The So-Called Experts....

It is fascinating to see how everyone acts like an expert when it comes to the Stock Market, and yeah, i tend to be one of them! Thanks to the newly installed TV screens at the office cafeteria, markets seem to have become a common topic of discussion. And why just markets, we have a solution for anything :P. Well let's leave that topic for another day!

The Satyam fiasco has really had a hard hitting impact on the common man, as far as confidence in the whole investment scenario goes. It's painful, yet funny(quite a paradox) to see unwavering faith turn to hatred in no-time! This indeed was the feeling of the 53,000 employees. (Is that figure really true? Lets assume so for now...)

I still remember those days of 1999-01, when I used to see stories of Satyam and its great poster boy, Ramalinga Raju, in most of the magazine or Newspaper articles. I felt pride in looking at growth stories of Indian IT services and how the rags become riches in no time. I carried that pride till date but it has dented after revelation of multi million frauds in Satyam financial statements.

Raju has been, for a long time, a beacon of hope for aspiring and ambitious youngsters. From a small time entrepreneur, to an IT Czar, the journey is quite fascinating! Satyam, founded in 1987, started off with a modest employee base of 20 and through the next 15 years spread its arms of influence to over 65 countries. And for someone running such a massive Info Tech organization, he does not have any formal engineering background. His achievements speak volumes about the good work done by him

1) IT Man of the Year - 2000
2) Asia's Business Leader of the Year-2002
3) Corporate Citizen of the Year - 2002
4) E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year. - 1999 & 2007

And perhaps, greed got the better of him. This golden period was followed by gross mis-appropriation of funds, hawala transactions, benami bank accounts.. The list is endless! It looked like Raju had used every trick in the book before coming out in the open about the mega fraud which saw the company's stock price plummet from 180 to the all time low of 6, that too in a matter of 3 days!
I try my best to retain faith in the IT industry, and BOOM! The World Bank made public it has barred Wipro Technologies since 2007.

And with all this we were discussing at the lunch table, a few days back, about 150 being a good price to buy Satyam shares. Anybody in for Wipro for the next few days?

Barney's Gyan!

It's "How I met your mother" mania these days. Season 4 in progress and the star of this Sit-com is the one and only Barney Stinson, a.k.a Neil Patrick Harris. He is the focal point of most moments that define the series.

Backdrop: He was a 23 year old virgin in NY. But like every late bloomer, he feels the compulsive need to compensate for lost time. He has his own set of hilarious "laws" when it comes to dating. Just felt like compiling all those i recollect :)

The Lemon Law:
When on a date, you have exactly 5 minutes to decide how long we want to spend with her.
The Hot-Crazy Scale:
A date is allowed to be crazy as long as she is equally HOT. The threshold is the Vicky Mendonza diagonal :P
The Platimun Rule:
Never ever ever ever Love thy neighbor..
The rules of cheating:
1) Its not cheating if you are not the one whoz married.
2) Its not cheating if her name has two adjacent vowels. (can you beat that!)
3) Its not cheating if she is from a different area Code.

Hail Barney!
This character is just legen.... wait for it.......

Raving about Slumdog millionaire!!!

There are some movies that are fun to watch, there are others showcasing the hard hitting truths of life... and then i found a third kind, Slum-dog Millionaire!!!
The casual portrayal of a Mumbai slum-dog does come with a fair share of subtly passed, yet hard hitting comments like, "But for Ram and Allah, my mother would have been alive".

This fascinating story revolves around a TV game show, "Who wants to be a millionaire" of about an hour. Every question takes Jamal Malik back down the memory lane and he associates his past with every question on this journey to becoming a millionaire.
Ofcourse, it does come with a couple of inexplicable moments like, how a random begger knows that the picture on the $100 bill is that of Benjamin Franklyn and how almost every question that was asked had something to do with Jamal's past. But the slick screenplay and the pace of the story overrides all these.
Anil Kapoor delivers a mature performance as the game show host, with great finesse.

Herezz hoping we get to see more of such amazing scripts!

Blogging mania!

Amitabh is paid a whopping 130cr for Blogging at Big Adda, Aamir gets a similar competitive number. Do i plan to get there someday? yeah sure ;)
I made one previous attempt at blogging, a few years back, and that lasted for 4 posts. But i think, this time im here to stay :)