Peace

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

-Robert Frost

Wish I went to sleep everyday like this... but ya today I will.

~*~ Bhars - the contented

Z.E.R.O

Know what, having a zero balance saving bank account helps :)

And ya, I am debt free :) Yay

God bless
~*~ Bhars...

Tirumala...

I always liked Tirumala / Tirupati for one good reason - the climb up the mountain. This arduous task of walking 9Km seems pretty tolerable to me, compared to the wait times in the long queues. I have climbed it many times since childhood, but for the past few years, I haven't done that. Hence went for a trip with the better half.


The 9Km journey from Alipiri (foothill) to Tirumala can be divided into two different stretches. One - the first 2 Kms - is highly inclined and made of steps. You can watch out for milestones every 200 m. The end of the steep climb is marked by the Kali Gopuram.


The second stretch - 2nd to 9th Km - is a cake walk compared to the first. The walk is on smooth plains and slight slants with fewer steps, studded with deer parks, beautiful sceneries and if you are in the early morning a wonderful sun rise. One mistake first time climbers do is to walk fast in the first stretch and lose their energy when the start the second stretch. I feel one should rest and relax as much as necessary in the first stretch so that energy is conserved to complete the second in time. 2hrs each for each of the stretches would be my unsolicited recommendation to first time climbers.


I get disturbed when one has to be in a queue for 48 hours (thats the case these days on weekends) even when all amenities are taken care of. Agreed, Balaji is a big guy - amidst all those Gods who give things that you ask, this is one guy who gives you things with out even you having to ask! But so much crowd? The last two times I've been to the dharshan I always felt guilty coz I was using influence to get ahead of the queue.


I prefer dealing with the God who stays closer to my home... particularly the one with less crowd...

God bless!
~*~ Bhars

Memorables

In 26.5 years of life, I have accumulated enough memories. It is hardly feasible to recollect all of them everyday. In the normal routine of day to day activities and deadlines, I hardly recall any memories at all these days. Sometimes, a trigger comes in form of an old email that someone forwards, or an old piece of paper that falls out of a book, or some other way. These memories come in all flavors, good and bad, happy and sad - but precious all the same, for its all mine!!!

Hyderabad has a wonderful climate here in June. I wish I could bunk office and go for a long drive in my activa everyday. But see, I am my sincere (ahem ahem) self, hence end up dragging myself to office. Last Thursday was no different. I looked out of the window and would have bet it was 6PM, but my watch, computer and internet all showed 12 noon IST unanimously. You know, my lifestyle is great. I wake up, cook, get ready, come to office, work, go back home, eat, sleep. Whattay! I hardly get out of office, not even to see how it looks from outside. Well I thought, the climate is so nice, lets go for a walk! The walk triggered some memories...

I saw an image of the girl walking past me in the very same hitec city roads with an umbrella... She was the only one in the road who was walking in that hot mid may afternoon. She was walking one kilometer when all her friends came by auto. Well, she's saving money. After all, she's going to get higher education soon, every penny saved will matter, no?

She walked back 3Km to reach her room. She finished the pathetic hostel dinner and went back to studies at 7PM as usual. She studied amidst the main road's noise and friends' chatter. She went through the practice tests she had taken that morning praying to God she did not repeat any mistakes. She studied, practised, strategized for the next test - till the clock stuck 11, long after her roommates had slept. She closed her books, said her prayer and went to sleep.

She woke up at 4:45 to answer the alarm, enthusiastic as though she was going to change the world that day. She opened the balcony door and saw the empty main road shining with bright neon lights. She prayed again, hoping her future was bright as well. Another dawn another test for her. She evaluated her tests (usual silly mistakes awww), woke her roommate and went to have a pathetic breakfast. She walked through the balcony staring at the morning traffic and started mugging up the words from Barons. Even an hour a day was not enough to get her English improved. Duh! Out she came at 8:30 with her bright violet umbrella and started walking again.

