The unknown and the known.

Scalability has always been an issue I have found intriguing. Some like to call it sustainability with growth. I prefer the former. How do you foresee the final outcome of your efforts if not scalability? While working you always tend to address and think about what it will take to make it big, dent the system, rake in the maximum or capitalize on the unknown. The theory of an Antilibrary seems to provide the answer to me. What you know doesn’t matter as much as what you don’t. It aint like taking a negative stance on things. It’s more to do with focusing on the bigger, unexplainable and random occurrences that has the capability to redefine the ways in which you lead your life.

What some people fail to understand when they point to the comfort of the ‘constant’ is that they concentrate on the known to plan for the future which in itself is a flawed strategy. Future has always intrigued mankind. With advancement in mathematical and statistical procedures men have come to believe in their ability to control things before they occur of itself. They tend to gravitate towards the notion that human intelligence can now defy the course of the future. Randomness is a highly under-rated phenomena. We are constantly fighting to eliminate what comes of it and despite repeatedly failed attempts we maintain an unwavering faith in the scientific pursuits of the elimination of this bizarre yet frequent phenomena.

Some people stand out. They focus on those obscure and abstract principles. They leave their fate hanging onto those very random occurrences to strive for their goals. They are patient yet aggressive in their chase. It’s the contagion effect at work that makes them see things in a different light. Things ain’t as simple as they are made out to be in history. When looked at it backwards, things look fabulously simple. Is it because they were inherently simple or is it a hind-sight bias so commonly overlooked? Clearly things cannot be as simple and the trajectory of this world cannot be as picture-perfect as it is made out to be in those sordid history books.

Being a trader, I understand. I understand the fallacy of expectations based on things known. I understand the hind-sight bias in full detail. I recognize the need to wait and capitalize on a Black Swan. Strangely, it is through my knowledge of how things don’t work that makes me apply that very realization for a profitable trade. A paradox it is. Just as it takes a story to displace a story, it takes knowledge to discard the powers of knowledge. As a jobber, if you wanna make it big you’ve got to take chances. The basic tenet of profit maximization is a greater risk exposure. But it doesn’t come with a privileged information or advanced technical know how. It comes with the realization that you know that you know that you don’t know. If you dont know that you dont know what you dont know you are doomed!

As a career enthusiast, I understand. I understand the need to focus more on tangible things than uncontrollable factors. I understand the need to remember the power of the bizarre and I recognize the need to re-orient my aspiration keeping that in mind. I understand the necessity of channeling my energy on things that include ’strange’ in its SWOT treatment and I recognize the need to be swift and daring to be keen and enterprising.

As a mortal I understand the need to see things without judgment. I understand the great intellectual fraud that is the Bell Curve. I also realize the need to keep things abstract and under-stated.

Take your chances. Believe in the theory of randomness and you might come out a winner. Stay focused on your knowns and you relegate yourself to constancy.

Inglourious Basterd-The Review

Critics have lambasted the movie for its sheer disregard to the issue that is morality but hey if its Tarantino its pardonable right? An audacious show of bravura coupled with some mesmerizing performance by Christopher Waltz relegates Pitt to the background and hogs much of the limelight if not the screen time. Quite reminiscient of the Joker walking away with the acclaim while Christian Bale fumed over? Quite like it. The beginning sets the tone for the rest of the drama to follow which at times becomes pathetically silly yet strangely believable. The characters are woven with characterstic Tarantino fashion with the result alternative history becomes fiction and an out and out grosser.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead-Tread Carefully.
While Col. Hans Landa, played by hitherto unknown actor Christopher Waltz, demeans the Jews, while he sits with Shossana, while he kills the actress and while he makes the deal with the Aamerikens he shines. Gripped to our seats, shifting uncomfortably with every polite gesture, waiting for a deeply disturbing reaction, one is forever in a state of great expectations, and therein, lies the charm of the movie. Pitt starring in his maiden Tarantino flick reminds me of Mickey. Accent modulation is commendable and effective. While stellar performances abound in this movie, the linear plot uncharacterstic of a Tarantino product is justified through its playful dealings with history, alternative history and pure fiction.

