Category: general

“Living in is perfectly ok. But no, we don’t drink – that’s immoral”

bah!

One new thing that ESPNStar has introduced recently into cricket is the introduction. Just before a batsman comes in to bat, or a bowler comes on for his first spell, he has to ?introduce himself?. While it provides some kind of context to the amateur watcher, it also gives out some important insights. And it gives the players an opportunity to literally make a statement.

For starters, there is Paul Collingwood. He describes himself as a ?right hand batsman and right arm (pause) fast bowler? with the emphasis on fast. Perhaps he believes that with the liberal support he is getting from the umpires, he is as threatening, if not more, than a fast bowler.

Another ?character? in this regard is Dhoni. He is perhaps the only guy who doesn?t use his first name to introduce himself, preferring just ?Dhoni? instead. One wonders if he would do the same if his surname were something much more common such as say ?Sharma?! The other interesting thing to note about Dhoni is that he says ?wicketkeeper? before saying ?right hand batsman?, maybe to make a statement that it?s he and not Dinesh Kaarthick who is the number one keeper.

This kind of an introduction is also likely to cause some kind of trouble to someone like say Tendulkar, who has no clue what kind of a bowler he is. He tries to get around the problem by describing himself as just ?right arm bowler?. Interestingly, even Anil Kumble describes himself the same way ? ?right arm bowler?! Wonder if he is trying to make a statement with that.

The most powerful statement, in my opinion, however, is by V V S Laxman. He describes himself as a ?right hand middle order batsman and right arm off-spin bowler?. While it is interesting that he mentions his little-used bowling skills here (without Sehwag, India lacks a part time off spin bowler), the more important thing is the emphasis he places on ?middle order?. I?m sure he is hitting out at the selectors and team management of the late nineties who tried to make an opener out of him. A strong opportunity this was to make a statement, and he has grabbed it with both hands.

If not anything else, this concept of introductions has made viewing much more entertaining, at least for those who care to listen to it. One sincerely hopes that the broadcasters carry this forward and make this a regular feature for all series. However, one needs to see how this would gel with teams like Pakistan and Sri Lanka, where a larger number of players can?t speak English. I won?t be surprised to hear Inzy (if he gets picked) saying ?Inzamam-ul-haq. Inshallah 36 years. Inshallah right hand batsman. Left arm bowler inshallah?!

Cross posted at Critics Corner

I’d never been able to learn macroeconomics. With all due respect to Prof Chiranjib Sen, the IS and LM curves and M2 and M3 money supplies never really excited me, and despite scoring a high A in the course, it left me much more confused than I was when it started. Immediately after that followed a short stint at JP Morgan where I had been safely tucked away in the interest rates swaps sales desk, which didn’t have much to do with actually predicting how the rates moved, and other similar macroeconomic things. I quickly became really good at swaps, and even some more complicated structures, but never learnt macroeconomics.

Looking back, it seems like the primary reason I didn’t learn it was because of lack of excitement. Unlike a lot of other fields which had a large number of related anecdotes, which made learning so much more simpler, macroeco had come across as a dull thing, which one should avoid as much as one could.

The recent bloodbath in markets world over seems to have finally provided me the reason. Over a month back, when my aunt Sowmya told me that she had sold her Chicago home for much less than what she had bought it for a few years ago, nothing seemed amiss. Then came the news that KKR’s public offering had cupped. Then, the local stock markets crashed. With each passing day, things became more and more interesting. Yes, I have lost money for some stocks I hold have been going down, but the excitement of the whole episode has been unmitigated. And day by day, the happenings have intrigued me to learn more. To find out why what is happening is happening. In other words, to learn macroeconomics.

Over the last week or so, I have been bugging my friends in investment banks to explain the things to me. My brief background in the domain is also helping me appreciate things better. I’m asking a lot of questions. Talking to these guys, and thinking a bit, and finding answers. I think I’m learning. I’m learning macroeconomics.

All these days, I was figuring out pieces of the puzzle. And it all seemed to be fitting in. Still, the big picture was missing. How did this happen? How did it all begin? Yesterday I sent a mail to Vennai titled “chicken and egg”. “Which came first? The housing market crash or increase in interest rates?” I wrote. The discussion that followed helped ease matters a bit. I had a good idea now. Then, today I stumbled upon this? , and all my questions are answered I think. I think I know what’s happening. It all seems so beautiful now. Macroeconomics can be interesting, I finally agree! If only all this had happened in Jan 2005… 😛

Ok for starters, this has nothing to do with my previous post, though both of them relate to food and both of them relate to structuring. In that one, I tried to use food concepts to explain structuring, while here I use the concept of structuring from ibanking and use that framework to explain some food stuff.

