Free Science Fiction

CFA Level 2 Financial Reporting Question Set 2

2010-03-25T20:59:00.001-07:00

"An employee of mico car currently earns Euro 50000 per month. The current rate of inflation in the country of Monetary is 3% in 2010. Hence the pay hikes till 2020 is 4% after which the employee retires. The discount rate used by the company is its WACC which equals 5%. The company contribution to the defined benefit plan is 1.5%.
Q1. What would be the employee salary in 2010?
Q2. What would be the Annual Unit Credit per service year?
Q3. What would be the opening obligation at beginning of year 2?
Q4. What would be the ending obligation at the end of year 2?
Q5. What are the current service costs in year 3?
Q6. What would be the impact of higher pay hikes on interest costs?
Q7. What would be the impact of an increase in WACC for the company on the service costs?
Watch this space for answers tomorrow!"

CFA Level 2 Financial Reporting Question Set 1

2010-02-25T19:23:00.000-08:00

The content is not endorsed by CFA institute, This content is to help other test takers.
Readers please feel free to validate

Financial Reporting and Analysis Passage
Masab corporation is located in Puerto Rico, US. U.S. GAAP is used to prepare its financial reports. Masab Corporation has trading interests in the Faladusian Republic and has invested $1 Million in the 5 year 10% government bonds issued by Faladusian Republic. The transaction cost is $500. The investment is recorded as Available For Sale. The 5 year 10% bond trades 20% lower than issue price due to higher fiscal deficit. The Faladusian currency has also depreciated by 10% in the meantime.

Q1 What is the initial value of investment which is recorded?
a. US$ 1000,000
b. US$ 950,000
c. US$ 1000,500

Q2 What would be the gain or loss from change in fair value recognized in equity as comprehensive income?
a. US$ 280,000
b. US$ 720,000
c. US$ 1000,000

Q3 If the investment is sold, how would it be recorded in the income statement?
a. Reclassification adjustment in the income statement
b. Reclassification adjustment in the statement of equity
c. Reclassification adjustment net of taxes in the income statement

Q4 If IFRS were used where would be foreign exchange losses or gains be recorded
a. Income statement
b. Other comprehensive income
c. Statement of equity

Air conditioner with anti mosquito technology

2010-02-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

Convergence is the buzz word. To monetize convergence, air conditioner with anti mosquito technology could do well in India. The problem with split AC's is that they are mounted high in the air. A replacable liquid anti mosquito canister alongwith electronic anti mosquito frequency is the idea.
To execute, a few visits to china might be needed to look at the AC OEM components.
Thoughts my friends?

KRI, KPI and PI

2009-12-27T22:14:00.000-08:00

Remember the Balanced score card and the strategy map? In the strategy map the drivers are the trained and motivated employees who work as per well defined internal and external processes to deliver products or services which result in performance which can be measured by financial metrics like ROCE or ROE.
As per an article I read today, Key Performance Indicators(KPI) cannot be a financial metric and need to be something which management keeps a tab on every day and every hour. Every employee is in some way responsible for the KPI. Example KPIs are late arrival of flight, customer satisfaction etc. Is it possible to monitor financial metrics every hour and is the investment in such a system economical?

An example Key Results Indicators (KRI) can be the Dupont formula or ROE which can be subsequently decomposed into net profit margin, asset turnover and degree of financial leverage( asset/Equity). Performance indicators can be number of employee suggestions etc. The article also downplayed the causality angle or lead (driver)-> lag (result) analysis method and used the metric late arrival of flight to prove the point. Is this metric a lead or lag indicator?

Outliers review

2009-12-26T23:28:00.001-08:00

I just finished reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It is a good read, what struck me was the lack of any reference to east Indians in the book! Only the korean, chinese .. rice growing chinese from pearl valley delta are taken. This makes me wonder if the author has a selection bias in the data.
One of the organizational behaviour inputs was the importance of autonomy and expectancy in a job, yes the Vrooms expectancy model where the motivation is determined by ones perceived chances of achieving valued outcomes. effort->performance expectancies and performance-> outcome instrumentalities influence the degree of effort, which is almost like P(A/B) is a factor of P(B/C) chaining. Also note that during my MBA I could not discriminate between performance and outcome :P, its only in a job that you start realizing the asymmetry of performance and outcome. I started thinking of my wife, who as a doctor certainly has a higher degree of autonomy. One of the advantages of my consulting profession is a high score on the autonomy axis.
Well the core idea of the book is that raising children by middle class is more like cultivation due to time sequencing of learning activities and also making use of the vacation time to build additional skills. I still remember my father giving me algebra homework from Hall & Knight during summer vacations, and all I wanted to do was to devour the next Issac Asimov novel from Haldia IndianOil officers club library. Well I did read the steamy passages from Eric Van Lustbaders novels too :P

The other concept is usage of mitigated speech in a hierarchical setting when speaking to superiors. An example given was the disastrous consequences in a cockpit where the listener does not have the luxury of time to interpret the fine nuance. I started wondering if inter team communication during a short high burn client strategy engagement require mitigated or direct communication? Mitigation of speech and nuances in sentences would be important for global firms which operate in advisory space. Overall a good read 4/5.

Investment value chain by looking downstream

2009-09-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

In the last post, I had mentioned about the importance of cash flows. One shouldnt however follow it blindly as I was almost about to sell BEML stock based on
negative operating cash flow of Rs 411 crores(Rs 4.11 Billion). However it was the inventory which increased from Rs 2 Bn to nearly Rs 6.9 Bn. With an inventory turnover ratio slightly greater than one. The gearing has also increased due to increase in working capital and other capex.

Looking at the downstream value chain becomes important as one analyzes as to where are BEML's products being used: for building roads and metro coaches primarily. The Medium term drivers are following:
1. The National highway development plan is going to receive a boost, however I saw mostly kobelco earth moving equipment in Hyderabad while travelling to the airport. So is this a valid correlation cov xy/ sigma x. sigma y
2. Metro is going to come up in Bangalore, DMRC is in for a massive expansion, so rolling stocks requirement is going to increase. That could be a reason for the significant increase in inventory other than a desire to build up inventory when the raw materials are in a negative cycle

In terms of long term drivers:
- Public transport could receive a boost with increasing urbanization and spending power in developing countries while the lobbying power of automakers decreases witht the Detroit bankruptcies.
- Mechanization in building roads is going to increase in India.
- Real estate prices in Bangalore are going to increase and BEML's real estate assets are significantly undervalued.
To end the post let me be a bit humorous, history does repeat itself like I read in russian science fiction in a story where a physicist is about to cross an unmanned railway crossing. BEML price has yo-yoed between 500 and 1700 in the past, so buying opportunities might be there sub Rs 750. Credit Suisse has a target of nearly Rs 1200.

Non recurring items and other income

2009-07-22T21:41:00.000-07:00

HDFC Bank: Out of a total income of $1040 Million, other income was nearly 20%, up from 14% in Q1 of 2008. What does this other income constitute of ; unconsolidated subsidiary earnings?
BHEL also had a higher income due to non-recurring item. These are important as analysts are primarily using recurring income from continuing operations to gauge the valuation of company. Will this impact DCF valuations, yes ! as one needs to make sure that the future cash flows are not incremented based on a current bloated cash flow due to one time infrequent /unusual/extra-ordinary item.

Praj Industries foreign investments and numbers

2009-06-28T00:25:00.000-07:00

Let me be honest, I invested in Praj after seeing a news item that one of the Menlo Park investors had invested in it. Venture capitalists are more focussed on the business model than on just the numbers which means that they look at cost structure, core capabilities, value configuration, opportunity cost, value proposition, customer relationship, distribution channel, target customer and revenue streams. Let me take a peek at revenue and cost.