Without giving too much away the movie is about Col. Hans Landa and him alone. It basically revolves around a bunch of Jewish-Americans recruited by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) fighting for the allied cause and formed to cause maximum damage to the Nazis. How they do that is pure Tarantino. The methods, the introduction of the characters and the killings are all woven into this fantastic western spaghetti pot-boiler that is bound to keep Tarantino fans loyal for many more years to come and push others to join the cult. When he makes a movie this great he is entitled to his indulgences and his occasional artistry is forgiven. Scenes like the showdown in the Tavern is one where you are bound to be confused as to laugh it out or eulogize the perfectionist that is this man Tarantino. Liberal sprayings of gore, delightful soliloquoys, enticing self-referential dialogue delivery and impeccable mannerisms mixed with violence makes it dandy for all the fans out there.

Oh and I forgot to mention, Hostel director Eli Roth plays the character of “The Bear Jew” with panache and a baseball bat!!

Highly recommended for people with taste for good cinema and disgust for everything SRK stands for.

Rating: 3.5/5

The joy of Giving

Giving is Good

This is a tribute to the wonderful idea that is The Joy of Giving Week. Small contributions when added up make a big difference and can dent even the most gargantuan of problems. Some of us believe that making small contributions that make no visible difference to the conditions at hand are of no use and should be done away with which is not the right way of looking at it.

Am quoting Livemint Blog: Sharing is Beautiful here: Public policy impact could take decades to achieve. So one has to keep plugging away without impact. Of course, in some cases, it might be good not to have an impact, especially if one’s thinking is flawed to begin with.

I came across this wonderful blog post by one of my friends about beggars and what thy policy is and why? To be honest I was and still am amongst those who detest sparing a penny for those hapless chaps that I frequently encounter on the streets. I detest them feeling that when they have their assets intact they could do better than begging, the world has so many things for them to do and earn a living with. Yet, strangely I connected with the blog. The recent Cadbury ads about the joy of giving a gift unexpectedly to a very unlikely beneficiary is heart warming and sweet. I tried it with a rickshaw-walla a couple of days back and extra 30 bucks brought a smile on his face which totally made my day. Sparing a penny or a mere 30 bucks wont starve me of anything but it would be specially significant for some who form the bottom layer of the demographical pyramid.

Talking of Ads I found the recent HT ads “It is time” to be thoughtful, funny and provoking. The campaign strikes the right note with its audience and connects instantly. The first ad on Journalism is spot on and carries forward teh debate on Meaningful Journalism and not merely a populistic overture lidden reporting. The second one on Swine Flu is hilarious and betells a lot about us Indians and how we perceive things. The one about praising China for making the Sea-link double our size and in a record 3-4 months is special to me because sad as it may seem I found myself thinking much along the same lines when the sea-link was inaugrated with much fanfare.

Then theres the one on Child Labor which had our Pizza delivery Guy laughing out loud! The Railway Crossing, the stooping neta etc makes for an interesting view and is a telling commentary on the state of affairs here. Heres the link of the entire campaign for those who are not hooked onto the idiot box(no wonder).

Ads in our times are evolving and I am loving it!!

Jibber-Jabber

From my office workspace I have a bird’s eye view of the busy road and the not-so-busy office lobby. People come and go, always in a hurry to reach somewhere. None looks up, none stays, and no same face do I get to see everyday. It’s strange sometimes to find myself running around in much the same way as those I see from my nest atop.

The specification of my job demands minimum or no interaction with my colleagues. They say its as if you are an entrepreneur working on your own, day in day out. Not that there is zero conversation on the office floor, quite opposite to that but as far as the job is concerned you are on your own. They say working in a team, having a team-leader and the hierarchy-denominations hinder growth and prohibit a positive working environment what with the office politics and bitching invariably coming round to haunt you either in your back or someone in the back. I find myself strangely attracted to the possibilty of working coherently in a group, mixing my thoughts with those of others, absorbing ideas, throwing my weight around, waiting to see if it actually has some. I sometimes wonder if going solo is indeed the right way.

