New Blogs

Added a blog to the list of links. Waiter Rant certainly has a literary quality to it, and is a very enjoyable read.

Though the internet is huge, it's strange how one can get into a cycle of reading the same sites over and over again. It's probably like vacationing: some sites become like home, and you are always happy to be back. Anyway, I have decided to increase my reading of personal finance blogs. MyMoneyBlog is one I have added to my list of feeds today.

And here is a link to some of our travels .....

Delhi Real Estate and India Investment

Recently, I was evaluating real estate in India from an investment point of view. A 3 br flat in Greater Noida is going for 30-40 lac (USD 100,000), and a 3br flat in Noida is going for 60+ lac.

On the demand side, I don't know if there are enough people in the market for 30-40 lac flats that are being built by the thousands.

On the supply side, however, the picture seems better. Huge areas are opening up in Gurgaon/Noida/Dwaraka, connectivity is improving with the Metro and flyovers. Delhi has no natural barriers, and plenty of land around. If connectivity increases, and the government does not create artificial scarcity by restricting the private sector, then there should be plenty of supply.

(The story with Bombay is different because land is naturally scarce.)

I have decided against real estate investment in India for the present. Now looking into mutual funds in India. Basically, it may be a good idea to move some of my savings to India to hedge against dollar values. I will be happy with 10% gain in rupee terms (fix deposits are giving 6-8% in India). I am willing to tolerate a little bit more risk than fix deposits for a little bit higher return. The unfortunate problem is that fix deposits give 6% at zero (negligible) risk. If you want 10% at tolerable risk, you are taking an infinite increase in risk for a 33% increase in profit.

That's where the shackles of middle class mentality hold one back ....

Catalina

Had fun on Catalina Island on Labor day. The only trouble was the Catalina Explorer ferry that had it's return trip delayed by 5 hours. Very bad customer service, we ended up coming back on the much more professionally operated Catalina Express. If google ever crawls my blog, hope they pick up on this negative review of Catalina Express.

One thing I don't know is who maintains quality control on such ferry and other tourist services. I mean, most customers to tourist places are first timers, and unlikely to be repeat customers. For abusiness in a tourist town, is the only reward for good service a better rating in Zagat/Frommers/blogs(?). Particularly in a place like Catalina where there is not enough competition to begin with (due to the small size). Maybe the tourism board at such places keeps a good tab on businesses.

Bismillah

Went to a Pakistani restraurant on Aug 14 night. It's called Bismillah, one block west of the 805 on Clairemont. Very nice food. The lamb chops and biryani were both excellent. Why don't the upscale indian restaurants like Star of India (Del Mar) and Monsoon (downtown) have such good food ? Do Americas who frequent the upscale places prefer that kind of food ?

Kashmiri restaurant

There is a new Indian/Pakistani restaurant in town: Kashmir Cafe, right opposite the Indian shops on Black Mountain. The chef has not got to the restaurant yet, but it his would be trainer is there already. The propreiter (a Kashmiri lady) is a pretty good cook too. Overall , the food was quite homelike, and not the standard Indian restaurant in the US type. Cost is pretty reasonable, competetive with other Dhaba type places around.

Let's see how this place shapes up. Hope it brings some relief to Indian food lovers in San Diego.

Lenscrafters

My glasses broke on a recent camping trip. All my earlier eyeglass purchases were in India, where glass lenses and good frame comes to Rs. 1500-3000. In San Diego, I decided to go to Lenscrafters, a chain store. Their service pretty much sucks, and prices are high too. I wonder how these guys stay in business. I told the salesman I have used glass lenses earlier, and would like to try if something new is available. He took a look at my prescription, and told me to go for Polycarbonate.

As I later discovered after an internet search, polycarbonate lenses have an issue with peripheral vision. For people with cylindrical power in the -1 or more range, the image is not clear when looking through the edge of the lens. And I am not talking edge edge: the image becomes fuzzy half way between the edge and center. Anyway, the salesman gave me no warning of this issue, and gave me a $350 eyeglass (that included a $25 polishing fee that he sprung on me at the end of the deal).

The eyeglasses irritated me with this off center problem, and I finally had to return them. The only saving grace is that the return policy was a 30 day no questions asked. I don't know if lenscrafters is a franchisee based operation, but if it is, they should keep better tabs on the franchises.

okay, end of rant now.

Online banking with ING

I opened an online savings account with ING Direct a few months ago. They are giving 3% annual interest, as opposed to the zero point something on my bank's checking and saving account. ING gives no checkbook and not too many services. They just let you put money in, by writing a check or electronic transfer, and take money out, by transfering it to your regular bank account. Thus, they keep overheads low, and interest rates high. It's got good reviews on the web.

