Alter(H)atePoint

What to do on long weekends

2009-09-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

“Spending three days at home with absolutely nothing to do can have a positive effect on one’s existence” is what I have discovered over the period of last three days. The benefits, listed below in no particular order, are:

You have all the time in the world to bring some order to your room. The male folks can definitely relate to what I want to say. For those who can not - it precisely means having used socks, stashed one after another, not in the shoes that you no longer like putting on, but in the closet after being nicely washed and dried. The clothes washed and ironed on the hangers, the bed sheets neat and clean, the books that I don’t remember when I last read, but still on the study table and so on and so forth.
There are always some friends, some uncles, some aunts, some cousins you wanted to call since long but somehow the daily grind leaves you too tired to pick up the cell phone and call them up. So, on days like these you can mend broken relationships by calling them up, enquiring about their well being, telling what you have been up to and you will definitely walk away feeling good about something.
Tax-planning is something that I always keep on procrastinating but on such a long weekend that is something that I enjoy doing and trust me so will you. More than the money that you will save on tax out-go it’s the feeling of having utilized your time in a constructive way that you will cherish for quite a few days. The money saved is just an added benefit!
I know you have resolved year after year, birthday after birthday, diwali after diwali that you will start exercising regularly from now on. And, always discovered to your great dismay that you once again broke your resolution. Days like these are just tailor-made to hit the gym and knock off some kilos off your tummy. Another positive – you get to meet new people and be friends with them.
All those movies that you heard your friends talking about and wondered what is so good about them. You can spend quite a lot of hours watching those movies you had missed out earlier.
Dine at that fine restaurant that was on your radar for quite some time and pamper yourself with some nice ice-creams, sweet dishes etc etc etc

I have done all this and more over the last three days and I am sure my life is a lot more organized & orderly than it was just three days back. So next time you have a long weekend and you are wondering what is the best thing you could do then don’t think any further. Refer to this post and trust me you won’t regret it.

In MADras!

2009-09-20T06:34:00.000-07:00

I am back in MADras and life here for people who come from places like Delhi and surroundings revolves around office, Hindi-speaking folks, gym partners, people you find at very few eateries that dish out North Indian meals/dishes, internet (the trusted friend), few friends who are unlucky enough to be slogging out in MADras like you, the cell phone and such trivial stuff!

Some of my friends believe that the locals here maintain a convenient distance between themselves (Tamils) and us (non-Tamils). Its not that we are being handed out a bad treatment but the feeling of belonging is missing. I am sure it will be a long time before we start thinking of Chennai as our city, if at all that ever happens and I dare say that life in Amsterdam or Chennai pretty much means the same to me. Language, food and personal behaviors will trouble you at both places no ends. And, its so natural to feel that way.

Anybody coming from Delhi will tell you that he often feels like having an ice cream at 12 in the night, he would want to go out and treat himself to the best international cuisines available, he would want to go out for the newest English movies, he would want to go out for a stroll in the tree-lined European style parks, he would want to indulge himself in road-side eating once in a while and what not. But sadly MADras, despite being one of the largest cities in the country, offers none in ample amounts. It doesn’t have enough of that entrepreneurial spirit which is so evident in people who come from my part of the country (read Delhi). People here like to play it safe. Very safe indeed. And that is why youngsters/bachelors from Delhi are the worst possible tenants to have! Think of mindless generalization of a very rare phenomenon and here it is.

Some things I like about Chennai include the public transport here, both local trains and buses, which are quite efficient by any standards. Almost everybody here knows English and so I have survived here without knowing a thing about Tamil. The power situation is not as bad as it was in Delhi this summer. In fact, power cuts are very rare. The traffic jams, here, are nowhere as long and time guzzling as they could be in Delhi. This city, I‘ve heard, is safer for woman and I hope it is. Last - with many more to be discovered in near future. This city offers tremendous job and career growth potential.

JAVA/J2EE J, State Politics and Tamil movies seem to be the favorites of people here. Everybody here knows one thing or the other about these three. Imagine my plight here. I am not at all, not at all, absolutely positively not at all interested in any of these!

Nevertheless, I am enjoying my stay here. The friends, the home, the office all inspire me to excitingly look ahead to the next day J

So far so good!

