Where did my money go?

Indian equity market is very volatile these days. FIIs and Mutual funds are playing high number game in markets. The sensex and Nifty fluctuates in high percentages daily. There are still very little room left for small investors in equity market now. I had a virtual investments for one lakh INR on few sensex large market capitalisation companies from April 2006.

Wanna see their returns now?

(click on the image to see the details). All are in red and negative returns except for few banks and Reliance Industries stock!
Man....where did my money go?

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Winter!

The chill breeze;
the shivering bike rides;
the comfy airconditioned office cubes;
the heavenly warmth of bed linen;
the early morning fogs;
sans lovely girl's warm kiss;
Miss you!

Winter is season of pleasant surprises. Indian winters are never as cold as northern world. There is no snow, no shovelling of roads, no blinding fogs and no heavy sized jackets. It is pleasantly cold. Bangalore at times surprises me beyond my imagination. Winter in Bangalore is slowly catching up. I hail from a place with hot climate all year around; so never want to wear a jacket even if cold wind chills down to the spine; want to roam around and catch this cold breeze ever inside my heart and soul.

Life takes roller coaster ride all over the time; hope keeps me going and kicking alive. I hope this winter brings much more surprises to all our life!

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Why do we fall in love?

I had a love break recently. Then it was my friend's turn. I doubt whether anyone left in this world who didn't undergo this pain of missing his/her love. Love and girl is always mystery for a guy. right?! There were always mixed feelings coming from english pop world. Here are few reactions:

Robbie Williams in 'Something Stupid' claims it a stupidity to say 'I love you'

I know I stand in line
Until you think you have the time
To spend an evening with me
And if we go someplace to dance
I know that there's a chance
You won't be leaving with me

Then afterwards we drop into a quiet little place
And have a drink or two
And then I go and spoil it all
By saying something stupid
Like I love you

Ofcourse the famous pathos from Bryan Adams in 'Please Forgive me'. I know a friend of mine (gal) who hates Bryan adams for singing this song. This song may sound great, but I felt sorry for him.

It still feels like our first night together
Feels like the first kiss and
It's gettin' better baby
No one can better this
I'm still hold on and you're still the one
The first time our eyes met it's the same feelin' I get
Only feels much stronger and I wanna love ya longer
You still turn the fire on

So If you're feelin' lonely.. don't
You're the only one I'd ever want
I only wanna make it good
So if I love ya a little more than I should

Please forgive me I know not what I do
Please forgive me I can't stop lovin' you
Don't deny me

Next, it is a pure aggression from NSync in 'Bye Bye Bye'

Hi, I'm doin' this tonight,
You're probably gonna start a fight.
I know this can't be right.
Hey baby come on,
I loved you endlessly,
When you weren't there for me.
So now it's time to leave and make it alone
I know that I can't take no more
It ain't no lie
I wanna see you out that door
Baby, bye, bye, bye...


Bye Bye
Don't wanna be a fool for you
Just another player in your game for two
You may hate me but it ain't no lie,
Baby, bye, bye, bye...
Bye Bye
Don't really wanna make it tough,
I just wanna tell you that I had enough.
It might sound crazy,
But it ain't no lie,
Baby, bye, bye, bye

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Guntur!

It was my best friend's marriage in Guntur on Thursday. We felt odd before going to Guntur for travelling without knowing their language. I thought it will be one more under-developed Andhra village as seen in Telegu movies. Now I had to change my idea. Guntur is a well developed municipal corporation. It was looking more like tier 2 cities (salem, Trichy...) in Tamilnadu.

All big retailer groups like Future group, Subhisikasha, Trinethra have chain of stores around the town

Guntur is famous for red chillies and Tobacco. The cigars here aren't looking like our poor-breed-indian-cigars 'Beedi'. It was more like cuban cigars, long and big, could not be even held in mouth. Later I learnt that Guntur's virginia tobacco is of world standard. Wow!

Delhi public school has a branch in Guntur. Man! DPS is like one big happening in education sector, they have 100 odd branches in 17 nations all around the world. I doubt whether I have seen enough DPS in Tamilnadu before!

The town is surrounded by villages based on agrarian economy- Paddy, chillies, tobacco....

Except for telegu name boards, I could see similarities to my native place in the city. It was more like travelling back again to my town and native village.

