Leftovers in different world

Sometime back I received a e-mail in my office stating that they have some leftovers from last night, which they have brought to share with their teammates. That was the first time I have heard some one say that. In India if someone said something like that people would probably feel offended. A little thought in this and now I think this is clearly related to historic and cultural difference.

In USA, which has a cold climate, have had access to refrigerators since 1930s, a lifestyle which does not include daily cooking of food, it is reasonable to say that I have yesterday's food and people are bound to believe it is still good. Contrary to this, in India, where refrigerators became common thing only in late 1990s, where temperature of 100+ degree F is a common event, where people cook food daily (twice a day) and prefer freshly cooked food, it is understandable that people doubt the food whether it is still fresh. Of course with changing times the habits also change. I now quite regularly eat 2 or even 3 day old food, a thing that would have never happened in my home!          

Sathya sodhanai!

For those on the other side of linguistic barrier, the title translates to test of truth (lot of "T"s here :D, that was't intentional though). Everybody must have had that moment. Let me share one such moment.  It was during my Master's class. Our professor had explained a simple MATLAB program to plot a spline, the equation of which we had manually derived from given condition. To follow up with it, he had given us an assignment which was same problem but different initial condition.

I solved it, my friends too solved it. I did the program too.  A simple 10 line code. No big deal. However my friends naively believed that programming is not a required skill set for a mechanical engineer. Hence they never really cared to learn programming. It was the submission time and I had  forgot to save my program in cloud. We were all near the class, my friends struggling to complete the program. I helped them and we did it. I thought it was a simple program and frankly there was not many ways to write the same program differently. So I asked them to get me a copy of the same program. We all submitted it.

Next class, all our program red-flagged and we were all charged with group plagiarism. I tried too speak with the Prof that this was too simple a program and I know enough MALAB to write a longer program. However evidence was against me and I was indeed wrong in submitted the same program. In oriental philosophies there is a term called prayaschitta. I had to do something to prove my Prof about my programming abilities. And indeed I did it.

[Legend has it (:P) that Pavanesh sat continuously the whole night programming. The result was a 180+ line code that could directly generate any of the four types of spline that a user selects.  It would directly derive the equation from the initial condition input;  and no manual calculation was required. That was a month of course work, over night transferred into a program. The Prof was so impressed he asked a copy of the program used it in his later as part of his classes.] 

Hawks, doves, bears, bulls...

In the blog title, we have two animals and two birds. If you think, it is about the beautiful wildlife, with a scene of a bull grazing in the African grasslands with a dove feeding on the bull's wound or a hawk feeding on the dead bear, flashing in your mind, I would like to say, I am sorry. I mean business here, literally!!

Before we start meaning business, I have some consolation for Nature lovers. When ever I think about Hawks, I always had this doubt: "What is the difference between hawks, falcons, raptors, kites, eagles and vultures?". Since I tried to find about them, I would like to share them. The Raptor is general term used to describe a bird which feeds on other animals, so we need not worry about it. Of the others, Eagle and Vulture are quite easy to differentiate. Eagles are the more majestic ones with large wing span and powerful claws and beaks. The Vultures are the larger birds with the distinctive neck which are always shown in Discovery Channel or NGC or Animal Planet as eating the leftovers of preyed animals after a lion, tiger or a cheetah has finished its lunch. As for the rest of list, they are fairly similar and is hard to differentiate for an untrained eye!

So much for the birds; lets get back to business. In the end of May this year, the US Federal Reserve System (shortly referred to as Fed) chief Mr Ben Bernanke hinted that the Quantitative Easing (QE) tapering may soon be started. In market jargon he was said to have used Hawkish tone. For people who do not know what QE is, it is an unconventional monetary policy used by Fed since 2008 financial crisis (or Great Dispersion II). It is actually the third leg of QE or QE-3, which is currently in place. According to QE, the US Fed purchases $85 billion worth of bonds every month from the market, there by infusing liquidity into the market. More liquidity means the market interest rates move down. And lower interest have simulating effect on economy(at least theoretically), as people tend to spend more now, than hold to their money. Thus by buying $85b worth of bonds and assets, Fed is trying to simulate the US economy.

As Fed chief had used a Hawkish tone, it spooked the markets world over; especially the developing markets like India, which have been enjoying the higher liquidity driving their markets - a Bull run. So the Hawkish tone has spooked the Bulls and the Bears had captured the market. The result, the rupee plunged to all time low against the dollar, and markets feel to the lowest point for this year. Then Dr Rajan was appointed as RBI governor and he used his 'tricks' and 'magics' to stabilized the market.

Yesterday the Fed has actually announced, "A $10b tapering will happen from January". Does it mean Bears will jump in again and the drive the Bulls away? I think otherwise and I have my reasons. First, the market was expecting a much steeper tapering. Second, the Fed has announced that, further tapering would be considered only if the US economy continues to grow at a robust rate. Third, the Fed has decided to hold the short term interest near zero. All these reason has made Fed sound Dovish, which the markets love. Moreover, it removes a great amount of uncertainty affecting the market and will make space for market participants to worry about other factors!

To put in short, in May end, the Fed was Hawkish and Bears enjoyed. Now that the Fed had sounded Dovish, will Bulls enjoy? In US the answer seems to be yes, with both Dow Jones and S&P-500 hitting all time highs. Will Sensex and Nifty follow suit? Hopefully!!