Did it....

Atlast I completed "The Alchemist" overcoming my impatience associated with reading books. I read the book here and there, left it behind for a week and all of a sudden decided to pursue with it this weekend and was done with it yesterday. I really enjoyed reading the book, the book talks about stuff which we all know but fail to realize. Definitely recommend to people who like me have trouble to read books. This would be a good start, a small and interesting one..... I still have not decided on my next book.... I want to go into a non fiction one and my target date would be before the New Year.... Going forward I want to do 2 books per month...... Lets see how far I go with this....

Welcome back DADA

He is back with a bang, a gritty 51 to lead India's charge in the 1st innings against the South Africans. There were good signs during the tour match when he scored that 83 runs against a good South African reserve side. I have always liked him for his aggressive nature and the way he molded Team India, especially when he took it to the Aussies in India and in Australia. To me the best captain India ever had, he bought in the aggresiveness in the otherwise meek Indian side. All can draw inspiration from his comeback, almost everybody wrote him off, I thought he would never make it back and now he is the top performer for the Indian side. I know this is an very early talk but when I watched him play there were glimpses of the Ganguly of the old. As he once said " We are the lucky few and all we need is one good day to turn things on", thats exactly what is happening to him. Players like Ganguly, Lara, Steve Waugh are good for the game just for their arrogance and to that they add their batting prowess. Good to see him back and hope he stays and performs for the next few years. India are in desperate need of some strong personality in the team......

Nth Attempt

I am talking about my attempts to read a book and eventually develop the habit..... Am I really making an attempt? If I had I should have done something about it... Do I really want to read books... I don't know... I have started a new chapter in another book leaving behind several others that needs to be completed..... This book "The Alchemist" looks interesting and if I follow the philosophy of the book, probably I should not be reading the book itself.... It talks about chasing your dream and following the path you want to follow.... Is reading books the path I want to take..... Lets see whether this book takes me in that path......

Pictures

My new Love

After few weeks of negotiation and test driving, I finally fell for the 07 Nissan Altima. I signed the deal yesterday and the car came in today. I just went around Dubuque for a while and came back home. Thinking of driving more this weekend. Will post pictures later.....

Finally made it....

The question was when and not will they enter India and was personally following the progress closely and the news was broken yesterday that Wal-Mart is going to pair up with Bharti to set up retail stores all across India. Though Wal-Mart is gonna be in the background taking care of the cost aspects of the supply chain, eventually they would take over the store front. Is Wal Mart's entry into India good for India's economy ? I want to post some of my opinions on this tie up....Wal-Mart's entry opens the gate for other foreign retail giants like Target, Home Depot to put their foot into India... All this means more employment for the Indian public, improvement in technology, better quality of living. There are some argument that we can see the same problems existing in the US with the small time vendors and retailers in India also with the entry of Wal-Mart. I feel otherwise, in India, Wal-Mart could face serious problems from the small time vendors. It would be interesting to see what kind of niche market Wal-Mart would be targeting in India, because the lower and the middle class the primary niche of Wal-Mart in the US does not possess cars or vehicles to go to the supermarket to make purchases, they prefer the local markets where they have the power of bargaining, prefer the comfort of the vendor delivering products to their houses but don't be suprised if Wal-Mart delivers groceries to individual households.Other challenges they could face are that the roads in India are not the best and this would definitely affect the lead time of the trucks reaching the stores on time, thus affecting their cost and hence the final price, (hope they would work to make the roads better) in the US most of their stores are in small towns but this techinique would backfire on them in India... It would be very interesting in the coming days to see how they perform and what kind of strategy they would hold in India...

What ever happens I feel this is a good thing for India and this would encourage the local giants like Pantaloon, Reliance to come up with innovative ideas to tackle this huge challenge..... The proof for this lies in the fact that Reliance announced plans to open stores all across India this year when Wal Mart was trying to get into India... Now that they are here we can expect more announcements and there lies a good future for the Supply Chain Industry in India. Lets hope for the best for India with this venture.....

Speechless

I always proclaimed India as the greatest Democracy in the World and basically it was pride rather than anything that made me take that path. Thinking about it, is India the greatest democracy ? Do we really have freedom of speech in India, is the media as powerful in India as in the US.... Will there be a day in India where a Daily Show with Jon Stewart take place with the local politicians... Will he survive over a week ??? How many restrictions are placed on the media ? Advertising agencies can't mention their competitors name but can only make hints ... Had a conversation with some friends about it a few weeks back and would like to discuss some points over here. Everybody would remember the Mumbai Bomb blast and the restrictions placed on writing blogs in India.... Was'nt the basic rights of an Indian taken away when that happened... The other side of the argument was security reasons for that act as information could be passed on through blogs... I could not understand that, then all forms of communication should be hindered, no phone calls, no email or no internet, who draws the line for that ? There is a severe restriction when publishing controversial articles about past leaders... the claim that it is not appropriate to tarnish the image of a person no longer alive... But on the other the same politician is used to attract vote banks... The balance does'nt seem to exist..... How could I finish a blog without movies... Movie titles.... Man so much of crap is going on atleast in the Southern States.... Some vague politician decides what should be the title of a movie... what alphabets need to be in there and what should not be in... Can we do anything about it ? First of all I would like some feedback .... Does everyone agree that we do not have freedom of speech...I promise that I would publish all the comments....

Back to Blogging

After a short hiatus I have decided to get back to blogging. Think I do not have anything better to do in my new home Dubuque.... Today I witnessed real snowfall for the first time in my life.... I had some exposure towards it when I was in Austin but nothing close to this.... The whole city or small town, however you want to call it was white and it was beautiful... I was paged at my work and asked to come out of my cubicle.... Then they took me out to show the snow flakes... Similar to the Pudhu Vellai Mazhai song in Roja.... Hmm I need to stop bringing in this kind of analogies..... Could not take a whole lot of pictures, have attached some here..... I would like to blog more regularly... am gonna try to do atleast one per week.... Would like to make the blog more meaningful but as of now have no clue what to do to get there...Suggestions are welcome....