Business with Latin America

For the first time, I attended the Seminar on 'India and Latin America - Augmenting Synergies in the post-crisis world'. I got an invitation from the Indian ambassador for Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay Mr.R.Viswanathan, who was fondly called by the entrepreneurs, CII, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of External Affairs as 'One Man Army of Latin America' as he has passion for Latin America to increase the trade between two regions (India and LatAm). I could see the meaning of this in him directly. It was very inspiring to watch him. There was a big queue of people who are already into the business waiting to talk to him to get his advice on various things. Mr. Viswanathan showcased one MSME entrepreneur (Ratnakumar) from Coimbatore who is doing business with LatAm region. I could see the happiness in the face of Ratnakumar and his family. I am sure Mr.Viswanathan will be able to inspire and motivate more people and take the trade volume and reach the targets earlier than planned. It was also very interesting to see the Columbian Ambassador Mr. Alejandro Pelaez trying to market for doing trade with his country. "You can come to me for any kind of help in doing business with Columbia and knowing the tax details etc free of cost. I am available always for you entrepreneurs. Take adavantage of me." These are the exact words Mr. Alejandro used to lure the entrepreneurs. Currently, India is doing $16 billion trade with LatAm and targetting to reach $30 billion by 2012 while China is already doing business worth $140 billion with LatAm. Come on India, we can do it and beat China!!

Business in the name of Olympiad

There were two circulars from my son's school asking for consent letter for participating in the computer science and science olympiad. (He is in standard two). Just like most of the parents, we simply consented for his participation each costing around Rs.150. He was also given a text book and work book by both the olympiads. We have been doing this for the second year and it is going to continue till he reached standard twelve. I googled for some of the related terms and figured out that there is only one olympiad which is international and supported by indian government which also yields good amount of scholarships internationally and nationally. All other olympiad seems to be misnomer and they are all purely business though kids will benefit learning cumputer science basics at the early age (may be too much at the age of 6 and 7). When I called up the founder of the olympiads 'International informatics olympiad' and 'Science olympiad foundation', I realized that they mean purely business. Following two links are the ones related to the international olympiad.
(1) http://olympiads.hbcse.tifr.res.in/subjects/mathematics/stages
(2) http://www.nbhm.dae.gov.in/about.html
To cinfirm my findings, I called up Professor K.N. Ranganathan (9600082365) who is the regional coordinator of the Maths Olympiad. He said that my findings are correct and olympiad word is not registered by any government or international body. So, it is not possible to control the wrong usage by various companies who are doing good business with the term 'Olympiad'.
Original Olympiad which is supported by Government has 6 subjects. They are Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy and Junior Science. Concept of this is to identify the best brains and give them the scholoarships. Students who are in XI and XII can take up this exam at regional level and move on to national level and 6 toppers from each country will be sent for the international level competition. Beware of Olympiad!!!!!!!!!

e-Governance - It wowed me.

Yes. Google is a great resource for every human being who knows to use computers. (My kid googles if he wants to know about anything. He is only 7 years old). But, when we want the authentic source of information, we really need to know who has the authority to give that authentic source and we should know the website of that authority. Recent days, I have been wanting to know many things for which Indian government is tha authority. I used http://www.india.gov.in/ to get to the authentic information. For ex, I wanted to know if the government has announced the 2010 central government holidays. I could locate that in few seconds. There are lots of information related to various minitries. All the required details are organized based on the ministry. If you start using the government websites, you will get used to the ministries where you can find what information. Another day, I wanted to know how many assembly seats are there in each state, I could get it from the same site. All latest tax related details, tender details and what not. I felt yes, we are really getting better in India. There may be still issues and flaws, but we are getting there.

World Statistics

Interesting website with world statistics on many things http://www.worldometers.info/.

Simple math on the age of mankind?

As per US Census Bureau, as of now, there are 6,775,377,28 people in the world. Assume we grew at the rate of 0.5% every year, there would have been only 5 people before 4217 years. Does it sound like a reasonable number? Is there anyway, we can get some material which has some proof to believe that mankind existed before 'y' years.

Calm and composed Dhoni

I knew that India would loose the match yesterday (2nd ODI against WI). It was 82/8 in 22 overs . But, Dhoni and RP singh put up a great show and frustrated WI bowlers by batting till 48 overs with a partnership of 101 runs. I thought RP singh would get out in few minutes and I would go to sleep. Man, RP simply listened to Dhoni and played the second fiddle role perfectly and he had faced 75 balls. Though we lost, Dhoni proved to be a great leader and that would have taught the Indian team a great lesson. May be this should be called as T20->T50 phobia wherein people find it tought to accustom to the T50 after playing T20 for 3 months.

