Banking on standards?

With the newspapers going gaga over the “issue” that might come up if Carla Brunei accompanies her lover the French president to India, the importance of the other French news seems to be subdued. The bank Société Générale has disclosed a loss of $7.2B due to an unapproved trade made an individual. May be the future b-school students will get to study about this guy in his “thirties, very quiet and a loner” rather than the usual stuff about Nick Leeson pushing Barings bank to sale with his $1.4B fraud. The bankers of the queen (Barings) were sold for $1 to ING after Leeson’s fraud became public. Let us see how fate pins on Société Générale.

It is really puzzling to see how fraudsters keep getting better at their work as the banks keep implementing rigid standards. It is another fact of the matter that most standards have been byproducts of some scam or the other. Société Générale has said “His approach was to balance each real trade with a fictitious one”. Isn’t this the same thing that Nick Leeson did 13 years back? Well, probably the specifics of the fraud are different. And surprise surprise, this person has also worked in the back office like Leeson!

Sports Center

Waking up at 3 in the morning was worth it. Tsonga played an awesome game to demolish Rafa in the semis of the Australian open. This is the first time I saw Tsonga and it seems he has a very physical game dependent on his powerful serves and good forehand. But whatever his normal game plan is, he better have a backup as he would face either Federer or Đoković in the final. Today’s match was against my expectations. I was expecting Rafa to thrash Tsonga, but it happened the other way around. I am expecting a closer match tomorrow between the in-form Đoković and the scratchy Federer. But the king is a big match player and I expect him to change gears in the semis. However…I’ll be supporting Đoković. Monopoly is bad in any form, and Fed’s monopoly on Tennis needs to end.

In cricket, some of the buyers of IPL teams have come as great surprises to me. I expected Mallya and Ambani to buy teams, but not corporates like GMR and India cements. SRK and Ness Wadiya were minor surprises, but nothing to throw me off. It is interesting to see so many people having faith in cricket reaping profits. May be we should list and trade these IPL teams to get BSE back on track!

With the possible delay in my return trip to India, I guess I might get to watch the Super Bowl. Go Pats!

Pongalo Pongal

It was a sudden decision to try making Sakkara Pongal to celebrate the festival of Pongal. A quick chat with mom and an online recipe made me understand that I did not have the key ingredients (cashew nut, raisins etc) with me. But I had decided to go ahead and make whatever I could. The initial part of keeping rice with water and milk was too simple. Then came the tough part - powdering jaggery. With the rule in this country that not much of sound should come from the apartments, breaking jaggery with a mallet was not the best of options. Still I started doing it till I felt like I was hearing shrieks from the below apartment. Then sprung the ideas of cutting the jaggery with knife, using a can opener to crush the smaller pieces, using the fruit juicer etc. Ideas came and ideas went, and so did 1.5 hours. Tired of the effort I chucked the process and used whatever small amount of jaggery powder I could make till then. According to the recipe I was supposed to put 3 cups of jaggery for 1 cup of rice. Well, I had put half a cup of jaggery for 2 cups of rice. Hmmm, too much sweet is bad for health I added rice to the jaggery paste and then added some ghee and cloves. Voila, sweet pongal was ready. Just that it was too solid to be called pongal and had too less jaggery to be called sweet. Anyways, I did not indulge in finding a new name for my latest invention.

My apartment mate liked it and so did I. The sweetness was less but I preferred it that way. The thing that took 2 hours to prepare was over in 15 minutes. Yep, satisfaction!