A competior is emigrant-direct.com. They are offering 3.25% now.

A Zoo in San Diego

No, not about the zoo of society, this post is about real zoos, where formerly wild animals reside.

Went to San Diego Zoo in Balboa park this weekend. For a zoo that is hyped as one of the best in America, it was a bit of a let down. But the zoo is certainly quite competetive with the other zoos I have seen.

Had a lot of fun watching the antics of a band(?) of Gorillas. Eight gorillas were playing in the spacious enclosure. There was one little gorilla too, and this kid was rolling and bouncing all over. My belief in evolution is confirmed every time I see any great apes.

Also saw a Hippo in his pool. This fella had a big plastic ball that he was kicking all over the place. The enclosure had a glass wall like an aquarium, and the size of this beast was amazing. The Hippo is the second largest land mammal if I remember right. The speed with which he moved under water, even though his legs are small, is a good lesson about the effect of buoyancy.

The third fun animal was the polar bear, who seemed quite happy in the 75F of San Diego.

The tiger, lion, bear and panda were all asleep. So much for going to the zoo on a warm afternoon.

Indians stick

I was wondering how it is that most Indian businesses in the US suck when it comes to customer service. Bet it the video rental places with in-your-face "We do not waive late fees" posters or grocery stores with old and mislabeled merchandise, or the shoddy service of indiaplaza.com that I made the mistake of ordering from. The answer in my mind is the lack of choice. We Indians have grown up in an environment without choice, where the customer will bicker with the shopkeeper, but not take his/her business elsewhere.

The same holds true for personal relationships. When things are not working, Indians still tend to stick. Because in our culture, the exercise of choice is almost considered a sin. But finally, the Lexus will win. It has to.

Ten laws of the modern world

Back to posting after a break. My wife is here with me now, and that should explain the hiatus :)

Great post by Sadagopan on the ten laws of the modern world (from a Forbes article). Familiar ones like Moore's law, and not so familiar ones like Drucker's law.

The flower fields

Visited the flower fields in Carlsbad, about 30 miles north of San Diego. This place is basically a flower farm, where they grow flowering plants in order to harvest the bulbs (roots) that are then sold to gardeners. While the flowers are growing, it is good sight for spectators to see a hillside colored with radiant colors with the oceon glittering away in the background. And the San Diego sun makes the sight all the more brilliant. They have just one type of flower, rununculus, that they grow here. Also, there is a small rose section, where winning roses from the past 50+ years are planted. Today, only about a third of those actually had roses on them, and I have seen better roses. A place worth visiting if it is the season, and if you live in San Diego.

Also drove by the TaylorMade golf factory on College Av, a few miles from the flower fields. It turns out all they do at this factory is to assemble together heads, shafts and grips that are imported from China and other places. Lou Dobbs has not added TaylorMade to his list. If you want distance, you got to take out some divets. But divets are people too.

Mail from Taranto

Had the following email exchange with James Taranto of Best of the Web Today of opionjournal.com (the WSJ opinion pages website). He is a smart man with a great sense of humor.

----------

My Mail

Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 11:32 PM
To: Opinionjournal
Subject: Pulitzers and Larry Summers

Dear Mr Taranto,

Your first item for Apr 5 2005 says

"Congratulations to our Wall Street Journal colleagues Joe Morgenstern and Amy Dockser Marcus for their Pulitzer prizes."

Now I wonder why you named the lady after the gentleman. The Pulitzer website you mention has Ms. Marcus's name before Mr. Morgenstern's, and an alphabetical arrangement of the names will place the lady's name first too. All the more surprising, the news stories I could google search all had Ms Marcus's name first.

So either you know Mr. Morgenstern better than Ms Marcus, or it must be reason number (3) on Larry Summer's list given below.

"1) Women want to have children, and as a result they don't put in the 80-hour work week that would make them competitive with their male peers;
2) the innate differences between men and women lead men to outperform women at the top end;
3) discrimination discourages women from pursuing science and engineering past their undergraduate education."

Maybe discrimination extends to the field of Journalism too.

With sincere thanks for your witty column.

-Rajat Prakash

Reply from James Taranto

Nothing to do with sex. I listed Joe before Amy because his reviews fall under the editorial page rubric, as does my Web site. Amy is on the news side. Same reason I listed Dorothy Rabinowitz before Ian Williams in 2001: http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=90000454

Cheers, James

Sin City (movie)

Saw Sin City, a movie based on Comic books by Frank Miller. The movie reminded me of Freud's eros and thanatos. Though many movies are about these base drives, Sin City throws away the polite coverings, and brings bare all that is erotic and destructive in the psyche. This movie has more of noir, and less of the cutting edge cool of Tarantino in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, or Beaty in Dick Tracy. Overall, a good movie, but nothing much missed if you miss it.