Feeling good!

Somehow I felt happy (very happy?) about the two things which happened this month.

1. Man Mohan Singh got re-elected to the PM office. I am not a supporter of Congress though. I felt happy because he seems to have earned the image of a honest and valuable person. I suddenly started analysing the hypothetical situation of me becoming a MP and serving the nation.

2. A terrorist got killed in the neighbourhood nation, though I am feeling sad for the thousands of civilians who got killed in the process.

Guest lecture

I got an opportunity to do a guest lecture in St.Joseph’s college of engineering, Chennai on 31-Mar-09. I was asked to take an hour to do the lecture on ‘Database design’. College was 27 kms from my home which I did not expect. I had a quick meeting with their guest lecture in-charge and CS department HOD. HOD was curious about where I studied and how I got to know about NIT Warangal (where I did MCA). We also talked about the campus placements and recession. She was pretty cool about downturn and said this is a cycle and it is not permanent types. Probably because I stepped into a college after a decade, some kind of happiness kicked in and the campus looked great with an air conditioned library etc. Guest lecture in-charge took me to a huge seminar hall. One of the students started with a welcome speech. (They took my profile.) I never thought they would use the content for preparing welcome speech. I was taken a back for a moment after looking at the way they introduced me.
I had very less time to prepare. I had put together few slides on db design, the products available in the market, how do we choose the database servers when it comes to live projects, usage of data store, little bit of business intelligence and in general talked about the future for the current students in terms of SaaS, open source, Cloud computing, Mobile computing etc and also talked about developing niche skills for getting better opportunities in the IT industry. I tried to make the session more interactive. It was difficult since all of them are first year MCA and MSc. Students. Very few students asked questions. Since I did this for the first time, it was thrilling. It was a good experience. I think I am quite confident of doing more lectures with better content.

Black day

Though today is the historic day for US since Obama is becoming the president of US it was a black day for me as it was the first time my career I had to sit with HR team to terminate the contract for 22 trainees from NIIT. Though we tried a lot to retain them, we could not sustain the management's pressure to reduce the bench strength. I feel very sad for them. I wish they all either get a job elsewhere or join some course and spend the crisis period and come out stronger into the job market after the crisis.

Economic Crisis and Job Losses

Mainly targeting MCA 95 batch... Others can also contribute...
What is your plan B or Plans B/C/D/.... if you loose your job? Have you thought about it? I definitely hope that none of us would loose job. Having seen the debacle of Satyam, we cannot confidently say that the job is safe in any industry anywhere. I am sure few of us would emerge as entrepreneurs when we are really pushed to tough situations. I would like each one of you to put down your views. Some of your ideas would definitely help others. Assume if I loose job, what should be the short term plan and what should be the long term plan? If married, what are the limitations? If not married, what are the kind of risks people can take? How long we can survive without salaries? What kind of additional income can be planned even when we are having the job? What if the spouse is not working or working? Should we switch to some other industry? Should we concentrate on starting a company and business rather than being an employee? How can we get working capital? Do any of you have any kind of experience so far in trying to get some venture capital? I would like each one of you to use the comments section to make replies to others.

First pongal for Varsha

We went to our native (devakottai) since it was the first pongal for Varsha. Traditionally, rice is fed for the first time on the first pongal for any new born babies in our community. I took 2 days off and spent 5 days in my native. It was definitely very enjoyable at home with parents. There was some amount of relief from baby sitting :-) since my mother took care of Varsha. Every day we start climbing the coconut trees (with the help of ladder only) and have tender coconuts (me and my son Akash are crazy about tender coconuts). We spend sometime plucking all the flowers and my father makes the garlands for the gods. Since I was there in native towards the fag end of Margazhi, I went to temples early in the morning (at around 5 a.m.) and it was nice to be in the temples where I used to go in my school days. I can keep on writing.... since I love my native.

Chennai Day (22-Aug-2008)

It is 369 years since Chennai was formed as 'Madraspatnam'. It suddenly struck in the afternoon and thought why not check with my project teams on what they like and dislike in Chennai. I sent a mailer to 80+ people. 50% of the people responded enthusiastically. Some samples below...
Raviram writes:
What I like in Chennai:
1. The Music – Chennai is Music and Music is chennai
2. The language – it is a fun to pronounce tongue twisting tamil words
3. The local train facility to almost all the parts of the city with high frequency
4. Job opportunities in IT
5. Giving work opportunity for women with minimal educational qualification
6. Traditional look of people, especially mamees in their pattu sarees
7. Being a better and the best place for shopping and especially window shopping
8. People adjusting just with Sambar as part of their meals in their entire life span.