Thayir sadam and morru mulagai rocks dude! (Curd rice in combination with chilly)

In lighter sense, the place is full of cinemas dude. All tamil movies are running here, but dubbed version. The movies which fared poor in tamilnadu are all sensational hits here dude (atleast they claim so in their posters). Kovai brothers has become pokkiri brothers, vallavan has become vallava. I saw posters of Thimiru, Alai, Em-mahan.... the kollywood fellows has found a convinent market in Andhra for all masala and crappy tamil movies :)

Marriage went very well, well organised. There was a live webcast through yahoo messenger for this function(Dunno how many seen it!). Marriage hall was air-conditioned centrally (That saves the poor bride and bride groom from sweating and souring hot climate outside). Few photos here

I saw this art work in our guest house there. Liked it! This picture depicts some celestial girl rambha or menaka seducing the saint vishwamitra!

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What's there in Wine?

Yep, I tasted wine today - my first ever stint with alcoholic drinks. My friend and I had a great three course meal with wine in Mughalai restaurant here. I had a special crush towards wine for long time. Recently I got inspiration to taste wines after reading an article in 'Business Today' supplement about wine tasting experiences and different wines available in India. Tasted Grover wineyards 'La Reserve' red wine; this product has won many accolades and fans worldwide and considered as 'the best new world's red wine'.

"Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy." Benjamin Franklin.
"God created wine and women, so that man could atleast own one" Anonymous

My first experience with tasting wine isn't that great. I had wine with chicken tikka, Tikka tasted better than wine!
It was tasting more like 'Listerine' the popular mouth wash.
Do you guys remember the volumetrics analysis we did during our school days in chemistry labs? Have you ever had experience of tasting the chemical liquids accidentaly while sucking through the pipette? The wine was tasting like that dude.
I was complaining about the taste to my fren all the while, poor soul!
I took more than two hours to drink a cup of wine. Good we didn't buy one bottle! I would have taken ages to finish it off!

One good thing: I understood the philosphy in the lyrics of Hotel California song for the first time today. May be wine made me a philospher ;)
I love this song. Lyrics are here.

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
’relax,’ said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!

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A Vagabond Strolls On - 5

We went with lot of expectations for this movie; but ended up with frustration. The movie has an appropriate sub-title 'the pain'; it is really painful to see such movies with so much pathos. My friend and I walked out in the half of the movie. It started out well, the first song 'veyilodu villayadi' gave a great start. The song kindled all old memories of my childhood. Though I haven't had such a colorful childhood, I could relate to lot of scenes in the song; showing movie in home with lens, mirror, old and waste films which we had picked up from old shops in market. There were not much science involved in that kiddies film projection, but we were so much enthused to show off to friends. Period. The film story revolves around the life of two brothers; the elder one's life running into chaos was shown in detail throughout the movie. Pasupathi indeed has a great role to perform.

We were in madurai yesterday to attend my friend's marriage. We had done with the function in the morning, we couldn't find better way to spend the afternoon other than seeing the movie. We had a lengthy debate on what to look for: whether good cinema theatre with good AC or some theatre which shows good movie. Madurai isn't that hot yesterday, but we ended up choosing good theatre. The cinema hall isn't that bad, but the above boring movie made us feel our decisions are always wrong. Moral: choose good movie pal if you want to have good time.

In last week, my office was still not out of layoff hangovers. No motivation to work hard. Me and my friends gang here were trying our best to engage us with some entertainment. We went to sequel of Dhoom. My requirement from a movie has come down these days; the movie has to be light and entertaining, good songs, no pathos, no sentiments and no need for complex logics. Dhoom fits perfectly in that requirement. The movie plot isn't that complex, predictable. Hrithik has a good role, he undoubtedly steals the limelight from Abhishek. I didn't go with much expectation for this movie. It scores well in entertainment factor. The best thing about this movie is: It attracts lot of crowds in INOX, bangalore. The reasons may be: PVR cinemas are not showing this movie, there may be lot of jobless people like us in Bangalore now to see movies even on weekday afternoon. Yeah I mean it, Dhoom was shown on two screens on INOX for afternoon show that day, both halls was full!

On another day, we went for bowling in 'The Megabowl' in airport road, bangalore. The place was perfect, they even serve drinks to attract more people. It wasn't crowded that much. We weren't great snow bowling players; still we managed to have fun. I even won one game, beating my other two friends in the last throw. I was in second place before the throw, lagging behind the first friend by 13 points. In the first shot, I got nine pins, that left with one pin in the middle. Luckily I got it bowled out in the second shot. Hurray!! that gave a spare throw, I scored 8 points in the spare throw, which marked my win. It was very much like our Indian cricket team entry to semifinals in the last matches; they would have had a bad tournament till then, but Indian cricket team always win those do-or-die matches. Booh!

