Blog Glut

I was away on an assignment and did not have time to type in a few lines of babble. It still is surprising how easily you can become a member of a large group of individuals who take to typing away on a terminal, publishing for a larger audience without proof reading or for that matter, even without a fair idea about journalism. Maybe that is why you get so many blogs left half baked, which could easily include mine, on the net waiting to rot. It is the seeming ease of entry which makes for so many drop outs, maybe even the lack of rigour in entry, like a dozen papers to pass and a thesis to prepare. Funny how access to a certain halo results in more people turing away from it than higher participation. It would be interesting to find out the percentages of drop outs in an activity or club where there is the said rigour against that which requires almost nothing to get in. It is also worth finding out who are these individuals forming this large mass suddenly found squatting in cyberspace, here are some numbers for the curious ones. Like everything else about statistics, do not ask where the numbers came from or whether the weighted mean has been used where data was missing or whatever.

Global demographics

Segmentation

Gender.... Aha... i see the whites of your eyes now!!!!

This is the link where i came across this, http://www.masternewmedia.org/blog_trends_and_statistics_the_state_of/

The figures are as of 2008 and given the exponential growth we may be majorly off mark but still the stats have a story.

Interesting piece of junk mail

FROM: SULE MOHAMED

AUDITING / ACCOUNTING DIRECTOR

INTERNATIONAL BANK OF AFRICA(BOA)

BURKINA-FASO WEST AFRICA.

My dear (my oh my aren't we getting a bit too comfortable with each other here?) I am contacting you in regards to a business transfer of a huge sum of money from a deceased account. Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make anyone apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day. I decided to contact you due to the urgency of this transaction.

PROPOSITION; I discovered an abandant sum of $11.5M(Eleven Million Five Hundred thousand United states Dollars) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customers who died along with his entire family. Since his death, none of his next-of-kin or relations has come forward to lay claims to this money as the heritier. I cannot release the fund from his account unless someone applies for claim as the next-of-kin to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidelines. Upon this discovery, I now seek your permission to have you stand as a next of kin to the deceased as all documentations will be carefully worked out by me for the funds $11.5M(Eleven Million Five Hundred thousand United states Dollars) to be released in your favour as the beneficiary's next of kin.It may interest you to note that I have secured from the probate an order of madamus to locate any of deceased beneficiaries.

Please acknowledge receipt of this message in acceptance of my mutual business endeavour by

furnishing me with the following;

1. Your Full Names and Address.

2. Direct Telephone and Fax numbers.

These requirements will enable me file a letter of claim to the appropriate departments for necessary approvals in your favour before the transfer can be made. I shall be compensating you with $4.6 Million Dollars on final conclusion of this project, while the rest $6.9Million shall be for me. Your share stays with you while the rest shall be for me for investment purposes in your country.

If this proposal is acceptable by you, do not take undue advantage of the trust I have bestowed in you, I await your urgent email.Please reply in this my alternative email address only (sule_mohamed02@voila.fr <http://us.mc596.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=sule_mohamed016@yahoo.com> ) for confidential reasons.

Regards,

Your;s faithfully,

Sule Mohamed

Indisputable Facts about Chuck Norris

A crazy page on frikipedia, sent to me by Anil, this is the article in full

Indisputable Facts about Chuck Norris

• Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
• He doesn't need to read books, he just gives this stare till they give him the information he need
• If you ask Chuck Norris what time it is, he always says, "Two seconds till." After you ask, "Two seconds to what?" heroundhouse kicks you in the face.
• Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
• Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse... horses are hung like Chuck Norris
• There are no disabled people. Only people who have met Chuck Norris.
• Chuck Norris recently had the idea to sell his urine as a canned beverage. We know this beverage as Red Bull.
• Chuck Norris doesn't believe in Germany.
• Chuck Norris once shot an enemy plane down, by pointing his finger at it and yelling "Bang!"
• Chuck Norris invented the entire color spectrum. Except pink. Tom Cruise invented pink.
• What goes through the minds of all Chuck' victims before they die? His shoe.
• Chuck Norris played Russian roulette with a full loaded gun and won.
• Chuck Norris does not think he has had sex with a woman if she survives.

http://www.frikipedia.co.uk/index.php/Chuck_Norris , yes their version of our Rajni

Swine Flu - 4

It seems to have quietened down a bit, what say? Sure the madness and panic with people keeping an active track of those succumbing to this suddenly popular flu, seems to have gone into auto mode. I wonder what the guys planning to sell the masks at a premium, end up doing with a house full of N95s.

