Swine Flu & the Media

I am not thinking about Swine flu these days. Well, the situation was very different 3 weeks back, thanks largely to the extra attention paid by the media to this pandemic. I still remember my childhood days when the elder males in the house used to religiously listen to the news on All India Radio or sit in front of TV for DD news in the evening to be in tune with the latest. As we know, the world has changed a lot since then. There are innumerable 24X7 TV news channels and it is interesting to note how they influence our psyche these days.

Swine Flu was the hot topic on all news channels and was on the front pages on all national newspapers. The coverage was important but if the media had taken a balanced approach and also focussed on some positives then some of the panic could have been avoided. The reports were mainly around number of positive cases & deaths but there was hardly any information on the number of recoveries. A statement reported in media from our health minister on 33% of Indian population getting affected by this virus did not help either. Surprisingly there was very little on the preventive & precautionary measures which is what media should have focussed on big time. All this led to a huge panic and everyone rushing to the limited test centers to get tested even for mildest of symptoms. People (including me) completely stopped going to crowded places, kids were not sent to schools, travel plans were cancelled and so on.

Not much has changed since then in terms of the situation. Swine Flu continues to be a big problem around the world. India now has around 140 officially reported H1N1 casualties with a few reported very day. More than 5000 people have been infected in India alone and mind you, this is the official number. Around 3500 people have died all over the world so far because of this deadly virus. Situation does not seem to be getting better. However, many people (including me) have come to terms with this and the panic has greatly come down. Well, it maybe the inherent compromising human nature but a significantly lower coverage of this flu in media has also greatly helped. As I mentioned, it is interesting to note the role of media in everyday life.

Having said that, let us all hope & pray that the most complex machines we all have (our bodies) come to our rescue and humans develop the required immunity to counter this huge threat that this pandemic has posed.

:PM

More Information
Country wise data

Skandagiri | Night Trek

A google search on Skandagiri will tell you that it is not as unknown as you may think. You will find numerous blogs & pictures on Skandagiri trekking experiences. In fact, based on what I personally saw, I guess every weekend an average of 30 people must be trekking their way to the top of the hill. For starters, Skandagiri is around 60 km from Bangalore and is located along the same range as Nandi Hills. Reaching Skandagiri is not so straight forward and I could not find detailed directions to this place on any site. So let me startight away add some value by providing detailed directions to the place.

Directions:
Drive from Bangalore towards Bangalore International Airport (BIA) on NH7 (aka Bellary Road). After crossing the BIA, you will be on Chikkaballapura road. Follow the same road until you find a Visweswaraih statue on to your Left. Take a left at this place and keep going on this smaller road. Take a right turn at the City Municipal Council (there are two parallel lanes on your right; take the 1st one). Keep going for few hundred meters on this small lane and later take a left turn at the junction. Keep going on this road for almost a km till you see an arc with Papagni Mutt written in Kannada on left. You need to take a left here on this small lane and then take a right on the dead end which will take you to Papagni Mutt (aka Omkara Jyoti Ashrama) through Kalawara village, which is at the basement of Skandagiri. You are likely to spot some villagers just before the Mutt offering their services as Guides and I would recommend hiring one of them for a smooth trek.

The Trek:
I will just say that the trek is awesome. There are 2 routes - one is relatively easy (~ 8 km) and the second one is steep & tougher (~5 km). I liked the latter. We took the tougher one while going up and the longer one while coming down. We started at around 2 am and reached the top at around 4:30 am. It was quite cold at the top - very misty & windy. The mist never cleared and hence we could not witness the much hyped sunrise. That is an incentive to go there again. We started back at around 8 am and reached the base at around 10 am. For folks who want to visit this place - it is better to carry a jacket and some snacks + water. Torch is a must if you plan to trek during the night. You do get tea, Maggi & omelette on top (not very hygenic though). If you go in a non-rainy season, there are ample spots for you to setup your tents and spend the night. That is what I hope to do next.

Verdict:
Must-visit for trekking enthusiasts

A lot has happened ..