One day cricket

Went to a local screening of the 1st Indo-Pak ODI of this series. The arrangement at the theater was quite good, plenty of space with a good big-screen projector, and some reasonably priced samosas and chai on the side. Regarding the game itself, the most striking part was how the whole Indian innings fell apart after Sehwag got out. This was pointed out by Ashish Magotra in Rediff here. Is it something psychological: he makes batting look so easy that incoming batsmen's mind is messed ?

Another interesting point was how Inzy gave up many singles to Dravid and Sehwag. Was this again due to the mental stranglehold batsmen of the calibre of Sehwag and Dravid can have on an opposing caption ? In contrast, Ganguly kept the field up, and prevented the singles.

Continuing on Cricket, Amit Verma has a crusade against cliches in cricket commentary. Okay, it is not a crusade, just a campaign ;-). Here is what the master of clarity has to say on the subject of cliches, and other abuses of the language.

Also, got the first comment on my blog, from Braveheart.

आज बहुत दिन बाद हिनदी लिखने का हौका मिला

But need to find a tool that works better than SC Unipad. It does not transliterate properly, and I could not find (in five minutes at 1230am) a way to insert half letters in Hindi. Anyway, something to look at at leisure.

Also visited a bunch of IITK blogs, just for old times sake. Can find some here, and more show up with a simple google search. Blogging is taking off for some people still at the hostel. I guess blogs of youger people are always more entertaining, they say more about themselves, and less about others. Oh ! that angst of yesteryear.

Now listening to podcasts

In keeping with my mission to explore the new world of cutting edge internet technology, I downloaded ipodder. It is a cool tool for listening to podcasts, though I would have preferred it if were somehow integrated with Firefox. Don't know if podcasting will be my cup of tea, but the idea sure is fun.

Is podcasting a disruptive technology ? I don't know, but it sure can drive revenues for the Wireless industry that is currently providing my livelihood. I wonder what all can be done once voice recognition reaches a level where I can search for words in podcasts. Google is planning to expand their search in this direction, but may have a long way to go.

I used to listen to a lot of radio a while back, mostly NPR stations, and hopefully podcasting will bring some of it back, and maybe with more variety. There is a lot of NPR stuff being podcast around. I somehow suspect podcasting will be a politically more liberal medium, as opposed to the traditional Internet.

Isn't it funny how I said "traditional Internet", and it seemed like normal usage. Oh the days of sitting in the lab in India in 1994-5 and looking at that first pr0n. Well, it's been ten years now since my first Hotmail ID. (does anyone use Hotmail anymore ?)

To close, I hope to keep updating this page with some good podcasts.

anatomy of failure

The defeat of the Indian cricket team in the third test against Pakistan at Bangalore is one of the strage occurances in sport and life. What causes a mindset that makes a perfectly capable team capitulate to an ordinary opposition ? Why do stupid decisions get made by brilliant men ? And it was a stupid decision to defend against spin bowling on a 5th day track with six close fielders.

We will never know the answer, and analysis after the event is always easy (or extremely difficult, depending on the honesty of the analyst). Was the team defensive due to confidence in their defensive skills, or lack of confidence in offensive skill ? When the team is offensive, is it due to confidence in offensive skills, or lack of confidence in defensive skill ?

Maybe this defeat was a result of overconfidence ? Hey, we can not lose, we are so good we can do nothing for a whole day. We have mastery of the knife, so we will bring it to the gunfight.

friends and girlfriends

How appropriate is it to tease friends about their friends of the opposite gender. I mean, when Y is meeting X often, but not that often, how do friends of Y determine if they are a couple or not ? My own take is in line with Mohnish Behl in Maine Pyar Kiya,

Ek jawaan laDka aur ek jawaan laDki kabhi sirf dost nahi ho sakte

I suspect this line is true, atleast when friend refers to someone you feel emotionally intimate with.

Refer to platonic, and advice by Carolyn Hax here, and here. This subject of course has been dealt with by experts: no solution has been found yet, and it is safe to say that none will ever be found. Anyway, in the meanwhile it is good fun for those not involved directlym and in a different way for those who are involved ;-)

ps: I remember reading an article about this "just friends" issue written by a guy in a college newspaper. This article became a sort of a cult classic, and got written about in the NYTimes/WaPo, but I can't find it by searching the web now.