I will keep posting about my efforts to find my roots here. I hope I will find out some nice things to write about Madras. I will keep publishing on this in time to come.

Cheers!

Ambience Mall in Gurgaon

2009-09-20T03:19:00.000-07:00

I was at the Ambience Mall in Gurgaon some days back which incidentally is just about 10 mins drive from my home and despite its inconvenient location, courtesy being bang on the Delhi-Gurgaon border and next to the 32-lane toll plaza, it makes more sense to me to come to this place, quickly park my car and go mall-hopping than go to the Metropolitan, spend anything like 40-45 mins to find a parking slot there on weekends and then keep on banging into the huge crowds there L. At least for me, going to the mall is more about having a casual walk there along with some shopping, eating, gaming and entertainment thrown in as add-ons without having to worry about somebody hitting my parked car or eloping with the laptop/music system in the car or avoiding the next swarm of mall-rats heading towards me aka Mumbai railway stations!

But alas visiting malls in Gurgaon is no more the kind of pleasure it was back in 2004, 2005 . Though there were very few malls on the MG road with only the MGF Metropolitan, DT City Centre, DT Mega Mall instantly coming to my mind but they were a welcome change for people long used to shopping in mud-filled, non-AC, poor-assortment stocking, and with untrained sales force kind of shops in conventional markets.

The multiplexes, the swanky showrooms, well-trained sales force, whole range of international cuisines to chose from, elevators, clean alleys, gaming zones, the discs, the bars, the food courts all gave a glimpse of what future could look like for Gurgaon, the millennium city, residents. But, like with so many other things, malls promised so much then and all those promises even today remain just that, promise!

We Indians have an old habit that just refuses to die and that is overdoing things. We first refused to accept malls thinking they were expensive and were a threat to our culture and when we did accept them we, true to ourselves, totally flooded them. Malls are full to the brim, in fact full is an understatement!

With so many new malls mushrooming all over Gurgaon, one expected things to be rosy. But, no matter which mall you go to, there are hoards of people. And that is what brings me to the Ambience Mall.

This is the mall that boasts of 1km shopping area on each floor on three or four floors with three level parking of the same size. But, contrary to my earlier experiences I discovered that no parking slot is free on Level 0 or Level 1 parking so I had to find my way down to the Level 2 parking. And that is after criss-crossing 1 km on each level ! Finally I parked the car and rached the lift lobby where to my surprise about 10-12 peole were waiting for the lift before me. The lifts that came to Level 2 were already full by then because people were boarding the lift on Levels 0 and 1. But didn't I say that there was no parking slot vacant on those levels. So where were these people coming from?? U 've got a mind of your own. Go and figure that out on your own!! Anyways, finally one lift came and most of the people got into it. And, after some more waiting I reached the ground level. I was really taken aback by the number of people there. It looked more like the Annual International trade fair at Pragati Maidaan on its very last day. Finally I managed to reach the Blu-O, the place where you can burn money pretty fast playing games hitherto unseen in India. But I was shocked to see that place. Not one more soul could get into that gaming zone. It was full of children, parents, youngsters, Grand-Pas and Grand-Moms! Don’t forget we are talking about gaming zone. I thought we as Indians were against indoor gaming J. And here was a motley mix of generations playing indoor games. And not one was person was coming out of that ring.

The world is having a tough time dealing with recession but Indians are having a great time burning dollars earned faking as a foreign agent in call centers or writing code for American/European clients. And that is why we cant find vacant places in our malls despite having so many malls now!

This is the new India. Un-afraid, Un-assuming, Un-fettered!

I didn’t want to wrestle with people around for a shot at some of my fav games and rather made my way to the Rockman’s Beer Island on the top floor about which we will talk in some other post. It is a fantastic place. So European, so calm, so serene! And yes it doesn’t have thousands of people. It is almost empty and you can spend hours there without worrying to order some more things to keep the waiters from telling you that we are here to do business and not to do some community service and providing them comfortable seating to sit on, big screen to watch football matches etc etc .

I miss those empty malls, those leisurely times I spent there! Till I write some more....

Letter to Federer!