To get an appreciation of the magnitude of Praj industries overseas investments and their performance, lets look at their annual report. Revenue was 7719 Mn in FY 2009 up 10% YOY. The Profit after tax was Rs 1297 Mn, down 15.5%. Site expenses and labour charges have increased to Rs 1907 Mn from a base of Rs 496 Mn.
The breakdown of revenue has been almost half and half in rest of world and India.

The subsidiary financials have been consolidated with Praj industries financials based on AS-21.With these figures in perspective, Praj industries has invested Rs 218 Mn in Praj Schneider. Praj owns 60% equity in Bioenergy Europa which has revenues of Rs 705 Mn in FY 09. Unrealized forex gain is Rs 240 Mn.

Beers sales are only expected to rise with the increasing pricing power of fermenting industry in India. Praj is working on both ethanol and bio-diesel technologies. If we take a 10 year horizon, Oil is definitely going to spike again resulting in super normal profits for the alternatives. Governments may further the alternative investments to protect the domestic economies. Clean technologies has been a theme with lot of emotional attractiveness and makes financial sense.

Americans think in months and British plan in days

2009-04-23T04:48:00.000-07:00

Look at the date format mm/dd/yy. Annual planning is much easier :). While typing 4/23, the first letter occupied my sphere of concentration and I was able to immediately discriminate with another meeting on 5/7. Hence I conclude that the American date format helps to plan for longer time horizons w.r.t the dd/mm/yy format.

Look at the distance in miles, it is numerically less but actually equal to kilometers.Let me think abou it ..abhi bahut door jaana hai servo extra mile bharo

EMI Demystified and relationship with PVIFA

2009-02-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

Excel simply will not scale like code ! So here is the derivation from the fundamentals; Enjoy:
Geometric series 1+x+x^2+x^3+...= 1/1-X if X<1
PVn = A/R - A/[(1+R)^n.R]
e.g. PV3 = PV(infinity) - A/[(1+R)^3.R] where PV(Infinity) = A/R; remember D1/Ke-g
FV=PV(1+R)^N + PMT[(1+R)^N -1]/(1+R)^N*R)
pvn =" A/i" N=" Periods," R="Rate," A =" PMT"

FV="O"
- PMT = PV*R(1+R)^N/((1+R)^N -1)

disc = (1 + coupon) ^ N

payment= Bal * coupon * disc / (disc - 1)

InterestCashFlow(period) = Balance(period - 1) * Coupon / Frequency
PrincipalCashFlow(period) = payment - InterestCashFlow(period)
Balance(period) = Balance(period - 1) - PrincipalCashFlow(period)

The diagrams are simplified and do not denote the complexity of Net Interest Margins of different assets e.g. Senior Notes

Assets are valued by Sellers/Securitizers based on:
1. Interest
2. Default
3. Recovery rates
4. Credit spreads
5. Prepayment rate

Entrepreneurship motivation

2009-02-22T08:03:00.000-08:00

The thoughts on top of most peoples minds is the global recession. Similary the driver for most people contemplating self owned business is money! I was thinking if giving employment to tens of people is a valid motivation. The right wing economists will start puking as they believe that profit should be the only motive and corporate social responsibility is not good for corporate health. The owner of business is an extension of the company, so this logic should hold for owner's motivation or driver as well.
The good thing was this thought chain helped clarify the dichotomy between trends and drivers. Trend would be the recession and driver would be something which affects the company postively or negatively like changes in interest rate , currency rate volatility, commodity price change. The visualization I had in mind was a person driving a vehicle, so what would be the primary driver for a company ? People and their intent!! So are drivers more likely to be internal than external like trends? This is like looking behind using the rear view mirror or the side view mirror. Most strategy maps have people as the point of primary focus to drive internal and external scorecards culminating with the financial scorecard.

I had these thoughts speeding through my mind after having a fast drive. There is delicious fatigue in the bones which prevented me from posting as soon as some insights crossed my mind. Now I am struggling hard to recall those nuggets, and hence this build-up.

Economics focus| looking good by doing good

2009-02-09T07:09:00.000-08:00

The incentives covered as an introduction to Freakonomics were financial, social and moral. The article examines if the so called moral incentive from contributing to charity is actually a social incentive. The article also examines if it’s possible to give creative financial incentives to boost charity.
Some of the questions which arose as I pored through the article were:
a) Does Individual responsibility have to be publicized? How much of charity is publicized. Statistics from a particular case in point can be misleading e.g. just taking Boston’s Institute of contemporary art(ICA) as a single data point prove that less than 1% of private gifts to charity are anonymous might be erroneous.
b) Is charity increasing in terms of volume figures and actual revenue? A 2001 survey that 89% of Americans gave to charity does point towards charity becoming more broad-based. Actual charity revenue might be totally opposite. Taking inflation into account, the tripling of charity to $306 Billion from a base of $100 Billion in 1965 is no wonder. In real Dollar terms, charity today should be approximately $719.47 Billion to have the same effect it had in 1965. Take a look at the table below. The table below also illustrates the effects of compounding. If there is 7% inflation, then money doubles in 10 years. Coming back to the crux of the article, if the author of the article intended to point out that charity has increased due to associated social incentives; it is not the case at least in real dollar terms. The data points to charity in real dollar terms being half of what it was in the year 1965.

c) Are financial incentives in charity inversely correlated to looking good in the eyes of those whose opinion charity givers really care about (Image motivation)? According to the article behavioral economics might provide the answer, but going by the recent boom bust and catastrophe in the global economy, it seems highly unlikely. In case of blood donation, the hypothesis might be true, but it cannot be expanded to cover all charity and all financial incentives to charity. Tax breaks are a very strong incentive to charity.
In some parts of the world, Charity is a method to launder money from black to white. Educational institutions and religious institutions play a role in this business.

Right wing Economists who have a belief that self interest governs most actions of man are intrigued by charity. They will take solace in the fact that charity has in fact fallen to half of what it was five decades back in real dollar terms. They might miss out the fact that today charity is international wherein aid workers and religious workers reach out to remote places to be noble. The cynic would say that the well-off are reaching out to exorcise the demons within them. If we are less cynical then we would simply look at the good which is resulting from charity.

Incentives that mold behavior in the workplace

2009-01-19T04:10:00.000-08:00

Take some time to think about the incentives that mold behavior in the workplace.
The author has defined three types of incentives economic, social and moral. We can approach the workplace incentives from two perspectives. The first perspective is from Frederick Herzberg’s Hygiene factors point of view. Herzberg rationalized that the factors causing satisfaction are different from those causing dissatisfaction. The determination of causality is based on employee interviews.
Following are the Hygiene factors causing dissatisfaction:
1. Salary
2. Work conditions(Cafeteria)
3. Company policy
4. Relations with Boss(Expats)
5. Peer relationships
6. Transport
7. Air conditioning
The following Motivator factors cause satisfaction è
1. Achievement
2. Recognition (WOW you work at xxyy firm)
3. Work (BPO, Coding, Consulting, Client facing work)
4. Responsibility (compared to other Indian firms)
5. Growth(Manager, Sr. Manager, Partner)
Economic Incentives that mold behavior in the workplace are more similar to hygiene factors, the absence of which causes dissatisfaction, but the factors themselves do not provide satisfaction:
1. Salary
2. Bonus
3. Perks
Social Incentives and Moral incentives on the other hand provide psychological gratification and are called motivators in Herzberg’s language. Following are the social incentives:
1. Recognition
2. Dinner with the boss
3. Important assignments
4. Interesting work

The second perspective or Maslow’s Hierarchy of human needs is evolutionary and involves redefinition of most important needs and wants of an employee as the basic needs like food, security and sex get satisfied at different salary thresholds. Somebody introduced purchasing power parity and wrecked the whole thing. The cost of milk is same in United States as in India. India is the land of low cost, so apartments with basic necessities are much cheaper. Electricity is subsidized by the government and so does not add up to the GDP. Even with subsidized electricity, the weather is so good that air conditioning is not a hygiene factor at home, but is a hygiene factor at work. Jumping to an interesting topic, of course the thresholds for sex are different for better looking employees. The threshold for sex is different in closed cultures like India where arranged marriage is the norm.
Moral Incentives like community work allow the employee to claim higher ground and is a win-win for the employer and the employee.
Moral Incentives can be considered to be on the peak of Maslow’s Pyramid:
1. Community work
2. Good Audit leading to greater transparency
3. Helping Clients and Economy do better
4. Recognition of Honesty
5. Evidence of no Dishonesty ( Borrowed from Nassim Taleb’s N.E.D)

It’s a pity that knowledge is not able to root out corruption. Erudite people in the middle belly of India are lacking the workplace incentives to deliver governance. By falsification, the absence of dishonesty or no evidence of dishonesty does not mean Evidence of no dishonesty. It is the lack of a measure or mitigating influence like cameras in public offices which lead to no evidence of dishonesty. The presence of a camera might lead to shifting of graft from office premises and employment of more middlemen.
In a perverse sort of way, the gratification from community work is much more in India, where there is so much work to do, so much poverty to alleviate by primary education and improving governance.

