Telecom dynamics - Misc Links

Lightreading speaks about European market.

In the meanwhile, India starts its walk towards 4G.

Shyam Ponappa's thoughts on Alternative Scenarios in Indian telecom

Sunday - Avatar Review, Sufi Music, Good Marathi Food!

So this post is not much of anything specific. We 3 friends started by catching the morning show of Avatar.

I found it awesome. James Cameron has finally made a movie that has a storyline. And the effects are stunning. The movie is set in 2154 where the humans are trying to seize control of a planet from its inhabitants. The natives are shown as more "humane" towards nature of their planet. The corporate honcho and the army guy plant a ex-Marine, Jake Sully, in the locals in his Avatar form. He goes and becomes a part of them and eventually leads them to fight back.

Sigourney Weaver, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Lang are all great. In fact I found the hero a bit flat. But the effects are amazing. I did feel the movie to be a bit long but was a great watch. That 3D is an irritating thing simply because it darkens the entire thing. The next innovation may be when it does not get that dark.

My rating - 3.5* out of 4*. Enjoy it in a theater near you!

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In the evening, we went to a Sufi Music program which was awesome. I had earlier written about Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia playing at IIMA campus. This was similarly amazing. The charm of such music is that the folks singing are perfectionists who have perfected the art over many many years. The music takes you to a different world, different universe. Amazing!

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We closed the day with Marathi food at Yashasvi, the restaurant in Maharashtra Sadan. Perfect, simple, Marathi food that gives a lovely conclusion to a nice weekend. Just one small thing, its puran poli can be better. Zunka and thecha are great.

Missing DoorDarshan on New Year Eve

Yesterday, the last day of 2009, end of decade, moving into new year, resolute on the new decade, optimism overflowing from people's eyes...ok I need to shut up and move on.

So I was seeing TV and the fact is that I could find nothing that would remotely interest me. Mostly it was some rehash of year's headlines, replay of same movie trailers and songs that have been played on channels a zillion times, comedy shows that make most of the content for  most a few news channels. I checked DD National too and what was on it could not stop me from moving to the next channel. It made me nostalgic about the late 80s.

People in 30s, who grew up in India in mid/late 80s have witnessed the cable TV explosion in this country. And they certainly know what DD was before the cable TV advent. DD was like a pizza with all the toppings - pepper, corn, tomato, olives...everything (now you know I am a veggie). It had Chhayageet, Mahabharat, Saturday evening movie, The World this Week, Surabhi and so many other things.

While the above toppings were weekly fare, people also awaited its annual fare - the New Year Eve program, Holi Haasya Kavi Sammelan, Coverage of Grammies and Oscars etc.

The New Year programs were a grand mix of everything. It was like an abridged version of what DD was. A bit of news, some songs (and by some I mean 10 at most), lots of contextual comedy stuff and some live programmes.

In particular, I remember the first time I was mesmerised by Javed Jaffrey doing his "I do not have bones" dance. There used to be those spoof shows. There was some controversy over BVO, on which I think it was, Harish Patel cracking some hilarious jokes or Raja Bundela trying to construct the spelling of Czechoslovakia.

The best part was all this was a compact package of 2 hours or so. Starts at 10pm, finishes at midnight, the channel says Happy New Year and off it goes. Amazing.

No, that was not the best part. The best parts were the discussions on these programs on the following day in school, some idiot getting caught trying to pass one of the jokes from the program as his own and the attempt to show off who remembers the most of the program.

Well, these days the TV does not stop, the viewer has to muster the courage to go to the power off button. These days there is no need of news wrap because you have been fed the same news 24x7 till you have learnt it to the last headline and you no longer wait for that 5 minute magic from Jaaved Jaffrey because there are like a million copies doing rounds on 50 channels.

I guess I had a great new year eve remembering those good old days. Perhaps they are good old just because  I was young then and am slightly older now.

WSJ reports taxi disputes in Aamchi Mumbai

WSJ is reporting how old cabbies are trying to block newcomers.

I wonder why this focus on cabs in Mumbai?

I know for sure Meru Cabs offers very good service but I don't have big problems with old cabbies either. You get them everywhere, mostly they are reasonable and go by the tariff card. They are certainly threatened by the new nice cabs...but as far as I remember there were also "Cool Cabs" of Premier Padmini as well. While they still made you feel the exact texture (is that the word?) of the road, yet they did offer air-conditioning.

As is true with everything else, old has to give way to new and resistance is... not just limited to electrical circuits.

Themes for Google Chrome

Hey..I just noticed Chrome Themes. If you are using Chrome, then check on the right-bottom corner. The area looks like a page is being turned. That takes you to the themes at this link
https://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/en/themes/index.html

I am not sure if these were already there and I noticed them only recently. Anyway, they are cool. Similar to the light-weightedness of Chrome, applying these themes is also light. And using a theme does not change the viewing experience in terms of speed of browsing or loading of pages.