The life and times of a jobber aint an easy one, this you should know. Dealing with losses that come dime a dozen, humbled by bad views, demeaned by a pathetic ego and crippled by a prolonged patience makes you see that darker side of human emotions. As is the case with every damn profession it all boils down to the EQ. While IQ is glorified EQ is mushified. The lesser of the two brothers is often made to be the scapegoat of everything that is wrong with anything. Emotional Quotient is quite under-rated. Oscar Wilde says thus, “Life is too important to be taken seriously”. How succinctly put ain’t it? Thrown the EQ in the dustbin, fling IQ out the window and live as you have never lived. How men wish to be free of all things that they are not free of and sadly can never be of?

Business Models Beyond Profit – Social Entrepreneurship Lecture

Business Models Beyond Profit – Social Entrepreneurship Lecture

View more documents from Alexander Osterwalder.

Days of our lives

Sometimes it so happens in this big fat world of ours that the link between the real and the surreal is broken. Fact is stranger than fiction they say, and i accede. I happened to trespass on some old charming memories. What brought it out is something that I better not discuss but what it brought out is worth sharing. I felt a strange disconnect between my thoughts and my aspirations. I was hopeful of a bull market in my life, a trending long term resistance free gallop to the pole, it was more of a choppy ride siding with the bearish sentiment. My irrational exuberance found no takers and I had to leave my decisions at bay.

I realized looking back that bullish/bearish phase is just a passing phenomena. What stays on is you and your meandering thoughts alone. I found out the harder way that its not the destination but the journey that is more fulfilling. Destination is just a stoppage in between journeys, coz you always have the next destination in mind, up and ready. I babble aloud in abstract lineage yet find myself strangely converging to a set target. I hop skip and jump my way across the carcass of filth and envision a valley with muddish tinge, the smell of freshly watered grass, the mileu of a sunlit faceless sky, the aroma of a daffodil garden.

The curious case of curiosity

The HRD ministry under the stewardship of Shri Sibal is trying to reinvent the wheels of  education in India. He describes every initiative he takes to be historic and exemplary. While I am not a critic of our honorable minister who is doing his job much better than his pooh-poohed predecessor I sense there is something other than logic that is driving his decisions in this regard. While doing away wih board exams in totality is a debatable topic of conversation and I for once lie on the minister’s side what with the increasing cases of suicides or attempts of such kind by the kids that grow up in an environment where science is “The” thing and commerce and arts occupy the periphery. While grading with a continuous evaluation methodology may work out fine while driving out the flaws that exist in the much-maligned Indian Education system it will certaily not weed out the one aspect that is plaguing it for long.

The creative appeal of an education system is normally gauged using the research paper index which in simple terms calculates the paper published per person in any particular country. Japan heads the list, Uncle Sam is not so far behind thanks largely to the Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian, Australian diaspora that exist there because of the exemplary infrastructure as also the research environment created. A multi-level grading system will not work fine until the ‘content’ious thing is sorted out. I have been mightily impressed by the kind of freedom american universities hand out to students out to get a meaningful education, not necessarily an exhausted syllabi.

Critics argue Indians are not born to be creative. They are hard workers all right but when it comes to ideas and its implementation, we lag way behind others.It is for this reason that coming out with a Google, a microsoft or ebay/amazon is not something we can expect from our kiln folks. I strongly disagree. With the right appendages, infrastructure and working environment we can actually reverse the so-called brain drain in its nascent stage and stand tall amidst countries where research and application work at tandem with each other. To foster the spirit of research the art of questioning and naive curiosity is a must. In colleges students in the back benches are the heroes while those seated near to the teacher is considered “muggu” in our parlance or a “geek” elsewhere. Asking questions is a strict no-no for those who need to project images of impassivity and discerned non-chalance. The Gandhi scion pointed this out about a year back and was met with a flat denial from the college authorities.

