Rich Dividends

Narayana murthy has finally come around and paid me whats due for me.

A full Rs.19.50 /- (for the 3 stocks of infy)! Hey, my first dividends..sure investment pays rich dividends :-)

btw, i dont own the infy stocks anymore! just made 15% profit and exited the market..markets are sure at sky rockets, so time to book profits!

You ask what's eda? step1 in understanding that!

Chip design? India's hot!
...
The most significant growth is in the $85 billion ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit -- where several circuits are integrated on a single chip for a specific application) market and the $25 billion embedded systems market segments, according to industry sources. Cisco has around 3,500 engineers working on ASIC.
...
More..

though i'm not working in this industry, i'm softwaring for this industry, hence should be good news :-)

bull & bear

when all and sundry give stock tips, that's when you need to exit the markets.
Read on..

A good one, if you are into markets!

chain spam?

Today, i got below mail on my school mailgroup from one of my friends.

Now the question is, is this mail true & genuine. Lets start.
* It is signed as "S. Dinesh Gopinath, I.A.S, Director of Medical & Research Div, Chennai." . Why would a IAS officer start sending such chain mail?

* Is there really person names Dinesh Gopinath, IAS. This name seems to be fictional.
when i googled for this name, i got just the pages which contain the below text.
when i googled for some other IAS person, i got a variety of pages, indicating the depts he has worked, awards etc.

* is there a entity called "Medical & Research Div, chennai" ?
when i googled for this term, again i get just the posts having the below test. I cudn't find the entity official post nor any mention of this anywhere else in the web. An org with name Medical & Research Div just doesn't make any sense to me. perhaps it's part some big org, say DRDO. but why medical & research..ha..gimme a break.

now that its clear that the author/orig sender is not a valid entries, lets get into the matter itself.

* "Disease Control Center" (in Paris)
when i googled for this , again similar results. i cudn't find the site of the organization.

frankly, even if the matter is heart-wrenching one, one shouldn't fwd such mails where the events/senders are not authentic.

:mail starts:
Dear Friends,

Kindly take a couple of minutes to go thru this mail. If useful may advise others also.
Please pass this on to others

This happened in Paris recently and may happen elsewhere also.
A few weeks ago, in a movie theatre, a person felt something poking from her seat.
When she got up to see what it was, she found a needle sticking out of the seat with a note attached saying "You have just been infected by HIV". The Disease Control Center (in Paris) reports many similar events in many other cities recently.
All tested needles were HIV Positive. The Center also reports that needles have been found in cash dispensers at public banking machines. We ask everyone to use extreme caution when faced with this kind of situation. All public chairs/seats should be inspected with vigilance and caution before use.
A careful visual inspection should be enough. In addition, they ask that each of you pass this message along to all members of your family and your friends of the potential danger.
Recently, one doctor has narrated a somewhat similar instance that happened
to one of his patients at the Priya Cinema in Delhi. A young girl, engaged and about to be married in a couple of months, was pricked while the movie was going on. The tag with the needle had the message "Welcome to the World of HIV family".
Though the doctors told her family that it takes about 6 months before the virus grows strong enough to start damaging the system and a healthy victim could survive about 5-6 years, the girl died in 4 months, perhaps more because of the "Shock thought".
We all have to be careful at public places, rest God help! Just think about saving a life by forwarding this message. Please, take a few seconds of your time to pass along.

With Regards,
S. Dinesh Gopinath, I.A.S, Director of Medical & Research Div, Chennai.

Rather than forwarding irrelevant mails, kindly pass this to every one.
Probably ur mail can help some save his/her life.
:mail ends:

PS:- there is seriously something wrong with me..i spent half-hour on this, while my project deadline looming big behind me!

Alien is here

The highly anticipated tamil movie of the year Anniyan is getting released this week!
time to head for the theatres!

spreading the virus

I'm just spreading the virus. virus came to me from Nirmala's.

Number of books I own: it would be around 2000+ . before u say wow!, let me list out what that includes..novels,management books,technical books,english magazines, tamil magazines and newspapers(now, the cat is out of the bag) :-)
if you just want the count of the first 3 in the above list it would be around 50! (hey, that still a decent one..)