Now that those formalities are out of the way, let me get to the point. One of the basic differences between North Indian and South Indian genres of food is the way in which it is structured. In South Indian food, you just order the “main item” and you get a host of side dishes free. For example, if you order idli, you get sambar and chutney free. If you go to Madras, you get chutney in three colors (coconut, pudina and tomato) free along with the Idli or dosa. Back home in Bangalore, you get unlimited refills of sambar and chutney. Sometimes you even have a choice of side dish. If you don’t like the sagu they give with puri you can ask them for potato palya. No cribs.

North Indian food is fundamentally different from this in a sense that there are no “set combinations” of main dish and side dish. In fact, the side dish is a side dish only by name – it usually costs much more than the main dish. And yeah, you order the main dish and the side dish separately, and make your own combinations. It is like a complete bipartite graph! And you can choose a few vertices here and a few there!

Another thing with North Indian food is “packet size” – typically one serving of a side dish serves two people (thatz teh thumb rule while ordering). This fundamental characteristic of this genre makes it much more suitable for eating out in a group, and makes it prohibitively expensive to eat alone. During my days in Bombay, I used to take two rotis and one dal fry, for 60 bucks. And about half the dal would get leftover. And there was no question of me having any vegetable – unless I decided to forgo dal that day!

OK, I guess that was too long a background for this (otherwise) extremely short post. And I think the whole point of the post has been summarized in the title (yes, I think i’m finally learning to give good titles).? Thing is fast food joints thrive on standardization. In a way, they are like Ford about a 100 years ago. They have a small number of items, which they sell in large quantities, and well at a faster rate. That way, they can reduce spoilage, inventory cost, etc. For example, have you noticed that Dosa Camp has only 3-4 basic varieties of batters, and that the N types of dosas they make are all embellishments on one of? the basic batters?

Now, if you think about this, it is tough to sell north indian food with this kind of a model. You need to have stuff to make a large number of gravies, and a large number of vegetables. Even for an “assemble to order” framework, you need a large number of ingredients, with a lot of them having extremely volatile demand – thus rendering it expensive.

There are many other reasons why North Indian food is not exactly suitable for Darshini joints. As I’ve explained above, you need to make the stuff on an assemble to order basis, which apart from rendering it expensive, also takes a lot of time. Then, eating north indian food is an elaborate exercise and consumes space – for all the main dishes and side dishes and plates – unlike south indian where you don’t have to serve stuff! Given that in a darshini, space for eating is limited, and that sometimes you may have to eat standing holding a plate in one hand, this is again not tenable.

In light of all this, the concept of the “Roti Curry” that is there in a large number of darshinis todya appears to be a masterstroke. For the uninitiated, it is north indian food structured in a south indian fashion. One in which you order the main and side dish together. For one plate of “roti curry” you get one (or sometimes two – varies from place to place) roti, one small cup of dal and one small cup of a sabji. Along with the mandatory slices of onion and cucumber and lemon. All for a very reasonable rate (<= Rs 20) For one, the “curry” is fixed for the day. And is usually one of the more popular stuff (they usually don’t give stuff like say palak which a lot of people don’t like) – like chana masala or “mixed vegetable curry” – which means that there is no loss of demand due to dissatisfied customers. The lack of choice in the curry means that it makes forecasting much easier, and hence reduces wastage and thus decreases costs for the restaurant. Another advantage of the fixed curry is that it can be made to stock, and thus the only bottleneck is the time it takes to make the roti, which at high demand times can also be made to stock! Then, the structure of the meal means that it all comes together in one single plate – which makes it extremely easy to fit into the darshini culture. It doesn’t take much space on the table, and can also be eaten holding the plate in hand. Apart from this, it is excellent value for money. For about Rs. 20, you get enough stuff to constitute a full meal (yeah, the rotis are usually huge). Of course, I don’t think they give extra curry free, but they usually give enough dal and sabji to last the full roti for most people. And the restaurants have a foothold in a genre which was hitherto untouched. Given all these advantages, it is no surprise that this concept is open in almost all darshinis which are open at dinner-time. I don’t know who started the practice, but it’s an excellent practice nevertheless. The crowds at the “north indian” counters of the restaurants will bear testimony to this. OK, it turns out that the post is longer than I initially thought it would be. So that elaborate introduction seems justified after all. And does anyone know of any place (apart from wholesellers like Nammora Hotel) which sell Idli and Chutney and Sambar separately?

Structuring is like making bhel puri. You buy the vegetables, peanuts, chutneys and all other ingredients. You don’t bother into their formulation and all. You just put all of it together in proper proportions so that the customer likes the end result. and get paid for that!