2009-09-20T02:16:00.000-07:00

Dear Fedex,

It was bit of a shocker that you gave us on Tueday Morning. I for once was so assured of your victory that I didn’t even bother to stay awake and guide you to your 6^th US Open crown. But, like all good things must come to an end some day so did your fantastic run at the US Open. You have already achieved way more in your career spanning just 12 years than anybody in the past could nor will anybody in future come close to achieving.

The past has seen players like Sampras, Ivan Lendl, Andre Agassi, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg and more but not one of these had the finesse and touch to make viewers think tennis is not a sport, not a science but an art so exact, so precise, so unearthly. The impossible shot-making, the ease, the high probability of coming up with winning balls a lesser player would not have even reached, the total devastation of top players all make you what you are today. You are God’s gift to our generation for we‘ve got a chance to see you live in action.

I know it feels bad to lose a match after having won 41 consecutive matches at the Flushing Meadows but that doesn’t take away from you anything you have achieved. You are still a God. Even God is allowed a few misses here and there.

Cheers!

The KING is dead , Long Live the KING !!

2009-06-08T06:10:00.000-07:00

It took a long time coming but finally it is here!! Fedex has finally achieved what even the great Pete Sampras cudnt achieve. He has finally managed to break the clay jinx and completed a career grand slam. In a way, it would have been more fitting had he triumphed over his nemesis of the last four years, Rafael Nadal. But I guess had he been in the finals, it would have been a completely different story. The guy(Nadal), has got to Federer’s head and he knows this. That is why Federer has already lost half the battle by the time he takes to the court against Rafa. But after the disappointment of the last 3 years when he lost in the finals (to Nadal, who else) , this time around the lady luck was on his side. He just brushed aside Soderling in straight sets. And, that is no mean feat either. With all due respect to Nadal, this guy Soderling downed three clay court specialists over the last week which included a stalwart like Nadal.

Comments from Sampras and Agassi came like an icing on the cake with both of them underlining the general view that he is the all time greatest tennis player. RF himself knows far too well the importance of winning on the clay courts at French. As has been experienced by greats like Sampras and others, the claim to being billed as an All time greatest is almost a no-show till you have a victory at Roland Garros up to show for your efforts. I am sure he is a very strong contender for the being the greatest ever, if he is not already there and if there are still some doubts and demons to be thrashed. The normally reticent Federer was emotional, quite unlike himself. Understandable because of the enormity of the occasion.

Having given uncountable moments of breathtaking tennis, Federer can now sit back and enjoy the fruits of his hard work for years to come. His shots, on grass and hard courts, almost defy laws of physics and the world will eagerly wait to see if he can weave more of the same magic that has given him 14 Grand Slams. But, Federer is one surname that will be etched in memories of sports lovers for all times to come. It will carry a weight quite like the Wood's, the Ali's and the Pele's of the past for all times to come..

But where does tennis go from here?? What will tennis lovers have to look forward to?

Men’s tennis is too freaky to predict anything. But we are witnessing a galaxy of players who have modeled their games on that of Federer’s. Lethal service, formidable forehand, strong backhand and agility are trademarks of Federer. I remember an era of tennis, when players like Sampras, Becker, Ivanasevic, Phillipousis, Rafter would just keep on firing aces well outside the reach of human-like-ordinary players or even if the poor soul on the other side somehow manages to get it back in play, these big servers would inevitably volley him out to finish the point. Incredible though it may sound because of the aura of invinciblity it creates but a tennis lover wont pay money to see that. What tennis lovers want to see are long rallies (Nadal style, running like a mad ox from one end to the other till the competitor gets frustarted and bangs one into the net or long) , somewhat of a classic or a purist mould.

Federer is just that kind of a player who attract crowds onto the tennis courts because he gives them glimpses of classic tennis. Forehand paases, crosscourt shots, lobs, drop-shots and obviously a bomming serve. He has brought a classic angle back into the game and and that is what his real contribution to the game his. Samparases, Beckers, Rafters almost appeared unprofessional on days when their booming serves didnt fire but the same cant be said about Federer and players of his genre.

Players with strong overall ability can still save the day if the service doesn’t fire or the forehands keep finding the net and we have lot of such players today, courtesy Federer. Soderling, Andy Murray, Tsonga, Del Potro are players of the same genre and it wont be an exaggeration to say that they have modelled their games on that of Federer's.

