Basically Blah

From the BBC article "Who knows why oil prices are high"

So what is it that moves oil prices up and down?
"It's the fundamentals, stupid," says Mark Lewis from Energy Market Consultants.
The fundamentals are factors that influence the supply of, and demand for, oil.

"We really don't know what the fundamentals are doing at any point in time," Mr Lewis says.
"The markets are looking for signals from the fundamentals. Some of them are irrelevant, some of them are wrong, some of them are meaningless, but they affect prices nevertheless."

Believe me this two paragraphs are from the same article which finally says no body has any clue why the oil-prices have gone high. Another case of a confidently confused analyst. Wish I got a job like Mr. Lewis that pays me for uttering gibberish.

Olympia : Gods' Abode

Oly beef steak --- Just ask any true-blue Kolkatan about it and if he/she doesn't get misty eyed with nostalgia there's definitely a problem with that bugger's lineage.

Did you know Ritwik Ghatak had his last drink with Uttam Kumar in this pub discussing about their next film. Ghatak had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital where he took his last breath. There are so many such stories associated with the stalwarts of Bong-heartland and this pub. I wish someone comes up with a book on the known and unknown stories of this legendary pub on the Park Street.

Long live Oly pub and its steaks -- HIC

[ pic courtesy : Oly pub group on Facebook ]

It's all becoz of the software bug

If you've seen the movie Office Space, you must remember the priceless expression on the faces of the 3 software programmers, when they found out that their money swindling virus that was supposed to deduct a few pennies only, has amassed a whooping $305,326.13 only a day after it was introduced. And this was followed by the declaration from Micheal Bolton with a dead-pan humor that it must've been a bug in the code that he overlooked.

Phew...sometimes real life follows the reel life!!!

The estimated 500+ billion dollar losses in sub-prime will now be attributed to a software glitch that apparently caused wrong AAA+ ratings for these stinky investments.

Somewhere in some corner of this zaleem IT world, entrapped in a cubicle, a computer programmer is scanning through lines and lines of if-else loops and is sweating a lot. Don't worry bro, pretty soon to save their own skin and regain the investor's faith in this "your guess is as good or as bad as mine" type silly economics, they'll implement another mandatory auditing like SOX or BASEL2.

So wipe those beads of sweat and hang on there.... you'll be back in action in no time adding more else-s to the ifs.

The Outsider

The Outsider has always been my favourite novel. My admiration started in the early pages where the main character Meursault informs his boss about his mother's death and adds "I am sorry", before realising he needn't have said that. Since opposite attracts, that was the moment the hypocrite in me feel in love with the urtmost honest Meursault -- an outsider to anything and everything surrounding him.

As they say, life really moves in circles. Last Friday morning I got a SMS from a colleague saying that he has to fly back home as his dad has passed away and he sincerely apologizes for any inconviniences caused. In my ideal deja-vu WTF moment I realised we all have become the Outsider from our own surroundings. And then I typed in "Take care...sorry to hear abt ur father.."

Sub-prime Crisis and Silence of the Liberal Bloggers

Around U.S. $200 billions went down the drains.

Around U.S. $135 billions were written off by taking loans from Mid East and China.

Around 10 biggies in Wallstreet laid off their CEOs or if the CEO was spared then who-ever he/she found to take the blame.

And all because of this ?

We can be either sprititual and blame that human greed is the cause all the woes.
Or try be pragmatic and pin-point that the major cause was the lack of regulations.

The proponents of free market solutions to anything and everything from child-education to saving extinct species - the leading liberal bloggers of desi blogosphere are suspisiously silent on the issue.

But knowing their shortsightedness [1] it's neither suprising nor amusing.

[1] Almost all the subprime SIVs had AAA ratings by all leading rating agencies. How do you apply caveat emptor in these situations.

DEJA VU

The landscape is a trapestry of dried yellow grass and brown patches of rocky infertile soil. The only touch of greenery are the weeds that thrive even on these desperate conditions. The sole remains of anything remotely human is the broken shack at the extreme left-hand corner of the picture I am trying to paint. The cracked walls with missing bricks here-n-there complement the torn down roof . The large rectangular voids outside and inside are the reminders that once upon a time there was a door to this house and some windows as well. There should be a broken bath-tub lying outside to depict that someone someday had a nice bath here under the sun.

A twisted tree without any leaves throwing its branches in an angry retort stands against the backdrop of the sky. The dead bark fills up the empty right-hand corner with the mighty emptyness of its presence. What shall we colour the sky ? Dusky Orange ? Murky noonish yellow ? Nah...I'll make it the morning reddish tinge on the light blue background. And there shall be no clouds. Drawing the clouds is making promise of rain and out here the promises have been carried to the grave and whispered by the spirits. Human ears are deaf to such alien pronounciation of dead hopes from the never to be falling raindrops.