Update: Some responses from my investment banker friends.

The guy from Goldman simply agrees.

The guy from Deutsche says

NO
its fooling the customer and making sure you get sued

The girl from Lehman says

no it isnt

its like making cake

you get a tonne of ingredients – get the basic batter

then bake it

then start embellishing

different bits differently

and then cut up slices so that everyone thinks they got the best slice at the bets rate 😉

The guy from Lehman is yet to respond.

Update

The guy from Lehman responded. He says

it’s pretty hard to sell products to be honest..? and customers shop around so they always go for the best bhel puri… wall street is like? row of stalls at shanti kunj.. 😛

I haven’t done it for a while now. So while I’m at it, let me break away from the usual TV ads and focus on voice ads for a change. Driving to office every morning, listening to ad-infested Radio City in order to catch the wonderful Vasanthi’s wonderful voice gives me an opportunity to listen to a lot of them.

The most jarring of them all is this ad by Puravankara. They have made a song in hindi which has a bad tune and bad lyrics with stuff like “mila hai mujheeeeeeeeeeee, purva mein gharrrrrrrrr” and stuff. If only I knew exactly how long the ad would last, I’d put the radio on mute for that much time. Sometimes it completely takes the joy out of listening to Vasanthi!

Then, there are these welfare ads put by the ministry of family welfare I think, which are absolutely hilarious. Some of them deal with cleanliness at roadside eateries, while others say that you can’t play with hens! And they have a number of versions of these ads, all of which provide for a good chuckle. Of course, there are also the “eye ads”. There is a song in kannada about glaucoma, which is sung in the form of a duet! One wonders why the ministry wastes valuable resources putting these ads in the mostly upmarket radio city. Wouldn’t its objective be better served if it were to be put on more junta channels such as Big or SunFM?

Then, of course, there are these TV ads from which the voice is removed and the ad played on radio. Most of these again turn out to be extremely irritating, for I think it’s mostly visual impact. There is this salt ad, which is in Hindi, which is perfectly fine for Radio City.

Today I found a new set of ads – for UTI Bank, which has just changed his name to Axis bank. They take examples of how Rajiv Bhatia became Akshay Kumar, and Shivaji Rao became Rajnikanth, and how nothing much changed. And that UTI Bank is like that! Coming to think of it, whoever had heard of Rajiv Bhatia? Or of Shivaji Rao (except for commuters on route 10A)? Is UTI Bank admitting that they’ve not been a good bank so far?

I’ve noticed one other thing with radio ads – initially they are all mostly in Hindi, including on the Kannada channels. After a while, though, they re-make the ad in Kannada, and put it in Kannada on all channels! Interesting stuff. The latest to do this has been Indian Oil, which has released it’s extremely irritating “ah aaah pucho pucho” ad in Kannada.

When I was a kid, we used to without fail celebrate my birthday on the 6th of December, and my father’s birthday on the 30th of the same month. However, never once did we celebrate my mother’s birthday. Repeated questions in this matter went unanswered for a long time, and I grew up wondering how amma couldn’t have a birthday!

Later, I figured out that the problem is not that my mom doesn’t have a birthday – it’s that she has several! When she was a kid, my grandfather wanted to admit her in school a year earlier, so a false date given to enable that (those days people didn’t care too much for birth certificates). Later, when she took up employment, she realized that she would have to retire a couple of years earlier because of this birthday. So she got herself a new birth date, a couple of years later.

Then, for some other reasons, she wanted to become younger, and got yet another certificate. And so forth. The title of this post may be an exaggeration, but I know that my mom uses at least four or five different dates of birth! And with my maternal grandparents both gone, and my two doddammas being of the forgetful variety, no one really knows when my mom was actually born!

So now, this causes immense confusion, and at times it’s quite funny trying to guess what my mom’s age with respect to this particular document is. At other times, it’s not so funny. There will be documents which will have to be produced together, but then suddenly we figure out that they have different dates of birth mentioned on them. And there is some extra effort we have to put in order to correct this inaccuracy.

Now, I just assume that my mom’s age is a quantum state. A random number. And I’ve been asked to wish her every year on 27th of January. Of course, none of the documents show this as her actual birthday!

In order to comply with the Right to Information Act (one of the very few pieces of good legislation by the current UPA government), IIMB has disclosed the “formula” used in this year’s admission process. For someone who went through the process three years back, it makes extremely interesting reading. Once again, I’m not in the mood for “writing”, so I’ll use bullet points.