Last but not the least, he is a thorough gentleman who takes both wins and defeats in the right spirit. Despite being an outright champion that he is and winning everything there is to win in the tennis world he remains as humble as he was on the day when he first defeated Sampras at Wimbledon to signal the change-of-guard at the helm of men's tennis. His multi-lingual press-conferences are a pressman’s delight patiently answering all the questions ranging from tennis to his endorsements to his marriage to his future plans.No wonder coz the guy is fluent in French, German, Spanish, English and more. What more can the world ask for!!!

Isn’t he God?? This is what GREATNESS means~!!

Celebrity Advertising...

2009-05-24T12:21:00.000-07:00

Do you remember Lalita Ji who for years was the face of SURF on Indian Television scene or the memorable Hamara Bajaj or the gorgeous La-La-La-La Lah-Lah-Lah Liril girls or the Utterly Butterly Delicious Ads of Amul or in more recent times the Hutch Ad featuring the Pug or the Vodafone Ads featuring the adorable ZooZoos.

I am sure you do.

Now, switch off for a moment from those all time classic Ads and try recalling any ad featuring a Bollywood Star or a cricketing genius?? Trust me there have been thousands of such ads all these years. Need Examples?? I‘ll be rather generous.

Amitabh Bachan ( that fellow is anyway well past his Expiry Date..I don’t know if the younger generation still looks upto him when they are deciding what to buy but he is really an expensive alternative??) telling you to drink Pepsi, eat Chawanprash, use Navratana Oil, wear Reid & Taylor suits.

Shahrukh Khan (the hopelessly bad actor that he is I hate him in every single movie of his. That we will ponder over some other day!!) asking you to drink Pepsi(he has now moved onto Coke (strange though it may sound but its true)), buy i10 and many more which I don’t recall.

Yuvraj Singh endorsing Rbk, Sachin endorsing Adidas and more.

But pause for a moment now and think if you have ever bought Pepsi because Sachin drinks the same or i10 because Shahrukh drives it or Chawanprash because Amitabh eats it religiously every morning???? I am sure you won’t have paused even for a second to make such utilitarian buys day in and day out. Does it matter to us ?? Not at all. After all a cold drink is only that much, a cold drink, meant to cool in summers and add lots of unwanted calories in the process. A car’s choice is governed by far more factors than Shahrukh Khan and more so when the star himself earns enough to buy the Mercs, Bentleys and Audis of the world.

Then why do companies spend crores getting these celebrities to endorse their products if we, the consumers, just don’t care?? Over all these years why haven’t the advertisers learnt that it’s the storyline of the Ad and the benefits of a product that convince the buyers to prefer one product over the other and not the celebrities??

But, are the celebrity endorsements a total failure?

I don’t think so.

They do make sense in some cases as in ads of a successful sportsperson, say Yuvraj, who attributes his success to Rbk. Though still an exaggeration, it is not as difficult to believe as Sachin crediting Pepsi for his sparkling career!! If at all it has had any impact it must have been far from being positive J.

Or Roger Federer endorsing Rolex. That makes lot of sense because first, he is a Swiss endorsing a Swiss brand, he lends his own class and aura to Rolex (perfect fit) and he exemplifies Rolex’s association with success. Perfect way to attract high fliers, high achievers who can afford a Rolex and want to be seen in that light by society!!

For a utilitarian purchase like a cell phone connection or a soft drink, companies must try to build a storyline around their brand/product that stresses on benefits, differentiation and one that echoes the life and din of common man. That is and will remain the most effective way to achieve high brand recall because common man, who is the customer, sees himself in these ads and how small benefits add up to big gains.

Vodafone’s Zoozoo ads do precisely that by showing how each add-on service can make life easier and more fun for the common man who is not a star like Shahrukh Khan(Airtel) or MS Dhoni (Aircel).

Other good examples are Sprite ( Seedhi Baat, No bakwaas) and Mountain Dew ( Darr kea age jeet hai) both of which develop a storyline in their ads to justify their brand positioning and attract targeted customers. Surprisingly, one uses star-power other doesn’t. But that is a minor issue. It’s the storyine that makes them click, not the presence/absence of a star!!

