’t listen.



# Marriage is one of the chief causes of divorce.



# When everything comes in your way you’re in the wrong lane.



# The light at the end of the tunnel may be an incoming train.



# Born free, taxed to death.



# Life is unsure; always eat your dessert first.



# A printer consists of 3 main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light.



# The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was the genius.



# The trouble with being punctual is that no one is there to appreciate it.



# Beat the 5 O’clock rush, leave work at noon!



# The cigarette does the smoking you are just the sucker.



# Alcohol doesn’t solve any problems, but if you think again, neither does Milk.



# All the desirable things in life are either illegal, expensive, fattening or married to someone else……

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Here, i was thinking that US is one of the most Capitalist country.



“The U.S. Federal Reserve stepped in to rescue insurance giant American International Group from bankruptcy with an $85 billion loan on Tuesday, the latest in a series of bailouts and loans for the financial and housing sectors.

The action brings the total tab for government rescues and special loan facilities this year to more than $900 billion.” Link

btw, this tally is as of today though!

This happened yesterday..



Colleague: Has something changed in your team?

Me : No. why?

Colleague: Because suddenly over the last few weeks you are working like as if there’s no tomorrow.

Me : heh…heh. i am on the verge of obsoleting myself.so this vigour :)

(As usual, she didn’t understand my reply and didn’t care as well :) )

Colleague: Whatever, once in a while come to coffee atleast !

————————————————————————————————–



Bugs are the part and parcel of a software engineer’s life. And our bugzilla has quite a few interesting Quips. I am sure many are the side effects of frustration :)

Of all the Quips, the one and only quip with which i can 100% correlate myself currently is,



“You single-handedly fought your way into this hopeless mess.” (And yes, a post is still getting typed on this topic!!)



Here is the list of my favorites.

————————————————-

* Booze is the answer. I don’t remember the question.



* Imagine what we can imagine!



* Sigh! Got to go buy some food. A mouse hung itself in my fridge and left a note “can’t live like this”.



* Does Australia float around or is it stuck there?



* If we disregard logic, we can do all kinds of fun things!



* You’ll feel much better once you’ve given up hope.



* Your reasoning is excellent — it’s only your basic assumptions that are wrong.



* You single-handedly fought your way into this hopeless mess.



* I have nothing to declare except these few functions and externs.



* There’s no place like 127.0.0.1!



* If you cannot change your mind, are you sure you have one?



* The solution to this bug is trivial and is left as an exercise for the reporter.



* The bug was reported. It resulted in a huge quantity of blood, sweat and tears and many more bugs.



* Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.



* The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.



* In the land of code, write like a man and conquer like a bug!



* Profanity is one language all computer users know.



* Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers can not write in English.



* The documented interfaces between standard software modules will have undocumented quirks.

——————————————————————————————————————————



BTW, here is a list of my old topics which capture a few funny stuff. Atleast, thatswhat i seem to have to thought, when i wrote these few years back ;)



http://cattrial.blogspot.com/2005/01/quotes.html

http://cattrial.blogspot.com/2004/11/real-funny-stuff.html

Not sure about the title of this post!



Since the vehicle needs to be given for servicing, my commute to office over the last 10 days was by Auto and return was mostly by walk.



One good thing about this city is, all Autos are digital meter fitted and in the mornings, there is no need for any haggle with the autowallas. Still, i just don’t trust these Auto drivers…Eventhough there is a digital meter, price varies for the same distance everyday. I have no idea as how this can vary, that too with a digital meter.



So whenever, i take an auto, my eyes are fixed on the meter most of the times!!

On wednesday, as usual took an auto in the morning. Suddenly, the fare shown in the meter changed from 16.20 to 120.20. I was shocked and told the auto driver that there is a problem in the meter and mentioned that it’s showing more than 100bucks. This guy turned and saw the meter. And he looked at me with utter disgust and said,”There is nothing wrong in the meter. It’s showing 12Rs. If you don’t know how to read the meter, please keep quiet”.