A lot has happened since I shared my Leh experience. What comes first to my mind clearly is the financial crisis that became much more visible marked by shutting down of businesses and significant decline in economic activity. Then there were the unfortunate 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai killing over 170 people. Obama was sworn-in as the first African-American US president while at home Congress staged a strong comeback and Dr Manmohan Singh was sworn in for a second term. Indians seemed to lack energy & will to win at the T20 world cup while the super cool Federer claimed a record 15th grand slam title. Eventful last few months ...

As for me, I went to Coorg again with family & friends and trekked the heck out of that place. Stayed at the same place which I had recommended on this blog (practice what you preach!). We finally also checked out the Innovative Flim City in Bangalore. The place met my expectations and mine were not too high ;-) You can easily spend one full day and some of the attractions are actually quite good. We all liked the Haunted Mansion, Ripley's, the 4-D movie show and the Mirror Maze.

I also got a chance to spend a weekend in Goa in April with my office colleagues. It was good to see that many cruise casinos have come up in the last few years thereby giving you more options. It was a fun trip overall and the icing on the cake was the 5 figure amount I won at one of the Casinos. Another outing worth mentioning is the night trek to Skandgiri with office colleagues. It was fantastic and I would write in detail about it once I have some pics to post as well.

Last but not the least, we also managed to spend a little over a week in London in June. The trip was a prefect mix of sight seeing and meeting up with family & friends. Both my wife & I loved the place and we liked the city much better than almost all the US cities we have visited in the past. We will surely be there again.

Will be back with details on the recent night trek ...

Leh - Travelogue

We were planning on a Mgmt Outing for a long time and after a lot of deliberations, we zeroed in on Leh. It was clearly one of our best Mgmt decisions :-)

We were 8 in all and our original plan was to land in Manali and then drive to Leh. Driving on this road is considered an experience/adventure in itself especially in October since the road is officially closed in mid Sep. We had planned our trip for 2nd week of Oct and we were hoping against hope that the weather God would be kind to us. However, there was a heavy snowfall in Sep last week and also some tourists got trapped/killed and that made us seriously re-think. Finally just 2 days before departure we cancelled our tickets to Manali and booked direct tickets to Leh. Actually in hindsight, we had much more fun with this changed itinerary.

Day Zero: We landed in Delhi at around midnight and had a flight to catch for Leh early in the morning. Hired a couple of cabs and rushed to a nearby Dhaba on the Haryana border. Spent a couple of hours doing you know what till the cops drove us out :-)

Day One: The flight was on-time and we landed at Leh in the morning. Leh is supposed to be the best place in the world to land at. The view from the plane was awesome. We checked into a very nice hotel - Noble House. This hotel had a very nice view from its rooms & terrace and the food they served was awesome. Since Leh is at an altitude of 10,000+ ft. it is advisable to take rest on the first day to let your body adjust to the oxygen levels. We did the same till lunch time and then ventured out in the afternoon to the nearby Leh Palace, Leh Bazaar & a temple. It was really cold and we also had a mild snowfall for sometime.







Day Two: The plan was to go to Pangong Lake which is bisected by the Indo-Chinese border and is the highest brackish lake in the world at around 14000 ft. It is around 150 kms from Leh and one has to cross ChangLa pass which is at around 17,500 ft. We started early in the morning as it takes around 5 hours one way to the lake from Leh. It is preferable to stay overnight by the lake but we wanted to come back the same day. The weather was cloudy and hence we knew it would be tough to reach our destination. The way to lake was very pictureseque with snow-clad mountains on all sides. Our fears came true when our scorpio starting skidding big time as we approached ChangLa pass. We had to return back from Zingral which was at 15,500 ft as only vehicles with chained tyres were allowed beyond that point. It was sad but then we had no other choice. We started driving back towards Leh and decided to head towards Alchi which on the Srinagar highway. This road was equally fantastic with multi-colored barren hillocks on both sides. On the way was a point called Sangam where the river Indus meets the river Zanskar. The view throughout was awesome. We finally reached Alchi monastery which is probably the oldest one in Leh in afternoon and later spent some time on sandy river beach before heading back for Leh. It was a hectic day where we covered close to 250 kms.







