Monthly Archives: July 2008

Analysts and film critics

Analysts are like film critics. And for the uninitiated, by analysts I mean company analyst, those who come with buy/sell recommendation for stocks (and also do much more than that).

I am of the opinion that (well that’s how analysts generally give a disclaimer: P) that analysts mirror film critics to a large extent. Here are the commonalities:-

  • They both give out predictions
  • They both change their predictions based on latest available information (company earnings report in case of analysts and movie release in case of critics)
  • They both are the not the target customers neither the target beneficiaries for their covered companies/movies. Movies are for the masses and their results benefit the producer. Companies on the other hand, give out results for equity holders and their target customers are definitely NOT ‘Analysts’
  • They both have their own performance measurement scales in place. Critics have different measurement scales for different genre of films. Analysts too have different measurement scales (which analysts love to call ‘models’) for different type of companies
  • They both are loved by the public/investors and hated by the film_makers/companies
  • They have their own set of favourites. Critics have their set of directors whom they intentionally or unintentionally favour. Analysts too have their own set of favourite companies.
  • They both have a rating system. Critics have a star rating system (generally a 5 point one). Analysts too have some thing similar (strong buy, buy, hold, sell, strong sell)
  • They both have immense knowledge about their subjects but will never enter that field to make a film or run a company.
  • They both go wrong
  • But still, majority of the population go thru’ their review/report before watching/buying film/stocks.

Btw, film critics are also known as ‘Trade Analysts’.

So, the moral of the story is that… to become an ace Analyst, start watching movies… ;)

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Darkest Knight

The Dark Knight. A lot has been said about this movie, but in my opnion it is the scarriest movie ever. Scarrier than even any horror movie. horror movies are spooky. It takes ghosts or supernatural powers for them to frighten us? “the dark knight” has ten times the impact and dosen’t even use a single ghost. Instead it uses the smallest yet the most powerful thing to deliver the impact- human psyche.
I won’t spoil the fun for those of you haven’t watched it (and if you are one of them, then book yourself a ticket NOW). but to sum it up… “If haar ke bhi jitne wala baazigar hai… then the Joker is the baazigar”

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Escapade to the unkown

When was the last time you went on for a unplanned journey? Well thanks to Amir Khan (yeah u read it right… the actor), I went on an unplanned journey last weekend.

Flashaback

It’s Thursday and the watch reads 10:23pm, I’ve returned late from office and am having dinner while watching TV. Suddenly I see this new Titan ad. Aamir khan asks us to “be more”. Among a lot of other things, he asks the viewer“kabhi kissi anjaan sheher ka ticket kata ke dekho” (get urself a ticket to an unkown station). Maybe I haven’t been outside Chennai much, or maybe I desperately needed a vacation or maybe out of pure excitement, I decided to spend the weekend doing exactly this. Escapade to an unknown destination. I asked ‘mb’ (my flat mate). He gave the idea a thumbs up….

And 33 hrs later, on a Saturday morning, I’m at Henry Irwin designed railway station. We tried getting others in the adventure, but some where either busy with work or sleep. Anyways, we proceeded with our unplanned plan. A quick look at the destination chart, and we had chosen our destination. It was to be a town called kavali, 227 kms away from the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The name sounded more like the style of sufi devotional music, made popular by the likes of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

It took some time for us to reach there ( 240 mins to be precise). Since we did not know the arrival time, we kept looking out for our station. On our way we passed thru’ a fairly big city called Nellore. And we finally reached the place. The town is a nice small sleepy one which gets active at dawn. We had lunch and then went on to explore the area. To our surprise, a beach called ramaypatnam, was just 12 kms away. We hired an auto and went for the place. The beach was amongst the best beaches I’ve ever seen. All pristine beauty. Far from all the crowd and clutter of city beaches. We roamed around the beach. And then, took an hour long nap on the beach. However, thundering clouds made us do some thinking, and we headed towards Nellore.

Nellore is famous for its food. So we tried out a pure Andhra tiffin (meal). Never ever has I eaten rice in so many combinations. There was chutney, sambhar, rasam, curry, some masala, curd, and god knows what…. But all to eaten with rice. Post meal, a Russian variety of potato extract made sure that I sleep well in the hotel. Next morning and it was already more than 24 hrs since we last saw Chennai central. But, we had more to explore. A small trip (1hr btw…) to krishnapatnam port and we realize the port is still under construction. Then a bystander came to our rescue and led us to krishnapatnam beach. Once again we were mesmerized with the beach’s sheer beauty. But, we couldn’t stay there longer,for we had to catch a train back to Chennai. We thought the escapade couldn’t get better, but we were in for some big show. The train got cancelled. We had 2 hours to kill before the next train. So we came up with this daring idea of searching any wheat based food item. Roti/chappati/sandwich/burger/pizza… we had a long list, but no where in Nellore could we find these. We had to give in and settled for dosa and idli.

And now as you are reading this, I am back in the city, in my office, in my cubicle. Waiting for another escapade.