That active, cheerful, studious, hardworking, god fearing young lady was doing a penance in the name of CAT. All this to make the lazy, cynical, confused, unclear, probablistically spiritual me who wakes up at 7:30 after snoozing off the alarm twice and goes for a job that I hardly like... Duh! Dont you hate me? I do :)

Thank God, memories exist!

~*~ Bhars

Research Paper

Wonder if I bragged about this here... After a long time, I was browsing through WIMWI website and found the following interview in a newsletter. Something somewhere sounded vaguely familiar... Oops this was the project I had done 3 years back! Its already THREE full years now??? Wonder if anyone not so familiar with portfolio allocation (for that matter, even the ones who are familiar with it) will understand the following interview, leave alone the original research paper. The project report looks like its worth 28$ a copy! I have no clue where the money goes - that is if somebody takes the pain to buy a copy!!! So apart from adding 4+ GPA to my CGPA, the work has added more value to me and the world (hopefully ;-) Over to the interview now...

Portfolio Allocation: Beyond Mean Variance

Professor Arnab Laha

Q Arnab, you have moved away, or if I may say, dared to think beyond Markowitz, a Nobel Prize laureate. Where and how does your work differ from that of Markowitz?

A Markowitz’s mean-variance framework assumes that returns on the stocks constituting a portfolio have finite mean and variance. It has been known for quite some time that some stocks do not obey this requirement. In such situations one cannot obtain the optimal portfolio using Markowitz’s approach. Our paper discusses portfolio allocation when some stocks (or assets) in the portfolio do not have finite expectation and variance.

Q What are the benefits of your model vis-a-vis Markowitz’s model?

A Our model is more general than that of Markowitz and can be applied to obtain optimal allocations for any portfolio and makes no demand that the returns on the stocks in the portfolio have finite expectation and variance.

Q What is the new criterion developed by you to take care of stocks which show “heavy-tailed distribution”? Arnab, as I am using a technical term from your paper, can you please explain in simple terms the meaning of these terms.

A The term “heavy-tailed distributions” refers to distributions for which we have higher chances of obtaining extreme values (high or low) than that would be expected for a normal distribution. There are a large number of distributions which are heavy-tailed, of which, some do not even have finite expectation and variance. We develop new criteria for portfolio optimization which are applicable for any type of return distribution.

Q Can an investor use this model? What are the benefits?

A Yes, investors can use this model to their benefit. The results in this paper show that if the returns of one or more of the stocks in a portfolio are heavy-tailed, then the portfolio allocation done by our method performs much better than the portfolio allocation obtained by a naïve application of the mean-variance method.

Q Can your model account for the recent crash in the share market? If yes, why and if not, why not?

A No, ours is not a market model and hence it is not expected that it will be able to predict market crashes. However, the results in the paper show that an investor may be better protected if they do portfolio allocation using our method than the mean-variance method.

Laha, A K; Bhowmick, D and Subramaniam, B (2007). “Portfolio Allocation with Heavy-Tailed Returns,” Applied Financial Economics Letters, 3(4), 237-42.

You can click here for the paper and here for the interview !

~*~ Bhars

P.S: Also, this becomes the 150th post in 4 years now! Lets see how and where it goes!!! Bbye!

Mothers' day...

Just read the article and I am really moved by what Thomas Friedman writes about his mom in NYTimes....

I don’t recall her ever uttering a word of cynicism. She was not naïve. She had taken her knocks. But every time life knocked her down, she got up, dusted herself off and kept on marching forward, motivated by the saying that pessimists are usually right, optimists are usually wrong, but most great changes were made by optimists.

I do not believe in these special days like mothers day, fathers day, valentines day and the like. (Well I prefer holidays though ;-). But know what, I did call my mom yesterday - just like any other day. In fact, I called her twice (the second call was to ask what to do with the left over sugar syrup after cooking gulab jamuns ;-). In fact I didn't even know yesterday was mothers' day. I wonder if she knew it as well. Hmm... should I call her up and say "He he he mom... you know what belated happy mothers day and ya I love you :D" I am sure she is gonna say 'Podi naaye phona vayiii!' duh!