Ratio of R&D to SG&A > 1

2009-01-02T01:04:00.000-08:00

I read Nassim Taleb on the first day of 2009 and wondered about the events which will happen. From a risk management perspective one needs to look at how one can bounce back from a multitude of events which are not neccesarily coincident. The investment in risk avoidance can map to 'n' number of events. Nassim is critical of Risk managment( cant have a risk specialist because of the breadth and possibility of a bend/wrap in the fabric of Risk space :P) .
While mapping the risk of companies, one metric I noticed was the ratio of R&D to SG&A expenses. For the more successful companies, the ratio seems to be greater than 1(OH CAUSALITY!). Investing heavily in R&D with an emphasis on the fat tail and serendipity can (Hypothesis) co-relate to risk reduction in areas like economic slowdown, change in industry structure and change in consumer preference. What investment in R&D cannot protect(Again a Hypothesis but of the falsification type / For eminent Catter's "scoring by elimination :D" ) against are risks like Litigation, Employee retention and Accurate Financial reporting.
('N'Assimilated from Nassim's Black swan)

Does a CAT have 9 lives?

2008-11-17T02:41:00.000-08:00

Apparently not as per a CAT expert excerpt in Economic times :
“Over the years, there have been candidates who make repeated attempts at CAT and even get right percentile for admission to one of the IIMs. However, such candidates lack the right attitude and IIMs in fact don’t like them. And this year’s pattern reflects this very well,” said a CAT expert.
I wrote CAT twice, the first time I was better prepared but I did not clear it, the second time I got a center at Jyoti nivas college and cracked CAT in a happy go lucky manner. The key thing is to be relaxed. Why did'nt I clear it the first time..Among the reasons which I thought:
1. I was not relaxed
2. I reached the center too early and lost my potential by whiling about in the garden
Blogging on CAT is an Annual ritual :D

saw toothed stock market

2008-11-13T21:29:00.000-08:00

The fluctuation of the NSE Nifty today reminded me of saw toothed waveforms which I would look to clip in my electrical engineering days at surathkal. IMO This volatility is a result of uncertain policy measures as US is changing course seeing China's fiscal stimulus move. Today in the hindu columnist patnaik essentially advocated fiscal stimulus versus just doing increasing the M3 money supply. Will the long term cash flows of cashcow companies get effected unless of course the cashcow is not the sacred cow we thought but just a ponzi scheme of routing money from financial services into aircraft turbine and power generation biz? Making the customer leveraged by having a financial arm might be a good idea in good times, but in bad times it can make you sink faster.

Saravanaa bhavan and free movement of people

2008-11-11T21:30:00.001-08:00

I am almost scared of posting for fear of horsing around. I had a shock of my life seeing the owner of saravanaa bhavan in chains. Is it a plot by McDonalds to stump the future of fast food from Madras. Saravanaa bhavan is an Oasis in Chennai station with fresh cool and clean air to breathe. Its so miles apart from the smelly station air!!
Saravanaa Bhavan near Mount road is where I would go with my parents on saturday nights to down the delicious Dosas followed by coffee and walk down to our house in Lloyds road. Walking a bit further and turning to left comes the US consulate who filed a complaint for traficking on Saravana Bhavan. Corporate governance becomes important for even SME's! Software companies would be well advised to look at the repurcussions of Visa abuse. It goes against my sense of liberty that the movement of humans should be restricted so that there can be certain oasis which reminds me of Babylon AD. In the movie Babylon AD , the rest of world is shown to be in Chaos while North America enjoys unprecedented peace and prosperity. Shall I accept the view that Visa is not a right and rebel against Darwinism and survival of the fittest. Why should a person who is not a diligent worker be sheltered against a hardworking person from another part of the world?

case studies for business process fraud analysis

2008-10-31T00:46:00.000-07:00

After doing a training on business processes for 4 days, I realized that the case study was most insightful. Factoring receivables opens up the same can of worms as CDO's. Lets look at the point of similarity, both of them essentially sell future cash flows at todays prices. Just as asset prices can be inflated or loans foreclosed, how can Accounts Receivable be manipulated?
1. Channel stuffing
2. Changing the credit terms
More ideas from readers?
The other important thing I gleaned from the training was keeping your vendor and customer files clean and excel pivot table definitely helps :>

Economy on steroids(Tax payers money)

2008-10-12T22:44:00.000-07:00

The infusion of liquidity by monetary policy is pushing up the price of gold and pulling down the price of oil.
Some interesting conjectures:
1. Gold is a not a luxury/vebelen good based on current trend where the demand has tapered off as price has increased.
2. Commodity prices are cooling off in effect equating liquidity pressures to cooling-off of demand side. By the same logic, easing liquidity should lead to easier lending thereby enabling capital expenditure.
I have been reading a lot on behavioural economics and Moral Hazard pops up everywhere, AIG management has gone on a vacation after bailout. Infusion of public equity(Tax payers money for bailout) into private sector will lead to inefficient allocation of capital. Regulation is a more efficient framework if Regulators listens to leading lights like Nassim Taleb who had criticised VAR methodology in the book fooled by Randomness . Can regulators listen to hedge fund managers like David Einhorn, however diligent they may be?
Risk taking =f(utility, weighing) , Tversky and Kahneman, 1992, suggest that individuals are risk seekers for small-probability gains and large-probability losses, and risk averse for large-probability gains and small-probability losses. The only issue here is whether the traders are cognizant of the large-probability losses!

wikinomics audiocast

2008-10-03T01:10:00.001-07:00

Listening to the wikinomics audiocast has opened my eyes to a trend which I used to view as insignificant. Listening to the audiocast was mindblowing enabling me to see myraid opportunities in the web 2.0 space . I see it as an opportunity to build consulting eminence. The example is of a Gold prospecting company which uploaded its geological data to public competition into a 40MB file and thereby increased revenue from $30 million to $9 Billion. Respondents used non traditional techniques from mathematics and operations research to search for new drilling prospects. The prize money has had a reinforcing behaviour on respondents and enabled multi-discipliniary approach.
The advantage of investing time in web 2.0 is to study how collaborative system interacts with the traditional control assurance behaviour of enterprises to bring forth new blueprints of more efficient people and business processes.

