Boulevard of Bowling Green and Raffles Place

Bowling Green and Raffles Place? Well....let me not confuse further, am referring to the MRT's of my workplace in two of the greatest cities in the world that i got a chance to visit this year.
New York and Singapore, one from the eastern and the other from the western hemisphere.
Two Great cities with amazing culture, people and warmth.

New York - This city which needs no introduction, a buzz ling ma(e)ga-polis, which has been the treasure chest of opportunities for people around the world, extremely diverse, which has faced the worst of market crashes(1930 - 1933), terrorist attacks but still bounces back to normalcy within no time, the place where i stayed was a service apartment at Lexington Avenue at the 21st Street, where i board the train, alight at the 14th street station, switch to the opposite platform and travel towards the Bowling Green for work.

One interesting person whom i met in NY is Jerry Ortiz (of coarse he also happens to be my ex-colleague @ Goldman), A person at his early 30's (but still looks like 22) having his roots from Texas-Mexico border (which should explain 'Ortiz'), married to Tenel Ortiz. Jerry is quite influencing but also complaisant in his approach. Jerry is an ardent fan of Ice hockey and hates, if I tell that I watched a ‘feminist’ movie over the weekend.

Singapore - Also called as the ‘New York of the East’ or the ‘Eastern hub’. One of the most developed economy, which also acts as the gateway to North East Asia and Australasia. A city-country with fantastic planning and stunning architecture. It has got a fantastic diversity of Indians, Asians (Mongoloids), Australians and few westerners. I was surprised to learn that Singapore is ever prepared for any kind of nuclear attack, with underground bumpers with all facilities like rest rooms and beds; of coarse they learn from the western mistakes, one more thing that surprised me is the highway which leads to the airport also acts as a substitute to the runway. I board the MRT at Dhobi Gaut and alight at Raffles Place to get to work.

Well…Kanika Maheshwari is the friend that I gained in Singapore, quite an interesting personality and I would say a ‘rare breed’ (that’s what I call her) is an INSEAD MBA and IIT Grad, being a lady – probably she depicts the evolution of a ‘Global Desi Nari’. This lady lost (who gets easily lost in thoughts amidst conversation) is a definitely a pretty dame and very good friend to be with. I have this habit of performing a cricket action and eventually bump a passer-by and Madam Diya Mirza/Riya Sen look alike (at least 50%) is sharp in spotting me and taking me for a ride.

The Essence of Carnatic Music.

This is something i have experienced personally and would want to recommend to all.
Let me start with an incident ...a couple of months ago i was highly agitated because of a financial crunch and was shouting at my family members and my friends no one was spared from my wrath of anger....that was a phase where i broke up with a couple of my friends.
Incidentally, i checked my BP and it was on the higher side 84/145...my family doctor was pretty upset about this and he said, i was very young to have such a high count on BP. He asked me to wait in the reception. The doctor being an aredent listener of Carnatic music, was playing the same in his clinic. I slowly started concentrating on the music....and to my surprise, i found out that, my nerves started easing out, i was relaxed and the music completely soothened my senses. I was thinking of effective solutions right now instead of complex financial problems.

I enquired thw doctor about the who-abouts of the carnatic artiste and surprisingly...he was an american born...called John Higgins.

My Last Lap in Goldman Sachs...

Iam writing this as iam completing my final lap in this great firm - Goldman Sachs

For people who are still not aware of the firm...its one of the worlds best Investment Bank, which does not believe in the concept of Brand Building in the literal sense.

The word 'great' can be associated with very few things and Goldman is definitely one of them. A 150+ year old company which has survived the worst of market crashes, adviced some of the best corporates in the world like Ford Motor Corp, Microsoft Corp, letting the world know about the BRICs, and perhaps one company that has the best work culture,ethics,decorum.....Its truly unfortunate that i have to leave this firm on personal grounds.

The BRICs report by Jim O'Neil of Goldman let the whole world know that Brazil,Russia,India,China are no more 'developing economies' but 'transforming economies'.

On the lighter note i want to share this incident that happened last year....Its true that Goldman does not do a lot of Brand Builiding which is all the more a vital reason for the house wives of India to not know beyond the contemprory Indian IT companies..A very proactive and 'service minded' neighbour of ours who enquired my professional where abouts was also quite concerned that i was working with a small,unknown company and went ahead, promised that she would ask her son to secure a job for me in an Indian IT company that he works for. Iam not here to compare companies but to just highlight deadly combination of 'Ignorance+Confidence' of our desi nari's.

True Inspiration....

This song and the movie series has always inspired me whenever iv felt low and ascertain the fact songs can truly inspire.....