I was a jerk when it comes to my relationship with my mom (may be I was that dad's girl)! I never managed to win her love as dramatically as my sister did. The cry baby nitpicking teenager I was, I promptly complained to her she doesn't love me at all... She had one sentence to answer for all my loooooong sessions of cribs. That was 'You will not understand it today, the day will come when you will!'

Ever since I was away from home, I missed her. Ever since I had a home for myself, in the past 3 months, not a day passed by without silently acknowledging what she had done for me all life. I think she must be smiling secretly in Thanjavur knowing that I am realizing it all everyday! May be she even knows what are the further lessons that await.

I wonder if there are ways to give back to parents... How much ever we account for, these remain irrepayable debts... One generation can at the max loan to the next, may be...

God bless moms!

~*~ Bharsss

GM Diet

Gotten bored with my routine office schedule, I wanted to try something new. Hence went on a GM diet last week. It is a program crafted to lose 5-7 Kgs in a week. Have known a couple of friends who have tried this diet, some completed, few gave up. Wondered how I would fare.

Prior to the diet week, raided the Venkatagiri Sunday market for all sorts of vegetables and fruits. One small watermelon, one papaya, 3 mangoes, carrots, raddishes, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, beetroot, drumstick all to consume for a week!

Day One

... is an all fruits day (no bananas though) with lots of melon

During the start of the day, I figured out the way to the office gym and weighed myself (lets say X ;-)

Cut half a water melon, quarter papaya, slices of mango and ate every now and then through the morning and afternoon in an indistinguishable brunch. I had forgotten about the diet and was immersed in the CoD dashboard that I had to send by the end of day. For snack and dinner, I had a fruit plate each from the cafeteria.

Had a mild headache, caused more by CoD dashboard than by the diet. Slept peacefully!

Day Two

Woke up with dreams of steamed potato for breakfast. The diet said 'ONE' potato. I thought one would be too less for me. Hence boiled about 2.5 potatoes. Added a tinge of butter, salt and pepper to the potato pieces - never thought that could taste like heaven! And to my surprise, I couldnt even finish one potato. I was no longer hungry. I stuffed myself to finish that saying I will need carbohydrates for the day!

Packed the rest of the potatoes along with 1/2 cucumber, 4 carrots, 6 ladies fingers, 4 cauliflower pieces for lunch and snacks (after all they dont sell vegetables in the cafeteria)

Once I reached office, I ran to the gym to check weight - that was a X - 0.5 Kg! Wow is this thing working? Or this 0.5 is just a calibration error on that dabba machine?

Had more carrots, more cucumber and cauliflower pieces for dinner and went to sleep. But sleep seemed to have lost my address... And there was a dire need to eat something sweet... I controlled till 1 AM, finally when I gave up, went to the fridge and ate a piece of dairy milk that the better half had left as my share! Only then could I sleep well...

Day Three

Had the same urge for sugar as last night. Opened the day with another piece of dairy milk. After eating a quarter papaya and a few mango pieces for breakfast, had a spoon of the kesari that I made for him...

Its a fruits and vegetables day (no bananas no potatoes) today and the weighing machine already read X-1.5 Kg. Wow!!!

1/2 a cucumber, 4 carrots and a cup of cooked cabbage made lunch! Had fruits for snacks and fried ladies finger and cooked cabbage for dinner.

My sister had called and I was telling her how sincerely I was sticking to this GM diet. She says simply "Oh now I understand why vegetable prices and inflation are sky rocketing... Its all you...!!!"

Grrr

Day Four

Bananas and milk day (with soup)

Had a full cup of horlicks with milk and sugar! Gulped 2 bananas for breakfast, 2 for lunch and snacks, had a banana milkshake for snack again, one more banana for dinner and slept

Felt no urge for sugar that day though! Weight stayed at X-1.5 only... I knew somehow that it wont go further down.

