Virtual Ramblings

Random Contrasts:
The week that went by had two extreme days, let me start with the happy one. On Wednesday I had an amazing day, I mean one of those days where because of no reason you are happy. Having lunch that day, we laughed so much that my stomach began to hurt, the reason was something very silly, and I myself may not laugh on that again, but still we were a bunch of four, and I could not stop laughing at all. I haven’t laughed like that in ages. Even after lunch, the whole day was amazingly happy and fun. Thursday was a total opposite, One of the worst days I have had in months, nothing seem to fall right in place, setbacks after setbacks, and more importantly no mental peace at all. I wanted to get over it, I wanted to forget about events, but then newer ones kept on occurring and I was feeling a lot down. This kind of carried onto Friday and a little into Saturday. On the whole it was a week of strong contrasts.

Random Hypocrisies:
One of my friends has decided to get married and has began the hunt for the prospective wife, so generally the point of discussion in the group has become marriage and choosing girls in general. One of these days, we were asking him his requirements, what is he looking for. I would not like to tell what he said, but I was really impressed to see a person who really knew what he wanted. In the discussion, the point of boozing and smoking came out, and I declared that when I begin to search, one of the requirements I would have is that the girl should drink occasionally. My theory is that, I have seen many a girls who come into our family getting a cultural shock when we cousins, along with out immediate elder generations including my father and uncles have an occasional drink at home. I have seen many new women coming into the family not happy with this practice.
The very next day, I was watching TV, and one of the songs of movie “Khoya Khoya Chand” and I saw “Soha Ali Khan” and immediately I got a talk, one should be as demure and beautiful as her. The fact that she looked so appealing was that she was extremely traditional look in the movie, with a antique look to her.
Are we hypocrites in wanting this?, I mean we want people to be modern and accept our lifestyle, however when it comes to women we want someone who is traditional in appearance?

Random Surprises:
Last week I did a post about meeting people online, and possibilities of a relationship with people you meet online titled Love in the times of world wide web. . I have to say the response left me totally surprised. I never expected people to be so open to meeting people online, and more importantly more women trusting people from the internet. Even though I am not completely convinced myself of the prospects, I was really happy to see more people “trusting”, definitely a very good sign for the society we live in. I did get some really practical responses, saying one should do more ground work before going ahead and meeting someone from online, but still on the whole I found people far more trusting then what I imagined we are. Such an eye opener this one was.

Random Romance:
I am not sure if many of my friends noticed this, but most of my posts in last couple of weeks have been in a way related to romance. As I had mentioned before, I did try my hand in writing romance this last couple of weeks, I could not manage a mushy story, not even close to romance we get to see mostly on television or the romantic novels. Still an attempt is an attempt right.
I wrote about a how a woman desires happiness and romance much more than any logic can define as a short story inQuestions unasked... I wrote about how people should blend and not think too much about changing each other or in the worst case change the person itself in It’s not all about change. I wrote about the new age internet romance in Love in the times of world wide web.
I also wrote about the flirting over at my other blog. so how good or bad was my brand of romance?

Random Foodie:
Looks like the foodie in me has suddenly lost his way, I seem to have lost the enthusiasm towards trying out new food stuff, more importantly my partners in crime seem to be very busy with their personal lives, making it even more difficult for me to get motivated to go and try new stuff. Whats happening people?

Random Rants:
My personal PC had died down last week, I tried to get it working last weekend, after about half an hour of struggle gave it up, was hoping the time plays a healer to my PC as well and it will get better as the days progress, turns out time does not help PC’s so had to call a repair person to make it to work. He took 10 mnts to correct it, unfortunately he screwed up a lot of other stuff, so when he fixed the new issues after 45 mnts, the original problem was back on. Finally after about 3 hours in total he found out some wire on the mother board had shorted because of the dust, all it needed was a puff of hot air from his mouth, and my PC started booting. Turns out after years in software industry, my hardware knowledge isn’t that bad, I kept asking him, in fact commanding him what to check next :D. Now that my PC is back, I think I can give rest to my office laptop.

July 31st 2003:
The day I got my first paycheck. I had worked for 32 days, and 16861 Rs was credited to my account. I was so enthusiastic about my first salary that I had made around 5 trips to ATM to check if the amount was already credited. There is something fun about the first paycheck which is unexplainable, right.

That must be the only month where I spent almost whole of my salary. I first bought myself a cell phone, one of the cheapest ones that was available, those days even these used to cost around 6000Rs. The first weekend, I was supposed to take out my cousins out for a drink and a nice dinner, we were link a bunch of 13 people and I ended up spending around 7ooo Rs on the dinner. That must be the only time ever in my life where I was totally drunk. I was so drunk I could not even sign the check at the restaurant and my dad had to do it for me. [Totally different and hilarious story, may be another post soon :)]. I did spend some money on clothes. In total my salary for the month was almost spent. Knowing my spending habits, this was like a shock to myself, just a month back I used to live with an allowance of 150Rs per month, within which I saved too. What a change it was.