• For a start, i never imagined that the formula would be so “complex”. If you look at the extent of mathematical computation involved, perhaps the only formula that that is more complicated than this would be Duckworth-Lewis!
• It is interesting to see how much your “history” matters. I didn’t imagine my 10th and 12th board marks would matter for so long. Thank goodness my 69 in 12 Board English didn’t have too much of an adverse impact!
• On a related note, it might explain why you don’t find that many gults, or people from factory towns such as Kota for that matter, at IIM. The fact that many of them totally ignore their 12th boards in favor of the JEE may perhaps be coming back to haunt them a few years down the line. This is just a conjecture, and there is a good chance i’m wrong on this count.
• Contrary to what a lot of people think, the place where you do your undergrad doesn’t seem to have any impact on your prospects of getting in. It doesn’t matter whether you do your undergrad from Indian Institute of Technology or (the now derecognized) Islamia Institute of Technology!
• On one hand, this gives a good opportunity to those who had missed out in their JEE or similar exams to “get back”. Also, one thing you will notice is that historically the percentage of IITians at IIMB is significantly lower than that at IIMA or IIMC. Maybe, now that fits in!
• The group discussion in itself has as little as a 7.5% weightage, which is heartening. In my opinion, group discussion is one of the worst selection tools. The equal weight given to the GD summary also offers a ray of hope to people who are not aggressive, or those who get stuck in a GD panel full of aggressive people.
• It is now clear that the “most preferred” work experience is about three years. So if you have tried four times for CAT and not gotten through, you might do well to look for alternate alternatives.
• Again contrary to popular perception, there doesn’t seem to be much weight for extra curricular activities, and leadership. Unless of course, they have an impact on your performance in the interviews. And they will probably improve your chances of a shortlist in placements if you do make it to IIM
• Then, it is interesting that the weight given to CAT in the final analysis is about 20%. In our batch (IIMB 2004-06), it seemed like the weightage for CAT was higher. Practically half my batch had a percentile in excess of 99.8. And we could see in our junior batch that this number had come down.
• The table with cutoffs for each category makes for interesting viewing. That the cutoffs for SC/ST/disabled is much lower than that for the general category comes as no surprise. It would be interesting, however, to know the difference in final cutoffs for people who get in “normally” through SC/ST and those who get in to the prep course. I have reasons to believe it is going to be significant.
• Much has been made out of the fact that the OBC cutoff is not too different from that for general. For example, Rashmi Bansal of JAM says , “It’s heartening to know the OBC cut offs were pegged very close to General cut offs“. However, I believe it’s more to do with demand and supply. Had the reservations been implemented this academic year, the proposed quota for OBCs was 7%, and this low “supply of seats” pushed up the cutoffs. If 27% is to be reserved for OBCs, I’m sure the cutoffs would be much lower, not too much more than that for SC/STs.

Do read the document, it makes for some interesting reading. And if you find anything else interesting, do let me and the other readers of this blog know.

I wait and wait for the weekend, and when it arrives, what do I do? First thing I do when I reach home on Friday night is to check my work email! And I do it again as soon as I wake up on Saturday, just in case one of the people in the head office in the US has sent some mail. Not that I bother to respond to any of it, and I have absolutely no plans of working over the weekend.

But I do it, check mail every friday night, and saturday morning. And some sundays also. Almost compulsively. And if there’s something in it which says I have a lot of work on Monday, I start getting worried.

Warrasht.??

The Gabriel Heinze drama is reaching dramatic proportions, with Man U refusing to sell him to LIverpool (or any other EPL club for that matter) despite the latter meeting the asking price. And it seems like Heinze wants to move at any cost – it seems he has engaged LIverpool’s legal team to assist him.

I don’t know how it will work legally, but Heinze might do well to learn from the guy who plays immediately to his right in the national team – Roberto Ayala. Last month, Ayala moved from Valencia to Villareal, only to move on to Zaragoza within a matter of days, without playing a single game for Villareal.

It seems like LIverpool desperately want Heinze, and are willing to up their bid. In which case, can’t they find a “surrogate intermediate club” for Heinze? Maybe some impoverished spanish or italian club might take up the offer. They buy Heinze from Man U for GBP 6.8 million (the asking price) and then quickly sell him to Liverpool for say 9 million, thus making a cool 2 million odd GBP profit! The money thus gained would be extremely useful to them while Liverpool will also get what they want. And if done efficiently, Man U will also be willing to sell Heinze to this impoverished club since it’s not in England and they are meeting the ask price!

On a related note, Liverpool bought Craig Bellamy last season for GBP 6 million from Blackburn, and now they have sold him to WHU for GBP 7.5 million. Do they have to pay capital gains tax on Bellamy?