Surprise!!

I am back. I didn't think I would make a blog post again this quick. But then today is a special date 12/12/12 that happens once every hundred years. Besides this kind of confluence would not happen again for the next 88 years. The next one would be 01/01/01 in the year 3001! In fact if the Mayan Calendar had its way, the world would end way before that! That's right, folks! In a couple of weeks the world may very well have ended. But don't worry if you missed this date. We do have plenty of dates remaining for the end of the work. For more details you can check here

I am sure you can pick a date that suits you better!

For the more apocalyptically (Is that even a word?) inclined, advanced wishes for a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year!

A long gap!

That was a rather long gap! I had forgotten entirely about this blog, until my better half reminded me. And that was thanks to the fact that I recently registered my domain name and linked it to my Google site. Yes, that's right! I am the proud owner my very own domain and website, thanks to Big Rock and Google respectively. The whole set-up cost me under Rs.1000 for two years, including free e-mail forwarding. I am yet to see the test mail I forwarded to that account though. No matter! I am sure the good folks in Big Rock would send it to me in some time.

In case you want to drop  by it is www.harishnair.in

I guess between the last post and this one there has been more changes in my life. A change in Job and a new member in our family! The second one is the more momentous change obviously!

So after this rather spontaneous outpouring, it is back to sleep! :-)

The last few weeks I have been reading a lot of blogs for one reason or another. I also read a book by Sidin Vadukut, "Dork: The adventures of Robin Einstein Varghese". The book is based on a single blog post that he made a long time back. His blog is also a great piece of cyber property to hang out in. I read most of the posts there, though I hadn't actually followed it earlier. It kind of inspired me to kick start my own blog postings/musings again. I haven't updated much on my blogs here, though I do update my twitter feed (http://twitter.com/harishnairr) occasionally, atleast much more than my blog posts! I have 140+ tweets, compared to 15 blog posts in a much shorter time. By twitter standards even that is low.

Anyway, so you can now read some of my more elaborate musings here from now on. I am planning to update it atleast weekly.

Last few weeks had been very hectic with a lot of travel and very little sleep. I kind of made up for that yesterday, with a lot of sleep. But still feeling tired. Not planning to do any travel for the rest of the month. Hopefully the plans won't change. The next month is a different story though. With lots of travel plans already in the making. Three out of Five weekends are already being painstakingly planned to the last minute detail. Hopefully the plans won't change again in the last minute!

I recently made a to-do list on my phone. The list is pretty long and fills up the whole screen space on my mobile (which is quite long, mine being a touch screen 5800). Hopefully I will be able to finish up a lot of that soon!

I am also planning to join a gym to shed a few(!) pounds that I have gained... I will update on that as soon as I have finalized a place, finalized the fees, and finalized the timings, a lot of finalization to do!

Alright then, till the next post... hopefully soon!

Another year gone by

And here we are... The last year was pretty momentous one for me. I managed to get hitched. Which is partly the reason for being quite for so long. Marriage has kind of mellowed me down (hmm.. and bloated me up as well). Blame it on the stress free days. It is kind of comforting to know that when you get home somebody will be there for you. And when you wake up in the morning somebody is next to you. And breakfast/lunch/dinner on the table which actually tastes good, doesn't hurt either (I help with washing the dishes and doesn't mind that)

Apart from the obvious change I have decided to put a bit of theory that I am reading into practice. Recently I got my hands on '7 habits for effective people' by Covey. Well, I usually don't buy self-help or self-improvement books. But the phrase 'effective people' caught me. I have to admit that the first time I glanced at the title, I substituted 'successful' instead of 'effective'. This got me curious and I wound up buying the book. But it wasn't just a read-through-it-and-forget-about-it kind of book. It describes some simple habits which can help you over the long run. And the first habit I am trying out is - "Be Proactive".

That was just 2 simple words. But implementing it in practice is a pain. What it implies, for me at least, is to not just crib, but do something about it. Well, there was a lot of stuff written. But essentially it boils down to this. And this post is kind of something I have been cribbing about for some time. So here it is... :-) Lets see if I can make this a habit!

