Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The Bull run












Now with the world economy steadying a little, its time for small investors to again look at the sensex with lust. Yes it had last to last year been an object of desire as it went on a roller coaster ride which had started by breaking the 15000 mark and then it never looked back and cruised to about 22000 in no time. The bulls were thrown out of Dalal Street by welcoming the statue of the Bull in front of the NSE building Wall Street style.


But sadly the joy ride did not last much longer and the stocks fell like the Great Indian batting line-up, in procession one after the other. This was largely due to the SLR crisis that had been waiting to burst. Now after around two years we again flirting with the 15000 mark and again hopes have been raised of small time investors to wet their hands in the moving water (It’s a phrase ). Again people with Obama at the helm are hoping for change in the market economy and rubbing their hands for what could be another joy ride in the coming. You could sense the optimism with the current Adani Power IPO which was actually to be launched a year ago but was withheld due to lack of interest in the market. However this time around it has been different with the scrip already being overpriced around 4.5 times people are expecting a boom this time around. Its price band is around 90 to 100 and is expected to launch right from the opening bell.


But what would be fresh from memory is the last time such kind of hoopla had been created and the Reliance Power scrip started losing from the very first few minutes of its birth. Considering this around the case would be different as last time the Reliance Power had indicated an end to the boom time and a start of the bloodshed. Similarly we are expecting that Adani Power would indicate the end of the slump and the start of the boom. But that depends how does the market react to the Adani Power share.


Again considering that the FIIs might have turned their heads back to India as their favorite destination this could be quite a good time for the Sensex.. However investment experts have advised people to not throw caution to wind and invest wisely a thing that we hardly consider when we ride into the boom time. Overall it could be predicted that by mid next year India would be chugging back into its growth path. For that to happen we must look into our manufacturing sector much more closely otherwise we would miss this opportunity to China which by then would be recording double digit growth rate.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

MTV OVERDOSE

MTV as of sorts is in the race of breaking records. No it is not competing for the most watched channel on the Indian television but it is aiming to be the biggest churner of reality shows of late. I think it has taken the path that is being currently run by the Bollywood films of producing over 300 non-sensical crap movies within a year and then selecting the best among the crappiest and sending that to the Oscars and praying Indian ishtyle thinking yes we can win this time too. But sorry folks we need to do better.

Coming back to MTV a channel which has transformed the culture of many a countries has now been bitten up by the reality show bug. If you see right from Roadies 1 now to Roadies 6, then you have Splitsvilla then you have “the fast and the gorgeous” then the teen diva , all with shitty sequels, then you have the latest “connected” . Then you have the “Stunt Mania” ,” the Rock Band’ and you are left to wonder how rich is Rann vijay. If you see none of the shows have that high TRPs but you still have contestants crying spilling beans washing dirty linen and all that kind of stuff on national television. You are then wondering how does MTV get all these samples. Is there a biological laboratory with MTV samples written on it that produces such things.

First of all the Roadies is still the most watched show on MTV. But if you see it has become repititve with Raghu trying to do the unexpected but even a kid knows what he is going to do next. And yeah we donot need Airtel digital to know who would be eliminated next. With Raghu trying to play mind games with the contestants but he ends up mind boggling our minds. Three seasons for any show is enough (except if it’s the Simpsons) otherwise what ‘s the point in dragging a show just so that you could give your unemployed brother , Rann Vijay and Nikhil Chinappa some work. Then you the latest game show that is Connected , where everything happens twice I think they should even air it twice show advertisements twice because no one is going to sponsor them. It lacks quality and content. You have contestants doing some silly tricks and the only requisite is that his partner should do it in the same way. That is MTV ‘s way of determining how connected two people are. Move away all astrologers and HR executives because MTV is the man. If there is sequel to this show it should be called Connected 4 because the first one happened twice ( got the logic ) I think a hollywood script writer and Mahesh Bhatt should be on this show because strangely their stories match they are the most connected.

