of Aamir and his dogs..

Read this interesting entry on Aamir Khan's blog. Suggest you to read if you get time. Might sound funny, comic and crass at the same time..

Heel boy, heel :-)

China faces tough time..

China is crippled by a powerful earthquake on Monday measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale as measured by the Chinese Administration and 7.9 as measured by the United States Geological Survey. As per the latest report, around 8700 people are feared dead. Continue reading here

Here is your chance to donate towards the welfare of the victims of this catastrophe through International Red Cross.

All you courageous and beautiful people out there, we are with you!

Hope is a good thing...

I am finally the memeber of coveted Have-watched-The-Shawshank-Redemption club. Feels good. Hope is a good thing and no good thing ever dies! :)

The Great Debaters

Got a chance to watch this movie last night. We really loved it and would like to recommend it to anyone and everyone who like watching some serious movies. This is a mind blowing piece of direction and I would rate its dialogues among the best that I have ever seen in a hollywood movie. Directed by Denzel washington and produced by Oprah Winfrey, TGD is based on a true story of a teacher called Mr. Tolson of the famous Wiley College of Texas who prepares a team of black debaters who go on to challenge whites across America. Filmed in the nigro lynching era of 1930s America, it touches upon the conflict between the whites and colored people in the country.

Heading for MBA

Just to share the latest news, I have got through the SPJIMR Mumbai for my MBA. I will be joining SPJIMR PGDM batch of 2008-2010. I have already resigned from my work and 30th May will be my last day followed by 2 weeks at home before joining the campus on 17th June.

Mahaganapathim

A couple of days back when I got bored of the kinds of music I had been resorting to for quite some time, I got reminded of this musical called 'Morning Raga' which I vaguely remember having seen a couple of years back on TV or/and probably just heard of it being shown to all the lady colleagues on the eve of Mother's Day of 2006 at Infosys Bangalore. All I remember in the movie or would like to remember, is this beautiful fusion number - Mahaganapathim. Click to watch.. I would keep this song in the league of Alayapayuthe song from the movie Alayapayuthe.

PS - Although I do not understand anything of carnatic music, still I find these two songs really cool! ;)

IMAP for Gmail and Log Me In..

I found these two truly fascinating things over the last two days.

First is this Remote Access and Desktop Control software on logmein. All you have to do is login to this website and download their software and install on your computer. By doing this, you add your computer to the this software. Now, repeat the same on a different machine which is connected to internet. Now go to the second machine and login to logmein using the user name and password with which you registered on the first machine. Keep the softwares running on these two machines. This way, you will be able to remotely control a remote computer connected to the internet. You will do yourself good by following the instructions given on their site. You can in fact run applications, copy files and do a host of other things between the two computers. I found this really exciting. However, I could not play around much with this because of my limited download volume internet connection. Nevertheless, with 2mbps broadband connection, I had a wonderful experience.

Second is another 'WOW' stuff! You can now download all your gmail messages onto your local device like MS Outlook email client on your desktop or some other email client on your mobile phone. All you have to do is enable IMAP in your Gmail account and follow the set of instructions given here to configure your local email client. I did it myself and I can now see all my gmail messages in MS Outlook configured on my desktop. I can access my mails even when I am not connected to internet. Of course I wont be able to receive any new message when offline.

Other than this, I also got BOSE Companion 2 stereo speakers for my laptop. Watching movie at home is an altogether different experience now.

TZP Songs and lyrics

In case you do not have Taare Zameen Par songs, you can listen to them online hassle free on its official website TZP. You just need to go to music section and click on play button against the song you want to listen to. And in case you want to act weird, you can play all of them together at the same time!! Now does that sound dyslexic.. :-)

Some economics related links and budget 2008

I found them useful for increasing my awareness in areas of Indian Economy and Finance.

Indian economy is one place where you can get the perspective of young aspiring economists and entrepreneurs to Indian Economy.

Swaminomics if you remember is a column which appears in Sunday Times. The author Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar also writes in Economic Times and this place contains a few of his published articles in print media. Interesting insight - deep and different.

India Uncut for anything India.

BRIC and Beyond - This is the place to find the economic analysis of Brazil, Russia, India and China done by Goldman Sachs. This might help you if you are into some quantitative research on these economies.

So enjoy reading.

By the way, Budget 2008 is already in. Although it comes with an election year populist taste, it also comes with a little challenge on part of govt. It is yet to be seen how the government is going to compensate the banks for the 60,000 crores farm waiver. Its definitely a great move by the govt., but what about the farmers who have taken loan from the money lenders to repay banks for the loans? And what is the percentage of farmers who owe money to banks and how much is it compared to those who have taken from local money lenders? And where is the thrust on the farm infrastructure development? Cut on excise duty is a feel good factor and so is cut in cenvat. But will it reach the consumers and will it really ease the inflationary pressure? These are a few questions which need to be addressed. Taxes on short term capital gains will stabilize the market in the short term. The thrust on Health Care by offering tax holiday to new hospitals in lower tier cities and increased allocation in education sector is a very welcome and long awaited move by the finance minister. But the most talked thing in this budget is the change in income the tax slab. By putting more money in the pockets of middle class, consumption will get a thrust and it will in turn affect various sectors positively. Overall a good budget!

That is all for now.