I was shell shocked.WTH, this guy was a complete moron and he didn’t realize that as well. On top of that, he had actually made me look like a stupid!



When i reached the destination, the fare was 137.40. He checked the conversion fare and got Rs.17 from me. (yes, due to petrol hike, there are new auto fares, but the meters are not updated. so they have the mappings in a conversion chart)



This is the cheapest fare i had paid for an auto travel to office!

I was wondering how this auto driver could be such a moron because even if the distance is a few meters, no auto driver will charge anything less than Rs.20. And this guy was collecting Rs.17 as per the meter for more than a few kms!



If i were in a normal state of mind, i would have actually given the correct fare…but I was really angry when i got out of the auto and felt that this guy really deserved to be paid less for his stupidity.



Still, i went back and told him again that there is some problem in his meter and asked him to talk to a fellow autowalla. He didn’t look convinced though and was just nodding his head.



Quite a strange experience! I wonder how somebody can be so stupid!! That too when he didn’t seem new to the auto driving.

College life, mainly hostel life, is one phase which has had a tremendous impact in shaping my thoughts…or maybe, it helped one to understand oneself !



It was the third year,sixth semester to be precise, in college. It was one of those rare moronic friday nights when some group of people gather in a hostel room and start talking about all the moronic things in the world till the wee hours of the next day morning. Topics used to range from gossips to Hinduism to preparation for GRE to the worthiness of marriage to the campus placements!!

After one such night, a hostel mate of mine gave me a book named “The Fountain Head” and said,”Read it. You’ll love it”…



It was the first AynRand book i have read…and finished it with a sense of guilt and sadness at heart…because how hard we try, at the end of the day, Peter Keating was the character one could relate more to…and this did upset me.

Next, i started reading,”Atlast Shrugged”. Started bunking classes for days together and was holed up in my friend’s single hostel room reading this book. Single room was a luxury at that time! My friend got scared completely looking at my obsession with the book. It was the time when everybody was thinking of campus placement preparation and here i was stuck with one book for more than a week. This is one of the rare insane incidents in my life!



Main problem with AynRand books is, it makes the reader think or atleast forces them…So,it takes time to read a book. Infact, i found “Atlas Shrugged” to be slightly boring than “The Fountain head” and “We the Living”. Still, i couldn’t feel it till the completion of the book. Still quite a few thoughts were so amazing and for the first time, i noted down the favourite lines …



And i have those papers even now…yes, even though i read it very occasionally, it is quite surprising to realize how long one has saved these few sheets of paper…



Ofcourse, few years down the lane after college, i did realize that there is no need to feel sorry based on some authors opinion, because all that matters is how true one is to the work one does and to the fellow human beings! So, it’s ok to be oscillating between Peter Keating and Howard Roark :)



Still, i should say there are quite a few influences and i am still finding a right time to reread the above mentioned books!



Anyway, here is the content…It is quite interesting to see what one has liked and noted it down…maybe, a psychiatrist can help in identifying the real self of this person ;)



btw, I seem to concur with every single line, even today.

So,does this indicate how little an individual has changed over the years? or how little an individual has got influenced by the external world? or how little an individual has faced the world? or … (i think it’s really not needed :))

—————————————————————————————————————



It’s the purpose that should drive you, not fear.



Not to make it, but to accept,

not to begin, but to respond,

not to create, but to admire.



Joy is one’s fuel.



Thought is a weapon one uses in order to act. No action was possible. Thought is the tool by which one makes a choice.Thought sets one’s purpose & the way to reach it.



He got up & walked to the window. He felt a desolate loneliness, of a kind he had never known before. He thought that Gwen Ives and Mr.Ward could look at him for hope, for relief, for renewal of courage. To whom could he look for it? He too, needed it, for once. He wished he had a friend who could be permitted to see him suffer.