Moving onto aspirational brands, the storyline is still important but here celebrities can make a much more positive impact. Examples are Dell using Raman Roy (founder of Quattro) to emphasize the role Dell played in his successful business venture or beauty queens used in soap ads (which may or may not add to their beauties, but it plays on the emotions of buyers) or Nadal endorsing Nike.

Its safe to conclude that celebrity advertising is not the cure for all the ailments/diseases. It works sparingly and should be used with discretion for the optimum ROI.

The Circus called IPL2!!

2009-05-23T00:43:00.000-07:00

India seems to be totally smitten by the Indian Premier League – 2009 and why not? It is a fantastic mix of Cricket’s Excitement, Bollywood’s glamour and gyrating bellies of young cheerleaders. One positive out of IPL being held in South Africa and not in India is the unbridled joy one derives out of the dances for long deemed unfit for a country of high morals like ours!!

The cash registers are ringing and boy, it is one hell of a trick to make quick buck. Be it the Franchise owners, Players, the BCCI or Broadcasters the money flow doesn’t seem like its going to stop anytime soon for any of these entities. Hats off to all those who are marketing this event. They are definitely running a good show.

But who is paying?? WE THE PEOPLE!!

What are we paying for?

For those with a little grounding in probability, we are paying to see a tournament in which every team has a 50% chance of playing the semifinals. How I arrived at that number is easy. We have 8 teams in the fray and 4 spots in the semi-finals. So 4/8 makes it 50%. Now, imagine for a moment how difficult (or easy) it is for a team to make it to the semi-finals. Not too difficult I believe. 9 times out of 10 a common man when faced with a challenge where he has a 50% chance of success will back himself to come out with flying colors. And, more than often not people around him will dismiss it as just another thing.

In a country like India, success is when a youngster cracks IIT JEE competing with about 3 lakh others like him for one of the 3000 odd seats on offer. Or even better is an IAS hopeful who cracks the world’s toughest competition to be one of the chosen few who will run this country of a billion plus people as its IAS, IFS, ICS and IPS officers. The probability to crack an IIT exam is (3000/300000) 0.01 and for IAS even lesser!! Compare with 0.5 in case of IPL!!

I guess you know where we are heading. An IIT aspirant after years of hard work may pocket a million bucks as salary, if he is lucky enough to be cherry picked by one of those paymasters from the western world. An IAS earns far lesser than that. (Wait a minute – we are not talking about how much he can potentially earn but how much he legally gets).

Now figure this out. Kevin Pieterson and Andrew Flintoff got 1.55 Million dollars for their short stints at IPL2 and that too without any performance guarantees. No wonder both were dismal failures. Shahrukh Khan’s loss-machine KKR has the strongest brand value and the highest merchandise sales despite being at the bottom of the table.

I don’t have anything against IPL. It is a brilliant concept but I seriously think too much is being made of it when it is no more than another tournament like County Cricket in England, Sheffield in Australia and Ranji in India. Just that it involves more money because of the franchise format.

And, it is the money that is calling the shots. IPL’s Modi is hell bent on making the tournament stretch longer by not going for groups wherein the group leaders contest in the semi-finals. Instead he has gone for a format which has no groups and each team play every other team in the tournament. So, a tournament that could have finished with 19 matches now stretches to 59 matches simply because more matches mean more money for everybody.

(Number crunching)

2*4C2 + 4C2 + 1 = 19 in case of 2 groups format

2*8C2 + 2 + 1 = 59 in the existing format

Does it also mean more entertainment? I don’t think so purely because it brings down the intensity with which matches are played. Teams and players know they can very well lose half of the matches and still qualify to play for the finals. Otherwise how do you explain BRC and DC losing 7 out of 14 and still progressing? On the other side, runaway team like DD made it to the semifinals long before it played its last match and simply let the standards slip in the later part of the league stage.

A tournament as long as this borders on the line of being rejected by the masses because things move too slowly and teams just as have too many chances to make amends because of the number of matches that they play. This is not the way tournaments are played around the world. Think of EPL or the Football world cup or the EURO cup. They are all in the group format.