Ps: If you go for an escapade, make sure that u hit the sack on return. And sleep for at least 8-10 hours before going to your office. Or else, you’ll end up sleeping in the office like me :P

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Best email forward till date

Every morning i religiously check my inbox for new mails. and more often than not i end up reading (read glancing) and deleting forwards (nomenclature: FWD). I was about to delete this forward, but a quick glance made me read the whole. i have done 70 things out of the list, and my fav being point 63 (for a totally diff reason ;) ). So wot’s ur score???

You know you grew up in India in the 90s when:

1) You know the words to ‘In-pin-safety- pin’ and ‘akkad-bakkad’ by heart
2) Cricket is almost a religion for you, and you idolize at least one of Kapil Dev/Rahul Dravid/Sachin Tendulkar/Saurav Ganguly
3) You have read at least some Chacha Chaudhary or Tinkle comics
4) You’ve watched Shaktimaan on TV at least once in your life. And you can immediately recognize the character when you see him.
5) You have some ‘NRI’ relatives.
6) You couldn’t wait for it to be December so you could have the Toblerone chocolates your NRI relatives brought you
7) You watched Cartoon Network, and then the late night movies on TNT that came after Cartoon Network ended.
8) You watched corny dubbed versions of Small Wonder, Silver Spoon, and I Dream of Jeanie
9) You were THRILLED when McDonald’s opened in your neighborhood (or even eight kilometers away)
10) Your first burgers were at Wimpy’s or Nirula’s.
11) A visit to Pizza Hut used to mean a special treat
12) You have seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun at least 5 times each
13) You still remember the theme song to Hum Paanch.
14) You have played hours upon hour of Pukdam-pakdai, oonch-neech, kho-kho, ‘Doctor, doctor, help us!’, ‘Lock and key’
15) You have played ‘Uma Joshi’ more times than you can remember.
16) Dog ‘in’ the bone was your favorite co-ed game.
17) Much of your free time in school was spent playing UNO.
18) You collected trump cards of wrestlers, cricketers, and airplanes, and did not quite understand why your younger siblings were obsessed with Pokemon and the other Japanese trends that followed.
19) Your summer vacations were often synonymous with visiting your grandparents
20) Your parents, at some point, told you ‘Dark Room’ was a bad game to play. But you still loved playing it.
21) Bole mere lips, I love uncle Chips!
22) You know the song ‘Made in India’ by Alisha Chinoi
23) You have seen many many many episodes of ‘Antakshri’ on Zee TV and know the only thing constant in the show is Anu Kapoor.
24) Amy evenings have been spent watching little kids gyrate vulgarly on Boogie Woogie on Sony.
25) You were the coolest thing in class if you had a computer in your house while it was still the 90s.
26) You learnt LOGO in school!
27) You couldn’t wait to start 4th/6th standard so you could start writing with PENS instead of with pencils!
28) You often you terms and phrases like ‘kutti’, ‘abba’, ‘same to you, back to you, with no returns’, and ‘shame shame, puppy shame, all the donkeys know your name.’
29) You most probably saw Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge at the cinema at least once. You also fantasized singing songs in mustard fields like in the movie.
30) You have seen David Dhawan and Govinda movies and laughed at them.
31) You have said ‘haw’ or ‘haw ji ki pwji’ when you saw people kissing in English movies
31) You have seen Titanic at least 12 times.
32) You thought seeing English movies and speaking English made you the coolest thing ever.
33) You remember the Orissa cyclone, even though you didn’t know what a cyclone was.
34) You remember the Gujarat earthquake very clearly and could possibly tell everyone EXACTLY what you were ding when the earthquake occurred.
35) Barbies for girls, and GI Joes for boys were the ultimate status symbols. You just wanted more more more and more. And how can I forget Hot Wheels, for both boys and girls? I personally have a collection of over 200 little Hot Wheels cars.
36) You have worn Osh-Kosh B’gosh and United Colours of Benetton clothes while growing up. And you thought ‘imported’ clothes were definitely way better than ‘made in India’ clothes (never mind that a lot of clothes brought from overseas by NRI relatives were actually made in India, before ‘Made in China’ started appearing on EVERY existing thing)
37) You know the words to ‘Posham Paa’, and like it better than ‘Oranges and Lemons’ even though you’d sing the latter to sound cool (see 32 above).
38) At some point or other, cool was your favourite, and therefore, most overused word.
39) Captain Planet was your first introduction to environmental consciousness.
40) You have tried to convince people around you to not burst crackers on Diwali, and then gone straight back home and burst them yourself.
41) You have had endless packets of Parle Gluco G biscuits, and of Brittania Little Hearts biscuits.
42) You loved licking off the cream from the centre of Bourbon biscuits.
43) There were no Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Puma- Bata and Liberty was the way to go for your sports shoes.
44) You have probably consumed more Frooti in your lifetime than there is oil in Iraq.
45) You watched Baywatch on Star World even though (or because) your parents said you shouldn’t watch it.
46) You bought packets of potato chips for the specific purpose of collecting Tazoa. And you had Tazos depicting everyone from Confucius to Daffy Duck to Daffy Duck dressed as Confucius.
47) For the longest time, the Maruti 800, the Premier Padmini, THE Fiat, and THE Ambassador were the only cars you saw on the road, and the Contessa was cool because it was bigger.
48) You would literally jump up in excitement if you ever chanced upon an imported car (Oh my gosh, is that really a MERCEDES?)!
49) You spent a good part of 1998 drooling over the Hyundai Santro and the Daewoo Matiz , debating which one was better.
50) You used to Fuzen gum. You also chewed Big (big) Babool and/or Boom Boom Boomer chewing gum. They were bright pink and disgusting tasting, but you loved them for the temporary tattoos.
51) Talking of temporary tattoos, you sometimes had contests with your classmates about who had more tattoos on their arm, leg, knee, hand, forehead, wherever.
52) You thought Mario and Tetris were the coolest things ever invented, especially if you were a boy.
53) You knew that having the latest Hero or Atlas bicycle would make you the coolest kid on the block.
54) You can imitate Sushmita Sen’s winning gasp to perfection.
55) You have, at some point of time, worn GAP clothes (real or fake) like SRK in KKHH.
56) Seemingly senseless acronyms like SRK, DDLJ, KKHH actually make sense to you.
57) You have at some point debated who was more beautiful- Aishwarya or Sushmita.
58) If you lived in Delhi, you went bowling at Essex Farms, or Go-Karting at 32nd Milestone and couldn’t think how you could get any cooler than that.
59) Baskin Robbins ice-cream was THE thing to have!
60) You know what Campa Cola is. And you also knew that Coca Cola was THE drink.
61) When you would watch WWF keenly every evening/afternoon and really think that Undertaker had 7 lives and he made an “actual” appearance in the Akshay Kumar- starrer Khiladiyon ka Khiladi.
62) When all backpacks (or ‘schoolbags’ ) and water bottles and tiffin boxes had strange cartoon characters that were hybrid versions of seven or eight different characters, and you still bought them, because a green man wih a water pistol, boots, a jet-pack, Johnny bravo hair, a rajasthani mustache, gloves, and underwear (long johns) over his pants, called ‘Mr. X’ was OBVIOUSLY a status symbol.
63) You remember the Nirma tikia jingle.
64) You remember the Nirma girl.
65) You remember the ‘doodh doodh’ ad and also the ‘roz khao andey’ ads.
66) You grew up reading, if you read at all, some or all of Nancy Drews, Enid Blyton books, Hardy Boys, Babysitters Club, Animorphs, Goosebumps, Sweet Valley series, Judy Blumes, and Tintin, or Archie comics. Because naturally, reading foreign authors made you much coller than reading Tinkle.
67) Towards the late 90s (1998-99) at least some of us started our Harry Potter obsessions!
68) You absolutely HAD to go to Essel World if you wnet to Mumbai! “Essel World mein rahoonga main, ghar nahin nahin jaaonga main!”
69) You watched the Bournvita Quiz contest on TV pretty religiously. The smarter ones amongst you actually took part in it and had your entire school and your entire extended families watch you on it!
70) “Jungle jungle baat chali hai, pata chala hai. Chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai, phool khila!”
71) Maggi 2 Minute Noodles = ultimate snack (and tiffin, lunch, dinner)!
72) If you grew up in the early 90s, you recall the nation’s obsession with Mahabharata on TV
73) In the later 90s, you religiously followed Hip Hip Hooray on Zee. Maybe Just Mohabbat on Sony too.
74) You eagerly awaited Friendship Day, so you could give friendship bands to all your friends, and get bands from them in return. Then, of course, those with the most bands loved to show them off (and on Rakhi, boys with the most Rakhis loved showing those off too!)