Day Three: The plan for Day 3 was to go to Nubra Valley via Khardungla pass. We really did not want a repeat of Day 2 and luckily, the skies were clear in the morning. This was undoubtedly the best day of our trip. The road to Khardungla pass is the highest motorable road in the world at 18,380 ft above sea level. As we approached the pass, the road became very slippery and it got really scary. We were determined to go to the other side of the mountain and we did make it. Some of us had to walk 2 kms at that altitude to get there but it was an amazing experience overall. After a short break at the pass, we headed towards Hunder village in the Nubra Valley. The road to the destination was very scenic with views of snow clad mountains, canyons, valley and even sand dunes. We arrived at the guest house in the evening and enjoyed nice drinks by the bone-fire before crashing off.










Day Four: After a nice breakfast, we started our trek towards Diskit monastery. We even helped ourselves with a ride on Mongolian camels for covering the most sandy portion of the trek. We stopped at the monastery for sometime and then headed back to Leh via Khardungla pass. The road today was much better and we reached Leh in the afternoon. We spent the evening at the Leh Bazaar shopping for some shawls & woolens. We had dinner at a nice hotel in the Bazaar and got to taste some exclusive Kashmiri dishes like Roganjosh & Rista.





Day Five: We were contemplating whether to go to Pangong Lake but then decided against it since we had an early morning flight the next day and covering over 300 kms in a day would have been hectic. We instead chose to visit the very famous Hemis Gumpa, Thiksey monastery & Shey Palace and later spent some time on bank of river Indus.





As you would have realized by now, we clearly did not lose anything by not taking the Manli-Leh road as we could instead cover a lot of ground in and around Leh. Even though we were there for 5 days, we still could not cover places like Pangong & TsoMiri lake. Maybe this will make us all go there again. It was truly an amazing trip to an awesome place ....

Weekend Trip - Coorg

This place significantly exceeded my expectations and hence it would not be fair not to share this. I am referring to a weekend trip to Coorg with family & friends a few months back. The goal was to just chill out completely and goal was met in time & budget :-)

The best part was a relatively unknown HomeStay where we stayed. It's called "Bee Hills" and is in the middle of no-where (read a large estate). It is a pucca "value of money" place - very scenic surroundings, decent food, excellent bon-fire place with a view of surrounding hills, excellent hosts, reasonably priced, no network :-) and much more. Even though I had been to Coorg once earlier and stayed at Orange County, it was no match to this trip. I can now see why Coorg is referred to as Scotland of India. We were there for 3 days and did not venture out of this place even once. The highlight of this trip was am amazing trek that we did. I will share some pictures & a video from the trek to give you a feel.

So, in case you want to plan a weekend get away from Bangalore, do give this place a serious thought ...

:PM

Acquisitions

Acquisitions are in vogue. They are happening across industries and in plenty. I work in the business software industry and it is interesting to note that one of the leading companies' core corporate strategy revolves around acquisitions. I, honestly, am not a big fan of the same. And it helps to know that majority of the acquisitions (especially in the software industry) have been disasters.

Acquisition decisions usually come out of the corporate strategy groups and I would really like to go through one such recommendation report someday to get more insight into the kind of analysis that goes into such a decision. I haven't been to a business school but I would like to list down 'Which One' and 'Which Not' to acquire based on my very limited knowledge of the software industry.

"Which One"