The Song: The measure of a man - Performed by Elton John, Penned by - Alan Menken
The Movie: Rocky V

These battered hand are all you own
This broken heart has turned to stone
Go hang your glory on the wall
There comes a time when castles fall
And all that's left is shifting in the sand

You're out of time, you're out of place
Look at your face
That's the measure of a man

This coat that fits you like a glove
These dirty streets you learned to love
So welcome back my long lost friend
You've been to hell and back again
God alone knows how you crossed that span

Back on the beat, back to the start
Trust in your heart
That's the measure of a man

It's the fire in the eyes, the lines on the hand
It's the things you understand
Permanent ties from which you once ran
That's the measure of a man

You've come full circle, now you're home
Without the gold, without the chrome
And this is where you've always been
You had to lose so you could win
And rise above your troubles while you can

Now you can love, now you can lose
Now you can choose
That's the measure of a man

Watch out for the Red Dragon.....

Statistics due this week are expected to show that China is on track this year to pass Germany as the world's third-biggest national economy, behind the U.S. and Japan, in another indication of the rapid change of the global balance of power, according to a media report Sunday.
Recent estimates put the size of China's gross domestic product in the past year at $2.8 trillion, breathing down the neck of Germany's $2.9 trillion national output for the period, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition. Only the U.S. at $13.2 trillion and Japan at $4.4 trillion have bigger economies, according to International Monetary Fund data cited by the Journal.
Chinese government data for the second quarter, expected Thursday, are expected to show that Chinese output grew by around 11% in this year's first half, a rate that economists think China will maintain this year, according to the report, which noted that even optimistic predictions for German growth, at close to 3%, are no match for that.
As recently as 1999, China was only the world's seventh-biggest economy, the Journal said. It has since passed Italy, France and the United Kingdom and could pass Japan in a decade if it maintains its current rate of growth, according to the report.
By another measure known as purchasing-power parity, China is already the world's second-biggest economy. the Journal said. If exchange rates are adjusted to equalize the cost of goods in different countries, then China's total output was worth $10 trillion last year, according to estimates by the IMF cited by the Journal.
That eclipses Japan's $4.2 trillion and Germany's $2.6 trillion, and is hot on the heels of the U.S.'s $13 trillion economy by that measure, the Journal said, adding that purchasing-power parity tends to make developing economies appear bigger than comparisons using current exchange rates, because a dollar can often buy more goods in poor countries than in rich ones.
China's imminent overtaking of Germany is only one instance of a broader global shift, according to the report. As populous countries such as China and India become major forces in the world economy, established powers such as Europe, Japan and the U.S. are becoming relatively less important, the Journal said. Many economists already argue that global growth is becoming less dependent on the U.S. economy, which has slowed in the past year without greatly affecting others, according to the report

Disruptive Technology?... and ...what is that?

A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is a technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or status quo product in the market.

A very impactive definition right...well iam writing this after the launch of www.marketsimplified.com from the shelves of my elder brother's Innovative Technology Start - up called Inxs Asia (www.inxsasia.com).

About my brother:

Venkat Rangan

A Technology Entrepreneur by birth, who with a visionary zeal has brought INXS and UBAC from a concept on a piece of paper to a platform on the verge of a revolution in less than 12 months. Venkat is a graduate in Business Administration from University of Madras, Chennai and has had start up experience ranging from Pacific Multimedia, a multimedia company servicing clients like Citibank and Ford and was Co-Founder of Media IPX(Singapore), a startup developing Online Media Convergence Network. The immense experience and exposure so gained have been instrumental in the development of INXS Technologies. Venkat’s single minded devotion to this vision has been the source of great motivation and inspiration to the entire team at INXS.

About Inxs Asia:

INXS Technologies provides technology to build complex financial applications that set the benchmark for elegance and deliver performance to the users.
The FoundationBuilt in year 2006 UBAC Financial Platform development offers previously unthought of capabilities and cuts short development time to a matter of days, while a ground-up design of financial infrastructure would take months or years and depend upon obsolete technology and constraints carried from several generation beyond the time of internet itself.
UBAC financial platform conforms to open standards where available and establishes open unrestricted standards otherwise by provided a published Open API Architecture. Using this say a brazilian startup can deliver a mobile financial application to Japanese market with 2 weeks what otherwise would have taken years.