Last book(s) I bought: I bought the below books couple of weeks back at Majestic black book market!
1) First, Break All the Rules --> just started reading, this is supposed to be for managers, but hey i'll be one, one day, so y not get ready now itself :-)
2) THE MONK WHO SOLD HIS FERRARI by Robin S Sharma -->Finished
3) Rich Dad, Poor Dad -->Finished
4) The Broker by John Grisham -->yet to start

Last book I read:
THE MONK WHO SOLD HIS FERRARI was the last one i completed. decent one. have learnt a lot of good stuff there. for eg. getting up early isn't difficult, reducing the sleep time to necessary 6-7 hrs and lot more..perhaps i need to read it again to drive home the main points again.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad :- i finished this before the monk. a good one and a must read for every one of the money earners. it questions some of the common believes such house is an asset! how to plan out your finances, how make your money work you instead of you working for money..atleast it has got me thinking..

Five books that mean a lot to me:

1) O Jerusalem! by Collins, Larry and Dominique Lapierre
this book narrates the events around the birth of israel. a gripping book and one of the best non-fiction i've read. he brings out the street fights and dramatic events around the time beautifully. a well researched book.

2) Calvin And Hobbes
mm..i started reading this books from my ex-company library (Texas Instruments) and just got hooked to them..and then i managed to get hold of the entire strips in soft copy and since then it takes quite a chunk of work-day :-) (lemme know if any of you need the full copy)..an absolute feast for mind..you would have seen a lot of it in this blog and you'll continue to see many more!

3) Stroustrup: The C++ Programming Language
how can i skip this book..though i wud come across this book in college, i wouldn't realise the value of this book till i started using these concepts in my work at magma. i know how beautiful the c++ language was, now that i'm out of it and back to stone age (aka c language)..

4) Five point someone - what not to do at IIT
this book came to a birthday gift last year and i'd luv it..it may be comical but it simply takes you to your college (or should i say hostel) days..

5) Catch-22
i'm not a fan of this book..atleast not yet..i've attempted to read this book thrice so far but couldn't manage to go much into(remember calving trying to learn cycling, thats what happening with me and this book)..why i wonder..but its definitely on my mind and i got to read it (and finish it) soon..

the list will be endless but for the fact that you have to list just five! its pity that my regulars cudn't find a place..sheldon(rage of angels, master of the game), grisham(pelican brief, runaway jury,..), crichton(congo,jurassic park,the great train robbery..) are my fav's!

now it's time for me spread it to others..need to tag five people..let me just whomever i know on this blog world..let them decide whether they want to bitten by the bug or they immune to it!
kirthi, vinodc, shubs, j, alok, guns

anyone and everyone can get bitten by this(including the spiders that drop by to index my page)..please drop the link if you're writing it on your blog..

I also need some motivation

Staff motivation? Take them to Hawaii

Talk about motivation..once my ex-company had hawaiian day celebrations..we were right there in bangalore inside our cubes celebrating it..Talk about motivation..

what's my mother-tongue?

As a kid i was confused as to what is my mother tongue. well, i was not worried about what's my mother tongue till I have to fill it out in a form. Then my confusion starts. Initially I was entering Kannada in the mother-tongue field (i guess during the hindi exam applications) (btw, though we're from TamilNadu, we speak kannada at home!). then when i was changing primary to high school, i filled it out as usual as kannada. the person-teacher who was scrutinizing the application took a good look at the appl, then looked at me and asked what's my mother tongue is. I answered promptly (had she asked it today, i'd answered can't u read?). she wasn't convinced. she asked do i know to read/write them..ha..here's the catch. I dont know to read/write kannada. (btw, all the conversation was going on in tamil, and not english. english was still a long a way for me, see the end of this post). she was of the opinion that i should enter Tamil in that field. Ofcourse, i never bothered to ask why et all. i promptly filled it up. from that point onwards till today, i've been filling out that field as Tamil.