Well they have one stoic customer, my wary head on the bookshelf.

Jokes apart, it still is a wonder how we begin profiteering in everything that happens around us. Apart from the mask fiasco, there are actual sms' where some companies producing drugs to fight against such disease are being recommended for purchase by the stock market brokers.

On second thoughts, we actually deserve this.

Millenium City I

There was and still is a lot of tension in the faces of news readers as they declare the lack of rainfall and the plight of the farmers who wholly depend on it to grow their crops. But in Gurgaon even the lightest of showers can put you in a tight spot. This is after a slight shower in Sector 50.

One good aspect of this being that old vehicles would find it hard to survive in this terrain, thus being replaced by more efficient or at the least new vehicles.

Express ways to goof up..

The Indian Express carried this story " Tamilflu tablets stolen from airport" which kicked my socks off. The now renowned drug "Tamiflu" has an Indian origin?? The last person with a serious case of Tamilflu was Bal Thakeray in the 60's which was revised to include people from other parts of the country by him and his own. Careful with the "l" guys.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/tamilflu-tablets-stolen-from-airport/502385/

Swine Flu - 3

Apparently there are a horde of others who think the same way as our gentleman at the hospital. Sad. Reminds me of a line from the awesome batman movie when the joker asks the batman to introduce a little chaos into the lives of the morally correct and watch them shun their own morals in a second.

http://finance.indiainfo.com/article/0908111117_making_a_killing_fear_masks_times_costlier/418208.html

Swine Flu - 2

Taking a cue from the last instance of the possibility of the spreading of the flu in schools, I approached, though through another person, a hospital where I sent them the idea of distributing masks freely. Gurgaon is primarily a moneyed place (why? because if you work here you are probably employed with a large sized multinational or if not you are rich all over by selling the land parcels to the multinationals and you plan to spend your remaining years mumbling to the buffaloes you take out for a walk) so the schools would have students from the parents who are on the "well off" curve or atleast a "High Earning, Not Rich Yet" Henry for short, types. So I see an advantage for the hospitals to actively do their provisions for a long tail activity. Hoping that the "moneyed" place hospitals would have marketing wiz kids who can see that far, I put up the proposal to the head of marketing. Guess what? the guy comes back that he is planning to sell the masks at a hefty premium (50%) even to the employees of the hospital, let alone any school kid. Thus he plans to make what? a few lakhs of profit. Jerk is an understatement here. All you needed was a few working grey cells to see the advantage and not act like a vulture for once. But again when we employee a marketing person we begin treating him like a sales guy and jump up and down on his head asking for numbers only. It is not surprising why he thinks so.

Swine flu

During a recent conversation, one of my friends who was down with a viral, heard me exclaim "swine" through the phone. He promptly questioned me if that was a general take on his behaviour pattern or was I sounding worried. It was a bit of both actually. He had not bothered to call back on a couple of occasions. So much for the innovative name which is slowly gripping the nation.

But inspite of all the news of a rising toll of victims, my present homeland Gurgaon remains oblivious to the dangers. We all know it spreads fast and there is no doubt that there is a higher probability of contracting it when in a human congregation. There is also the terror of having to be admitted into a government run hospital on contracting it and being exposed to a horde of other disease which run free.