Then you have Splitsvilla a show where love is war. You have contestants trying to prove who is the dumbest among them all. The first show had such poor TRPS that instead of four winners the winners had been narrowed down to two and even the prizemoney was halved. Moreover the airtime that the winners got on MTV even that flopped due to poorly managed content .They really think that we audience are really dumb. Then we had teen diva who nobody watched and nobody could watch.

Fast and the Gorgeous a show which selects the pit girls for the Team Force India is another such futile attempt . It is quite similar to the one adjudged by Ganguly to select the cheer leader for the KKR. Sadly KKR were so poor in the IPL that the cheerleaders started to cheer other teams like Indian politics. Similarly our Force India team is so poor with Adrian Sutil and Fischella that during the race the force India team doesnot get that much airtime leave alone the pit girls. You have a force India car either crashing and burning or reaching the finishing line when all the other drivers have reached home.

Not learning from all these MTV has started yet again brought Stunt Mania .God knows who will watch this when all have YOutube. Anyways whatever might be the case I think one thing is for sure the MTV Tickr is going to be voted the most watched tickr in history because of such shows it is getting food for its tickr even when you don’t have a Jacky Bhagiani or a Govinda film out.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

PERSPECTIVES OF A DANGEROUS MIND

The human mind has generally three perspectives to a singular situation. It could be a positive perspective, a negative perspective or a practical perspective. I would like to quote a very famous aphorism “I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist but I am a realist”.

Now lets leave all that aside and concentrate on the human psychology alone. Whenever the human mind takes up something like a task to be done or a work to be done it goes through all the three above mentioned perspective. The transition that takes place among the different perspective is what makes this post worth reading. Let me give illustration to explain my point of view or POV as it is called. These are day to day situations that we lazy species on the face of earth face and how we citing these three perspectives start accelerate and end up doing things.

Instance 1

Optimist: I am going to hit the gym the first thing from tomorrow.

Realist: Working out in the morning is not that fruitful as survey shows that evening work outs produce quicker and better results.

Pessimist: Working out in the gym consists of lifting weights and endurance training which leads to the body bulking up hence running and skipping is the way to go I am going to run tomorrow.

Instance 2

Optimist: I am going to run from tomorrow and I have set my eyes on Usain Bolt he is my inspiration.

Realist: I have knocked knees, flat foot and don’t what hence running can only aggravate my problems. (Man you should be a lawyer)

Pessimist: Running could lead to exhaustion and that affects my performance at work hence from its dieting for me.

Instance 3

Optimist: I am going on a diet from today.

Realist: But it would not be a instant one as it could lead to amnesia and sometimes unconsciousness

Pessimist: Dieting is dangerous to health and it can cause the swollen arteries , hence it could cause low blood pressure hence I would say to hell with dieting. I am going to gym from tomorrow.

And hence the cycle continues…..

Sunday, July 12, 2009

ZERO PRODUCIVITY

Zero productivity work, an entirely new concept discovered by me while I have nothing productive to do. Now some people might wonder what actually is zero productive work. Some might even argue how can work yield zero productivity. But actually its definition is quite simple. When you work and you do not gain anything by doing that work either physically emotionally or meta physically or alpha biologically or gamma chemically or theta mathematically ( it was meant to confuse) then we call such kind of bullshit a zero productivity work. Let me discuss a few instances with you on this entirely strange concept.

