The economics of life..

Jet lag can do weird things to you. I have just come back from Mexico to India and however hard I try to get my routine adjusted, the body just does not seem to be responding. So I sleep at random times, for random number of hours..lunch, dinner and breakfast have lost their meaning and new shitting records are being broken. But what this gave me is an amazing amount of alone time with my overactive brain..

In one such instance I started thinking about life...(those who know me can continue reading when they have stopped laughing)...and as you have read about many great scientists, I had a eureka moment.

Economics:


If you are NOT an economics post graduate, then believe me...as soon as you hear this word, the first thing that comes to your mind is not Amartya Sen, not your economics teacher in school/college but the famous supply demand curve. I think that is like the brand logo of this subject and kudos to whoever came up with it in the first place.

Well why I bring that up is because I applied it to life and compared it with the notes I have on my life so far..(Again, those who drink more than 2 pegs a day average should never try this anywhere) ...and came up with the conclusion that it works almost beautifully.

All of us humans require peace, success, prosperity, freedom and countless other such things. The demand for these qualitative needs is set by each and every individual in his or her own specific way. The supply for these is directly impacted by the efforts of these individual in conjunction with his surroundings. The price or value of these needs is then determined by this supply demand curve.

To illustrate, consider Indians before independence, the supply for "freedom" was so short that the price or the value of the concept went through the roof and both Indians and British had to pay it with blood. Take the example other way round. Today's generation has created such a high demand for success and prosperity that the price or value has become prohibitive. There are those who end up paying with life, others pay with health, and whats even worse some pay with their family. Even those who achieve it have paid so dearly that
the attainment does not satisfy the demand for happiness.

So I ask you guys a BIG question. Who is managing the inflation here?

Cancun Mexico - Retirement destination?

Its been some time since we chatted and the blame lies with my work. Its been keeping me busy and has led to what authors call a "block". But then last weekend Cancun happened and I tell you its an experience that can shatter all kinds of blocks. Go there in March, when its the "Spring Break" (Yoooohoooo) in US, and you will understand. ;)

My wife and I took what they call an all inclusive package to a hotel called the Royal Solaris. Its not the best one there but its the best you can get at that cost. If you go on google maps and zoom into Cancun you will see a piece of land they call the hotel zone. Its like a very thin peninsula jutting out into the Carribean sea in the shape of a 7. The width of this piece of land is just enough for one road and one hotel. So what you will find that each hotel in the hotel zone has the sea on its backyard and a lagoon across the road!!!. On top of that the Solaris had 5 swimming pools inside the campus. So if you love water..you know what to do with your next vacation.

The place over the years has become customised for the US people and you will find almost every body speaks english and expects a tip. Every hotel has an entertainment group which keeps the tourist busy around the pool with things like water aerobics, crazy couple games, tequilla volleyball and what not. On top of that Solaris had an indoor theater where they used to perform things like Magic show, plays, dance programs every night.

"All inclusive means" exactly that. You can eat, drink, swim, excercise, play tennis, golf, use the beach...absolutely anything you can think of anytime of the day for free. There is just so much to do that the holiday can actually leave you exhausted!!

One Sunday Afternoon..:)

Its July now and yes we are still in this blissful place called Mexico City

Mexicans are a proud people but even they will gladly admit that they have one of the worst traffic scenarios in the world. But then the Mexico city has this wonderful system of closing down a section of their main city tributary called the Avenue Reforma every Sunday. So there are no vehicles on that particular section of the road and you can see a lot of rollerbladers, skateboarders cyclists... having the time of their lives..Its a unique sight one that you would not see anywhere in India. If you had happened to be crossing the Reforma on this Sunday, you would have been pleasantly surprised to see a very cute Indian couple, wearing the fancy X-games helmets, riding very old but sturdy looking bicycles and in general being overwhelmed by the sights around them....

We had always observed people from different nationalities riding these old looking cycles on the pavements before and wondered what that was about. So this Sunday we decided to give it a try ourselves. We did some research and found that on a kiosk very close to our hotel, we could get those bicycles against our identity proofs..for free!!!

We hadn`t set foot on a bicycle for at least 12 years so you can imagine the state of our minds. There was excitement of a novel experience mingled with the anxiousness caused by the lack of confidence on our ability with a lost skill... But as it turned out, it was an experience we will cherish for a long time.

Having overcome the initial jitters we were flying past intersections when we observed a very peculiar sight on the side of the road. In an open space in front of a grand building we saw a group of people playing mini football with a very small sized ball. The teams were five a side, wearing green and yellow t-shirts, while there was a referee in a red one holding the whistle in his mouth. The field was on concrete and wasn`t bigger than 10X10 feet. On both sides of the pitch there were supporters for both teams wearing the team colours and in general there was a lot of noise. We decided to take a look.