Even though I spent a lot within my first month, I was back to my normal habits from second month. I used to save most of what I earn. I can’t say if it was good or bad.
Those days, we used to have bi-annual salary revisions. After just two months in the company, my salary was revised, as it was too small tenure, I was handed a nominal increase of around 6-7%, I must have seen my revised salary atleast 10 times that day. I immediately planned what I would be buying for myself and what I would buy for my parents with the extra money in the next month. The increase translated into something like 1000rs per month extra. But still I had so many plans for next few months on spending 1000Rs.

2nd July 2007:
The hikes were announced yesterday, we were all called individually by managers, and handed over hike letters. I was anxious to know how much I got, Is it good compared to others?, Is it good compared to my expectations, Was I expecting too much, Am I paid very less compared to other companies. These were the questions on my mind. I got a satisfactory hike. I came back to my normal routine. My colleague reminds me the salaries for month of June has been credited. I had totally forgotten about the salaries this month, I checked how much of income tax has been cut this time. The only column I look at now a days when my payslip comes out. The amount of deduction towards tax this month.

I was anxious about the percentage of hike, but really had no clue as to how much it translates into, I mean the actual amount, how much more I will be getting per month, Is it going to make happy?, Am I going to buy something, Am I going to spend the extra money I make, Am I going to enjoy the extra cash. Answer for almost all the above questions is No. Probably another week I will forget about the fact that hike happened. Until I notice more tax being cut from my salary next month.

Its not just me, I did speak to a couple of my colleagues who had the same opinion. The enthusiasm we had with out first pay check, our first hike etc, is totally lost, none of us were really bothered about how we can enjoy the extra money, only thing we were bothered was how much people in other companies are making.

Annual salary hike has ended up becoming just a number, number we use to value our performance against peers in the company and peers out in the other companies.

Future:
I think more responsibilities or financial liabilities might change me. May be the movement from enjoyment to no feeling, will turn into worries, how will I make the extra cash ? will be the question on my mind.

P.S If you think the numbers and dates are fake, you don’t know me.

Cubelands everywhere across the world has no shortage of young people. Cubeland here in India has engineers as young as 21 earning huge amounts, huge in terms of more than how much they need to spend. Again I wont get into how much they need to and how much they want. I think all of us agree that they are getting more money then they spend.

Now lets come to some slightly experienced guys around 25/26 age brackets, I, along with most of people around me belong to this age group. I can safely assume that we too make good money, more than what we spend. Here there is a catch, many people in this age group, have less commitments and are the easy targets to make them commit.

Just the other day I was doing a stock check on all my investments and savings, Something I would have never imagined myself doing. I just wanted to see my limits, I wanted to see how much I can afford to do, and whats the best thing to make them grow. I have had clashes with my parents when it comes to investment. I don’t agree with investing on property when it is for the pure sake of investment and that too after taking a mortgage. I simply don’t understand this. I know I make more money when I sell it. The question here is at what cost. I don’t want to spend next 20 years of my life, giving everything I earn to a bank. This is something which is purely my feeling and please don’t consider that I expect everyone to think this way.

Indian economy is fast growing and one of the change that is happening is the way youngsters are lured into spending more money. The conservative India which once believed in saving is slightly changing into more of an liberal spending new India. I have absolutely no problem with this. I mean this does boost our economy and again gets the clash flowing, making everyone prosper.

Unfortunately Indian economy has not stopped at this, what has happened now is banks are luring people into committing to loans and mortgages. I feel this is making them indirect slaves to the economy. The growing interest rates charged for home mortgages coupled with global slowdown in high paying technology might be a super killer in a short time. You can call me a over cautious or even non risk taking fellow. But somehow I am not convinced all is well with Indian economy. I dont see alternate jobs coming up where the people can shift to, nor people planning to work on that direction.

Coming back to financial woes of twenty somethings, I just had a conversation with my father and his siblings about what used to be the their concern when they were my age. I was surprised that they never had so much concern as to what will happen in future, agreed they neither had a high paying job nor had an insight to their financial future, more importantly money was not in their priority list. I am not saying they did not have aspirations and wants, they too wanted a good life and decent house, if possible a two wheeler or a car some day, but never money.

The other point was they never had to worry about repaying a huge mortgage for next 20 years of work life, probably the most fruitful period in their life, time when they can enjoy and be happy.

I still believe in the old school of thinking that credit is devil, I am still a believer that one should not try to stretch beyond their limits. May be I am a misfit for the young school of thought