There... I have added Twitter

There... I have added Twitter account to my blog!!! Nobody can accuse me of lagging behind in technology!!! :P

After a looonggg time....

After taking the resolution to be a regular blogger as a part of my New Year Resolutions I finally found the time to update my blog now. I am not going to offer the usual excuses of work, or rather over-work, and insufficient time to pen down my thoughts. Instead, I would like to take the braver strategy of offense, being the better form of defense, and state that I was putting my thoughts into action where it matters more! Rather than penning them down, and eventually forgetting about it altogether.
But, truthfully, I think the reason would be that I was plain lazy. I found the time today to write this post, only because I was taking rest at home for the last two days, recovering from flu, and was getting bored to death.

OK, then! All the trivia aside, what am I going to ramble about. I didn't have the faintest idea when I started. There were numerous incidences since my last post... the roller coaster ride of the stock market, a few grisly murders in the upper echelon of the society and some lesser publicized ones at the lower end, a cricket tournament which reeked so much of cash and glamor that it was hard to make out as a gentleman's sport any longer and the Slap-gate saga that took place half way through it, political maneuvering in elections making king makers out of independent "rebel" candidates, movies that are far moved from reality filled with computer generated imagery, and yet some which still manages to touch our heart, the run-up to a presidential election that has threatened to overthrow gender or race discrimination, but not both, an Olympics which is throwing up a sand storm of protests which seems to politically divide, rather than unify the world, and which might still, hopefully, bring a totalitarian regime to end, without shedding any blood, Spiraling oil prices, Fluctuating dollar values, Threats of global recession... The list seems to be endless.

But I think I will write about a different incident this time. One that might not have been noticed by everyone, even though everyone must have seen it one time or the other. It is based on comments made by US president Bush regarding spiraling food prices at home. The gist of the explanation provided by him is this.

Third world nations like India and China are prospering, resulting in a higher number of people in the middle class. This translates to a higher food consumption, since you eat more when you have more money. The Indian middle class is more than the combined American population. So that is where your food is going, and that is why prices are increasing, since there is less to go around.

Right? Wrong! There were quite a few feathers ruffled in India over this. The Times of India published an article, listing the dietary practices of Americans and Indians and statistically proved that an average American eats roughly twice or more grains than Indians and much more of meat than Indians, besides that India is self sufficient in food and a net exporter of food and in no way causes food shortage.

Conveniently, many people play on the pride factor, anti-american rhetoric and forget about the main point here. WHY are food prices increasing then? Even in India, the food prices are increasing. My view is that there are multiple factors involved here. Let me take the domestic scene first.

At one hand we have farmer's committing suicide because they can't make a living out of agriculture. This implies that the rise in food prices does not seem to have created better living conditions for them. They are being denied the fruits of their labor. Where is the increase in price coming from then? There is only one place it could come from. On the way from the farm to the market shelves. In other words, the distribution system. The agriculture sector is suffering, not because we eat more, but because of the failure of the distribution system and the lack of incentives to the farmer, who, in turn, is turning away from food crops to more lucrative channels. The farmers who remain with food crops are not getting the returns that they need to survive.

In the international scene, the Americans, and for that matter most of the first world, consumes much more processed food, compared to the rest of the world. And they are mostly net importers of food. This results in additional processing cost as well as some wastage during processing of the primary raw materials. Compound this with the problems of rising transportation costs, additional processing cost, increasing labor cost, we get an additional spike in prices for them.

And all the while, the population of the world is increasing, never decreasing.

What is the solution for this?

I cannot claim to have any solution for this. But from a layman's point of view, the solution seem to lie in better distribution system, utilizing areas under cultivation optimally and providing better returns to the farmers, cutting out the middle men, and maybe a return to a more organic and natural, instead of processed food consumption.

Happy New Year!

Wishing Everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR! I guess this will be my last post this year. I am taking a new year resolution to be more regular next year. Hope to see y'all more frequently.... Seeyaa.. Have a great time and stay good...