so what's my mother tongue? wikipedia says - "First language (native language, mother tongue, or vernacular) is the language a person learns first. Correspondingly, the person is called a native speaker of the language. Usually a child learns the basics of their first language from their family."
it's perhaps more confusing now. I learnt both kannada and tamil from family for sure. perhaps i'm good at tamil more than kannada (hey, i've won inter-school competitions).
wikipedia also says : "One can have two (or more) native languages, thus being a native bilingual". Perhaps i fall into this category! but the applications seems to allow only one entry for that field huh..

so are you confused with your mother tongue?

coming back to that primary-high school transition, i faced a embarrassing moment there. i was studying in tamil(vernacular) medium till 5th std. i applied for the english medium in this high school and it required my name to be written in both tamil and english. till that point, i rarely required to use my english name. infact, my english name was given to me by my hindi ji, as it had to be entered in the hindi exams application. and she happily gave me the english name 'veerabadran' (she had written even my hindi name like that). and i was happily using this name wherever i needed to. and then this person-teacher (why teachers always have to be female with big specs?) happened to be a english teacher also, and she was quick to catch that my tamil and english name dont match well. she asked who filled out the application. i was happy to announce that it was me. then she fired a salvo at me asking do i know to write my name in english. frankly, i was perplexed as to y she's mad at me. i've been using this name lately without any issues. then she made me to pronounce my name correctly and said that tamil name is fine while english one is wrong. She'd strike out the english one, and replace it with something else. she was also pretty upset that quality of the applicants have come down and i had no chance of clearing the entrance test. i'd be more worried because she wrote something there and but i didn't have enough time to read it. there my name would go without even knowing what is in it. i'd wait for couple of agonizing days for the list to come out, see my name in the list and jote it down and memorize it. phew! finally i learnt my english name.

past weekend and coming weekend

Ganesh was here last weekend and I had to play host and take him around this beautiful city of gardens (well, well, we didn't go to any gardens/parks)! But I ran out of places very fast. we went to Forum and then to MG Road (going there after really really long time..nothing has changed..its crowded like hell and girls are rarity there:( i cudn't figure where else to go when a friendie drops by..

Was planning couple of other things for the weekend but couldn't make it.
Rangashankara : i've not been there so far, but always wanted to go. but again i couldn't make this time 'cos we planned for the D party at home sat night..should go there sometime soon.
Rallying for a cause : we should be there at the start point by 8.30AM to participate. I got up at 10AM 'cos i was up till 3 in the morning (u know y).

For some reason, my friend liked bangalore and said trafiic is better (which I completly disagree) and conditions are more livable than chennai (which I completly agree)..add to it, it was raining both days and it was completely cool day time!

Talking of weekend ahead (what..this is just wed..u're already talking of weekend ha)..yes..yes..my weekend starts tomorrow..am off to Madurai for four days for what promises to be very tiring schedule..there is some temple festival (aka kumbabhishekam) and that i should be present it seems..lets see..

see you folks (whoever is reading this page) next week!

Success

"The only certain means of success is to render more and better
service than is expected of you, no matter what the task may be.
This is a habit followed by all successful people since the
beginning of time. Therefore I saith the surest way to doom
yourself to mediocrity is to perform only the work for which
you are paid."

*Og Mandino {1923-1996 American Motivational Author & Speaker}


==> I wonder if i'm working enough for what I'm paid for! and this guy says you should de more than what expected of you..Nice try..

Rallying for a cause

Rallying for a cause

There is going to be bike rally this sunday! Thinking of going for it.
It will serve 2 purpose. One is ofcourse the cause (which anyway i dont follow)
my friend will be here and this ride will take him around the city :-)

lets see!

he is coming

it's been four years since i met him. he was my roomie in agate hostel of REC,Trichy in my first year of engineering. and needless to say he is good guy, unlike me :-(

Da Maverick aka Ganesh Anandakumar

he'll be here in bangalore this weekend. lets see how he has changed..i can see from his photos he's changed a lot at least physically!!

and by the way, he got into a accident in US, perhaps lost his license and went to court etc (i'm not sure of the full turn of events though)..but hey that was quite a adventure to have, like calvin used to say. look at me..was i ever arrested for felony charges or had i stepped on the gas and sped it to 200miles etc..!the closest i've come to the police was when i stopped my bike beyond stop line in a signal and police gave me slip for 50Rs/- ..huh..