To complete my picture and the story there shall be an unceremonious grave at the foot of the dead tree. Engraved on the tomb-stone will be the words "DEJA -VU".

We all have one such picture stored somewhere in our grey cells. What's your picture look like ?

Rukawat ke liye khed hain

As I keyed in my username/password into blogger login pages, my request was immediately heard by the ever alert login process. Wasting not even a nano-second it immediately forked a thread to probe into the blogger database and returned with the details of my user profile. The log-in process made no error to remind me that my last post was on Mar 27-th.

Had it been attached to the code snippet to handle emotions,it surely would've added the extra words "Lazy bum your last login was May 27-th". But last heard Google labs haven't had met with success in doing so --- so mercifully I was spared of the humiliations.

Coming back to the topic of long absence between the period of India booted out of 50 overs WC to India lifting T20 WC --- it's really been a long time since my browser has opened the blogger URL. Frankly speaking blogging was replaced by slogging at the office after a job change in May.
But that's not an excuse for there are hell lot of blogger --who work 26 hours a day yet continues to churn out posts with nearly the same regularity as the toiling obstetricians in the maternity wards around the country continues to show the light of the day to newer babies.

So the real excuse is my inability to prioritize the fine splits of minutes spent in deciding which topping and which bread to choose from the Subway offering to something more creative like writing a blog. But then again the moment I try to write a blog the question arise what topic to write about. Usually the easiest to pick up is the nautanki provided by politicos both desi and videsi variety. Sadly by the time I scourge through my RSS subscriptions to find a news and do a google search for the finer details all it returns is 50000 links by more alert bloggers.

So next in list cometh the movie reviews --- infact everytime I see a movie I mentally write a blog post about it. But then again the moment I come to print about it I see another 600000 techorati tags showing the same content. Baffled by the stiff competiton I am forced for a change of marketing strategy -- tread in the least treaded paths ---switch to personal experiences.

As soon as this proposal is placed in the shareholders meeting of grey-cells in my brain who are responsible for maintaining this blog , the pluses and minuses are being weighed by the legal team. Any De-saad esque escapades are a strict no-no, else as the great Baburao Apte said "Raat ko Ramlaal ke saath sona padega". So what remains is still a dangling question mark pf what's left whose curve is no joy to look at.

Till I straighten out the "kutte ki teri doom" types question mark, my regularity of posts will be comparable to the times Fardeen Khan gets the best actor of the year award. On second thoughts make it the number of times CPM threatens to withdraw support from UPA . That'll ensure atleast 3 posts a quarter.

ps: To all the kind hearted souls that kept asking online in blog/orkut or offline about what happened to this blog, this post thanks u all for reminding me to blog while I slog. Otherwise living is all about just inhaling O2 and exhaling CO2...not much fun it that.

Off-Stumped Vision

It was the worst of times and it was the worst of times. Of the two firangi coaches in Indian subcontinent, one was left murdered after an un-predictable defeat and the other was seen hiding behind a bullet-proof glass while his team was getting booted out of world cup. That, in short, was how cricketing fate of two neighbors had been over the last one week.

While Bob Woolmer's yet to be solved murder mystery throws a light on the criminalization of the gentleman's game, India's defeat and the aftermath surely shows the huge scale of commercialization of the game. The only thing common between legitimate and illegitimate businessmen sitting on the two sides of the fence is the exorbitant amount of money they throw in.

But the glaring difference lies in the fact that while betting rings can hedge their investments, the corporate world doesn't have much cushion when their logo displaying players flop. So likewise the hype is created before the tournaments, the media thrashing is largely driven by interests of those who have invested into this circus. That's probably I'm ranting my investment of S$100/- that allowed me to watch only 3 matches played by India.

I'm now curious how the corporate world will implement the hedging concept when they will sign the next contracts with these walking bill-boards. Would there be penalty clause for every catches dropped, every ball misjudged and every extras bowled? If that be the case then the cricketers could hedge their earnings by secret tie-ups with the betting association for each of these penalties. So the thrill will be in speculating for every ball bowled whether the sponsor paid more for the batsman to hit a six or the better paid more to give a lolly catch to a pre-determined fielder. Just like stocks and bonds, the game of cricket will again enjoy the odds of uncertainty making the matches worthwhile watches. Also if you have access to inside information, you can make some hay while the sun shines.

And those of you complain about Krish Srikant's nonsensical analysis – there’s good news for you as well. In future you might see these ex-cricketers replaced with market analysts and conmen who’ll be much more knowledgeable on the odds and evens of the game than those who have wielded the willow. Add a lil dash of Rakhi Sawant and Mandira Bedi to this cocktail and what you get will be total entertainment.

Till all these goodies come to the cricketing world, left with much less option, I'll be cheering for Sri Lanka in this world cup, for their obvious Bong Connection.