The other movie 'The Guardian' was also great. The story is about the coast guards, a legend and his student. The love plot added to the main story line gives out a different tinge for the movie. I hadn't seen the previous movies of this hero before, dunno whether he acted earlier or not. The training school scenes are scintillating. We couldn't avoid relating those motivational training scenes to software industry. The softies here too need a kind of training we motivates them about their job. The actions in the sea are inspiring. But more efforts could have been put forth in those night action scenes in rough sea. The climax was very much predictable. These days Hollywood movies are becoming more and more lengthy; this movie is running for three hours.

Wow! I could able to write about all the movies I had seen in the last week. I am warning that these are not professional movie reviews, it is my personal view about these. May be spoilers too. Before ending I am inserting the video of Green Day's song - Boulevard of Broken Dreams. The lyrics are here.

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You are The Star!

This is tarot card prediction for me! Found this test from Visi's.

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.
The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

To take the test, go here

[+] I am happy because blogger has decided (atlast!) to upgrade my blog to beta.blogger with all yummy features. You can find those futures soon in my blog!

[+] Had a great weekend. Didn't have enough time to put those in words in blog. will write about it soon. Saw bunch of movies Veyil, The Guardian and Dhoom-2.

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The Ghost of You!

Here is the short story that I submitted for the GP's competition. Details are here and here.

A black Aston Martin babe skids past the flyover like a pro Ice skater waltzes on the ballroom. Ashwin gazes at his rear view mirror with a cruel killer instinct. There are red light spots in his mirror; the sleuths are chasing him for the past ten minutes. His gaze lands on the face of the girl, who lay lifeless in his rear seat. Her face is frozen like a pale ice brick; her black eyes are popping out like Chinese candies. The white dress is tainted with dark red blood bleeding near her heart. A gun fire at close range should have killed her. Her dress shows that she was a beautiful damsel in her life before death. Period. His babe speeds past 120 Kmph with onboard cruise control. Ashwin manages to smile suppressing the sublime depression. When he brings his attention back to front side, he barely notices a speeding cross country truck coming towards him. He scrambles, cuts the cruise control, and tries to switch on the collision avoidance system. The blue cockpit screen turns on, the microprocessor pukes out words. “System Failure, Target is too close. Please apply the master break. The button is at the right end of...” Screeeeeeeeeech.

The scene widens to a beautiful beach stretch. There on the white sand, a beautiful couple hugs each other crazily as if they gonna eat each other. That looks like they are in a vacation in Easter Islands. Ashwin is a well built, six feet personality. The yellow Lamborghini parked near them tells that our hero is crazy about cars. “Honey, I love you. Love you madly you know. You were looking like an angel, you see, an angel from heaven in my birthday party yesterday night. Half the eyes in the party hall were looking at you, when we danced. And you know what…My dad had gifted me a new Aston Martin yesterday. I can’t forget this birthday dear. Undoubtedly this is the best birthday ever in my life. Thanks Honey. I Love you sweeto!” The beautiful girl on his cuddle is Lara, the Icy cool girl of this generation. She is a contender for Ms. Earth competition, which is going on in Easter Islands this year. “You are my sweet heart, honey. I will do anything to make your life bliss. Your love makes me feel like a blessed girl, you know”.

Sun is racing past the mountains in horizon, spews out the bright orange rays to color the sky at dusk. Ashwin cell phones kicks up indicating the call from his sweet heart. “Honey, when are you reaching the venue? I am getting tensed. I wanna see your smiling face before entering the stage. It’s the D-day and I am dressed to clinch the title. You should see me and I will wait for you dear. Coooooommmmmmme soon”. Ashwin mind goes blank; all he wants to do is to reach the hall as early as possible. He zips pasts the ongoing traffic in the highway, rushes to the venue like a mad man. He curses himself for leaving Lara alone in the venue and for coming to airport at the wee hours to pick up his new babe. His cockpit screen throws out a beautiful icon with music; it says a new message; he touches the new mail icon. Mail reads as “Son, I am flying to New York with your mom tonight. We will be there with you in Easter Islands day after tomorrow right on the dot for your engagement. Hope you are having fun with your new babe too. Love you dear”.

May be he should not have left her alone. He didn’t know at that time that he never gonna see her lively smile again. When he manages to reach the hall, there is a huge round of applause. “Ladies and Gentleman, Welcome to this grand finale. We have six beauty queens here and the judges for the occasion are….” Ashwin runs like a madman to her personal room at backstage. As he opens the door and steps in; a gunshot; she falls in his hands lifeless; a guy with black jacket runs past him. That guy, our villain, jumps into his car and vanishes in the highway. Ashwin in Aston Martin with his girl is on fire behind that car.

