Two of the four full-time jobs that I’ve done have been “offshored”. They’ve both involved working for the Bangalore office of American firms, with both jobs having been described as being “front end” and “high quality”, while in both cases it became clear in the course of time that it was anything but front end, [...]
This post was written two weeks back, during one of those days when I didn’t have internet access at home. Posting now. In the course of a rather elaborate shower this morning, I started thinking about the global economic crisis. I thought of the crisis of 2008. I thought about the Arab countries where there [...]
I have been drinking coffee for as long as I can remember. Maybe I started drinking at the age of three. Maybe even earlier, maybe later. But I clearly remember that back when I still had half-day school (i.e. kindergarten), after my afternoon siesta, I would sit down with my grandmother (another major coffee drinker) [...]
I spent a year working in an India-focused high frequency trading hedge fund. I used to trade stocks and equity derivatives there. We were primarily an arbitrage hedge fund, and our aim was to make money by trading on assets that were mispriced, in order to make riskless profits. For example, if the price of [...]
Last Wednesday I saw a chain-snatching live. It was late in the evening and traffic was moving at a snail’s pace on Good Shed Road (formally called TCM Royan Road). I was on my way to the in-laws’ place in Rajajinagar. There was an unusually large number of auto rickshaws on the road (may not [...]
When you have a number of things to surprise someone with, you can either flood them with that, or present it to them in a staggered manner. And based on recent experience with both forms, on both ends of the divide, I get the feeling that staggered surprises are superior and more effective than flooded [...]
I turned twenty nine today. Yesterday to be precise; I see the clock has just ticked past midnight. And I’m sensing that my “project thirty”, where I had decided to not take up a full time job until I turn thirty and do “all the things I ever wanted to do”, is already in trouble. [...]
Following a brief discussion on twitter with @deepakshenoy I’m wondering what’s preventing the RBI from making the rupee fully convertible. The usual argument for full convertibility is that it will make the exchange rates volatile. My argument is that exchange rates are already so volatile that the additional volatility that could stem out of a free [...]
In Bangalore, you have two kinds of residential layouts, BDA Layouts and Revenue Layouts. The former are layouts that have been created by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) or its predecessor the City Improvement Trust Board (CITB). These agencies acquired land from villages which were then on the outskirts of Bangalore, planned layouts with sites [...]
Ever since my parents both passed away in their mid-fifties, I’ve had a problem in dealing with the news of deaths of people who I think are past normal “life expectancy”. Despite my best efforts to control myself, and try look respectable, I begin to laugh uncontrollably, especially while reporting the news to someone. People [...]
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