Movie Reviews

Recently, my classmate told me about his blog Cubicle Talkies. This blog is maintained by three friends and contains world movie reviews. The movie reviews on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes are mostly individual reviews and based on individual opinion. To gain holistic view, I have to read at least three to four individual reviews but Cubicle Talkies reviews are like casual conversation between three friends which brings out the complete picture of the movie. This is the USP of this blog, I do feel that this is a better way of reviewing a movie just like we do over a tea.

Do check out the site and specially the review of The Inception, its done comprehensively. 

January Fog

January fog clouding my head,
cant see the path ahead,
may Feburary bring the sunshine,
I get what is righteously mine.

Pledge

I, MJ, solemnly pledge to blog once every twelfth of the year.
Should I fail to do so, must be inflicted with severe filth from thee.

Car Pool

Recently, I put forward another step towards being green conscious; this doesn’t mean environmental consciousness (which already I am) but 'green' paper consciousness (for nerds it called money). The company provided transport charge is 1250 bucks a month which is very high as I live within 10 Kms from the company.

So I decided to weigh the options that I have:-

1. Use the public transport

The BMTC bus 501 can drop me within 1 Km of my company in 9 bucks and the BMTC stop is hardly 100m from my house. So, considering that I go office daily, 22 days a month; I will spend

8*22*2 = 352/- a month

This is one-fourth of what I spend when I use company transport. This is the greener side of the story, it looks pretty impressive. But when you actually experience it, the whole point of saving paper becomes nullified.

First, you have to wait for the bus; it may range from twenty minutes to forty minutes which is total waste of time. Remember our company charges a lot for us to the client and also it’s not fun to waste time at bus stop and then work late hours.

Second, most of the time you have to go standing in the bus (not so indifferent when you catch company shuttle service) and the whole water that you spent bathing in morning goes waste, so does the laundry water (remember I am environmental conscious also). No wonder you look like a blue collar factory worker coming out of the factory working hard all day with old leaky machines, after your BMTC ride is over. I don’t prefer to go to my workplace like this.

2. Use Auto-pool

I had my three flat-mates (one actually left now) who used company transport; together we were paying 1250*3 = 3750 per month. We could have hired an auto for pick and drop. Optimistically (*considering the auto meter is only 10% faster and will not ask extra bucks), we together will spend:-

75*2*22 = 3300

This is not a huge saving, additionally, finding an auto which will go to the city outskirts (with all *conditions apply) is very daunting. Also, I hate the noise pollution auto creates apart from the obvious rash driving.

3. Car pool

This, in my opinion, is the best way to commute; provided somebody is ready to give a ride to a person like me (who doesn’t even own a bicycle). We are three people out of which only I don’t have a car (lucky me – hassle free ride). If you work out the cost estimates, assuming the worst car efficiency of 10Km per liters (simplifying calculation as one side travel equals one liters of petrol), per month petrol expenses:-

2*22*50 = 2200

For single person it comes out to be approximately 700 bucks (Save the holy money). Now comparing it with the company provided transport ride:-

• You know well in advance when you will get picked up (missed call when the person starts from home)

• You don’t have to share the one-half seats of Swaraj Mazda

• Bumps are not scary anymore (still remember my head bumping the roof on every bump in Swaraj Mazda – last seat)

• You avoid pseudo-racing with colleagues in other bus (Did I forgot to tell you the how much is the extra premium for accidental insurance)

• You can listen to your favourite songs (that too clearly)

• You avoid the pollution and extreme weather

I have experienced all three and therefore I can safely conclude here that Car pool has been the best experience for me.

26 on 26

I was planning to write this post for a long time. Last October 26, I completed 26 years of my existence on this planet. Almost a quarter of life is past behind if I believe a lot of astro specialist who have dug into my horoscope many times.

When I reflect back to the life that I have spent, I see a lot of memorable moments and lot of things that I have achieved. Twenty six years were well spent considering the amount of life lessons I have learnt. This has led me to be more mature than my age, having high moral values and more importantly cultivating the traits of a good human being.