Day Five

Rice and Tomatoes day (more water today)

No hunger, made a cup of tomato rice - ate half for lunch and half for dinner. Had a cup of vending machine chai at office... already got bored of the diet!

Day Six

Rice and vegetables day

Ate some soup, some rice and some vegetables on the sixth day... totally bored of the diet... I was not longing for food but was just plain BORED

Day Seven

Ditto as previous day

Learnings

What is the point of doing something when I dont learn anything? So, here it goes...

• I dont *need* as much food as I actually end up eating
• Clearly 4 trips to the vending machine and cafeteria per day is unwarranted
• I have understood, chai is my favourite (and the one I missed the most during this week)
• I have some amount of control still left in life!!!
• My 1.5Kg loss may be purely calibration error :D

Thank God I am in right BMI category and wont need any of these fancy diets in the near future..!

~*~ Bhars.

Are you ready?

Get rich Slowly is one of the blogs I read regularly. I know I can take a few ideas from there, sometime later. Most of the content being America centric, I will not be able to follow some of its articles - for example, living out of credit cards - I never use revolving credit (once I forgot to pay in time and it got revolved. From then on that is) None of my friends around use it to revolve. All of us promptly pay back. So, I dont really expect to understand someone getting into credit card debt. Talking about credit cards, I love their reward points. Recently I got a 5 knives set and stand from ICICI loyalty points - Being a killer cook myself (ahem ahem) I just love those knives. But ya I guess culturally our financial priorities are different.

That aside, I read this particular entry (actually all the 100 odd comments as well) and thought how true! I have myself known of people like this, who SAY they want something but actually DO nothing about it. Of course I myself sometimes do. I should remember these for life, should recall whenever I'm confused

• One just won't DO anything (that requires quite an amount of effort) until they actually WANT to - until they are READY!
  
• When words and actions conflict, judge by the action!
  

BTW, I am ready for the Indianized version of the famous GM Diet. Are you ready for something?

~*~ Bharsss

Trip to Chilkur

What is this Chilkur thing?

In our 5th term in IIMA, we had a case study on Tirupati Balaji. It was an excellent situation to apply our learnings on the queuing theory. We had to solve a single server (God) multi-client (that too loooong winding queue of clientswaiting to get serviced) problem. While solving it, we learnt some more queuing theory, some stuff on perceived-vs-real waiting time, and had great fun in class explaining basic terms like 'Balaji', 'Dharshan' and 'Laddoo' to the foreign students who had come to the campus as part of the student exchange program. One of the closing points the professor (who had actually made the current queuing system for Tirupati) made was to create duplicate servers - or a copy of the same God in different places - for example in Chennai T Nagar, there is a replica of Tirupati Balaji located on the Venkatnarayana Road (I should mention that the queue in that replica temple is so long that we have to consider replica's replica these days)

Looks like long before the learned professors could come up with this concept, 'The' Balaji himself had come up with His own replica in Chilkur. You can read the base story of this place here. You can only ask Chilkur Balaji for some wish to be fullfilled, only after having taken 11 pradhakshanas (walk around the temple praying) around Him. I think this practice is to make sure you dont go to God asking for some of the impulse wishes to be fullfilled. It is believed that the God grants you the wish once you do this. After the wish gets fullfilled, you have to go to the God again and take 108 pradhakshanas to thank Him for the same.

The Activa Vrooooooooooooooooom

The better half had prayed and taken the initial 11 pradhakshanas there. With his wish fullfilled, he had to go back to complete the 108. With our new black activa (brag brag ;-) around, having a three day weekend got us thinking about a drive to Chilkur. From the local map that we had in our store room and from Google maps, this drive seemed straight forward. So we started on Sunday with the fuel tank filled to the brim (Oh yeah, its a _new_ bike na, I have to measure mileage)

Balaji must have told the Sun and Wind Gods that we were out on a drive. They both were so pleasant on us. Banjara Hills Road No. 12 seemed like Heaven on earth at 2 PM that day. We had thought given the temple is very famous, we would have milestones guiding all the way. He he he. When we reached Mehdipatnam, we knew we had no clue as to how to go. We gave up on all the mugged up map routes and asked a friendly cell-phone-cover seller how to go to Chilkur. He told us to catch a 288D. We smiled and said we were driving - he said 'Go straight'. Thats the first of the infinite number of 'Go straight's that we heard that day.

