While I travelled to NYC, Boston and Manila during the last few months..one of the things I notice in these two countries is..don’t make Starbucks as your landmark..for sure you will never get to the place where you wanted :)
US and Philippines have Starbucks at every corner everywhere…And in Philippines, Ministop and 7-11 are not a good idea to make those as a landmark..they are many stores and like Starbucks, they are everywhere…
Over the last few weeks, Some nice movies that I watched... To start with ‘Up in the Air’.
The opening scenes of the movie with pictures of cities from the airplane…very nice…George Clooney (as Ryan) is again at his best. Ryan is a person who likes flying, accumulate flying miles and is a motivational speaker. The Backpack scene was nice stating life full of possessions is not easy… ‘Make no mistakes, moving is living… The slower you move, the faster you die’..
He works for a company which takes on the outsourced activities related to people management at organizations. Ryan has an ugly job of telling people ‘You are fired’, however he tells it very nicely like, ‘you can do now what you always wanted to do’… ‘A new start to meet your aspirations, etc..’ Its always hard to tell someone if they do a crap job and telling ‘you are fired’, i think is the hardest one… Well, no one is going to be happy hearing that he or she is fired.. the reactions, the anger, the trauma on the face of those who hear that is not a scene someone would like to see in their real life. The movie sequence, the acting and the opening scenes does not stop me from giving it a four star..
The sound track ‘This Land is your Land’ is nice to listen…originally written by Woody Guthrie
Continuing from one of my previous posts on fb where I mentioned about this movie… This is one of the best made horror movie. Does not use high graphics, animations or sound effects, yet it does manage to scare you…scare you like you have never before… It does leaves you scared after watching the movie! The movie uses simple scenes to leave you scared… The opening sound of the door, the light in another room…the scariest part is the one where the male lead character (Micah) sleeps and for hours the female lady character (Katie) is standing next to him. Don't watch it alone and if you stay alone or if you occasionally get scared sometimes in the night, this is not the movie for you!
Katie feels that there is something in the house, while Micah does not seem to believe. He decides to capture the movements of that somebody using the video camera. They keep the camera ‘on’ during the night while asleep. The sequence of doors closing, the shadow, and abnormal activities like Katie waking up and standing still for hours and hours does not scare you while you watch the movie. However, if you remember those sequences later on, I am sure most of you will be scared. Imagine while your asleep, and you sense that someone is standing next to you for hours in the dark night! I give this one a four and a half star for leaving me scared for quite some time…
Movie Trailer – Paranormal Activity…
Reading Sherlock Holmes stories was fun… and have liked watching those on TV.. While on the movie, in 130 minutes not many Sherlock Holmes adventures can be fit. One of the best scenes from the movie was the way Holmes calculates the arithmetic to surprise his opponent in wrestling, disarm him and beat him senseless. Movie has shown the reasoning and calculative approach of Holmes in a very nice way. Another scene where Holmes looking at the lady who arrives with Doctor Watsons at the restaurant, tells her about her past…the superb way of deduction looking at the clues like the sign of the ring on the finger, the necklace, etc… The disguise, the deductions and the movie sequence leaves you to think and the arrive at a conclusion the same way as Holmes did! Four star for this movie as I did not get bored watching it again! The story of evil aristocrat executed for series of murders and black magic, returns from dead does not sound that interesting…however, the visuals and the backgrounds in the movies well made…
We all know the speed of light is 300,000 kms per second (or 186,000 miles per second) and it travels faster than any thing. However, I may not be wrong to correct the first line…Light is second to mind in reaching the destination. To reach google.com server located in mumbai from bangalore, it takes .0000053 seconds..well for the mind to think of the location and imagine any of the roads or shops it hardly takes anytime…Mind need not go through routers or switches, well the message travelling through the internet has to! and it is accompanied by several milliseconds or more of delays at those routers and switches... Imagine how much of data transfer do those cables under the oceans handle..while the brain is hardwired with so many neurons that it can easily let you think of any thing which is thousands of miles away!
This is one of the videos and songs which I think are best made. The flow of the song and the filming has been superb…Acting of various actors is great and the way the song has been put in the format of a film from start to the end of the song does make you think how did 5 minutes pass by…
Well I think I can write a book on this now…I am not kidding…The way we perceive things can be really different the way it actually exists. It is all based on the pattern recognition that we follow through out. I tried few examples with my good friends and the results were not surprising. Those proved to be showing that we do follow a lot of pattern recognition in almost everything we do. Be it at work or in personal life, the use of pattern recognition exists. Pattern recognition is associated to the the way we think. The hard wired neurons do not want to waste a lot of energy on trying to think for everything in a different way, unless you consciously want to think different. The example I tried with few of friends had three lines I narrated to them and asked three questions about those lines.. Here are those-
1. Jane heard the jingling sound of the ice-cream van, and she went to first floor.
2. She looked for the piggy bank till she found it.
3. She tilted the piggy bank till she had some money out of it.
Now the three questions…
1. What is the age of Jane?
2. Why did she go to first floor?
3. Till when she tilted the piggy bank?
And the answers were..