The Stockdale Paradox

The name refers to Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest ranking United States military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over 20 times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner's rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command, doing everything he could to create conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken, while fighting an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda. At one point, he beat himself with a stool and cut himself with a razor, deliberately disfiguring himself, so that he could not be put on videotape as an example of a “well-treated prisoner.” He exchanged secret intelligence information with his wife through their letters, knowing that discovery would mean more torture and perhaps death. He instituted rules that would help people to deal with torture (no one can resist torture indefinitely, so he created a step-wise system—after x minutes, you can say certain things—that gave the men milestones to survive toward). He instituted an elaborate internal communications system to reduce the sense of isolation that their captors tried to create, which used a five-by-five matrix of tap codes for alpha characters. (Tap-tap equals the letter a, tap-pause-tap-tap equals the letter b, tap-tap-pause-tap equals the letter f, and so forth, for 25 letters, c doubling for k.) At one point, during an imposed silence, the prisoners mopped and swept the central yard using the code, swish-swashing out “We love you” to Stockdale, on the third anniversary of his being shot down. After his release, Stockdale became the first three-star officer in the history of the navy to wear both aviator wings and the Congressional Medal of Honor.
You can understand, then, my anticipation at the prospect of spending part of an afternoon with Stockdale. One of my students had written his paper on Stockdale, who happened to be a senior research fellow studying the Stoic philosophers at the Hoover Institution right across the street from my office, and Stockdale invited the two of us for lunch. In preparation, I read In Love and War, the book Stockdale and his wife had written in alternating chapters, chronicling their experiences during those eight years.
As I moved through the book, I found myself getting depressed. It just seemed so bleak—the uncertainty of his fate, the brutality of his captors, and so forth. And then, it dawned on me: “Here I am sitting in my warm and comfortable office, looking out over the beautiful Stanford campus on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I’m getting depressed reading this, and I know the end of the story! I know that he gets out, reunites with his family, becomes a national hero, and gets to spend the later years of his life studying philosophy on this same beautiful campus. If it feels depressing for me, how on earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?”
“I never lost faith in the end of the story,” he said, when I asked him. “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”
* * *
I didn’t say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, “Who didn’t make it out?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “The optimists.”
“The optimists? I don’t understand,” I said, now completely confused, given what he’d said a hundred meters earlier.
“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say,‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”
Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
To this day, I carry a mental image of Stockdale admonishing the optimists: “We’re not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!”

Are You a Hedgehog or a Fox?

Are You a Hedgehog or a Fox?

This is a wonderful article on Human Behaviour

The fox is a cunning creature, able to devise a myriad of complex strategies for sneak attacks upon the hedgehog. Day in and day out, the fox circles around the hedgehog’s den, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. Fast, sleek, beautiful, fleet of foot, and crafty—the fox looks like the sure winner. The hedgehog, on the other hand, is a dowdier creature, looking like a genetic mix-up between a porcupine and a small armadillo. He waddles along, going about his simple day, searching for lunch and taking care of his home.
The fox waits in cunning silence at the juncture in the trail. The hedgehog, minding his own business, wanders right into the path of the fox. “Aha, I’ve got you now!” thinks the fox. He leaps out, bounding across the ground, lightning fast. The little hedgehog, sensing danger, looks up and thinks, “Here we go again. Will he ever learn?” Rolling up into a perfect little ball, the hedgehog becomes a sphere of sharp spikes, pointing outward in all directions. The fox, bounding toward his prey, sees the hedgehog defense and calls off the attack. Retreating back to the forest, the fox begins to calculate a new line of attack. Each day, some version of this battle between the hedgehog and the fox takes place, and despite the greater cunning of the fox, the hedgehog always wins.
Berlin extrapolated from this little parable to divide people into two basic groups: foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes pursue many ends at the same time and see the world in all its complexity. They are “scattered or diffused, moving on many levels,” says Berlin, never integrating their thinking into one overall concept or unifying vision. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything. It doesn’t matter how complex the world, a hedgehog reduces all challenges and dilemmas to simple—indeed almost simplistic—hedgehog ideas. For a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea holds no relevance.
Princeton professor Marvin Bressler pointed out the power of the hedgehog during one of our long conversations: “You want to know what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart? They’re hedgehogs.” Freud and the unconscious, Darwin and natural selection, Marx and class struggle, Einstein and relativity, Adam Smith and division of labor—they were all hedgehogs. They took a complex world and simplified it. “Those who leave the biggest footprints,” said Bressler, “have thousands calling after them, ‘Good idea, but you went too far!’ ”
To be clear, hedgehogs are not stupid. Quite the contrary. They understand that the essence of profound insight is simplicity. What could be more simple than e = mc2? What could be simpler than the idea of the unconscious, organized into an id, ego, and superego? What could be more elegant than Adam Smith’s pin factory and “invisible hand?” No, the hedgehogs aren’t simpletons; they have a piercing insight that allows them to see through complexity and discern underlying patterns. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest.