75) This list made you smile.

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a day in annaland

A day (evening to be precise) at my karmbhoomi (read “pays my bills”bhoomi)…..

its 6pm…. i got some work.. but before that, i’m on office terrace for quick snack break….
then… back to work.. and more work…. now it’s 9, and i leave for home…. i reach home only to find my roomie on his new bike….


…. but to my dismay…. he’s just checking out the bike…. (the bike belongs to Rao, the one in the background, he just gave the bike… not the keys… smart guy… ;) )
anyways…. after dinner…. i go for a walk… although the roads are deserted by time… but this one had a special guest…. no prizes for guessing her name… ;)


And if u culdn’t yet guess whr i am…. this road side graffiti should clear all ur doubts…..


ps: pics courtesy, my mobile cam (hence the low quality)

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Stock market lingo

Here is a lowdown on the latest stock market lingo…

PE - Plunge Endless
EBITDA
- Exit Before It Tumbles Down Again

QIB
- Quixotic Indian Blunder

HNI
- Has No Idea

FII
- Furious Impoverished Investors

PMS - Premeditated Scam
SIP
- Suicide by Investing Patiently

Fund Manager – Last year’s ace stock picker now locked up in an asylum
Investor
- Someone who is broke

Broker – Worse off than an investor
Correction – The next day after you bought shares
Momentum buying
– The fine art of buying high and selling low

ps: an email fwd

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