I had always been fickle with hobbies. This has got me to learn vast number of skills and do activities like, skits, singing, script writing, public speaking, writing, reading, poetry, watching movies, listening to music, dancing, playing various sports like badminton, table tennis, lawn tennis, bowling, pool, squash, cricket, soccer, swimming and other activities like cooking, traveling, trekking, Para-gliding, water scooter, rappelling, mountain climbing, river rafting and biking.

Professionally, I have earned a good reputation in both technical and non-technical realm related to the service industry and I am also being counted as one of the top performers in my organization.

So far these 26 years has laid a good foundation for me, the only concern now is to build upon these and achieve more. So in the next ten years, following are the various milestones that I would like to achieve:-

Earn Money: This is one of the most important aspect which has started bothering me lately, more so because of the fact that I have to settle down and have a family. Till now I have been focusing on building a solid foundation and now that I believe I have done a pretty good job at it, its time to capitalize it.

Have Family: Because of the social pressure, (I hate relatives bothering my mother about me still being bachelor) and also considering the “social fact” that oldest one should get married first, its time for me to get married.

Build Reputation and Recognition in Industry: Being recognized and appreciated at workplace is not enough, it is important to make presence felt globally across industry.

MBA: A long “un-fetched” dream of pursuing an MBA from a world reputed institute needs to be realized.

Achieving any of the above tasks is not a puppet’s play; it requires lots of strenuous effort and strong will power. 

So wish me good luck.

The World is Flat

If the water level rises one inch at one place, it would raise the same everywhere.
Financial crisis in US has yet again reminded us of the fact that the world is flat.

If you have read Thomas Friedman about the world being flat as I have, then you obviously know how good it is for the world being flat but recent crisis has started a debate in myself that would it have been better if the world was not flat? At least I wouldn’t have lost money in Indian stock market because of mistakes done by the finance companies in US.

Think of the olden times when civilizations & settlements were separate and thrived in isolation. Some civilizations faced grave times, some come over it and some got eradicated. It all happened in separate places and may be since everything was so isolated it did not affect the other civilization/settlement.

Imagine a group of people who are caught in a maze and it is essential that any one of them should come out of the maze and survive, what would be the best strategy? Should the people be together or should they go in separate directions? Mathematically and logically they should separate out and go in different direction in order to have more chances of anybody surviving.

I never stop thinking about a situation or crisis that affects one part of the world and gets transmitted like a disease to other parts of the world because everything is so connected. What are the chances of our survival if something like this happens?

To buy or not to buy - that’s the question

After a lot of rumination, I considered buying a flat in Nandi Wood housing. 

The flat will cost 40L+ which will put me under the EMI of around 45k+ according to the prevailing interest rates.

But I am in complete dilemma nowadays, whether to buy a house or not.

I came across two blog posts:-

First

This blog emphasizes on buying a house when you are young.

Benefits are listed out as:-

1. will save on rent
2. will build an asset
3. may seem higher now but as the time goes by the EMI sum % of your income will decrease

Second

This blog is a straight mockery of the people who are buying house by taking hefty loan. Following are the arguments:-

1. Paying hefty EMI every month will deprive of the much needed cash at the onset of your living
2. House may not prove to be an investment - classic case of US sub-prime crisis
3. With the house loan you loose mobility and risk taking ability

The inference that can be drawn from these two mindsets is that it is always better to buy a house early in your career and it is also not desirable to be burdened by the heft EMI amount of the home loan.

The best case scenario is that you are in 20's and you have enough cash to completely buy the house, no loan, no EMI.

But if this is not the case then certain question arises, what is the extent until which it is financially and logically Ok to be burdened.

After hours of calculation, I derived on the generic method to determine if one is eligible to go for the loan.

If suppose your in hand income per month is X and your average maximum % expenditure for the forecast of next 2-3 years is 30% of X (assume various cases like , you getting married or having children or buying a car etc etc) then EMI should not exceed 40% - 50% of X where assuming 20-30% of X as your saving (You need to have some liquidity) . Please note that if the % expenditure is more that 30% of your in hand income then better pay attention to that.

If you are buying a house then take loan for the amount which can translate to EMI of not more than 50% of your income. You should put in the cash for the rest amount.

Well I have decided to hold my decision of buying the house.