Rainfall driving and keeping cool

2008-08-19T04:51:00.000-07:00

Roads have been washed away by the rains in Hyderabad. I am faced with two options

1. Inch along for half an hour before reaching the tunnel where four lanes merge into one
Distance = 5 km, Time = 30 min - 2 Hrs Accident risk =Low
2. Drive through a different route where I tend to almost knock over motorcyclists who are overtaking on the left side.
Distance = 14 km, Time = 30-45 minutes Accident risk = Medium

Lets travel to uncle Sam's place. In Texas, I was amazed to learn about road rage. Who would imagine getting shot at by a shotgun for rowdy driving. It is so important to keep cool during driving and not deal with it like its CAT or JEE exam where you have to get ahead of the others. Parents have been drilling this message. Why am I so competitive that I try to stop others from overtaking me?
The solution has been :
1. Not have a target time to reach office
2. Drive in a straight line

convocation

2008-03-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

Finally a dream comes to an end. Convocation ran like a well oiled machine and my face was puffed up with pride. There was a lingering sadness in the back of my mind about leaving my K'omrades. It is still ennui before work resumes. When the mind remains idle it makes fantastic conjectures and this is leaning more towards synthesis rather than analysis. I am training my mind to place things in the concrete and abstract quadrants too. Few of my thoughts while lazing on a houseboat in the backwaters

1. Pension schemes should be taken on the wifes name as women live longer. This eliminates the need to take life insurance. The caveat is that this does not cover children.

2. There needs to be incentives for cleanliness in public places. The backwaters are so neat inspite of so many visitors. Kozhikode was not so neat a few years back. It took a sustained grass roots campaign by the district administration to make Kozhikode one of the neatest places. Its important not to throw around plastic. It will be such a lame post if I buy an SUV :(!

3. A short article on Warren Buffet @ Dalal street was enlightening. I liked the part about not spending on brands but on buying what one wants ( shades of no logo) and doing what one really wants to do. Remember its only one life and time in finite. I like watching national geographic and discovery channel if I am not able to travel :).
Why doesnt Dalal street provide FCFF and FCFE? The beta shown in also not complete as without mention of the period, the beta is useless. Dalal street online http://www.dalalstreetjournal.com/ONLINEPREVIEW/tabid/146/Default.aspx

Contagion

2008-02-20T10:51:00.000-08:00

Stevia

The other thing I did today was to meet CEO of medicinal herbs company who connects the suppliers to the demand. I had queries on stevia and the response was that bid ask yield has reduced from 90/150 to 60/90 in 2 years. Currently there are no farmers who are cultivating stevia in wayanad. The climatic conditions are cold which cause flowering. Flowering a decreases the yield of stevia leaf. He was able to spare some time for me and showed me a sample of stevia powder of puritan brand imported from US. The label reads nutritional supplement. A very pertinent point as there are political implications to stevia from companies which have poured billion dollar investments into sugar substitutes. The other political problem is the sugarcane lobby.
The insight which he gave me was that the very Institutional voids which we criticize in India can help make stevia a success here. Now the challenge is generating demand. I thought the package might be a problem. If stevia is properly packaged in smaller packets, it can be a hit with juice wallahs. Coke uses Stevia in Japan, so another big market. The biggest market is households as stevia stays stable at high temperatures, even 400 degree centigrade.
To find farmers in wayanad who are cultivating stevia in wayanad, I got the suggestion to contact nurseries in and around kalpetta as growing stevia seedlings requires careful supervision. Good irrigation and hot sun are good enough for stevia to grow.

It has been quite a day for me. Recounting the details might take the juice out of readers who love one genre more than the others.
Among one of the ten magazines I picked up today two things struck me
1. US has a 14 trillion dollar economy , China has about 3.5 trillion dollar economy and India has a 1.1 Trillion dollar economy , looking at the magnitude of difference in size of economies, the decoupling theory does not hold.
2. An article on SIV Structured Investment vehicles , which are nothing but a synthetic of banks , borrow short and invest long. similarly Banks lend long. Now these long investments have to be liquid i.e. tradeable and offer an arbitrage opportunity. SIV are in a spot because liquidity has dried up as subprime CDO's are not generating cash flows.

Fooled by randomness

2007-12-10T08:52:00.000-08:00

It was a 7 hour flight from Zurich to Delhi. I met a Gujarati accountant who had survived the stock market for 20 years while waiting at Delhi airport. His wife didnt like him talking to a stranger about investments. Still we had time to pass and so he spoke. I would rather that he spoke because he took a paternal liking to me! One of the pearls was to exit at 20-30% profit and try to profit recursively and diversify risk. It vindicated me as I took lower risk. I didnt make 5 times the money but twice the invested money in the boom time between 2004-2007. I sold my 2000 shares of ICICI @ Rs 74 booking a profit of Rs 24. Today ICICI trades somewhere near Rs 900. Sometimes I look back and wonder if took the right decision by selling. Reading Nassim Taleb doesnt make me feel better. The subject matter of the book is on profiting from increased uncertainity and volatility (The black swan). Make small losses and a huge infrequent profit. The mirror image is making small gains and a huge infrequent loss. Are there zones which are in between ?

Fooled by randomness is a non-fiction book on probability in markets and profiting from uncertainity and volatility. Nassim Taleb gives illustrations of the boom and bust cycles(wrong choice of word) to illustrate that the past is not neccesarily a predictor of the future. Its a must read for those who want to preserve capital . It is also for those who are watching agog as the newspapers extoll readers that sensex will reach 25,000.

I was amazed at the insights presented by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. These were illustrated in class at IIM like birthday coincidences and non symmetric distributions. Some concepts were beyond my understanding in class :(. In his book Nassim brings probability concepts to life.
I decided to order the book on exotic derivatives by Nassim from Amazon.com. The irony is that the publisher is charging $110 for a book in India which costs $70 in the US!

Back to Nassim, there is intellectual arrogance in the book which makes me confront my own subconscious thoughts on knowing it all which results in rigidity of thought. I had frequent arguments with my father where I would ask him to back up loose statements with intellectual rigour. Reflecting at myself, I realized that seldom had I subject my ideas to internal censure before blurting them out from the tip of my tongue.

Why do FII's and MF's prefer GAIL & Bharti

2007-07-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

Based on the last 5 year monthly returns for GAIL and Bharti, We see that these stocks lie very close to the Efficient frontier as per Capital market line theory. No wonder FII's and MF's are stocking on this low risk high returns stock of Bharti Airtel which is the yellow triangle bounded by red in the graph shown above.

The distribution of returns over the last 5 years are shown in the RED graph above

Kurtosis and skewness adjustments will have to be done for Standard deviation (Risk) of Bharti.

Covered call versus Protective put

2007-06-30T01:32:00.001-07:00

Covered call is selling a call option ie. you are obligated to sell your stock to the buyer of the call option. Covered it is because u have the underlying security in your portfolio or a cross hedge. Covered call would need repeated skimming of premiums. Hence I opted for the protective put on the NIFTY july futures. It all boils down to probability that how many options get exercised and who gets to be on the receiving end.

A covered call would be adopted in cases where the market is moving listlessly and you have to make your margins. For the long term investor, the protective cross hedge put looks better as continuous monitoring is not required.
That is the advantage of European options and in India, the Indice based options are european options which are exercisable only on expiry. The share based options are American options which can be exercised anytime before expiry. Hence an option pricing model would have to profile the investors.

Fusion 9 at Hyderabad happened at 6 am

2007-05-28T01:34:00.000-07:00

The Nizams city
early in the morning
waiting for the Bus
So early in the morning
Its already crowded.

There stands a man
with sackful of things
Some for his livelihood
and some which cling on.

The man was a mason
His wife stood at the front door
and both would yell about
what to pay the conductor.

The conductor would tell
Put the sack someplace
So the mason man put
the sack on my toes.

I put my bag on the sack
and waited for a place
a place to sit and watch
as the morning commuters
gathered their lives.