Bhasky reminded me of the Pongal that we celebrated 3 years back in Indore. Nostalgia -> http://sbhaskar.blogspot.com/2005/01/happy-pongal.html

திருவடிகள் தொழுகின்றேன்

அலைபாயும் மனதினோடே
அமைதியில்லா இதயத்தினோடே
கவலை எனும் கடலின் இடையே
துடுப்பின்றி மிதக்கின்றேனே

குறைகள் இன்றி மனிதர் உண்டோ?
குழப்பம் இன்றி வாழ்க்கை உண்டோ?
உம்மையன்றி எனக்கொரு கதியுமுண்டோ?
எண்ணிப்பார்த்து சாந்தம் அடைந்தேனே

உலகத்தின் ஒரு முனையில்
உறக்கமின்றி தவிக்கும் நிலையில்
உன் நினைவு வந்த பொழுதில்
மனம் மலர்ந்து மகிழ்ச்சி கொண்டேனே

கருணை என்னும் விளக்கெரிய
கொண்ட கவலை விலக்கினாயே
நின் நினைவின்றி இருந்த என்னை
பெருமானே, நொடிப்பொழுதில் ஆட்கொண்டாயே

Things That I Will Miss

With just about 25 days left for me in this country I wonder on what all I would miss of this place and its people. Let me see…

Library: A huge public library near office that has every book I would want to read and every movie that I would want to watch. That too for free! I am surely going to miss the Saint Paul public library.

Sports: Be it tennis or table tennis, the court is either inside the apartment or right next to it. And again, free! I’m not too sure if it is the availability of the court, or the availability of time that is differentiates US from India. Also the availability of treadmills in the apartment itself is bliss for people like me who are lazy to visit a gym. (Though unfortunately the treadmill in my apartment stopped working in October ‘07 )

Time: As hinted early on, time is a huge factor. In India I never felt as if I had time for anything. Long hours in office regardless of the amount of work, spending time with family, and the like consume time in India. All those things are absent in the US. Get out of office at 5:30 pm and think of something to do.

Change of seasons: Having grown up in the hot-hotter-hottest Chennai, it has been a revelation watching the different seasons in the US. Enjoying the different faces of nature in the same place is marvelous.

Traveling: Not that India does not have places to visit. It is just that I become totally lazy when I am closer to home. Also the lack of company matters.

Lack of pressure: I am pretty sure that the minute I land in Chennai the usual “You are still with the same company?”, “Your friend of a cousin of a friend of relative is XYZ in company ABC after being just a BSc” will all start. If I lose hair in US due to change of water, I lose more hair in India due to pressure.

Movies: With the amazing internet speed and time at hand, I can watch so many movies online. I don’t think I ever fancied movies back home.

Concern for the physically challenged: Everything in US is made with the disabled people in mind. The pavements have small slopes for wheel chairs to get in from the road, the restrooms have lower urinals for the handicapped, buses have lifts and wheel chair restrainers, doors have a button to open them automatically so that people in wheel chairs need not struggle holding the door and the wheel-chair at the same time. If not anything else, this concern is something that I wish India could ape from the US.

So, do I like US more than India? Not at all. The above are things that I like in the US, but there is surely lots more to India than what US can offer me.

Football - Not Soccer

You cannot work in India and not know cricket. Everyone talks about it and you would feel left out if you do not have any interest in the game. A similar scenario prevails in the US with respect to American football. For a starter it is only Football and not American football anymore. The Football that we used to know in India and the rest of the world is Soccer here. Since I came to the US with the decision of not staying here for more than a year and since I was too lazy to start following a new sport, I was oblivious to football, NBA and baseball. The other 2 are fine, but not knowing football seems to be considered equal to blasphemy here. Good mornings are followed by discussions on the game and team lunches are filled with football opinions. Forget the Americans, even desi lunch and dinner chats center around football. I was still stubborn not to follow the sport but then the local team here, The Minnesota Vikings, started performing well during early December and the discussions in office became even more frequent. So I started learning the basics of the game and watched few minutes of some games.

As fate had it, the Vikings crashed out of the tournament as soon as I built some interest around the sport. Not that I am big fan of the team, I hardly know any player. It is just that the talks in office have reduced and following a sport is always easy when you support and follow a team. But let us see. With this new found interest I might follow the play-offs and determine a favorite for next year’s season.