Subprime to Credit Crunch to Recession

No I am not starting a boring anecdote of the topics that have made a large number of final year students like me insomniac. Lots of dissection has already been done on them: their causes,etc. Some over enthusiast like me can go through the blogs of Paul Kruggman and Gregory Mankiw in order to find out more. However today something came in my mind: A different reason for the cause of all the doldrums in the economies. It occurred while I was having lunch and this stupid show was running on the TV. "MTV Roadies" - I know some of you out there would be swearing to kill me. Human being aspires money, glamor, power. Perhaps the glamor aspect of these shows is what keeps them running.
Q: So what has got to do with economic recession ??
A: Think a little differently. Look at the people out there who has got all those three above mentioned booty. They are the movie stars, certain other people from the glam world, ministers and sportsmen (for India only the cricketers). Now when an academician finds that a certain guy who has not got even one-tenth of the grey matter that he possesses makes some 50 to 100 times more money than him it would require a lot of altruism on his/her part not to feel jealous and frustrated. The result is you would find Phd-s in physics from top US universities moving to GoldmanSachs as investment banker. Read the book "My life as a Quant". Certainly the last resort of the desired three and plenty of them. The desire increases, the desire for more and quick. The story after this, can be related to the subprime story and the consequent problems the world is facing today. Was everything too far fetched?? Well may be.
~ Perhaps the greed factors are omnipresent in the human beings.
~ Perhaps I was trying to connect everything to something else: What can make people aspire something more constructive
~ Perhaps the media can help by glamorizing something else. And not how to be "cool" and/or "hot".
~ Hypothesis: MTV Roadies (I am using it as a representative) the real reason for everything.... Did I strike?

When life doubles up

This blog is dedicated to one of my dear friends who tied the nuptial thread last weekend, and I was there to witness their relationship culminate in the ultimate bonding. This bonding between the two has got some special meaning to me. Their pre-marriage relationship has been a long one. It started in class eight - Yeah!! you heard it right - and has just taken off :). It is sweet to say the least. As another friend puts it: " Nowadays when people fail to stick to a marriage for twelve years....These two have been in love with each other for that long a time ". I certainly don't know about the little 'sparks' that keep their relationship intact but I have my own views on it.
I treat childhood love special. When two kids fall in love with each other they are not aware of the myriads of other things that accompany the package called love. Infatuation you call it right. Well how many of us do carry those little doses of infatuation and store them in some special corners. And those who can preserve them for such a long time are certainly the lucky ones. And my friend is lucky to do so from a stage when it would have been hard to spell the word commitment. A stage when their love did not come in package. "Wish you two a great life ahead".

Note: All views are personal.

The Highs And Lows of __________ ???

Dear readers
What does this picture remind you of? Think a little beyond the obvious

Pursuit of Happiness

A few days back I was having a conversation with one of my friends:
Me: "Can you remember the last time you were really happy?"
Friend (Irritated) : "Yeah!! I do.."
Me: "When was it?"
Friend: Remembers some particular instance ... A party
Me: "But weren't you that particular day brooding about the current placement scenario?"
Friend gets confused and then remembers another occasion: The day he converted a day 0 summers
Me: "Common I remember you abusing the interviewer who did not give you an offer. He ruined your chances of joining your dream company and instead join this one"
He gets further confused. Each time he tried to find an instance when he thought he was happy, he actually found that he was not happy.
I have often tried to ask myself the same question. And I know the moments I am really happy. Today once again when I felt happy I thought of blogging it down, giving it a shot before the London diary.
I do derive happiness out of very small things. I would write about them all sometimes later. But the one that always makes me happy is when I play some sport. Be it volley, football, cricket, give me anything...I have realized that when I am inside the courts I completely forget about the entire world outside. In fact I change as a person. The usual cool me becomes extremely aggressive. The usual extremely careful person completely loses balance. During my days in IIT I was known as extremely injury prone. The reason behind is when I play I don't care. Nowadays when I have started getting a little conscious about my ankle (which is a constant source of injury) I know I am less happy than when I would not. A little philosophical way of saying would be "Sports is my salvation". Perhaps Me inside the court is the real me and the usual me that people know might actually be masked. And as long as I am fit enough to play I know I would be happy in my life albeit in patches.
Actually right now I feel quite happy after penning down my source of happiness. And frankly I always want to know the instances when people feel happy. The few people who read my blogs a sincere request/question "When did/do you feel happy". Please leave a comment. The answer might be a past event or something that I have instanced.

Suddenly Something

The last comment made on my previous post suddenly made me realize that my blogs are actually not defunct. Looking back I had not made a single post in 2008, which has been such an eventful year. And frankly the series called "Summers Journey" that I had started has not got any more importance in my life, and hence find no urge to continue with it. But stories should have an end. Hence I thought that in this blog I should sum that up without going to the intricacies, the little emotions, which I am so fond of expressing in writing. You know you love cherishing your successes and not something which culminates in failure. The point of time when I last wrote, the world to me was a success. Perhaps you should compare everything with the sensex. Remember the sensex was somewhere around 20K at that point!!!! Then drastic things started happening. For the not so technical people: The Subprime crisis started, leading to credit crunch, economic recession in US which has already spread to India, Banks started going bust.Lehman Brothers!!! (( And I was actually aspiring for it though I tanked their interview giving wrong answers to known questions )) and finally the sensex is at the half of 20K.
My story during this period has been something similar. Chronologically:

1) Got an offer from HSBC London for summer internship
2) Had an wonderful time of two months in London. Nice vacation I should say.
3) Worked hard to get a final offer.
4) Finally was not given an offer for apparently no logical reason.
5) Everyday is turning out to be worse than the day before now with the economies slowing down.
6) Becoming an I-banker (Does the term exists in the dictionaries any more) looks like a distance dream.
7) And now the the summers journey for our junior batch is at the climax.

This is everything in a nutshell. Perhaps someday soon I should write about the London trip. I also feel like writing on the current affairs in the economy. But seriously I think that would make the blogs boring. Of course everything depends on my mood. And right now the mood is all too somber and gloomy. So one can assume that my next set of blogs might be extremely dark (:P). Once again thanks to those few people who read my blogs, commented on them that gave me the motivation to do something which I love to do: expressing myself to the abstract world.