Got down from Godavari
Travelled over Godavari

IIM K Rowdy gang's Holi and Munnar trip

2007-03-10T01:30:00.000-08:00

Munnar was a treat , time just flew and I got the name of giidh aka. vulture for spotting somebody on the road. It was fun, always fighting for the window seat as the panaromic scenery flew by. Munnar is truly truly pretty !nothing like I have watched before. The lakeside is the best I have seen, its not as large as lake Tahoe but on a smaller scale and the scenery here is much prettier. Once you get there you will see the speedboats trying to scare the honeymooners, how can i forget threee years b4 I had been here for my honeymoon....sweeeeeet
HOLI HAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
I Was holed up in the library trying to escape the holi heat. I decided to play holi and boy was it fun. Wet Wet Wet with sweets and thandai and Color.

Repo rate and Reverse repo rate surya@iim k

2007-01-29T06:35:00.000-08:00

The repo is the rate at which the RBI lends to banks while the reverse repo is the opposite.
Follwing has been taken from a reverse repo auction notice on RBI site:
11. The successful tenderer’s Current Account with RBI will be debited as per the current procedure under Reverse Repo facility. Securities will be credited into the tenderer’s RRC SGL Account simultaneously. On the date of reversal, the tenderer’s RRC SGL Account will be debited and Current Account credited with the reverse repo amount and interest earned. For instance, in a Reverse Repo auction where bid amount accepted is Rs.420 crore at a rate of 4.75 per cent the calculations of amount of cash outflow in the first leg and amount of cash inflow in the second leg (with interest) will be as under.

Leg 1: Tenderer’s Current Account Dr. Rs. 420 Cr.
Tenderer’s RRC SGL Account Cr. Rs. 441 Cr = (Amt.of bid * 105) /100

Leg 2: Tenderer’s RRC SGL Account Dr. Rs. 441 Cr
Tenderer’s Current Account Cr. Rs 420,05,46,575 = (Amt. of bid + Interest for 1 day at 4.75%)

Lending rate > Borrowing rate
I have been grappling and googling with these terms. Central bank gives money"Hard Liquid CASH!!" to Banks who pledge government securities.
Repo(Repurchase):RBI Lends money: A short loan with security as collateral
Mirror Image
Reverse Repo: RBI Borrows money: Money deposited with RBI by Buyer of the security

Now any money making machine would want to keep the inflow of cash more than the outflow. So it charges more for outflow than for inflow and there-in lies the arbitrage.This is similar to currency traders who will give less rupees for $ , but when you go to buy $ you have to pay more rupees.

time bend

2006-12-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

Its on the inside
and on the outside
time is bent everywhere

My mind is not free
and I cannot bend time
else I would be free

Is it an illusion
as it slips through fingers
Time is not stopping
Spotting the time
dotting the keyboard
boarding the train
where time returns and cycles.

2006-08-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

I can hear the rain but I cannot feel it.
Its late in the night and I cannot see anything.
If I cannot see the rain, can I feel it.

I shift the curtain and peer outside,
can only see my reflection in the glass.
I begin to see my eyelashes , but it is
hours to go before I sleep as I
etch the alphabets on the glass screen.

Biotech sector report

2006-08-09T13:38:00.000-07:00

ITs 2 AM in the night. Just finished making the biotech sector report, in retrospect. The financial analysis still needs to be done. Was planning to start marketing. That remains a plan . Dunno if tomorrow will be IT quiz . The IT project meet was quite successful with work allocation and architecture getting finalized. Divided work ito 6 parts...sixy sixy sixy

Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC)
Specifies the rules for the manufacture, use/import/export and storage of hazardous microorganisms genetically engineered organisms or cells, 1989.
http://www.envfor.nic.in/divisions/csurv/geac/biosafety.html
Drugs and Cosmetic Rule(8th Amendment),1998
Revised guidelines for research plants & guidelines for toxicity and allergenicity evaluation of transgenic seeds, plants and plant parts,1998
Guidelines for generating preclinical and clinical data for rDNA vaccines, diagnostics and other biologicals,1999
Report of the Task Force on Recombinant Pharma

Department of Biotechnology (DBT) http://dbtindia.nic.in/

Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC)

Review Committee on Genetic manipulation (RCGM).

Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) http://www.cdsco.nic.in/html/central.htm

Central Authorities are responsible for approval of New Drugs, Clinical Trials in the country, laying down the standards for Drugs, control over the quality of imported Drugs, coordination of the activities of State Drug Control 0rganisations and providing expert advice with a view of bring about the uniformity in the enforcement of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act.
Drug Controller General of India is responsible for approval of licenses of specified categories of Drugs such as blood and blood products, I. V. Fluids, Vaccine and Sera.

4. Identification of sector Impact factors:
Increasing middle class purchasing power in India: Middle class can purchase costlier vaccines for children which have fewer side effects. This will increase the net margin for biotechnology companies. From the following table one can extrapolate the growth in vaccines. (bold).

Biocon has made significant capital expenditure and its profitability depends on the competition with Chinese players in the statins market. Another important factor is the opportunity from drugs which are coming off patent in the US market.

so precious

2006-08-08T14:16:00.000-07:00

Suddenly old memories were jogged with a friend leaving a message on orkut. Its so amazing, how friendships when one is young are held so precious. I just hope that I will keep my friendships without being selfish and self-centred. Reading about OB is scary as if meta analyses are really true , then deprivation and self centredness when one is very young and not love makes one a leader.

throwback in time

2006-08-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Me and keks, and dalla, we had a suuuper time at sjc , sfo and of course ole fremont. I still remember those days on stevenson blvd. Celebrated tingis birthday and bought a cake from a chinki shop.

when i lived in sjc, there was no santana row, not that it would have made a difference, malpani would never approve of buying stuff there :).
Going around and driving so much reminded me of the US way of life and planning for the next right turn, keeping your eyes open.

Transitivity and Incompleteness in mid terms

2006-08-02T07:39:00.000-07:00

Did ok in economics , made a mistake in a basic 2 marks question. Rest is theoretical stuff which can go on and on where factors of production and output depends on states of nature(starts sounding like decision analysis again), did explore from price elasticity point of view.

Afternoon , got jacked in accounts, did only 9 marks correctly , rest is left to the discretion of the examiner :(. Did make the adjustments, adjusted column , p&l column and B/S column...running short of time revenues and COGS made me go agog. didnt know there were lifo fifo in accounts also...generally one problem took an hour to do short ckting everything else.

Plan to buy a N91 after the OB exam ...I just loved the HBR articles...loads of gyan...tada
Now tending towards the E70 or Moto Razr v3i.
The OB paper was loaded with questions on outcomes, Vrooms expectancy theory and instrumentatility. Really felt like an IIM paper. Kudos clap clap. Marks dont matter, what we learn matters :) ; I mean for people with more than three years of experience.

classical probability and mid term performance

2006-07-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

One day and one night to go b4 Classical probability will strike again. Talked on the phone to jyothi and parents. Feels isolated but that is a pre req for good managers as per the OB stuff I read today, ie. should have low need for affiliation but high need for power which is also controlled and inhibited. I am excited about learning a lot of new kita "A Herzberg term" instead of the karate katas which I tried veri veri hard to master but could not muster. What I liked was the grossness of hygiene as being a demotivating factor and the dichotomy part :) split the nut.

B4 mid terms at iim k

2006-07-25T02:15:00.000-07:00

Attended all classes. I have to optimize by bunking some classes today. Some vindictive future MBA took attendance in MC class !! ppl want to get ahead at all costs. I have a medium to low MACH score in personlity assessment unless I tried to manipulate the results of personality assessment test itself. Its a logical conundrum.
Quantitative methods was a riot where all the 99 percentilers got hauled up to explain normal distribution!! Rather standard normal distribution and symmetry about the Mean.
Thinking about the z, always being z fixated the fact that on the graph mean is zero point is lost.
In accounting I made a mess of the salary head :(. Have to be careful to read with a scale in one hand! Hopefully it will not happen in mid term or final term.

photo taken at iim k

2006-07-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

Got his photo taken at iim k for the summer placement . Got to take the photo b4 the fungus sets in like it did in surathkal in the most unlikely places and we called it guitar strumming or krec chik chik chik.