Blogging friends

My old buddy AT has started this blog. He claims I was his inspiration, but that would be a case of the lamp inspiring the sun to shine. In any case, as long as they both derive equal satisfaction by shining ...

Black (movie)

A very well made movie, and great performances from Amitabh, the child artist Ayesha, and Rani. What I liked about the movie was that they did not make Rani into some superhuman genius. She was just a smart blind/deaf kid with a good teacher. The whole Anglo american setting seemed a bit overdone to me, but it probably made more sense than her being the beti of some thakur sahib.

1. This is a review that would classify as encomium (GRE word list revisited).
2. The BBC review is an example of a bad review. The first part recaps the movie, pretty much destroying the viewing experience.
3. This review says that the first part of the movie, (which is the better part, by a mile), is copied scene by scene from "The Miracle Worker".
   

back from LA

Got 54.2 miles to the gallon on the way back from LA, the most I have ever got. Tried to keep the average at 65 mph. Udupi (sp?) in Artesia served up some good Sambhar Vada and Utthappam. This restaurant will last a few months if they open a branch in Delhi. And that's a few more months more than most Indian restaurants here (there I go again ....).

Also went to Naaz 8 cinema, and ate samosa in the intermission. Now that's what I call a good desi movie experience.

Off to LA, and Indian food

Making a day trip to LA tomorrow. Lately the Prius has been giving low mileage (42 mpg), hope to get something better on the freeway. Also plan to check out some good lunch place in Artesia. The Indian food in San Diego is sub-par. Sitar, Indian Tandoor (Mira Mesa) and the Sardarji on Activity Road are pretty much the only decent gigs in town. They are all dhaba style. The proper sit down places in town (there are 3-4 of them) can do much better.

My theory about Indian, and for that matter Chinese food, is that if you see many non-desis in a place, the food is probably not that good. Another good metric to apply is this: If this restaurant was in India, would I ever go there ? The answer for most restaurants here is NO. Which begs the question: why am I not in India ?

Okay, enough sentiness for the day. Must be that Mai-Tai I had tonight.

San Diego weather and windshield wipers

Though San Diego is famous for its sunny moderate weather, this season has seen a lot of rain. San Diego Union Tribute weatherman Rob Krier has a nice blog. He has this link to an analysis of Southern California weather.

It rained a fair bit today. An interesting thing during rain is when you shut off the ignition of your car, and the windshield wipers stay stuck at an odd angle. Do you find this annoying ? Maybe I need to buy a cadillac, that surely will not have this craziness.

MultiDesk

Installed Multidesk, a multiple desktop tool for Windows XP. Much better than MSDVM (part of Microsoft Power toys). Download from zdnet.

Firefox

Updated Firefox to version 1.0.1. All extensions I had on 1.0 are working fine. The extension I like are All in one gestures and Scrollbar Anywhere, Adblock, StockTicker, ForecastFox, FocusLastSelectedTab, Sage. Though I would much rather that some of the extensions, such as FocusLastSelectedTab, become part of the main release.

I find Sage to be a very useful extension to Firefox, I can check which one of my favorite websites have updated recently (using RSS feeds). Particularly useful for sites that only update once every few days: dpreview is a good example.

More on the virtues of RSS some other day (see the Wikipedia article for a summary and lots of links).

via erosblog

How to hypnotize a man, via erosblog. This guy is funny.

It works !! (and Da Vinci)

Okay, so now I have a blog. If no one reads it (hey getting insecure already), atleast it will be a good diary. Finished reading Da Vinci Code a few days ago. Since I did not know of the conspiracy theories that are the subject of the book, I found it quite exciting. Take out the magnitude of these theories, and it becomes an ordinary book. My take on the book is that it is pro-church, as in pro the modern church. spoilers ahead

1. The Vatican does not like questionable organizations like Opus Dei
2. Even Opus Dei (a questionable organization) does not like violance
3. The people who the church is supposed to be after, are actually supportive of the church, in that they are upto nothing revolutionary

Come to think of it, Lagaan (bollywood movie, 2001?) is in a sense pro-british. The powerful did follow their rules and they left when they lost their bet, they found fair umpires. As my grandfather used to say, the british did have character.

Dhoom

Saw bollowood movie Dhoom. Very dhinchak timepass movie. This movie is a good example of nepotism in Bollywood. Abhishek, Esha and Uday. One scene where Abhishek tries to act drunk is quite tragic. And you almost wish Esha did not look like the dreamgirl .... but not too harsh, maybe she has talent which some director will bring out sometime ....