Huge noise; people are pouring in the highway to see that twin crash. Both cars had collided into that mammoth truck. As clock ticks fast, Ashwin gets back his consciousness; manages to come out of his car. With all the depression and aggressiveness in his eyes, he runs towards the other car. That is also badly damaged. People had pulled out the driver. Ashwin runs to see the killer. He couldn’t believe his eyes, “Daaaaaaaaaaaaaddddddddd! Is that you?”

“Shit! Look at Ashwin. He had bed wetted again. Wake him up and take him to the rest room please” Ashwin papa is shouting at his peak to his wife in that wee hours of night. “Don’t worry dear. He is still an eight year old kid. He should be learning to sleep like a guy soon. May be he had a bad nightmare!”

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Vijay!

I am a diehard fan of Actor Vijay. I never had an affinity towards gold chain till I saw him wearing one in Kushi movie. In my subsequent vacation in home, I was nagging my mom to gift me one gold chain like that. I was wearing it for long time, but never could sustain my love for it. Now it should be happily sleeping in some bank locker ;) He didn't have a magical start in his film career, and never got my attention till 4-5 movies. Later, there were some magical hits which added more fans to him Viz Kathalaku Mariyathai, poove unakaga... He dances with ease which won him many accolades, once Farah Khan wondered about his dancing style. His dressing sense is quite different, sobre dresses, yet will have a style element embedded in them. Till now, my wardrobe has some inspiration cues taken from him.

Though a great fan of him, I am not crazy to see his stupid boring movies. I am not the first-day-first-show style fan. I will go with review from friends. Tamil tinseltown always needs two polarities to keep its business brimming. Earlier it was MGR-Sivaji, Rajini-Kamal, now Vijay- ?. If you take a look at the user messages displayed at bottom of screen in Sun Music telecast, there is always war of words between Vijay's and Ajith's fans. Can't stop laughing on seeing some sms-es like this:

"Thalai Ajith, Good Morning"
"Ajith than tamil movie-nu thalai"
"Vijay is next super star"
"Ajith than adutha kamal"......

Here are two classical melodies from Vijay:

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A Vagabond Strolls On - 4

After blood bath, the headcount in my company came down drastically. You know what the problem is- the motivation for the rest of the guys to work is lacking badly. Hope things improve in forthcoming days here. I am happy that I am part of our new spinoff company which will work on embedded markets with much more vigour. On last friday, most of my colleagues were out to attend a conference. Me and my fren decided to show our presence in that conference and then scoot off for movie. We watched 'Casino Royale' on friday in Inox.

You would have heard enough people cribbing about the new bond movie that this is not like regular bond movies. My feedback is not cribbing, but go-green signal for it. I love the movie and James bond is more humane and real life guy in this movie. The new bond Daniel Craig has down to earth personality, more macho than Pierce Brosnan. Pierce did a fair deal for James Bond role in bedroom smooches and while giving poses for photographs. The stunts in this movie are more macho than any other before (though I have a grudge that there are not enough fights, thats the other side). I was very happy when Bond had a love break in the movie. Wow! thats fantastic story line you see. Bond shouting at Ms.M that 'She had left me' and then cooling down and understand her love for him was true. Wow! I love the movie for this story line. Bond girl is not sexy, but lovely. The next best thing about the movie is- the bond style of proposing his girl. He takes her out on a vacation in Bahamas, have a cold bath in beaches and takes rest under shining sun. While relaxing, Bond proposes in Ishytle...
"What I am left over is for you. I love you. Do you like to accept me with whatever I am left with?"
The funny part is -whatever movie it is, whenever they show casino, Hero ends up winning in the climax beating the villain even if he is expert in the game.The new bond movie also has this plot over the villain. The Austin Martin car would have felt disappointed for not getting used at all in the movie- it had a car chase, but ended up in flames after a freaky rollover.

Just started with Dream A Dream's new computer programmer for kids this weekend. These guys in DaD always start their session with some game, it is embarassing at times. But finally gives out a satisfaction that you had crossed some inhibitions of yours. Yesterday game was to write down 'what do you think about yourself. What did others thought about you in the first meet? From that what did you learn new about you today?'. We had been give a piece of paper to write down what we thought about ourselves and for others views. Here is mine:

I am reading the book 'The second sex' by Simon De Beauvoir now. It is one of legendary works on human psychology. My fren gave a good review for the book, which made me buy this. But the sad thing is it is much more bulkier than I expected. Can't avoid dozing off while reading this book :) Will write a review for this book If i could ever able to finish reading this.

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