2006-07-22T13:26:00.000-07:00

As I peer outside by lifting the curtain, a cloud goes by in front of the orange light of the sodium lamp . Staying on the top of the hill does have its advantages, except when a cloud gets in and wets everything. Another day goes by . Its 2 AM , I feel the need to study more but my eyes are droopy and I am blogging away :(. The marketing project for Maruti suzuki versa got rejected. Luckily we have dettol soap on hand as a backup plan. Looked up the capitaline databases to find dettol segment but seems its included in toileteries. Need to figure out the conditional probabilities of Dharwar drilling society. After markov chains this should be a breeze except for the grammatical nuances :). Those in the know will know ! Sometimes I think my language is too terrible except for me, I am like warped out in my own world. Neeraj gave me this book about Artemis Fowl! Really enjoyed that. My pot of gold is in my head. I am thinking of using my blog as a yellow post it :). I Will wake up tomorrow to the spice hills of kozhikode and stretch my hands and yawn at the green expanse as my eyeballs get exercised.
About the Biotech sector analysis for tomorrow 9 pm i need to get an exact sector definition. Recombinant gene technology, vaccines, prostheses, monoclonal antibodies, Large molecule medicines, petones, peptides. cell culture. Biocon is the gorilla in this space with revenues of 687 crores out of the nearly 1000 crore market. Somehow Sterling biotech doesnt figure in this list whereas titan biotech, panacea biotech and jupiter do !

Admission to PGP 2006-2008 batch iim kozhikode

2006-06-15T03:47:00.000-07:00

It has been a crazy early morning . Got up from the dust of kalasipalya "Bengaluru" ek kalasi do kalasi teen kalasi (popular song) onto the bus to submit my admission draft of Rs 50000 to iimk. AC volvo bus dropped me at kunnimangalam at 4 am . No transport :( , I lugged my two bags and hiked to the top of the hill, There a Guard appeared like a phantom on the Nth left turn and gave me a room to sleep. In the Morning , I had a wonderful breakfast and gave my admission draft.
Then I went back to kozhikode in reverse direction to bangalore , had parathas and green peas curry . I made a reservation on a passenger bus but immediately saw a Super fast Bangalore , got into it and conductor gave me an e-ticket , electronically typed ticket. 8 pm finally got back to bangalore where a bus almost knocked me down . Another bus slammed the brakes hard and Driver of bus 2 scolded driver of bus 1 Rash alli drive beda ie Dont drive rashly. Got down to 314H to take me home tippasandra.

Free science fiction Immortal Qyanni

2006-05-04T05:54:00.000-07:00

03 BM (Before marriage :) n-3 )
The year is 2200 AD. The month is March and the ice is melting in Africa. These days planetary weather sytems no longer have the kind of impact on humans which they might have had on the dinosaurs. Man has escaped one womb and has spanned out to the outer reaches of the Galaxy . What lies beyond the galactic cluster", which denotes a grouping of stars within our own Milky Way or the “galaxy cluster”, a group of tens, hundreds or even thousands of galaxies held together by their mutual gravitational forces.
Genius stood in the night naked under the sky without the roof of concrete and glass to shield him from the forces calling his soul from above. He stood at the southern most tip of Africa , the Cape of good hope and let his mind dip into history about years before when sailors like vasco da gama had looked at the stars and sailed around the cape of good hope to Asia and riches.
Genius smelled the aroma of the fresh ground coffee in the cup and when it mixed with sugar and hot water the smell seemed to permeate the air around him, perhaps taking away the virginity of the air around him , hell ! he didn’t mind as long as he could stay awake and gaze at the stars and contemplate about the Qyanni.
Qyanni a race of protoplasm in one galaxy cluster which can be seen with the naked eye - The Local Group, which includes the Milky Way as well as the naked eye galaxy (under very dark skies) The Andromeda Galaxy and the Megellanic Clouds. The Qyanni reside in the fifth Local Group member, M33, can be seen with the naked eye under truly dark skies which is why genius was espescially out here to wonder and look at the Aliens who were the soul catchers . The Qyanni were very superstitious , even though they played God and had become immortal , the Qyanni feared divine wrath if they shared their knowledge about the dimensions of time and the particles which crossed the dimensions of time without regard to going forward in time ALL THE TIME. The Qyanni had obviously managed to harness these particles to be able to clone the brain , not the grey matter which in itself is nothing but also the relativistic field which coexisted with the brain and gave it the soul, ESP or extra sensory perception.
Genius took another sip of the coffee and felt glad for the comforting fluid which seemed to ease his uneasiness in his stomach as he stood facing the stars. It was late in the night but the nightlife in cape town would be still on and he looked forward to indulge himself, afterall the next mission would be a very long one and he didn’t know when he would return to the smells of earth .
There was something about the nightlife in earth maybe the non synthetic feel of the people which he so cherished unlike the Rings of saturn where nightlife was a 24*7 affair with the forever young people having the ball of a time and indulging in 300 to 400 ml of hard liquor at a time because they knew their livers were replacable.
He had watched old CDs about love , but couldn’t bring himself to believe it in outer space where he was born but here in the womb of humanity he had even fallen in love with a dark eyed beauty. Not that looks were the only thing , this exotic cocktail of oriental and african genes simply was too smart even for him “Genius ” whose parents had named him so . Even now he sometimes argued with them that even though his intelligence at birth was so high that it had to be measured in logarithmic scale to the present day IQ standards, they shouldn’t have named him so. His dear Sheila was even smarter than him in many such areas espescially cooking where he could make the most accurate calorie mapped dish ie a dish which would match his calorie requirement to 0.01 calorie ensuring he wouldn’t have to exercise. His dishes failed however to arouse the tongue.
He could go on looking at sheilas face for hours without having a conversation but he felt so nice talking to sheila , that everytime she moved though beautiful luscious lips of her it was as if she was soothing his back and lulling him to sleep. No but he didn’t want to sleep and lose himself in that never land which lies jut beyond consciousness where everything is warm and comfortable as a mothers womb. He would watch her lips muttering incantations to buddha as incense filled the air around him and curled up in formless way to reach the ceiling and be damped. Her prayers seemed to fill his mind also with peace but he knew that his quest for peace was his own.
Suddenly a massive wave crashed into the rocks and the surf from the waves filled his nose with salts and woke him up from thoughts of far away as his mind had wandered in time and conjured up wonderful times. He clutched the precious drachmas in his pocket afraid the water would wet the precious credits he had carelessly left in his pocket. The Earth still was primitive in the sense the payment couldn’t be made from the inbuild prostheses which maintained track of his finances in the outer worlds. On Earth he still had to keep the magnetic striped card which enabled him to buy comforts.
The Continental space port though would accept his prosthetic money balance. Anyway the card shouldn’t hold such amounts of money which would make him target for international booty hunters. He had skirmishes with inter Galatic booty hunters who were pretty civilized.
Booty hunters were a fascinating species , he thought as he puffed on his nicotine laden cigaratte and watched in glee as the smoke swirled away due to the strong salty breeze. He was glad as he hated the smoke swirling around in a room and seemed to be coming at him rather than going anywhere else in the room. It was as if the smoke had a mind of its own.
Enough of such random thoughts, he controlled his mind and wondered if the Qyanni debacle was throwing him back to the days when he woke up in the morning thinking of love and was unable to get out of the quagmire which was like a warm welcoming pool of quicksand eager to swallow him. He started wondering why he shouldn’t take the help of the booty hunters better still give the entire project to the hunters. After all the basic tenet of management is delegation. He decided to take the help of booty hunters at least to get into the Qyanni space . What the booty hunters could not be allowed to know was the reason why a human was sticking out like a sore thumb in the Qyanni quadrant. He would have to cloak himself in the garb of a social scientist.
He had already started studying the subject and already downloaded some statistics. Fascinating , that reasoning ability or an analytical skill could not be downloaded unlike pure calculation skills.
The Qyanni didn’t expand their space in the universe like the humans always seemed to be doing. The Qyanni didn’t believe in the human principle of hedging ie to spread the risk wide. They had become like the very affluent nations where the death rate was greater than the birth rate in short suffered from decreasing population because some got simply tired of being immortal . They were in short bored. Boredom was also one of the foremost human mental diseases . This was because there are only a finite things in the universe and only a finite things to do . This however was his Genius’s own theory. Boredom was like the waves crashing into the beach one after another in a pattern overlapping each other as far as his eye could see under the moonlit sky.
Finally even he got bored of being there . So many people had writter that one could go on watching at the enormity of the ocean . He deifinitely was not one of them . He could only look at the ocean for a finite time . Even if there were two oceans he was looking at the Indian and the atlantic ocean. That just didn’t mean that he could watch the ocean for double the amount of time he would watch the ocean . Looking at large or swift moving water bodies did give his soul some sort of caress he couldn’t identify.

