A Trip

And finally time to start a trip which I have been planning for some time now : Valley of Flowers.
Starting tonight a week long adventure with Ketan and the way he has gone about planning, it sure will be an adventure. We still don't have a place to stay in Ghangharia where most of the action will be. I dread at the thought of sleeping out in open after a 10 mile trek.
But I am eager and so is my Nikon D80 :-)

Back Home

After a year and half down under I am back to the place where I belong :-) Feels so good to be back in Amchi Mumbai, to once again breath the air (agreed its polluted and all), still this is the only place where I feel at home. And I came home to this :-)
And this

WTF

http://www.livemint.com/2008/08/10235758/Centre-puts-squeeze-on-Chinese.html?h=A1

The most interesting part of the story is this:

The power ministry, in a 24 July letter to the coal ministry, seen by Mint, said, “...Ministry of Power recommends coal linkage for such projects (less than 200MW) subject to the condition that the main plant equipment for such projects will be ordered from reputed domestic manufacturers.”

The article claims that this is to stop Chinese entry in the energy market in India. While it makes sense some way to stop China's entry in such critical sectors as energy, but do our domestic manufacturers have the technology know how and capacity to meet India's growing energry requirements?

To the best of my knowledge there are only 2-3 domestic players in this area: BHEL, L&T and Suzlon. Now if these domestic manufacturers are competitive on price, quality and delivery promises as international one, why the need for such protection? When our companies are trying to compete the global markets does it make sense to have restrictions of these kind on our domestic market?

Wild guesses

Since I belive most of the stock market analyst make wild guesses, I will also make one of mine for the week. The stock markets will be positive for the week and close around the 17k mark by the end of the week with gains in Banking, IT and Reality sectors.

Now to see how good or bad these wild guesses are :-)

A call for economist to help me understand this

http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/aug/04infla.htm

What the article goes on to say is that government is thinking of having Rs 4000 CR fund to fight inflation. My understanding of macro economic is very limited, but if I remember correctly, inflation occurs when there is a surplus money supply in the economy. Isn't the government doing just that, without any addition of product or services, just adding money which will further drive up the prices? On a similar note, how much impact did the multi billion dollar bail out of US financial institutions have on global inflation

Kaun kahta hai

One of the pleasures of playing iPod in shuffle mode is you never know what you are going to hear next. Came across this gem from Jagjit first thing in the morning:
कौन कहता है मोहब्बत की जुबान होती है
यह हकीक़त तो निगाहों से बयां होती है

जिंदगी एक सुलगती सी चिता है साहिल
शोला बनती है ना जलके धुवा होती है