• Complement your offering - A software product company may acquire another smaller one that fills in functional gaps & holes. However the target company should be mature in what it offers (avoid a start-up unless you want access to IP), the revenue/operating margins etc. should be solid (avoid loss making companies) and if possible it should be operating on a compatible technology (integration can be a mess otherwise).
• Acquire Customer base - One may acquire a company just for the customer base. This can either be for gaining entry into a specific segment (say SMBs) or just to simply expand your existing customer base. You, however, may have a functionality overlap and it will help if the target company is not doing too well financially as it will be easier for you to convince acquired customers to upgrade(?) to your offering.
• Kill Noise - It may be worthwhile to buy small niche companies just to kill noise. This should be done only if the small company is struggling financially (revenue going down, trading at 52-week low, etc.). The noise that you want to kill may be in the form of repeated elongated sales cycles in that niche domain because of competition from this small company or negative campaign during sales cycles or an open IP infringement lawsuit from this smaller company or some such headache. Of course, this will make sense if you are a big multi-billion dollar company and the noise creating company is worth a few hundred million.
• Horizontal Expansion - An acquisition may also make sense if you are very profitable but spot a glass ceiling in the vertical(s) you are operating in. In order to ensure further growth in revenues/profits, you may want to use some of your idle cash productively by entering a new industry via an acquisition. Of course, the target company in this case should preferably be a mature and profitable one in the business it operates in. This buy vs make decision will be even better if your current products/services can also be sold to the customers in the new industry or vice versa.
• Eat into supply chain - Acquiring your upstream/downstream partner in the supply chain may sometimes make a lot of sense and you may be able to improve the operational efficiency and thus become more competitive.
• Access to IP - An acquisition may be made to gain access to IP/patents and build something promising and profitable on top of that. This will be better than wasting an opportunity or even paying royalty/settling lawsuits later on. It will be easier to do this if the IP lies with a very small company compared to you.
• Kill Competition - You may acquire a competitor to gain market share, increase your revenue/profits and strengthen your leadership position. However, this may be successful mainly in high growth or emerging industry. Acquiring a competitor, especially a medium/large one, in a mature industry can be a mess.

"Which Not"

• Technology Mismatch - Acquiring a company with an intention to complement/extend your current offering can be very dangerous if it operates on a different technology. It is likely to result in huge integration challenges and more often than not you will end up in a mess.
• Immature Products - Acquiring a company with flashy but immature niche products with limited or uncertain revenue stream is a gamble that one should avoid in my opinion, unless you have ton loads of cash that you don't care about. Buying a company based on promise is alright as long as there are at least a few customer success stories to its name.
• Buy Vs Make - Buying a small niche company, when it is not tough to produce that software or diversify your service offering into that vertical in-house, is not a smart move in my opinion. Acquisitions always come with redundancies, cultural differences & geographical challenges. Moreover, whatever you build in-house will always better integrate into your overall portfolio and brand.
• Revenue Gain - Buying a company operating in a related vertical just to beef up your revenue is a short term gain in my opinion and can cause damage in the long run. One should evaluate how easily the target company would integrate into your offering/brand in the medium to long term before going ahead.
• Expensive Acquisition - Acquiring a company by paying much more than its current market value is something that should be avoided. Sometimes, companies get sold out for much more than what they are worth either because there is more than one potential buyer in the game or because analysts claim a huge growth potential in that domain. An expensive acquisition should be done only if you are ultra sure about recovering your investment in some form.
• Kill Leading Competition - In a product oriented industry, acquiring a competitor to gain market share can be dangerous. This should be avoided especially if you need to pay a lot for this acquisition. Acquiring a medium to large sized competitor will either confuse your customers if you continue both offerings in parallel or will confuse you while trying to integrate or rationalize the offerings. Either way, it will be a big mess.

The Right Combo?

The Indian cricket team management has been struggling to arrive at a strategy in terms of the number of bowlers to be included in the playing eleven.

For me it is very simple, we should always go with 7 batsmen (including our rockstar wicketkeeper). In Tendulkar, Yuvraj & Ganguly we definitely have the skill and experience to share at least 10 overs. For God's sake, Tendulkar has more than a 100 wickets in one dayers! I am sure if he had been bowling regularly, he would have had more than 250 to his credit today :-) Ganguly is a pain in the **** with his slow medium deliveries and Yuvraj has proved to be an effective slow bowler more than once. I would go with 4 regular bowlers even if it is a belter of a pitch.

Agreed that once in a while there will be situations where part-timers (read Yuvraj) will get hit for 5 sixes in an over, but we will also have an extra No. 7 batsman (read Robin) in the team to see us through ...

Bangalore Real Estate - Hot or Not?

It's been long and I am back with an interesting topic - real estate situation in Bangalore. We have had a BIG BOOM in this sector and prices have at least doubled in all major cities in India over the last 2-3 years. At least in Bangalore, this has been a topic of dicussion in almost every (guy) get-togther apart from discussing the extra-ordinary hikes some of the software professionals have got in recent times.