We are really rewarding MEDIOCRITY in IPL. It doesn’t deserve this amount of public’s attention because it is just not worth it. A shorter, a crisper, a more intense IPL is the need of the hour.

2009-05-20T23:58:00.000-07:00

Date – Monday, 18th May, 2009
Venue - Dalal Street, Mumbai
Time - 9:50 PM

What the world witnessed at the Bombay Stock Exchange minutes after it opened on Monday wasn’t unexpected but the magnitude of the event was. The BSE SENSEX skyrocketed more than 2000 points minutes after the stock market opened to record two momentous events. First, this was the single biggest gain in a day in the history of BSE and second, it resulted in a never-before event of a Circuit Breaker kicking-in because of the upward movement. The Indian markets and its participants are more used to events like Manic Monday when the market crash wiped off 100000 crores (that is 1 lakh crores) of investor wealth.

The general public and market participants, in particular didn’t get tired beaming their close-up smiles for the TV cameras all day. The Brokers were seen taking pictures of the TV screens broadcasting the big news of the day just to show to their children and grandchildren that they lived to see this day. And guess what? Nobody actually gained anything.

Alrite agreed, the UPA is set to return to power and that too without the Left Support which will free the Govt. from the arm twisting techniques of the Left. A strong Government would be able to push through Economic and Social reforms much faster thus giving India a better chance on the world stage. But what has UPA Govt. done in the past 5 years to suggest that we are looking at brighter days ahead. Its governance record has in the past been, at best, scratchy and that can be attributed to the policies of the Left. But, not once in the last 5 years has Left did anything to mar any project related to Roads, Railways, Power, Airports, Urban Renewal etc.
A cursory glance at some of the stats available will put things into perspective:
Only 40% of roads targeted for completion are anywhere close to finalization.
Of the planned Power generation capacity addition only 32% achieved.
Only two green field airports, Bangalore and Hyderabad, have seen light of the day. Chennai and Kolkata airports are vintage WW-2 era styled and crying for attention.
Only 8000 KMs of new railway routes added since independence and majority of the last 62 years have been under Congress Rule.
Rampant corruption charges against Ministers.
Incoherent foreign policy in important events like Sri-Lankan Civil war and N.Korea, Iran Security Council Resolution.
Shabby record in internal security because of rising terrorism and all time low relations with Pakistan.

Moreover, bureaucracy and vested interests of political groups don’t let things move fast and nothing has changed in between 14th and 15th General Elections to suggest otherwise. Things will move like they have all these years and that is slow. Reforms might still take place but not at a speed at which you can justify the huge euphoria in the Dalal Street. More or less, things are the same and the only positive out of these elections is the fact that Govt. at the centre will be stable and decisive. Already the power tussle at the centre has shown that more the things change, the more they remain the same.

Now, getting back to the rocket Monday on BSE. The volumes were dismal at just Rs. 600 crore which means the Brokers didn’t earn much that day and investors were just left out of the rally because before they could buy stocks at a discount, the price had already spiraled. So investors also lost out. In a matter of minutes, stocks changed from PE multiple 10 to PE multiple 15.

Acronym Alert (Beep Beep)
(PE multiple = Market price of a stock / Earnings per share)

(And Earnings per share = Net Income / Number of outstanding shares)

The Earnings can not and didn’t change overnight rather it was the market price that had zoomed its way up for most large caps. But, there is hardly any justification for the rise barring the market sentiments.

Stock markets mostly play on investor sentiment and that is the only reason why markets went up in a jiffy. Millions of un-executed trade orders with buyers queuing up and no seller at all is a classic case of unmatched demand and supply. The demand exceeded the supply and thus prices went up. But, this euphoria won’t last long as markets today are global phenomena with the Wall Street playing the Big Boss. Retail investors are just another cog in the wheel but in the driver’s seat are the investment firms registered in tax heavens like Luxemburg and Mauritius. They push the market up and they pull it down on their whims and fantasies. Companies are the same, economy is the same, whatz more even the Government is the same. The inherent strength (or weakness) of a company’s balance sheet is what the markets look at and suddenly one fine day markets wont just find a new way to look at the bean counter’s work (the balance sheet).
What has changed is the sentiment and though it may sound illogical or weird to some, it is THE thing that matters in stock markets.

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Comments welcome!!