We had reached the outskirts of the city in a few minutes wondering if we were in the right route. Once in a while a share-auto driver confirmed us we were in the right road asking us to 'Go straight' further. A few times, we saw a 288D coming in the opposite direction and told ourselves we might be in the right road after all. A few other times, we saw a lone traveller walking(!) on the road and confirmed from him that we are in the right road. I kept cribbing to the better half next time he prays, he better pray to a God who is closer home. A lot of confusion, few wrong turns and drive backs brought us finally in front of the small temple in Chilkur.

The Temple

The better half told me that the last time he had come on a Sunday, it was very crowded and the dharshan queue went till the roads outside the temple. May be on this particular day, people were worried if it would rain and postponed their Chilkur plans - we had very manageable crowd there. I saw a lot of people taking their 108 pradhakshanas. I saw the temple's board read, 'Concentrate on the God, not on the number'. To make sure the counting is taken care of, there are printed cards kept there. Every time you cross a certain point, you can cross out the numbers on the card, to manage the count. I saw this temple did not have a hundi - they believe that they should not get money from devotees.

I realize my Bhakti has gone down over the years - more rationalization, more belief in 'I can', may be lesser failures hence the lesser need for God... I remain a probabilistic theist (check out Scotts explanation here ;-). Well I dont mind doing some calculations on our pradhakshanas. My guesstimate on the perimeter of the temple is about 60m. So our prarthana meants about a 6.5 Km walk! Isn't that cool :-)

Take aways

• If I had told the better half, 'Come on! Lets take a 6.5 Kms walk this Sunday afternoon', he would have just said 'pagal hogayi kya'. But through this prayer, not only did he walk the full length, but also put up with my lack of stamina many a time. Well its all about perspectives in life!!!
• The way as much as I figured it out, when you go from Mehdipatnam towards Chilkur, take the locate the second circle on the main road and take a left from there. There are signs all the way till the Artillery center, follow these signs - Always follow the main road. The Artillery center comes on your right. It is a big red building after which comes Tipu Dwar. Take a left there - the road opposite to Tipu Dwar. Then go straight following the main road, if need be confirming from shared autos or 288Ds till you reach Swaminarayan Gurukul - a big bright colored building that comes to your left. From there take the road that goes right. You will see a board for the first time saying something like 'Welcome to Chilkur', from here the road to the temple is pretty simple (go straight ;-) and there are signs wherever you need to take a turn.

Hope the directions were helpful. You can see the same directions explained differently here. In case you have a different route, let me know through comments.

Whether you choose to drive or not, you gotta visit Chilkur Balaji. Whether you visit Balaji or not, you gotta drive to Chilkur :-)

Take care...

~*~ Bharsss

Will power

I just read this article on New York Times. That is one of my favourite things-to-do when I am taking a break from my process-engineering work (BTW, thats what I do to earn my livelihood these days). Reading NYT for me, is to just look at the top 10 read / blogged items on the right side. I hardly read anything else, including the headlines. I get a well filtered content of the site, somehow in just these two clicks. Coming back to the article, it throws light on two things -

• Brain has only a limited amount of willpower
• Practice can improve willpower capacity

I guess these two will help me now to get out of my Everything-O-Mania. 'Whatever you do - give it your best' is what I have lived by all the while, trying to take up as many things as I can and trying to give as best I can. I tell myself all I have is one life, I have to do so much... Marriage has just added things to that list... like cooking, home design, etc.

Now that I understand a bit about how brain works, I am going to select ONE thing and focus! Let me see how it comes out...

~*~ Bharsss

P.S: The better half faces a puzzle everyday when he gets to office. Help him solve it?