Well, just like on Sensex, there are different opinions on whether this boom is here to last and when will the slide down begin. I happen to have an opinion as well :-) It is obviously very tough to predict anything in a sector such as this even for so-called experts who are tracking everything from the global economy, earnings & spending trends, SEZ plans across cities, infrastructure projects, consumer confidence and so on. Let me state that what I am about to write is worth nothing ... it is just an opinion of a person who is not even tracking anything relevant :-)

In my opinion, the real estate in Bangalore, though a little expensive, is actually a better buy for an investor than one in cities like Mumbai & Delhi. My opinion is based on 2 facts -

• P/E Ratio
• Demographics

Let me elaborate on these two points now -

P/E Ratio:

For those who don't know P/E refers to the Price to Earnings Ratio and is very commonly used in the stock market to pick the right stocks. For real estate sector, price is the buy price of a property and earnings in the annual income that you can potentially get out of the same. A low P/E ratio in most cases indicates a potential good buy and a high P/E ratio indicates an expensive property.

About a year year back, Bangalore, by this parameter, was an excellent buy. You could buy an excellent 2BHK apartment for 30 lakhs and you could expect a monthly rent of around 10K which amounts to a P/E of only 25. The situation today is a little different and a little more expensive. An excellent 2BHK would cost you around 45 lakhs and a 3BHK around 65 lakhs (service tax & VAT have added to the cost as well) but the rents you would expect remain the same - around 10K and 15K for a 2BHK and a 3BHK respectively. This amounts to a P/E of around 35 which is high but again not too bad, if you manage to find a tenant within a few months. But, this definitely indicates there is no room for prices to grow in the near term.

Let us compare this to Delhi/Gurgaon/Noida where a very good 2BHK partment will cost around 45 lakhs but the rent that you would get will be around 7K making it a P/E of over 50. That is sure shot expensive and clearly indicates that there is not enough demand to justify such a high price.

To summarize, Bangalore is definitely a little expensive today. I don't see the demand diminishing in near future (I will explain why in my next point) and hence if the prices remain where they are or actually slide a little bit, you will get a handsome return on your investment. If you plan to buy one to sell again in a year or two, this is not a good time to buy. I do not see prices rising significantly in the near future but I definitely do not see a major slide from the current levels as well.

Demogrpahics:

The average consumer in the real estate sector in Bangalore is an IT professional who has high disposable income and is most likely not even married. He is today sharing an apartment with a couple of his friends and is almost sure to either move into a separate apartment of his own or on rent in 1-3 years after getting married (unless ofcourse Bangalore traffic drives him away to Chennai or Hyderabad). Banks are willing to approve his loan and he is definitely capable of re-paying the same in 15-20 years.

This is the reason why I do not see the demand going down significantly in near future. Ofcourse, the Indian IT industry cannot grow (in terms of number of employees) at the rate it currently is and once the current population grows a little old, this demand is bound to come down but that is at least a good 5 years from now in my opinion, if not later.

Last but not the least, if you are in Bangalore and plan to buy a house to live in, don't care for what experts say and just go for it as the prices will always rise in the long run and the earnings in this case is anyways always zero :-) It is not very easy to time the market and today is always gonna be worse than yesterday ...

:PM

A few good books ..

In one of my earlier posts titled "The Master Keys", I had listed some of the things one should definitely do. I had also mentioned that the irony is that I myself don't engage in all the "recommended" activities. One of such activities is "Reading good stuff".