1. Blogging. This is the first and most useless thing that almost every Joe takes up with a singular selfish motive that is to earn money. Now although we all are aware of the fact that we all are dumb at writing stuff and that even trained and professional writers do not earn much. Still we have that Shakespeare in us who tells us to write or not to write. They all take heart from the great Labnol, thinking they can make it big too. Sadly in just a few months the Shakespeare in us becomes a shaken spear. I have seen way too many blogs which starts with great posts then after a while due to dryness of ideas they turn to time.com or news.com do a CCP (Cut Copy Paste) of the first page along with the photos and shamelessly promote plagiarism on their blogs. If the guy still has some originality left in him then he starts posting about what he did from Monday to Sunday from morning to evening and other silly stuff. Now if you are writing it has to have a target audience, what is the point of letting other people know that you cut out newspapers and make shapes of dogs and monkeys out of it. You are making a monkey out of yourselves by doing that. Then you have people cooking something and putting pictures of that on their blogs. I had seen a guy putting photos of burgers on his blog. Wow! Burgers that is indeed a divine cuisine!. If the guy is still more lazy to write then he starts posting posts containing the photos of nearby post offices to public toilets to I do not know what all stuff. You have camera phones so freely available that you have “Click when you talk policy” (IDEA ad ). He keeps on clicking all the useless stuff and then posts the entire shit collection on his blog.

2. Social networking sites. Now this is the greatest and the dumbest thing that people today are hooked to. Now it makes sense that you might have joined any one of the social networking sites because you need to catch up with your friends after college or after school or who lives abroad but what is the point in joining and registering a whole dozen of them . Like you have orkut, facebook ,MySpace which are quite famous. But then you have a lot of useless other networking sites like the newest craze Twitter, Bebo, Lobo, gikeo, chambu , damphas, and I don’t know how many of them. And you have your inbox of your only email id full from your silly friends who constantly poke you tweet you treat you beat you murder you expunge you decimate you tag you from all the different sites that they might have joined. Don’t they have other better stuff to do , you are left to wonder. Even then you accept their invitation and join such sites because you are afraid you might get left behind. If such sites are not enough then you have crazy application that they run on their sties. Like lets measure your brain size or The Elvis presley test or the Hollywood test in which you have score of different guys being posted on it. You start to compare it then you are sure that you too have joined in the rat race.
Anyways I have no special grudge against any of these networking sites or blogging because I also belong to that elite class of technocrats (as they like to call themselves) but think about it is worth it?

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

SPORTS-A-MANIA

Now its that time of the year when nobody has really anything interesting to do. Its July and you have all the sports coming to a halt. All the seasons whether it is NFL,NHL, PHL or FA League everything has come to a grinding halt. You have people especially sports buffs like me and having nothing more important to do asking for more. The cricketing season has just shifted gears onto the test mode where all the nations are busy playing the purest form of cricket . After six months or so of pyjama cricket some sanity has prevailed. You have two big transfer deals almost complete. That of Kaka and Ronaldo. Amidst so much sports one cannot help but miss the Confederstion Cup. You almost would have missed the Wimbledon was it not that Federer would have reached the finals and gotten through. You had the poor American Roddick getting thrashed quite gracefully by the great man. You had almost everyone in the tennis world present there to witness the greatest man ever to play tennis . Before this you had India defending the T20 cup as though they had been forced to do so. Before that you had the IPL spanning almost 40 days. With this edition not generating the same fanfare as before.


Just when you thought that cricket was over we have the Ashes where Australia had some extra practice on English conditions following their early exit from the tournament. After Ashes it’s the Champions Trophy following which there is Champions League T20, followed by IPL again and then another T20 World Cup. Really ICC should do something about it, otherwise how will John Abraham give us more horrendous expressions from his usually docile face.


August is the beginning of the EPL , the Spanish premira and the Italian league followed by the world cup of soccer next year. Boy I am sweating as I write this . As you come out of this in between you have the AustralianOpen followed by the U.S. and then the French and the Wimbledon where Federer would win his 16th Grand Slam. If between this you are considering the F1 race that is around 18 then you better not switch your Television off . With so many sports channels working around , you just cannot take your eyes off. If hypothetically you consider the eight F1 teams break-off and create their won Ivy League then again you have another 18 races with some of them held in India.


So if you are a sports fan my advice to you would be shut the hell up and cut your cable televisions otherwise you just cant take your eyes off this one.

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