I, Yousuf & my handicapped Bike

For sure, We all will miss this date for the next 4 years. This day(29.02.2008) will remain in my memory for long.

It was quite hectic day at office today, as it is for the past couple of months. Suddenly things have turned around bcoz of few unexpected changes. I hardly find time these days to play Pacman. But, LIFE GOES ON.

Our team will be in a weekend mood right from the time they step-in to the office on the friday morning(only). Colourful dresses, Beautiful, Charming & Fresh faces, fully energetic and enthu with fun filled ambiance. They hardly work post lunch and start counting minutes(& literally seconds also) for the clock to tick 6PM. and slowly people vanish. Today, it was only Me & one of my colleagues (two poor souls) who were slogging hard even at 9PM. I worked till 9PM and thought...... ENOUGH. What am I doing on a Friday evening @ office? We thought of calling it a day and leave office. We decided to come on SAT,SUN & wrap the things. It was about 9.15PM by the time we reached cellar parking.

We both stay at two different locations. He needs to catch an auto and I have my bike(partially handicapped). We both wished good night to one another and he left the place. I went to take my bike and realized that it got PUNCTURED !! F**K, man, it is already 9.15 PM. I asked the watch man if there are any mechanic shops nearby. He gave me the direction. I called up my colleague & luckily he didnot catch the auto till that time. I asked him to come back to parking. With his company I went to that mechanic shop which is some 200Metres from my office(luckily). Thank God ! It is still open. We asked the mechanic to stay there for another 10 mins, so that we can get the BIKE from parking. I had only 100bucks in my wallet that time. I thought of borrowing few more from my colleague & When I asked him, he said he has purchased a Quarter WHISKEY just now !! and he is left only with sufficient amount to reach home. We went to the ICICI BANK ATM in our office. This damn thing as always was not working ! We went to CITI BANK ATM on the opposite side of the road(hoping CITI BANK ATM for sure will have money). After waiting for 15 mins in queue we went IN. But even this was not working(amazing... only ICICI debit cards are not working!!). Then we walked a lil more(around 200 mts) and went to another ICICI ATM. Even this was not working !!! Shocked,Confused,Amazed,Perplexed.....& asked the watchman of ICICI ATM the reason. He said there is some problem with ICICI servers & hence no ICICI debit card will work.

We both looked at each other's faces faces and laughed at our fate for sometime. Helpless. I asked my colleague to leave to his home. I took my bike from office parking and went to the mechanic to check if he can fix the puncture without changing the tube, thus saving money. He said if the tube needs to be changed then it costs Rs.170. And I am sure the tube needs to be changed coz, I am facing this situation for the second consecutive day(forgot to mention Feb 28th night's experience. Bike had a puncture the earlier day also!!). And I had only 100 bucks.

I explained my current financial status to that kid. His name is Yousuf(around 14) .

This is how the conversation went...

ME: suno... koi ATM kaam nahi kar raha hai. aur mere paas ye 100 Rupees hai. Aap tube change kar dena, aur mera office ka ID card rakhlena. Mein kal subha office aanese pehle tumse leloonga.

Yousuf: nahi bhaiyya, mujhe account apne saab ko dikhana padega.

ME: bhai, mein wo jo company dikhraha hai na. usme hi kaam kartha hoon. Apna ID card ke bina andar jaa nahi sakhta hoon. Samaj rahe ho? agar chahiye tho ye 100 lo aur kaam suru karo. Mein baaki paisa kal subha dedoonga nad apna ID apse loonga. theek hai ?

Yousuf: bhaiyya, aap ab phir se ATM try karo. upar satillite ki problem hogi. mujhe bhi aksar hota hai. 15-20 mins mein theek ho jayega. Aap phir se try karo. Is baar pakka theek hogaya hoga.

ME: bahut late hogaya, mein ATM ke paas hi kaha khada rahoon, raat ke dus bajgaye. Agar karna hai tho, kaam suru karo aur ye lo mera ID. varna, mein apna bike office mein chod doonga aur auto se ghar jaonga.

Yousuf: aap kitne baje office aaoge?

ME: subha ke 11 baje.

Yousuf: aap pakka kal aaoge na? kal saturday hai na.

ME: kal saturday hai, isiliye 11-12 baje aaonga.

Yousuf: chalo, theek hai. mein tube change tho karoonga, lekin bike theek hone ke baad, ek baar ATM chalo. Agar paisa niklega tho abhi dedo.

ME: chal, theek hai. fatafat kaam suru kar.

He started the work. He is a kid and half of the work was done by ME !! Finally he opened the tube and said bhaiyya, nalli nikhal gaya. tube change karna hi padega ! ( my guess was right!).
Then, he said, bhiayya, tyre bhi bahut puraana hogaya, grip nahi hai. Naya tube daloonga tho bhi, agar chotisi phattar se bhi puncture ho saktha hai. woh second hand tyre jo dikhai dera, vuse replace karu ?

ME: kitna me milega woh purana trye?