I was taken aback when even in the schools, children have not been asked to take on the precautionary mask. The mask is still the sign of a victim and is open to being discriminated against rather than being seen as a measure of precaution. I agree, precaution is not really embedded in the Gurgaon psyche where beating the other vehicle to the toll plaza would probably top the favourite daydream contest, but schools?. Atleast that's the last place you hear that tree and sapling planting is good and that it could save the earth. Yes, idealistic, and you would expect them to think better during such an epidemic.

Out to prove a point

Entity Proof - 3

The entity proof is fraught with many contributing to the collective sabotage of a very simple process. I am licking some wounds and thus the reason for this update.

For the filling up of the ST – 1 form for registration of the Service Tax, it is recommended that this be done by you. Spelling and content need to match big time. Well for starters the spellings were messed up and so was the address. Simple stuff like the word “Engineering” was entered as “Enggineering”. “Vyapar” as in “Vyapar Kendra” was replaced with a singular “Vayapar” along with some additional details being omitted at will.

To remedy this glitch I looked at covering the address correctly during the current account address creation. Well RBI guidelines specify that the address proof and the address mentioned should match completely but there are some areas where we can make the necessary changes like

- the entity name being too long , “engineering” was replaced with “engg” so similar errors can be made up for

- the forms for account opening have information like “landmark” being captured in the address which is the best place to add missing details and rectify some errors.

It is recommended that all such oversights be cleared at the onset to avoid severe case of head banging later in the year. About correcting the form with the help of the lawyer whose flunky did it, I am pursuing that and hope to get him to do this for me.

Afternoon innovation

I was at a restaurant in Gurgaon and saw an "offer". It read "Upto 20% discount on billing amount using your Citibank credit card". I order a wee bit more than i need, yes it is tough to resist, and knowing how hardwired the word "discount" is to ones psyche. Well I was packing the same for a family lunch at home. The Gurgaon sun is not so appealing this time of the year and more so if your car's ac is not in "tip top" condition.

I flash the gold card only to be told by the waiters (post a huddle and shifty eyeball dialect, practiced and perfected after years of confronting demanding customers), that the scheme is valid only for those who eat the meal at the restaurant rather than pack it.

Now that would qualify as the most innovative idea on how not to give the discount I have ever come across.

Entity Proof - 2

This is a continuation to creating an entity proof for your company.

The routes to service tax registration are many. The most difficult one being that of approaching the excise department and wading through the swamp manually. It is not difficult to understand why the processes are made so tardily and how it throws up a turgid layer of middlemen and fixers.

For the fresh ones making an application or trying valiantly to do so individually, its fairly pointless. The axe will fall on you somewhere down the line. There are two groups you can approach for doing this. One is the CAs dotting the offices near the courts or the lawyers blinding the entrance of this institution. I chose the latter as the former would have got in touch with his soft target “latter” and further strengthened the bond at my expense.

It cost me 5k to do this. As with much of the commitments in and around Delhi (I have no idea why it is so though), the standard line is that it would be ready in 48 hours. But let me tell you, that, does not include the signatory going on an unannounced and unplanned extended holiday just when your application hits his desk. So bottomline, keep a week in hand.

Also, avoid mentioning this to other CAs during conversation and wise cracks as they would come up with the “Tch tch, you should have told me nah, I would have got this done at 1/10^th the cost” tagline. All the while you were wailing from high above for someone to help avoid the expense, there were no takers.

Well you need to fill in the form ST – 1 and the docs that need to be furnished are

- Your id proof (PAN Card)

- Your address proof ( telephone bill or lease agreement) as I am sure that the migrant worker would rarely have a drivers license or passport with the current address.

- The lease agreement to the shop you just took for the business

- A company seal which should read “ Proprietor ….. EM&D Inc“ (a subtle way to put forward “Employ Me & Die”). Okay not so obvious, your company name (after careful numerological additions of an extra “a”) would do just fine.

After you did your bit just take on the Hero Honda punchline “fill it, shut it, forget it”. Well you can hope that the signatory who’s absence waylays your completion of this task, suddenly runs out of money due to a moronic move in a game of “teen patti” and has to hurry back to sign your application. Yes light a couple of candles to that, would you.