He crushed the empty coffee mug and got onto his hover scooter . It was a pretty neat machine . The proton drive made a neat sound unlike the silent electron drive ones. He Vrooomed away into the night over icy roads without a worry because he was not in contact with the road. The road just being for directions and ensuring that his GPS calculated route wouldn’t interfere with people sleep peacefully in their homes. He wanted to buzz the sleeping people though, before reaching downtown capetown where people would be awake and leering away at the night.
He just wanted to have some good grub and look at some beautiful girls to fill the void in his heart. It was again the wake up thing . Once he was fully awake he didn’t realize why he needed anyone else in his life.
Afterall signing a marriage contract would mean he would always have someone tagging along with him.
He asked luko the bar tender about marriage . Luko said he disliked the idea of having noisy children. Genius liked the idea of having cute imaginative and original children who could be anyway quietened by putting plastic nipples in their mouth. In his stomach the red irish beer was mixing with the coffee and making some disturbing noises which he hoped luko wouldn’t hear over the din in the pub . Bar tenders however have very sensitive ears after years of picking up the correct order in the din. Luko suggested that he get a new pair of entrails which would be much more silent . Genius told him to mind his own business as his entrails and the feeling’s of internal conflict were entirely his. Luko shrugged his shoulders and went about his business of serving mind numbing concoctions to the galatic bevy. All the beauties of the galaxy seemed to have been attaracted like moths to cape town . It was something to do with perhaps being on the edge of something as big as Africa. Maybe that was good enough for some free kicks.
He couldn’t afford to run fould of luko though and started chit chatting about the beauties and their ergonomy and topological variation. It was fascinating why 70% men Booty hunters included like bronzed skin with blonde hair . Another 20% liked bronzed skin with black hair . The rest were miniscule and there was too much variations , in fact so many permutations and combinations that his mind couldn’t handle them . He looked admiringly at the bronzed beauty hoping that he would find a booty hunter trailing the pretty lass. The odds were low that the first one she found for the night would be one. This guy looked too effiminate to do anything brave. He hoped that this particular bronzed goddess didn’t have a disposition towards only feminine looking guys as he rather liked the idea of tagging this girl . This would be rather enjoyable . Getting any business done would be an added bonus. He had to keep alert that he didn’t let his fantasies drown him in such a manner that he wouldn’t use his logic to find out which of her companions could be a booty hunter . He had his own special methods to find out these nuances. He liked to think this was luck . He rather fancied himself as a luck fellow based on these flawed assumption of an otherwise logical mind.

2006-05-04T03:57:00.000-07:00

Short story.
I had a dream this morning. I met Krishna and became friendly with him. My reaction was not perplexing as Krishna resembled someone I new in my previous organization. What followed in the dream was a riot and deja vu~.
As it often happens in dreams , dreams follow reality but with a twist. In my dream, Intels office shifted from upstream to downstream of my current office and a bank appeared in place of a eating joint. The bank was ABN amro. Now no ABN amro bank exists anyplace near my workplace.
Krishna offered to take me to the bank as he had some work. Once I reached there I was wondering why I came there ? Krishna started talking to someone as if he was his own brother. After that Krishna totally neglected me. It was as if I was an inaudible ghost. I was talking but he was not listening.
After this while returning back , I tried to sit behind Krishna's lime coloured scooter. Soon, However my rear was in the air and the scooter 100 feet in front of me. Then I noticed that krishna had an earplug or some ipod headphone in his left ear. I thought that Krishna didnt leave me behind on purpose. Here I remembered when some years back In surathkal I had left behind a friend in mangalore. I had put on my helmet and didnt realize that he was not on my yamaha. I returned psyched out to hostel imagining that my friend had fallen on the road somewhere.
Coming back to todays dream , Krishna took a u-turn on his scooter came back to me, and again took a u-turn without letting me get on the scooter. There you go, reality and dream diverge .

PEACE n LOVE

2006-03-24T02:55:00.000-08:00

"It is usual," the playwright Jean Giraudoux wrote once, "for the two leaders of the peoples concerned to meet privately at some innocent village, on a terrace in a garden overlooking a lake. And they decide together that war is the world's worst scourge, and, as they watch the rippling reflections in the water, with magnolia petals dropping on their shoulders, they are both of them peace-loving, modest and friendly... They really are exuding peace, and the world's desire for peace. And when their meeting is over, they shake hands in a most sincere fashion, and turn to smile and wave as they drive away. And the next day war breaks out."

2006-03-15T05:19:00.000-08:00

The U.N.'s Right to Development Declaration of 1986 states:
"The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realised."

2006-03-14T04:35:00.000-08:00

We are there at vakil garden city and the houses are getting fast built rising up the ground to touch the blue sky ..looks more like creamy blue sky with willows of clouds touching the distant blue mountains.

2006-03-14T04:32:00.000-08:00

Fireworks at Mohits marriage...Now I have got a technicolor video too...I was busy dancing and cheering

2006-03-14T04:30:00.000-08:00

This is the new WAP5 engine , runs upto 150 kmph..Finally we are speeding away but the new coaches dont transmit sound so much , so the need for speed is still there :)

2006-03-14T04:29:00.000-08:00

The lucknow shatabdi express is being loaded with luggage for the trip from new delhi railway station to lucknow and it starts from platform 12 ie. the ajmeri gate side ..

2006-02-20T02:54:00.000-08:00

Sunrise in araku valley..catching the pale pastels of dawn as we trekked up the bamboo groves of the small hillock

2006-02-20T02:53:00.000-08:00

Borra caves

2006-02-20T02:50:00.000-08:00

Araku valley goes by as the kirandul passenger chugs along.

2006-02-20T02:45:00.000-08:00

Bright blue coorg sky. One can see the cumulus from the ground side. The silver oak increases the oxygen content in the air helping the coffee grow better. Cauvery is flowing by nearby as we cycle along.

2006-02-20T02:44:00.000-08:00

That is the view from my future home .. far away bangalore hills with NICE road cutting through it . Can Get to Electronics city in 15 minutes . M G Road 16 kms , Railway Station
17 kms http://www.vakilhousing.com/

2006-02-20T02:42:00.000-08:00

I always wanted to sleep on a solid block of wood. I mean this bed rocks . There is so much space to keep the book I felt asleep reading . The faux wooden wall is also infra dig !