Driving in Bangalore/India

This hilarious article is written by a Dutchman who spent two years in Bangalore , India , as a visiting expert

Thought I can Just Share...........

For the benefit of every Tom, Dick and Harry visiting India and daring to drive on Indian roads, I am offering a few hints for survival. They are applicable to every place in India except Bihar , where life outside a vehicle is only marginally safer. Indian road rules broadly operate within the domain of karma where you do your best, and leave the results to your insurance company. The hints are as follows: Do we drive on the left or right of the road? The answer is "both". Basically you start on the left of the road, unless it is occupied. In that case, go to the right, unless that is also occupied. Then proceed by occupying the next available gap, as in chess. Just trust your instincts, ascertain the direction, and proceed. Adherence to road rules leads to much misery and occasional fatality. Most drivers don't drive, but just aim their vehicles in the generally intended direction. Don't you get discouraged or underestimate yourself except for a belief in reincarnation; the other drivers are not in any better position. Don't stop at pedestrian crossings just because some fool wants to cross the road. You may do so only if you enjoy being bumped in the back. Pedestrians have been strictly instructed to cross only when traffic is moving slowly or has come to a dead stop because some minister is in town. Still some idiot may try to wade across, but then, let us not talk ill of the dead. Blowing your horn is not a sign of protest as in some countries. We horn to express joy, resentment, frustration, romance and bare lust (two brisk blasts),or just mobilize a dozing cow in the middle of the bazaar. Keep informative books in the glove compartment. You may read them during traffic jams, while awaiting the chief minister's motorcade, or waiting for the rainwater to recede when over ground traffic meets underground drainage. Occasionally you might see what looks like a UFO with blinking colored lights and weird sounds emanating from within. This is an illuminated bus, full of happy pilgrims singing bhajans. These pilgrims go at breakneck speed, seeking contact with the Almighty, often meeting with success. Auto Rickshaw (Baby Taxi): The result of a collision between a rickshaw and an automobile, this three-wheeled vehicle works on an external combustion engine that runs on a mixture of kerosene oil and creosote. This triangular vehicle carries iron rods, gas cylinders or passengers three times its weight and dimension, at an unspecified fare. After careful geometric calculations, children are folded and packed into these auto rickshaws until some children in the periphery are not in contact with the vehicle at all. Then their school bags are pushed into the microscopic gaps all round so those minor collisions with other vehicles on the road cause no permanent damage. Of course, the peripheral children are charged half the fare and also learn Newton 's laws of motion enroute to school. Auto-rickshaw drivers follow the road rules depicted in the film Ben Hur, and are licensed to irritate. Mopeds: The moped looks like an oil tin on wheels and makes noise like an electric shaver. It runs 30 miles on a teaspoon of petrol and travels at break-bottom speed. As the sides of the road are too rough for a ride, the moped drivers tend to drive in the middle of the road; they would rather drive under heavier vehicles instead of around them and are often "mopped" off the tarmac. LeaningTower of Passes: Most bus passengers are given free passes and during rush hours, there is absolute mayhem. There are passengers hanging off other passengers, who in turn hang off the railings and the overloaded bus leans dangerously, defying laws of gravity but obeying laws of surface tension. As drivers get paid for overload (so many Rupees per kg of passenger), no questions are ever asked. Steer clear of these buses by a width of three passengers. One-way Street: These boards are put up by traffic people to add jest in their otherwise drab lives. Don't stick to the literal meaning and proceed in one direction. In metaphysical terms, it means that you cannot proceed in two directions at once. So drive as you like, in reverse throughout, if you are the fussy type. Least I sound hypercritical, I must add a positive point also. Rash and fast driving in residential areas has been prevented by providing a "speed breaker"; two for each house. This mound, incidentally, covers the water and drainage pipes for that residence and is left untarred for easy identification by the corporation authorities, should they want to recover the pipe for year-end accounting. Night driving on Indian roads can be an exhilarating experience for those with the mental make up of Genghis Khan. In a way, it is like playing Russian roulette, because you do not know who amongst the drivers is loaded. What looks like premature dawn on the horizon turns out to be a truck attempting a speed record. On encountering it, just pull partly into the field adjoining the road until the phenomenon passes. Our roads do not have shoulders, but occasional boulders. Do not blink your lights expecting reciprocation. The only dim thing in the truck is the driver, and with the peg of illicit arrack (alcohol) he has had at the last stop, his total cerebral functions add up to little more than a naught. Truck drivers are the James Bonds of India, and are licensed to kill. Often you may encounter a single powerful beam of light about six feet above the ground. This is not a super motorbike, but a truck approaching you with a single light on, usually the left one. It could be the right one, but never get too close to investigate. You may prove your point posthumously