Indians are people with loads of ego and scrapes of curiosity. The “chalta-hai” attitude is visible here as well. We need to be a bit more proactive and excuse ourselves from taking things lying down if we are to rise from the ashes and create a hot-bed for innovation and a harbinger of ideas.

ticks and tacks

What does Usain Bolt and Mr. ST have in common that I don’t? Think hard. Brian Lara qualifies to be in the same league. So does Muhammad Ali and Micheal Jordan and Lance Armstrong. What people like these possess or what these people are possessed with I know not coz folks like them can only generate awe and respect. Sheer dedication to their trades maketh them a force to reckon.

I would have thought Jinnah’s ghost was slowly but steadily fading into oblivion. But I guess I was wrong and Qaid-E-Azam is as live and kicking and biting as he was back in the 40s and 50s. The fact that he was demonized disproportionately in India is a fact. Historical distortions are a part and parcel of the society we live in today. It is said,”The conquerors conjure history as they seem fit and historical relevance is lost in the process”. Quite succinctly put and again a fact it is. Not that I’m that well read on modern Indian history thanks to the brilliant course conceptualization by the NCERT/AICTE bureaucrats, I’m of the opinion that the indictment of historical leaders come too quick and easy. Subjectivity and relevance remain at loggerheads with each other much too often. It aint a black and white world out there and historical facts are too distorted and ’simpled’ out for our own good.

Taleb in his book Fooled by Randomness terms historical facts and recountings a farce and a normalized version of the reality. He essentially states that history is replete with complex underpinnings impossible to put in records. Singling out Jinnah, Nehru, Patel or for that matter Baapu for partition and its aftermath is foolhardy and downright unjust. Let’s leave history history and catch hold of the future before it too recedes into the past. Jassu bhai’s 30 years of work went down the drains thanks largely to an opinion he held out and elucidated in his book. BJP today is in shatters and is catching the tail end of what is wrong within it as a national party. The Vajpayee era of moderate right wing ideology is no longer visible in its thinking. In its efforts to fashion itself to an ideologically driven party the “Party with a difference” has now become “Party with many differences”. An external affairs minister then the finance minister and then the defence minister Jassu juggled many hats for his party and was doled out a treatment that only my name-mate deserved for his “stupid” outburst. Anyways, so much for politics.

Its been close to 100 days of the freshly minted Manmohan era and dare-i-say-it i’m mightily impressed by the influx of some very good work that is being rolled out by the incumbent government. Not that I’m that big a supporter of the massive social scheme programs but they have been doing a world of good and seems like India finally has a sarkar at the centre that is both pro-development and inclusive in its ideology. NREGA, NHIDP, NPC etc seems like a hungry tiger ready for action and immediate deployment. Economics and fiscal prudence aside I am liking it.

The appointment of Nandan Nilekani, the Nuclear Deal. the ASEAN FTA, the RBI tackle on the meltdown, the Naxal approach and the disinvestment plans are some of the highlights of this 100 day old child. Piggy Flu was an aberrant and slighly overrated. The D6 gas dispute seems complex and smells of something deep-rooted and corruption ridden. Murli Deora has a tough task in hand while dealing with NTPC and RNRL at the same time. The MTN_Barti deal seems to be simmering and is taking ages to fortify. Sunil Bharti Mittal is God and you should know it. So is Jug Suraiya. My infatuation with him doesn’t seem to end.

Meanwhile Ashes should be with the Britons. They deserve it. Schumi lighted up old candles but it died down soon after. Massa did something to stir things up for sure, damn the bike that had Schumi’s neck on the needle. Woods must be turning sideways in his sleep with Yang screaming ” Haa Chiiin Chuuu” up his ears.

Thats all that was in my mind. This is my penseive and I intend to keep it this way.

Blowin’ in the Wind.

Had been sometime since I last posted something here thanks largely to my first job here at Gurgaon. For those uninformed I have taken up the job of a Derivatives trader/analyst in the company thats (appropriately) called “Futures First”.We folks are called jobbers in our own parlance. You might not dare call us that.