Yousuf: Rs. 200

ME: Tyre + Tube = Rs.275 ??

Yousuf: chalo, Rs.300 dedo.

ME: OK

He replaced both the tube and tyre. Then we went to ATM again. and luckily this time ATM is working !! I gave him his 300 bucks and said THANQ BOSS.

How famous are you ?

I dont really know what I want to write in this article. Today,I just want to post something on this blog. So thought of scribbling some random thoughts that were going on my mind at this point in time.

How do you generally measure SUCCESS ??

Now don't tell me it all depends on your perception. YES.... it is, but, still I want to count the ways we can measure someone's success.

Either it should be in terms of Money or Name/Fame(of course 'Name' for Good cause, otherwise it would be Blame!!). Fame and Money go hand in hand. Somehow I feel, both are inter related. If you have Money, (which is as sweet as Honey) Fame will follow and vice-versa.

I tried to prove my hypothesis wrong. But realized that i failed to prove what i want to prove. I considered few examples...oh sorry.. not few....TENS of examples.Of course, all of them are Celebrities. And in this process I hardly found anyone who has only One of the above mentioned qualities. Almost all the successful people have both the things with an exception. If a person has more money then he has more fame but the other way around need not be true. A person might be famous but he need not be as rich(But, RICH for sure!).

Long time back I read a book called 'YOU CAN WIN' written by SHIV KERA, which I am sure most of you must have read. He has a formula to measure success.

SUCCESS=(WHAT YOU HAVE ACHIEVED)/(WHAT YOU ARE CAPABLE OF ACHIEVING).

Now if you consider this formula has got only numerator and a denominator, and one of the simplest formulae you might have ever come across, then you are seriously mistaken. There are hell lot of parameters that come into picture when you deeply analyze it.

Now, I have discovered an interesting and a funny way to identify how famous a person is(in other words, how successful he is). In an era of Cyber Revolution, I don't think there would be any person on this planet who knows a lil bit of computers and don't know anything about GOOGLE. I tried to search in GOOGLE with keyword as my NAME. The whole idea is to know if I figure in any of the search results ! And if I appear in the search results then at which position. What is the PAGE RANK of that web page. Fortunately the very first link gave details about me !!! Of course, details mentioned about me in my very own blog. Then I tried to check the Page Rank of my blog. Unfortunately, the Page Rank is Zero :( . No surprises, as I was expecting this number.

Its a known fact that the celebrities appear at the top of the list. AM I A CELEBRITY ?! ALMOST FAMOUS !!

What I am & What I want to BE

Ever gave a thought to explore urself ?

This taught was haunting me for the past few months ! But I am lazy enough to detour this thought and procrastinate it. It is highly impossible to come out of your comfort zone and make a SWOT analysis kinda. At this juncture, I remember the old adage "Procrastination is the fault most people put off correcting".

Finally , i thought of breaking the ICE and started writing this article. If you also fall under this category, then please, at least for your sake, break the JINX and come out of those woods.

If interested in knowing more about me, then continue reading....

THIS IS WHAT I AM !

1. I am a Lazy bug, probably the laziest you can ever find around you.
2. I Hate to think, at times become over confident & act in haste .
3. I am a spoiled BRAT, I am a firm believer of "Doing what you like is Freedom, Liking what you do is Happiness".
4. I love to watch Hollywood movies, but unfortunately never understood the complete plot in any of the fiction movies :(
   
5. I am a Cricket Crazy fan. Sometimes even skip the office work to watch Indian matches !
6. I treat books as sleeping pills ! I never faced the problem of Insomnia in my entire life, books are perfect remedy for me. One dose = one page of any book(novels are no exception) and I'll soon get into deep sleep after which no one can wake me up !! & the next day, I end up reading the same page again !!
   
7. My new year resolution last year was "to go for Jogging early in the morning". My new year resolution this year was also "to go for Jogging early in the morning"! My new year resolution next year can also be "to go for Jogging early in the morning" !!!
8. I loose interest in many of the things very quickly. I can give N number of such things in my life. But few things which fascinated me like nothing else are STOCK MARKETS, CRICKET, F1, QUOTATIONS, PANIPURI, BLACK Colour, STEVE JOBS/APPLE PRODUCTS, MUSIC OF B^3 (BRYAN ADAMS, BACKSTREETBOYS & BOYZONE) + ENRIQUE + SONU NIGAM, HRITHIK ROSHAN, DIL CHAHTA HAI(must have watched it a dozen times fully & another dozen times partially !).
   

THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO BE !!

1. I want to hate the word Procrastination. Delete it from my WORD WEB Dictionary !
2. I want to continue going to the office late on a consistent basis. But still be able to complete all the work given by sharp 6.30 PM. This is 'WHAT BUSINESS DEMANDS', 'HIGH PERFORMANCE, DELIVERED' !!
3. I want to be LOVED & more LOVABLE than i am presently.
4. I want to be quick witted & take my sense of humor to the Zenith.
5. I want to watch AAMIR KHAN more frequently in future, of course in movies.
6. LETS GET A BIT MORE SERIOUS from now... I want to increase my concentration levels and prepare more seriously for CAT 08, so that i can crack CAT 09 and break into one of the TOP 20 INDIAN B-Schools and start doing my dream course "MBA" with specialization in FINANCE by 2010.
   