After a few minutes I realised that the teams weren`t actually trying to score..they were just passing the ball around!!! Suddenly one of the guys on the field fell down and started screaming holding his leg. The referee blew his whistle and pointed to the spot. All hell broke loose..the opposing team members swarmed the referee claiming injustice, the supporters started cursing the referee...the other side started cheering. There was just too much animation for it to be normal..that's when we spotted the video camera. However the best bit was yet to come..

The penalty was going to be taken..the striker had placed the ball, goal keeper was ready, referee had the whistle in his mouth and suddenly it went dead silent. What happened next was just out of this world..the whole penalty kick was performed in slow motion!!...And when the ball went past the keeper there was literally an explosion with everybody expressing the right emotions but all the same...shouting at the top of their voices..The performance and the match was over.

Football Crazy

World cup football is on and I am lucky to be in Mexico. A part of the world where a goal is pronounced..Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool and that too at a decibel level which is illegal in our country after 10 p.m. The people here might not know what Germany did in WW II but they will surely tell you the score of every single match they played with Germany in the last 100 years..and that too without you asking!!! The children here can rattle off the name of every member of the playing 11 and can even tell you who should have been in the team if the coach had any brains.:)

My wife and I got a chance to see the Mexico Argentina game on a large screen in a restaurant with a group of locals. The audience was composed of people from all ages and genders. Everyone had come as if prepared for battle. The tension during the game was palpable. Every tackle, every pass, every decision was cheered or jeered with equal vigor. We knew beforehand that we would feel like complete misfits especially with the commentary in rapid Spanish. And that's why we had a plan in place. On the previous day we had each bought a Mexican football team t-shirt which we proudly wore to the game. We had no clue what the commentators were saying but we started screaming some gibberish whenever everybody else did :). And it worked..

But when it comes to football Brazil is even more special. I will give you an example. Before every match day, there is a mailer sent out by the local HR department in my company informing the employees to arrive late to the office so that we can stay home and watch the match...can you believe such a thing would happen in Indian offices even for an India Pakistan world cup cricket match??

The depth of their passion makes you wonder..what happened to our national game?? why can't it have the same effect on us? More importantly why do we keep calling it our national game when we know that the loyalties lie somewhere else?

Global Warming

This is a concept, I just can't get my head around. I think the globe has been warming since the Ice age. How else did all the ice melt?? So what's new...

 They come out with statistics such as "The sea level will rise by 2 meters..." Hey!! who cares? Its not gonna happen overnight is it??.. Its not like you are playing ball on a beach in Hawaii and boom!! you are underwater face to face with a shark that wants to play with your balls...All things change and so will the weather..so why panic?

They say the islands will be submerged and people will have to relocate..i say bring it on..we will just have more places like Venice..

Well that is assuming ... they can prove what they are saying in the first place..I mean yes the summers everywhere are getting hotter but then the winters are getting cooler too!! And whats with the icebergs melting and poles shrinking...lets not forget the temperature however high in summer will go below zero in winter..so whatever melted will just freeze again!!! right?

And most of all heat is a form of energy..so more heat is more energy. What we need to invest our time and money in is on how to convert this additional energy to best use for humanity...Not on having global conferences and usesless research

Why do they have conferences?

I am sure this is a question which at one time or another has boggled your mind.

It usually happens after you have come back from a gloriously luxurious one, as is the case with me. Well "gloriously luxurious" is not quite right, but then you have to help me with a better choice of words. I will paint a picture for you. The group was 35 in number. We came from all around the world (avg. travel 2500 USD per person). We stayed in "The Address" Dubai Marina for five nights (Avg room cost 250 USD per person per night), had gala lunches and dinners (avg cost 60 USD per person per meal), went and did a cruise and of course the desert Safari (another 100 USD per person). That's about 150,000 USD.

And the question begs to be answered...WHY?.. why spend so much for five days...what could we have possibly achieved to cover for such a huge expense...

One of my bosses once told me "Conferences represent the rare occasions when your company pays you to drink and think" I am not sure about the thinking but there definitely was a lot of drinking ;).

As is the case with most of such philosophical questions, the answer lies in the negative. The risk of not calling us all together and aligning with whatever it is they wanted to align, far outweighs the cost incurred. Lost you? Think about it....

A flight of fate

There are those who believe in fate and there are those who don't. I just don't have an opinion...

Once upon a time my wife and I had to catch a plane to Mexico via Amsterdam. We reached Bombay with all our luggage packed, filled with the excitement/anxiety that is closely associated with international travels. The thrill of a new adventure in a land far far away. By the time we reached our hotel, fate had made it's first move..A bl**dy volcano had erupted in Iceland of all places, spewing a smoke cloud so huge that the Schiphol airport and hence KLM had to shut down shop that day.