It aint an easy job if thats whats in your mind. It aint gambling either if thats what you think it is. To put it bluntly its demanding and pretty interesting at that. To top it all, all you need to do is buy/sell, look at the multiple screens screaming numbers infront of you and take a stand! Believe me, it could not get simpler than this, but as thing goes not all is simple. This reminds me of a pretty hilarious dialogue in one of the reality shows you see streaming on every damn channel these days. It goes like this-” Sonali ke playground me kuch simple nahin hota. Sab kuch tedha hota hai and bla bla…”. So , as things stand buying at a lower price and selling it at a higher value aint that easy. Anyways, am not gonna get into the full blown description of my job here. Not for now. That can wait.

Will include a description of the city that Gurgaon is sometime later too. There is just too many things to write on that. So it needs structuring and organized writing, something I am not likely to do in my lifetime or so I suppose. Anyways…

The top trader here earned 100,000 Euros in a single day yesterday. That takes his cut to be a little over 40L in a single day. I mean seriously, WTF? His is a case of total control, freakish dedication and consistent performance. Not everyone can clock a take home bonus of >30 mill every damn quarter for the past 3 years!! I felt like puking when I heard the numbers!! 3 years on and I am gonna get there!! Sooner or later its gonna come aint it?

Back to the reality now. Living comes easy here and have enjoyed the first few weeks. It gets quite tiresome during weekdays but when you like what you do, you dont look at how much you do. Time goes thick and fast when the Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) trades in the NYMEX Exchange. You like it when you see the possibility of yours truly making a loot with a few gentle strokes of the logitech mouse and without the use of any Ctrl. After all Ctrl is for losers eh? Getting used to the trading parlance now and am not gonna take pains at telling you all of it coz beleive me they are one too many.

Made some new friends, broke some new records, opened new bottles of spirit, pissed in a dark alley and came out untroubled(figuratively, stupid), acclimatized to the fricking hot weather, got stoned for the first time, understood the meaning of Monday Morning Blues (MMB), valued the significance of Thank God its Friday (TGIF), thanked God for Zero office politics, chartered new heights of emotions, cozied up with complete nonchalance, zeroed in on a definite career path, appreciated the discipline and the change in the lifestyle, saw half-blood prince, love aaj kal, ching chong, trainspotting, lock stock(again)..liked it all, cursed the pathetic gurgaon electrical department, scoured the lengths of Gurgaon, zeroed in on a prohibitively expensive apartment (dint eventually work out with the landlord though what with the demand for married folks, could have been Dostana like had there been a Prink Chops! sigh..), caught up with kgp folks, missed the “life-at-kgp” (an article on this to follow sometime later), made losses amounting to about 3000 dollars!! All in all a change that was destined to come, a change that came so sudden it hit me good, a change that was welcome and sad at the same time, a change that was good and refreshing.

Lets see how this works out. Am keeping my fingers crossed, are you?

Jst a thot

It is unsettling to see oneself being uncertain about what one wants in life. When there are so many things that occupy your mind at any point of time you sometimes fail to understand what it is that interests you the most and then you start to doubt yourself; what it is that makes you happy. Is it the never ending thirst for perfection or the instincts to satisfy the creative intellect, or is it the exhilaration of a debate won or a point scored?

I sometimes find it hard to identify myself as a person. I try to believe it to be a result of the limited years behind me but then I see people around me living like they never had any doubts about their intentions and desires? I on the other hand have desires one so many, intentions far fetched and varied.

There cannot be one reason that I can ascribe to this trait of mine. After all dreamers all and sundry have been like that, or so I believe. But then how am I to know which dream it is that I should attach the most value to, which ambitions should I prioritize, who and what should I care about? There are times when I limit myself to the thing that stands erect infront of me, tall and imposing, it stands upright and asks me to follow it, then there are times when I want to bring out the tiny nano-fragment of austerity and innocence that I value dearly. What is the point, I ask then.

I look at it through a prism. An angle that presents all dimensions fair and square. It is only then that I realize its not me and my thoughts alone. I am one among the crowd and yet I have to be alone.