Without pretense or protection, on whom he could say lean for a moment, just to say,”I’m very tired” & find a moment’s rest. Of all the men he knew, was there one he wished he had beside him now? His chuckle of anger brought him back.The absurdity of the longing jolted him into calm.That’s what you get, he thought, when you indulge yourself in weakness.



Reason is the most naive of all superstitions.



There is no source of public opinion. It is spontaneously general. It is a reflect of the collective instinct of the collectively mind.



Only if one feels immensely important, one feels truly light.



The sight of an achievement was the greatest gift a human being can offer to others.



It was the security of being first with full sight & full knowledge of one’s course-not the blind sense of being pulled into the unknown by some unknown power ahead. It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust, but to know.



Celebrations should be only for those who have something to celebrate.



The worst thing about people is not the insults they hand out, but the compliments.



Married people don’t look as if they have a bedroom on their minds when they look at each other. In this world, either you are virtuous or you enjoy yourself, not both.



The only pride of her workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived. It was wrong, she thought, it was viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any hour of one’s life.



I feel that others live upto me, if they want me.



If there’s something that i won’t take, it’s something for nothing.



A low form of feminine ostentation.



Money is the symbol of man’s right to his own mind, to his own work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself. If this is evil, if this the reason for damning us, then we accept it and choose to be damned by that world.



Expectation should not be there between any two, only deserving should be there.



Don’t try force a mind.



The removal of a threat is not a payment, the negation of a negative is not a reward.



Guilty of a fierce desire to remain alive.



Genius is a superstition.



There is no surer way to destroy a man than to force him into a sport where he has to aim at not doing his best, where he has to struggle to do a bad job.



To each according to his ability.



A man of a self respect doesn’t turn into a milch cow for anybody.



My mind is not on the market any longer.



We have no time to feel tired.



That’s our error. We ought to take the time, some day.



Motion does exist, without any moving entities.



When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgement, it’s his thinking that you want him to suspend.



Price of everything, value of nothing.

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i am not sure whether this can be called a photo. Maybe a design.

Whatever, but this is an amazing one. Colors are so perfect and crescent design using flowers is outstanding and refreshing.Thanks to this link, i got to see this photo. Here is the original link in flickr.



Interestingly, exploring flickr.com is one of my favourite pastimes.I got to know this feature while analysing a feature related to my work :) Yes, sometimes, work is good!



This is the link for Interesting photos.



As mentioned in the site, it is quite addictive…there are just so many amazing photos out there and clicking the “refresh” does bring a new set of photos for a long time, so we really end up browsing for a long time.



Here is one such photo i found few days back related to Ramzan…



http://www.flickr.com/photos/deem-qatar/2816190288/



BTW, Picasa really lacks a great community as the one Flickr does!

Maybe Google is more interested in ad revenues from Youtube and Maps in the future rather than from standalone Picasa!

I am not sure how i came to know about this book. For sure, it has got something to do with one of the google searches related to Pakistan, but couldn’t pinpoint the exact one.



This is quite an interesting book, mainly because of its satirical humor. (hmm…this made me realize why i am a regular reader of few Pakistani blogs :))



There is always a line or two which makes one laugh for every 2 pages. Although, at times, there seems to be an overdose of satires, it kept the reader stick to the book.



It would’ve been better, if the descriptions in few places weren’t so elaborate (ex, Ali explaining his dark cell in Fort) and also length of the book is slightly on the longer side at the end. Also, few instances were quite shocking, but this might not be a general issue as it would vary for different readers!



One point though, i would’ve preferred a slightly better happy ending because Baby-O character is really good!



Here is an article by the author which highly motivated me to read this book.



It has received good review from Amazon reviewers.



Also, this is one of the shortlists in Booker Longlists…well, yes, Booker prize announces a longlist first, followed by a shortlist :)

Here is an article from Guardian regarding this year’s longlist entries.



BTW, there are 3 Indian authors in this list (interestingly, i remember reading an article sometime back that eventhough Salman Rushdie was born in India, he currently holds a Pakistani passport and not an Indian one.)