2006-02-20T02:39:00.000-08:00

Lift the WALL , the GOA wall

2006-02-20T02:12:00.000-08:00

Elephant crossing in the madumalai forest sanctuary.. Remember reading but not able to distinguish between national parks versus forest reserves. The Giant pachyderm can squash my Zen ..so I better get going :)

2006-02-16T06:38:00.000-08:00

Visakhapatnam has more beautiful vistas ..the beach drive is more amazing than 17 mile drive in california

2006-02-16T06:35:00.000-08:00

kailashgiri in visakhapatnam. Lord Shiva is watchful on Visakhapatnam . Simpli-city that is VIZAG with beach sea hills and ZIG ZAG VIZAG roads

2006-02-16T04:47:00.000-08:00

Jog falls in monsoon RoRo Rocket Raja and Rani ...on the way to Goa...Shimoga was lovely in the rains...nice to see kids going to school while we were on the way to goa..It warmed the cockles of my heart that kids were going to school even without shoes in the remote fringes of shimoga...Way to Go kids

2006-02-16T04:43:00.000-08:00

Myself and Kansal dude in a masti mood at goa...

2006-02-16T04:32:00.001-08:00

Does Araku valley look like afghanistan..believe it or not this place has got lovely coffee plantations and beautiful hill top views .Andhra tourism has got some good hotels there. I loved the stay at the jungle igloo cottage. Some wild animal scratching kept me awake all night he he he

2006-02-16T04:32:00.000-08:00

Borra caves in Araku ..you can see the stalagtites and stalagmites and I am trying to leap into the other dimension..wake up now to the other side.

2006-02-16T04:22:00.000-08:00

Bangalore the global gateway...I went to places because after krec I joined the FORCES of bangalore...May the force be with you..I went to work with McAfee in dallas Tx ..and am back in bangalore ...more traffic but same beautiful weather...All around the year. May the FORCE be with you...yada yoda yada

2006-02-16T04:19:00.000-08:00

Galibore Cauvery: We went for a picnic there, jungle lodges ...wonderful experience. the sounds of the night ...nothing around...it was a bit warm after bangalore ...just hearing cauvery flow by and the wind humming.

2006-02-16T04:09:00.000-08:00

yesterday

San Jose

2005-12-04T08:48:00.000-08:00

Nice weather, bright blue sky. Srinu picked me up from South san jose and we picked up the rental car from SJC airport. I then followed him to 880N , as jammed as always. Remembered the time I used to walk down stevenson blvd.
Siri was so shy , but now she has got used a bit to me. She is a musical baby. In the night I remember Neeharika and jyothirmai a lot.
So I went to kekdas place and we had an omlette which was laced with cheese. that place was very beautiful, I think its called oakyard road on lickmill. Blue sky not a single cloud in sight and we got into kek's infiniti G3Five and drove down to santana Row. Now Surya deserves a pat as he saved a crash. Amit was giving me the camera, keks was saying something and one car was backing up in front.
Directions:
montague expressway , Rt when coming from fremont 880s, then right on lickmill which is just after orchard st.

Nothing was purchaseable at Santana Row , though lot was watchable. There was tag heur watch which Shah rukh khan advertises in India. Keks didnt know what tag heur was so we thought it was good that in a CAP country he doesnt know about TAG.
Then in the night we went to Shanthis place where for the first time I saw Mounish and is he cute. Eeshas grown a bit and hates being called baby, she likes being called Eesha kiddie, I mean she said that the photograph should be called Eesha kiddie. I hope she becomes a great writer or scientist.

Directions
680 N sacramento take Bolinger canyon blvd exit

Bangalorean wedding

2005-11-21T05:33:00.000-08:00

It was a windy day and president kalam's motorcade whizzed past . Police officer was shouting hey hudugi(Girl in kannada) to a girl trying to cross the road "who didnt understand what hudugi was".
Vehicles of the convoy were whizzing past at 60 mph. I stood by the signboard chatting with mayank and abha. Nitish was given charge of shooting with a camc. There was international participation. Then the car came with bade dulah and chotte dulah ie. big groom and small groom . There was much dancing with ex-palak and Neerajs Mama leading the baraat. That was the high point, escaping getting hit by a scorpio ...talk about the sting of a scorpio. Then We went back to the apt and spread rose petals on the bed :). Came back had a swig with neeraj at the watering hole , then came home and was soooo excited that couldnt sleep till 3 am.
Cheers!

Last day at sniffer

2005-08-29T03:21:00.000-07:00

Its the last day at sniffer, Priya has organized a wonderful FARE-WELL party. Hitesh, Amrendra, Arun, Raja, Apurva, Kalyan, Ashish hate,Ashish Gupta, Raja, Sumanth , Priya, Divyananda, Vidyashankar and Sathya were there. I got my slam book filled. Anand advised me to be less out-spoken and keep quiet when in stress.
Chitta advised that I should keep relationships good 360 degrees around. Time came for my farewell speech . I was lost for words except the philosophy that no risk no gain. The gift was printed on Apurva's printer and selected by Sumanth. It was the galibore gang photograph. Wish 5.0 all the success and MARKET SHARE :).

Goa

2005-08-15T22:57:00.000-07:00

Mon-Soon Goa
Drove down with Amit Debu , pinju. We drove down to shimoga after an overnight stay drove through jog falls, honnavar karwar into goa.
The drive was amazing in the morning except for the wandering cattle on road .
day 1
Goa was all rainy , we went to the beach slept off , woke up at 11 pm , and had goan food cooked by a mallu. After that the fun started, we went to Mambos, besides Titos and boy was the crowd rocking, the item number at shack was there.
day 2
Biking around goa, anjuna, fort auguada, lunch at joey's or joes :).
We came back went to the beach and had fun with some other punters from bangalore....one guy was really a punter at bangalore turf club. Night the music was special, dost gave his dil away ..food at souza lobo was purr..fect.
day 3
Drive back among the rocky iron ore laden trucks, through beautiful valleys, the road to dharwad was bad, so we drove through belgaum , hit bangalore eventually in the night. We keep the fighting spirit alive dost :).

2005-05-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

pic

surya prashant rao a creature

2005-05-20T04:17:00.000-07:00

I surya prashant rao , all small letters am a creature walking the mean roads of india , us , in dallas , haldia, baroda, san jose ... feels pretty disjointed by giant rolls royce engines which with a roar move the mind from a cultural ripeness to another..I am articulate but particulate...I just like to Rhyme,,,I also go by the name Rhymeboy and newton, thats pretty derogatory in a world of expanding waist lines :)

I am interested in Wireless reasearch , ie wep wpa tkip and also WAN technologies like Sonet , ATM...It would be wonderful if we had a wireless ATM, not the money machine illa macchina...

6879812 Portable computing device and associated method for analyzing a wireless...
United States Patent 6879812Portable computing device and associated method for analyzing a wireless local area network
Issued on April 12, 2005
2004-10-056801756 Method and system for dynamic evaluation of a wireless network with a...
Aspects of the invention are found in an apparatus for monitoring data on a wireless network. The data is transmitted according to a wireless data network protocol across the network. The apparatus is contained on a portable wireless network analysis device. The portable wireless network analysis...

United States Patent 6801756Method and system for dynamic evaluation of a wireless network with a portable computing device
Issued on October 5, 2004
Aspects of the invention are found in an apparatus for monitoring data on a wireless network. The data is transmitted according to a wireless data network protocol across the network. The apparatus is contained on a portable wireless network analysis device. The portable wireless network analysis device has a wireless network interface that communicatively couples the portable wireless network analysis device to the wireless network. This allows the portable wireless network analysis device to receive data from the wireless network. The portable wireless network analysis device also has a network traffic analyzer. The network traffic analyzer is communicatively coupled to the wireless network interface. The analyzer receives and analyzes the data received from the wireless network. The portable wireless network analysis device is capable of being operated by user at one location and transported to second location. The portable wireless network analysis device is able to continue to monitor data on the wireless network while being transported from the first location to the second location. The apparatus may also have a user interface. Information about the data may be displayed on the user interface. In a specific instance, the user interface is a display screen. The apparatus can have a storage system. The storage system stores the data when initiated by a user. The apparatus can also have a filter system. The filter system filters the data based on a predefined criteria. The apparatus may have an alarm system. The alarm system indicates when a predefined network event has occurred.