Frankly, I never had the time; probably because I never had the interest or the patience :-) Well, I have changed to some extent and for the last year or so, I have managed to read quite a few books. The good part is that I have enjoyed reading most of them. So, for those of you who are still struggling to start, you can do it too. Without wasintg any further time or real estate on this html page, let me list down some of the books that I would definitely recommend to you all -

• The World Is Flat - This one from Thomas L Friedman is a must read for folks into IT. It was good to read someone talk about the importance of China and India in the overall global economy. Some of the real world examples on the world flateners especially WalMart & UPS were too cool.
• Wings Of Fire - I like books that are less than 300 pages because I still don't have patience to go through a really long book (I really struggled to complete the one on top). This one is an autobiography of APJ Abdul Kalam penned down by Arun Tiwari. It was interesting in parts and inspirational over all. If I have to take back something from this book, it would be the fact that inspite of his modest background and a lot of failures early on in his career, Abdul Kalam really went on to achieve great heights.
• The Greatness Guide - This one and a few others by Robin Sharma like the Leadership Wisdom are excellent ones. I still haven't read the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, but I was totally impressed with whatever I read so far. I liked this book because it is not too verbose and is very neatly organized into 101 chapters, some of which are absolutely "must-read".
• Freakonomics - This one from Levitt and Dubner is again an excellent one. Just about 200 pages and a lot of data related to some of the real world problems and perceptions. It is more of a human behaviour & perception book rather than an economics one so don't get scared away by the title. Some of the data & analysis presented in this book is just too good.
• Beginning Algorithms - This one by James Ross & Simon Harris has to be one of the best written books related to computer science in my opinion (disclaimer: all I have read so far is some text books during my under grad and grad school and some books on programming languages). Agreed the focus on JUnit tests is a little too much and not useful for many of us, but the way it explains the data structures & related algorithms makes it a must-read for every software programmer. And by the way, the example code is in Java.

If you happen to read this post and in turn want to recommend some books to me, please do that. Bye for now and happy reading ..

:PM

More Cricket? Redirecting ...

Since cricket is a my favourite sport and the world cup is on, I realized that it may be worthwhile to start a new blog dedicated to the cricket world cup.

Here is the link to my world cup dairy: http://kriketworldcup.blogspot.com

Cheers
:PM

Forecast Change ...

I first had the title of this post as "Change in Predictions .." but having worked in a supply chain company for quite a while, I changed it to "Forecast Change ..". I know that was unnecessary information and hence let me jump straightaway into the cricket field.

This post is an addendum to my earlier one .. with Akhtar, Asif & Razzak ruled out, I am forced to downgrade my ratings on Pakistan. All three are match winners .. and I especially rate Razzak very high. Instead of Pakistan now, I feel Kiwis would be there in the semi-finals alongwith India, WI & Sri Lanka. Kiwis must surely be on a high after amazing chases against Australians and their middle order, especially, seems to be rock solid now. As for the finals, it wil be Apna India Vs WI/NZ.

Before switching back to work, I will take your permission to make a change to my playing eleven as well. I'll play Munaf instead of Pathan and bring Pathan in as an all-rounder only if Sehwag fails in the first 2 games. This is considering Pathan did not do so well in the last domestic game he played ..

Thats it for now .. have a good day! Will be back with something different next time ..

:PM

Cricket World Cup ..

I am back after a real long gap and this time with views on one of my interest areas - Cricket. The world cup is starting in a month's time and I personally feel this will be one of the most exciting editions simply because almost all the test playing nations have very good teams and it is practically impossible to put your money on any one team. It will surely be one heck of a tournament and I can't wait for it to get started ..

Now I would just use this space to list down my playing eleven for India and also the strategy that the Indian team should adopt. My eleven (in the batting order) would be -

1. Robin Uthappa
2. Saurav Ganguly
3. Rahul Dravid
4. Sachin Tendulkar
5. Yuvraj Singh
6. Virender Sehwag
7. Mahindra Singh Dhoni
8. Irfan Pathan
9. Ajit Agarkar
10. Zaheer Khan
11. Anil Kumble

Coming to the strategy, here are a few points -

• Knowing the Carrebean pitches, I would have Tendulkar, Sehwag & Yuvraj bowl at least 15 overs between them, thus eliminating the need for a specialist 5th bowler in the playing eleven.
• Unless Kumble gets injured or really loses his touch, I would always play him ahead of Bhajji. And I will never play them both in a game.
• I would open my bowling attack with Irfan & Zaheer since it is tough to swing the white ball after 10 overs or so. It may not be a bad idea to have Agarkar open as well instead of Zaheer. Now Zaheer is my No. 1 bowler but he can deliver even if he doesn't oepn teh attack.
• Munaf & Sreesanth are very good too and can be brought in if others flop.
• In case Uthappa fails in more than one game, have Sehwag open the innings and play an additional bowler in this case.
• Have Agarkar, Zaheer & Tendulkar bowl in the slog overs (avoid Pathan & Sreesanth at any cost).