1. One of the response was 8 years old, other was 8 to 9 years old and another was 6 years old…
2. She went to the first floor to find the piggy bank as she needed some money to buy the ice-cream.
3. She tilted the piggy bank till some coins fell with which she can buy some ice-creams…
There is absolutely nothing wrong with these answers. As Tim Hurson states in his book - ‘Think Better’, we all are conditioned to use the patterns to act. While these questions were being narrated or read by you, there was a picture of little girl Jane in a frock running to the first floor after she heard the sound of ice-cream van. We all visualize that scene. The way she would have run to the first floor, the way the stairs were arranged, even to the extent of the color on the walls, the piggy bank and also the sound of some coins falling from piggy bank. The pattern recognition is so common and so powerful because it is how we all are conditioned since we were kids. While walking in the dark and a lonely road, a fallen rope may sometime seem to be a snake, or a person fallen unconscious on the footpath of a road may be perceived to be a drunk guy, however it may not be case always!
Why did I choose to blog about this? In the last few years, I have been working and interacting with people at different levels in their jobs, coming with different cultures, educational qualifications and experiences. In every one with so many differences, yet one thing that remains common is the pattern recognition which influences the way things are perceived in the same way yet by different individuals. There is nothing wrong in coming to conclusions using pattern recognition and this is what that makes us superior to other creatures. However, the use of pattern recognition needs to be applied carefully when trying to think different!
Last few months just flew by…and I could not find time to blog.. I was looking forward to blog on lot of things…the heat in Bangalore, my visit to NYC and Boston and few new things that came my way as learnings. Last three months have been excellent with lot of new things and developments. My favorites of all, the new learnings with people perceptions, technology and how it impacts most of us and trying food at different places..esp this time out of India. Well there is lots to write about and I will distribute it over the next few days and let my blog talk about these wonderful experiences…
Heard about India Shining? I did some time ago…The growth story of India has been good especially during the times of global recession…When some countries are facing huge financial crisis, India managed to live with the recession with a good GDP (Indian economy grew by 7.9% during the last quarter, real good number). The BSE 500 Index grew from a low of 3500 in Jan 2009 to 6000+ by November…a remarkable growth.. Better national highways, good number of jobs, etc… All said so far about India Shining, but not everywhere. Recently visited Bailhongal (about 40 kms from Belgaum, Karnataka).. once upon a time, the town had good roads…and the condition of the roads now is real bad, actually, one cannot say with confidence that there existed a road! Similar experiences across some towns in Maharashtra. While on the other hand there are excellent roads, the National Highway Golden Quadrilateral and Bangalore-Mysore Highway for example… Power cuts for almost of 4 – 5 hours in a day in towns and smaller cities just show that Govt babus’ and the elected leaders must really work hard in improving the roads, power situation, and also the quality of education. Last year I met a few MBA grads from colleges from different parts of the state. I appreciate few grads who were exceptionally brilliant while a lot of them were not aware of basics. Some unaware of the current affairs and the market trends, while some not aware of what needs to be looked into when predicting stock markets, and some not aware of the basic balance sheet equation..that was a terrible experience…Quality of education at the primary and secondary levels is great. A few books from NCERT I read in the last few weeks are good, the syllabus is up to date. In my opinion, the college education needs to improve. Even though the syllabus at the graduate levels and post graduate levels are up to date, the examinations need to be made stringent. Exams need to check the ability of students understanding of the subject and they just should not act as a easy gate to pass by. Question Paper pattern look easy for a person to study during previous few days and pass the exams. More objective type questions and only a few essay type questions may be a good one. Lot of essay type questions will just welcome lot of paper wastage with no good answers. People may just end up writing stories or write the same sentence first in active voice and next in passive! While some leaders have said, youth are the future of a country, therefore the youth need to be made intelligent enough to drive the country in future!
Initial look at the google wave since I started using looks great.. The best way a technology is been used to make conversations real-time. More to follow…Still it needs fixes in terms of some issues. One – While you try to resize the window(s) in the wave, its little slow. Have not tried it on Chrome, guess it would better perform on Chrome than Mozilla as Chrome is from Googles basket of offerings…
More to come on gw review..
Searching for the best methods available for an article to be written on the stock performance. Statistics, Trend Analysis, Fundamental approach, Technical Analysis…etc. All these methods give a good insight on the performance of companies… While I believe in Fundamental approach which is the one I would prefer anytime..however given the herd mentality in stock markets..one needs to look at technicals. Well technical analysis is for those investors who act like a passenger in the shareholding pattern of a company while fundamentals is for the long term and investors… Market anomaly! still needs exploration…