What I don’t like in Chennai:
1. Narrow Mindedness
2. Dominating mentality of people
3. Doesn’t accept any other language than Tamil
4. Finding faults in other cultures
5. Changing the pronunciation and spelling of many words which are mostly common and same in the other parts of the country

Arul Jegan writes:
What I like in Chennai:

I like Temples. Particularly Maylai Kapaleeswarar & Parthasarathy Temple.
About cinema theatre I like Prarthana theatre. Good employment opportunity. Finally city bus service for fewer amounts we can trip to all places in Chennai.

What I don’t like in Chennai:
Poor city infrastructure. Mosquitoes are increasing day by day which is dangerous to our health. House Land rates and house rents reached sky high. No plan and Vision for Chennai for next 5 years from Government. City population is increasing day by day. So, spending time with family only should go to beach. But there also I could feel so much of crowd. So, I am hopeless about Chennai to live longer here.

Manikandan K (Cricketer of Calsoft) writes:
What I like in Chennai:

Mount Road, Spencer Plaza,Central Station ,Satyam Theatre, Thayir Sadham,Anna Flyover, PTC, Kamal's Acting, Ajith Style, Ranganathan Street, Vandalur Zoo, EgmoreMuseum, MGM, Illayaraja, ManiRathnam Movies,Chepauk Stadium, Kapaleeshwar Temple, Santhome Church, Mount Road Darga, ECR, Saravana Bhavan Sambar Vadai, EGA Theatre, Hot Hotter Hottest May Masam, Pani Puri @ Gangotri, Landmark @ Nungambakkam, Movie Posters, Burma Bazzar, Ritchie Street, Pondy Bazzar, Koyambedu Bus Stand, Adyar Bridge, RoadSide Book Shops, Gandhi Statue And of course Marina Beach, Elliots Beach

What I don’t like in Chennai:
Beggars all over the places mentioned above.

Nostalgic feeling...

I was truly nostalgic when I visited my native (Devakottai) last week. I loved to be with my parents and with my family. We offered Varsha's hair in one of the old temples at my native called Kaliamman temple. We also visited some more of temples at Ilangudi and Illupaikudi. We go to these temples with all my family members once a year. It was really refreshing. I visited my UG college mate and we were talking about some of the past events.
It was very satisfying to be in our house at devakottai with a garden. We used to sit together and decide what should be the menu for the day's lunch. Menu would mostly something from the vegetables we grow at home. We have plantain plant, Coconut tree, ladies finger, Yam (Chenai kilangu), Sundai kai, paruppu keerai, Poosani kai, Brinjal, tomato, chillies etc. We pluck fresh plantain leaves (Vazhai Ilai) for the lunch. I have been longing for the day when I will go and settle at my native place and spending time in the garden.

Akash - good brother of Varsha...

Akash - Playing a good brother of her little sister. At times, he cries too.

Varsha listening to 92.7 fm

Varsha - the rain in our life - listening to FM92.7 at 2 AM - her 10 pm for any day. She is taking toll on my sleep every day - leading to mouth ulcer for me - drowsy in the digite training - created new habit of chewing gum in the afternoon daily in the office to avoid sleep - still I enjoy spending the time with her alone when the whole of India sleeps :-) - with FM radio and a camera.

Vamsi: Going bang bang!!

Vamsi - my teammate at Calsoft was teaching his wife car driving in Beaverton, Oregon. They banged the clients office on 12-Jul-2008. Thank god they had insurance. They must have faced cops and would be visiting the court to pay fine. Most of the people from India would not even dare to talk to Police (cops). (Thanks to Indian movies for portraying Police as bad boys!!)

Karthik G - An unforgettable character

Pradeesh who works with me at Calsoft told me that Karthikeyan G has been admitted in hospital and he is in a critical situation. Karthik needed lots of blood on 14-Jul-2008 as he was diagnosed with Leukemia. Many of us went and donated blood. But, the situation never improved and it was only deteriorating. We got a call from Pradeesh at 5 PM on 15-Jul-2008 that Karthik G passed away leaving all of us in sorrow. I just wanted to recollect the days we interacted with him in tha last 17 months.
A character whom I cannot forget. He worked for Ramco systems (first job). I interviewed him for Calsoft and was stunned to see his attitude, the way he spoke, the level of honesty and boldness. I did not get into technicals but simply recommended and recruited him. He resigned Calsoft on 30-Apr-2008 after spending around 15 months in Calsoft. He joined Meryll Lynch in Chennai. He was one of the enthusiatic organizer who was part of the organizing team of our last outing to a resort. We all wish that his soul rests in peace.