And, well if you have not tried Chrome itself, it is available here...
http://www.google.com/chrome

Stock Market - Current Valuation & Primer Articles

Some very interesting articles on how to view market valuations.

Today's Business Standard article Shobhana Subramanian: Is the market overvalued?

Current rally analysis by the Economist in Liquid Fuel

Warren Buffet's Owners Manual of Berkshire Hathaway - Intrinsic Value on Page 5

2 primers from Paddy - Value of a Stock

Dinosaurs in India

Something very different from what I usually follow. ToI reported that a Huge nests of Dino Eggs has recently been discovered in Tamil Nadu

My knowledge about dinosaurs is about the same level as theirs about me. The main sources of my knowledge include the thick GK books read during childhood, 3 movies from a certain Mr. Steven Spielberg and one visit to an area where Dino footprints are preserved in Texas.

Despite my virtually zero knowledge about these giant lizards that lived millions of years ago on our planet, I still am fascinated about the topic.

Some of the basic questions that come to my mind are
1. What made these lizards so huge in the first place?
2. Did these lizards have evolutionary intelligence? That is did they show characteristics similar to animals of this age?
3. Do we really know about their DNA / other physiology as shown in the movie 'Jurassic Park'?
    3a. Did mosquitoes really exist at the time of Dinos? If yes, were their proboscis long enough to suck Dino blood? :-)
4. The usual question of what led to their extinction?

If you know about this just post it in comments or if you know where this info is on the net then do please post the links in response to the post. Thanks in advance.

A related article from National Geographic
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/08/0812_030812_indiadinosaur.html

Miscellanous and Interesting

1)
An interesting discussion in NYTimes on Wireless On-board.
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/the-in-flight-menace-wireless-chatter/

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2)
Mumbai municipal corporation has just earned Rs. 26 Crore for scientific handling of garbage dumpyard. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Mumbai-dump-gets-Rs-26cr-in-carbon/articleshow/5048215.cms

I am witness to this change because I lived in that suburb. We used to hate going near the creek because of the smelly garbage pile that could be seen and smelt from a kilometer away. This summer I went to Gorai Island and actually did not smell the stink. When I checked ( that is turned my head in the direction of dumpyard), the pile was transformed into a smooth surfaced hillock. It was obvious something was done about the thing but I did not know at the time that this was the work that was going on. Something to be proud about.

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3)
Swapan Dasgupta's article "Bust the myth of Good over Evil" in this Sunday's Times of India left me baffled.
What exactly is the point of this article? That we stop believing in the values we built? Or stop believing that, ideally, there should be law and order...and that if it breaks down there is a judicial process?

Mr. Dasgupta, who is generally articulate and logical, is all over the place with this article. Speaks about 80's movie endings, then about Ravan's virtue, then Kumbhakarna's moral dilemma. But what is the whole thing about?

After a certain age we all understand the reality and flaws of a system that prevent the world from becoming perfect. But does that mean that we abandon praying for the victory of good?

More than anything else, the social value of occasions such as Ramleela / Durga Puja is reason enough to keep the tradition going.

Miscellaneous and interesting

Interesting news clips I found today -

1) First news from USA where AT&T gets rid of a part of its message when routing call to the Voicemail. Now this is interesting because it reduces close to 5 seconds of call time for every call forwarded to voicemail. Towards customer delight...

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/att-relents-drops-paging-instructions-from-voicemail/


2) Next refer to Strategist section of this week's Business Standard on State Bank of India. The article tells a lot about how the current SBI chief, Mr. O P Bhatt, is strategizing the turnaround of SBI and within SBI.

I had written my experience some days ago. After reading the article, I wonder if SBI employees aligned to its goals? It does not seem so.

I agree the load in branches is massive but there has to be some operations strategy. For example, one thing to adopt is give the customer everything that is needed to keep him/her out of the branch like passbook, ATM card, online access, IVRS number etc. I can tell every customer has to visit at least 3-4 times to just get all this.

The article also has an interesting discussion on SBI Home Loan rates and possibility of a smaller version of subprime crisis.

Check out the article, very interesting read (a little long though).
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/are-you-being-served/369333/


3) Next - Nortel's fire sale - Nortel's Enterprise business goes under the hammer tomorrow.

http://www.allaboutnortel.com/2009/09/08/details-about-fridays-enterprise-auction/

4) Sports - Hurray to Vijender for ensuring that medal for India. And another hurray to Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi who have both reached finals of US Open. Whoever wins, we will be proud of both of them. Hurray to Pankaj Advani as well. It is heartening to see India perform well in such competitions.