After the numbness of the initial shock faded, we began to evaluate our alternatives. We decided to take fate head on, called our agent who in turn ranted on phone with the airlines, eventually succeeding to get us an alternative route via Frankfurt on the same day. The joy of having punched fate in the face was sweet :). Little did we know fate, had already moved another soldier in place..

We reached the airport and were successfully through the immigration in a matter of half an hour, all smug and proud with boarding passes in our hands. After a bit of window shopping it was time to board. What we did not know was, that it was also time for fate's "agent of chaos" to take center stage in this drama. Right before the doors of the airplane one of the airlines personnel decided to check our passports. One look and his face lit up like a light bulb. He was about to demonstrate his meagre decision making powers.

It turns out that when an Indian passport holder passes through Frankfurt, whether he enters the city or not, he needs a transit visa (which we did not have). A fact, that joy of our small victory over fate in the morning, had wiped out of our minds.

From then on, things went from bad to worse. They promptly began the offloading procedure. We were asked to identify our baggage, taken back through all security and immigration procedures, glared at by fellow passengers as if we were terrorists, shouted at by the airlines personnel for delaying their flight, and ranted on by the duty manager for our ignorance about basic immigration rules. The serious question about how we reached the gates of the airplane through the immigration in the first place, never occurred to his thoroughly ordinary mind.


By the time we were leaving the airport, it was 4:00 am, and we were tired to the bones. However we had no choice but to go back to the hotel and pay for another night. Before switching off my headlights, I sent out a furious note to my agent for having gotten us into this mess. All thoughts about petty battles with fate had faded away...

The next day, the fate with its evil machinations, had moved on to another poor soul. And the day began to look brighter from the word go...

We got a mail from KLM airlines expressing great regret for their mistake and appropriate incredulity over our mistreatment. The smoke cloud had lifted, Schiphol was back on and we had two very comfortable Business Class seats in KLM with no additional cost. Fate, it appears had balanced out the matter....

Sleepless in Dubai Marina

Monday 3:00 a.m.

Here I am in one of the most luxurious hotels on earth called "THE ADDRESS" in Dubai Marina..but such is the irony of life that in the very place that they claim is "designed for my comfort", I can't sleep... You can provide all the comforts of life..the best quality of srevice..but you can't beat the damn jet lag.

After 22 hours in flight from Mexico via Amsterdam, 9 of which were spent sleeping..there was no chance I was going to have a normal first day in Dubai. I reached around 6 in the morning had a hearty breakfast (although my stomach had no clue whether it was meant as breakfast, lunch or dinner) ...came back to the room ..switched on the TV and promptly went off to sleep..

The next I knew anything was when the incessant ringing of the phone woke me up and the clock showed 5:00. To realise whether it was a.m. or p.m. took me five minutes..and consequently at 5:05 p.m., I was completely if regrettably aware that I would not be sleeping tonight..

Well you could not bame me for lack of effort...I tried hard to tire myself up in the gym..had a huge indian dinner (chicken tikka :))...tried to bore myself by watching some arabic song and dance channel...but to no avail. I still feel like Poppeye the sailor with spinach in me.

Well sometime after Germany beat the hell out of Australia (world cup soccer)...I picked up a book recommended to me by a colleague. Its called "The Broker" by author John Grisham ..whom by the way I had written off somewhere on 123rd page of "The Summons" a few years back. But boy can he tell a story.

The book was an eye opener. Well, I did enjoy some of his old books... like "The Firm", "The Pelican Brief" and especially "The Runaway Jury" but I used to think that all he can write is legal dramas. But no sir..he grabbed me on the fourth page of the book and never let go till I turned the last page. The story has everything..drama, espionage, love, intrigue...its practically a hollywood movie. But the Author's note right at the end beats everything. It is one of the most honest and endearing confessions by an author.

Well, as you can see my last ploy ..talking to no one in particular through this newfound medium..has also failed to put me to sleep, I have no choice but to start the new day.

Have a great day.

The Businessman

Its not always that you get to meet a rags to riches guy in real life..and when you do..however much you try to be cool about it...the natural reaction is pure admiration.We met one such person who I will not name just because you might read a book about him very soon and I don't want to get into any copyright discussions :).

The strangest thing is that we met him halfway around the world in Mexico city when he actually is from Indore MP India..our very own hometown. However its been over 20 years since he is calling Mexico his home..He was gracious enough to spend close to a couple of hours with us at lunch and tell us his life story. It has bollywood movie written all over it..and I believe a very successful one at that. I will not tell you the story as i believe thats his prerogative but..I can tell you this...In those two hours we realised that we are sitting with a great man..