Now coming to predictions, I feel WI, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India will make it to the semis and either India or Pakistan will lift the Cup !!

Thats it for now .. signing off ..

:PM

The "Master Keys" !!

Here I am, writing again, came back sooner than I expected.

Based on whatever little I have read & experienced, I would like to jot down 7 points that, in my opinion, are key to happiness. I call them the "master keys" -

• Be positive and optimistic. It is quite easy to blame anything & everything. Instead, look for positives in everything and you shall be happier.
• Work like there is no tomorrow. Take every assignment as a challenge. It is easy to say that your job is monotonous & boring but say that only after you have mastered every aspect of what you do and there is no one better than you out there. Someone rightly said "Attitude is a small thing that makes a big difference".
• Play harder. Take time out whenver you can. Have tons of fun and your definition of fun can be anything - going out for a movie, going out to shop, trekking, swimming, reading books, playing cricket, dancing, hanging out with friends .. anything! Make sure you plan a vacation with your family/friends at least once every six months. Don't ever miss out on fun!
• Exercise regularly. It is very important especially these days when stress levels are high and we hardly get any physical activity. You will feel fitter, stronger, healthier and energetic. You could hit a gym or play tennis every morning or go for a swim on evenings .. choose whatever suits you but please be regular! Apart from physical activity, I'd also recommend mental exercise .. the easiest would be to grab the morning newspaper and spend 10 minutes with a sudoko or a kakuro puzzle .. with time you will be good at it and you will feel good!
• Read good stuff. Rightly said, knowledge is power. Read whatever interests you .. it could be technical literature or autobiographies of great personalities or religious books or some international bestsellers. Remember, knowledge is a treasure that nobody can steal!
• Listen to music. As they say, it is food for the soul. And listen to whatever interests you .. ghazals, sufi, soft rock, hip-hop, latest bollywood offerings or even the golden oldies from Rafi, Kishore, Mukesh or Lata.
• Try to be good to others. Help the needy whenever you can, be polite to others and always smile :-)

The irony of this blog is that I personally don't follow all of this .. but as I am getting older I do sincerely plan to follow all of this and more ...

:PM

My "First blog"!

This is my first blog and I promise to keep it short (and for me promises are not meant to be broken!!)

I will start with an observation of mine that Internet is back bigtime. After the painful dotcom bust, there was a lull for quite a few years. Someone has rightly said "Everything has a cycle". And expectedly last couple of years, we have witnessed a lot of action and as a result, a lot of innovative and exciting ideas in the internet and the related technologies - Open source, Wikipedia, AdSense/AdWords, Blogging, Internet telephony (Skype/Gtalk), Internet Video (YouTube/Google video), Orkut, Google Earth .. to name a few!

Google has definitely been one of the major (innovative yet profitable) players on the internet and, in my opinion, has reinforced the fact that if you have a cool product or a service, you can make a difference. The company must be an inspiration for many a folks who do want to make a difference through their own cool ideas. And in my humble opinion, a "cool" offering is the one that has:

• simplicity - is simple & intutive yet effective and hence attracts new users easily
• speed - is faster than the existing applications .. because most of us are short on time & patience
• speciality - is unique in someway and has something that others do not offer

There are a plenty of areas yet to be explored and there is a huge opportunity for people who wish to make an impact. All that is required (I am sure everyone knows it already) is to have an "idea" and then implement that keeping the 3Ss (mentioned above) in mind.

Internet blogs are one of many "cool" concepts to have captured the attention of worldwide users .. and I too decided to get hooked !! My agenda is simple - to publish my thoughts on various topics and once in a while share stuff that will be useful (hopefully) for at least someone out there!

I will park my pen here .. and hopefully come back with something interesting ...

:PM