7. I want to increase my READING SPEED.
   
8. I want to be a millionaire by the time i reach 30. This is the same target which WARREN BUFFET wanted to reach when he was in teenage. I have started a lil late, but no worries..... LET ME GIVE MY BLOODY BEST !
   
9. I want to own a FORMULA ONE TEAM in future. Am I not too greedy?? Yeah... even I think so. Chalo... if not a TEAM at least a RED FERRARI CAR with V10 engine*(might get upgraded with time).
10. I want to clear all my Current Credit Card debts in another 2 quarters & get make fresh debts in order to buy a new power bike !!
11. I want to own at least a piece of all APPLE products. Primarily an iMAC so that I can trash my WINDOWS through my back DOOR.
12. I want to be a synonym of MAVERICK :)

Will jot down few more as soon it strikes me. Thanks for sparing your invaluable time and reading this non-sense stuff written by a Maverick, who is still in the process of discovering who he actually is !!

You can soon join this elite club by penning down what you want to be in future. TRUST ME....ITS FUN !

Lessons from January 2008

Lessons from January 2008
--Udayan Mukherjee

The thing about life is that one makes mistakes. Many mistakes were made in the second half of 2007 and those sins have to be washed away by blood, such is the way of financial markets. Some participants will go down under and never be able to get back to the market again but most will survive. The pain will linger for many months, maybe years but lessons have to be learnt. Every such debacle has lessons for us and the sooner we forget them the more we suffer.

The first lesson is not to let stock price performance become the sole reason for buying, a mistake which was made in abundance in the last 3 months. What couldn't be explained by fundamentals was credited to liquidity. The present lost all relevance as people chose to focus on the distant future, perhaps simply because the present could never justify those ticker prices; only a hazy dream of the future could. Traders and investors had no time for fundamental analysts, in many cases they were labelled "cribbing fools". Chartists became the most celebrated tribe on the street as only they could see and predict the one way run to glory for many of the hot stocks even as fundamental watchers cringed at valuations....till the music stopped. Don't get me wrong, charts do work in trending markets but once stock prices veer away completely from fundamental value, people need to get careful. But they never are. Now that the blinkers are off, people should ask themselves why stocks like RNRL, Ispat, RPL, Essar oil and Nagarjuna fertilisers have lost 50-70% of their value. It is simply because their stock prices had snapped all connection with underlying business fundamentals, earnings and value. Their stock prices became the only reasons for buying them which works for a while but not forever.

The other big lesson, one which should have been driven in earlier in May 2006, is the danger of overextending oneself in the futures market. The lure of stock futures is easy to understand. Put in some margin, take a big exposure on a fast moving stock, make a killing when prices shoot up. Repeat exercise. Just that people forgot that prices may also come down and at a pace which noone can even imagine, maybe their friendly stockbrokers forgot to tell them that part of the story. The result : unbridled speculation that ran into lakhs of crores, excesses that we are paying for today. Even this fall will not cure investors of their love for futures speculation but if at least some amount of caution is injected it would have been a worthwhile learning. Futures are not toys for amateurs, they are time bombs in the hands of inexpert and inexperienced traders, it's only a matter of when the fuse runs out.

The other learning which I hope will play out in the future, as it has in the past, is that it pays to be brave in times of panic such as these. If I was allowed to invest myself , which I am not, I would have no hesitation in deploying serious money into the market today, knowing fully well that prices may fall more tomorrow. And I would be standing there tomorrow to buy more of the same, till my money ran out. India is going to be a terrific stock market story for many years to come, even an intermediate bearish patch cannot shake that conviction of mine. At best, one will have to wait a bit for the returns to follow. That's alright. You are happy to put money in a bank FD and then wait for one full year to collect that measly 8%, aren't you? Then why does the stock market need to give you 20% every month? In the last one year, I haven't seen so many good stocks trade at such mouth watering levels. Forget trading, avoid the duds which were fuelled up by operators, just go out and buy those bluechips. They will deliver, even if there is a global market meltdown for a while, and if you are a bit patient you will be rewarded. But do remember January 2008, as history will repeat itself again in the future. Just that our memories tend to be too short and our greed too much.

Udayan Mukherjee

Requirement not captured properly !

Requirement not captured properly:

The wife was very unhappy with her car and complained a lot to her husband:

Knowing her birthday was coming up shortly, she said to her husband...
'Buy me a surprise for my birthday!' she said.
'Something that accelerates from 0 to 100 in 4 seconds! And I would prefer a blue one!'

Happy and excited she was counting down the days to her birthday.

And on the day she finally she got the beautiful present her husband thoughtfully bought....




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WEIGHING MACHINE

The poor guy is dead today, and his wife's in jail for murder !