After loosing everything at a very young age he has practically rebuilt life for him and his family singlehandedly with sheer "muleheaded" drive and abilty to grab the right opportunities!! He has learnt life's lessons the hard way..maybe the hardest possible way..while working in countries where even in today's age staying alive is a quetstion of chance at best. He now owns property in four different countries across three continents...has at least three highly profitable businesses and from what he told us launching his fourth big one very soon.

Wish you all the best sir for your future and wish more people get a chance to learn from you.

Once upon a time in Mexico city

My wife...my love...mi amor...is a remarkable woman. I would write songs in her praise... but lets be frank, neither I have the ability nor you have the time..so I will make do by telling you a small story.
We came to this wonderful exotic country called Mexico sometime in May with mixed feelings. On one hand we were excited to see a new country..a new culture , on the other we were scared..primarily because of the dangerous statistics which are abundant on the internet..crime rates..drug mafia...kidnappings..you know.
In circumstances such as these it is easy to get inside your shell..be overly conservative..and then miss all the fun of the new place. But that is not what happened with us..in fact we are having the time of our lives..and the credit goes to her. On the third day in Mexico she realised that the best use of her free time would be to learn the new language..promptly called a few agencies..interviewed some teachers and BAM..on the fourth day in a new country she had made a new friend. From then on with the improving command on the language she has practically become my support system in Mexico. Ordering food..sightseeing..using the local public conveyance..just became so easy..
What is even more remarkable is that she has now started a small business of doing mehendi for the local people by appointment...this way she enjoys her free time and keeps on making new friends..All within the span of less than three weeks. A feat most indian women can't imagine. just can't admire her enough.
Today I have to leave for Dubai for a conference..but I have no concerns about leaving her alone in Mexico at all...she is just so much able to handle her self..that all my misapprehensions have dissipated.
But I am going to miss her and I am sure she is going to miss me...
Well..its just seven days..take care jaan.. I love you..:*

The other side of the world

I am today practically on the other side of the world from my home. They say if I dig a hole through the center of the earth right here in Mexico city it will probably open somewhere in the north east of India. But is this world really that different? well to tell you the truth yes!!

For a start the female hotness ratio is inverted. Ok..maybe i jumped a step..Female hotness ratio can be defined as the number of females that you are sure will be hot if you randomly pick out a hundred females. In India if I want to represent a number for the whole country then I believe it would not be more than 15. It probably depends on the location within the country too. For example in Delhi and Bombay I think it can touch about 35. Chandigarh...may be 45. But thats about it. In Mexico I can safely say its more than 70. And from what I have heard so far I believe it stays about the same or higher for all of Latin America. So guys..maybe a trip to Latin America is in order what say?

Well just having a lot of hot girls is as good as having a bottle of beer without a bottle opener. If you don't know the trick you can break your teeth ;) . Thats where I believe we Indians have an edge. When we come to Latin America we are no longer the mundanes but the exotics ;) if you know what I mean. And as we all know if you are an exotic, then the probability of getting it on with the opposite sex increases to 80%...oh you didn't know.:O

Anyway, SO I guess all I am saying is if you come to Latin America and get out of your hotel in public there is about 70%*80% = 56% chance that you will get to be with a hot latin girl. SO all you need to do is get out of the hotel more than twice a day and you are done. :)

Disclaimer: I do not put my ideas into practice for personal gains. I am a happily married guy. I am much like indian politicians always thinking of the betterment of my fellow countrymen.

Chao

Charlie - the bastard

This is for all those of you who have never watched "Two and a half men". I just do not possess the literary capability to express what you guys are missing...and yeah the stress is on "guys". Sure there is something for you girls too..CHARLIE!!

He charms the hell out of one gorgeous girl after another with his inacndescent wit and wagon loads of style...and you can't help but iconise him. What, with a dumb ass brother...and an even dumber nephew to boot...one can't ignore the genius in casting. To top it off you add a roughish housekeeper, a cute stalker with one hell of an attitude and an incorrigibly wierd mother and what you get is 30 minutes of pure humour.

On a serious note, there is a lot to learn from Charlie..both for our personal as well as professional lives. With that curious note I end this ..well review...

Do watch it!!

my first blog

Hi guys,
Finally the peer pressure has proved too much for my petty resistance to change...and here I am writing my first blog....
As you habitual bloggers would know this is not an easy task...you need to think about what you want to write...then try and express it in flowery words... put in a bit of humour...some sarcasm maybe...include some current affairs (you know to sound serious)....you know the grind!!!..seems a bit too much of work to me...
SO may be I will do it another time...
keep reading!! :)