ExpertDabbler

Recently, I went to meet a doctor for a health condition. The doctor suspected some infection and prescribed anti-biotics. Moreover, he wanted me to support Glaxo over Mankind Pharma. Now in case you are wondering. The doctor figured I am a rich guy and so I, should support big drug companies which spend millions of dollars in R and D and take doctors to exotic locations for their paid vacations over drug companies who copy the medicine formulas after the patent expiry. Yes, the doctor prescribed Augmentin 625, the chemical name of which is Amoxycillin-Clavulanic Acid. Each tablet costs about 40 Rs. I was asked to take a course of 10. On the other hand, there is a generic pharma company called Mankind Pharma which manufactures the same drug and calls it Ramaswamy aka MOXIKIND-CV 625 instead of Kuppuswamy aka Augmentin, and interestingly offers the tablet for 15 Rs. It is not as if Moxikind is manufactured by Selvasingh annachi kadai in Medavakkam. Mankind is also a recognized pharma company.
I buy the medicines and came home happy, only to find Thangamani fuming.

She thinks the doc took me for a ride by prescribing a more expensive brand when there are cheaper but as effective options available. Thangamani and her ‘pal’ doctor colleagues always prescribe Ramaswamy (the Mankind pharma brand) and apparently it’s as effective and evidently costs 25 Rs. less per tablet.

Interestingly for the other anti-biotic, the doc prescribes the generic ‘metrodinazole’ when the popular brand is Flagyl. Why? This one costs 7 Rs. for 9 tablets. No wonder he did not care what I bought, my wife says.
How do I know Augmentin is a brand name for Amoxycillin-Clavulanic Acid tablets and the same thing can also be called Ramaswamy by Mankind Pharma and it would cost less?

On hearing this, my mom started how I always paid more to fruit vendors, vegetable vendors, auto drivers, etc. - Somehow they all figured I am one sucker and this doctor is the latest is mom’s theory.
My friends told me I would’ve mentioned something which made the doc feel ‘Oh here’s one more jobless IT guy who had searched endlessly on the net for the symptoms and conditions’ and so charged a 100 bucks more for consultation and a few more on medicines.

All said and done, I have recovered from my condition, and I am happy that I contribute my bit to the economy, keep the medical fraternity in good humour, and support big pharma. More paid vacations to the doctors!

One thing that has happened in 2011 is that a bulk of my reading material has gone digital. The books are synched and retrieved whenever I want. The kindles, dropboxes, boxes and safari oreilly subscriptions not to mention the veritable ebookee has helped me build a decent library. And My iPad (one wise buy in 2010) facilitates easy access to this collection.

For the kind of reading I do, the productive output from me is not what I am happy about.
The only explanations I give myself is that the benefits of reading should be considered not only in terms of what I do, but also in terms of what I avoid doing. Reading helps me avoid kodambakkam cinema ( now that I am staying away I think the 95% of Tamil Nadu is obsessed with it), unhealthy friendships, and not least of all more unhealthy habits.

Looking back in 2011:
My daughter’s arrival is the highlight of 2011. Moving to the new and bigger home was another good thing. I took better control of my finances, which can never hurt.

I do not remember the last movie I saw in sathyam on my own. I had very few restaurant outings, and fewer window shopping opportunities in Landmark.

On the other hand, GMAT was a debacle. I scored what I scored in the GMATprep - 590. So much so I forgot to even blog about it. Failure to get a car was another. My exercise regimen has taken a beating.

I will becompleting 5 years in my job next month and I don’t even know if that is a good thing

I would like to think more good things can happen if I focus more on act based on what I know.
Hopefully 2012 will see me finish some of the unfinished agenda.

Wishing you a happy 2012!

P -> probability.
And I hasten to add I don’t understand much
http://www.thoughtleaderforum.com/957443.pdf

Hm. The Maayan calendar apparently stops On Dec 21, 2012. We should ask Maayan to print properly for 2013.

Do very close friends necessarily make great co-workers on a project? I’d say not necessarily.

It is one thing to talk for hours together with a friend about all the things under the roof while having dinner. But it’s quite another when the friend tries to talk as if he is Jack Welch and you are one Ramarajan.

In theory it is very easy to say no to such situations. But then in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is

There are friends who would make dream partners and co-workers, along with some who are an absolute nightmare.

Arul wrote for my post

I had similar thought process as you have. As the current pricing scenario is unreall. But my sister and mom wouldnt listen and went ahead and bought 7 cent plot near mathampalayam bus stand in 2009 for 1 lakh per cent. Now in just two years we had three to four calls from the broker asking us to sell the plot for 1,50,000 per cent. I dont know what to make of this! In another bizarre pricing the house opposite to our grandpa’s house near periyaniackenpalaysm is quoting 70 lakhs. It has 61/4 cent land but the building is atleast 20 years old … Then i decided not to use my logic and analytics here..Just go with the flow and milk as much money as possible… Its like short term trading. I am still young just 25 years old. So i also dont have the memories like you do which makes my decision to buy and sell that much easier… The only way to stop this arbitary price rise is to have 2 year buy and sell ban on properties..similar to hongkong…in 2009 HK had similar problems now the prices have come down.. So the thing is you can still make lots of money out of the real estate market… You gotta trade short term in the long run the bubble will burst no doubt about it… Lot of people will default on their home loans..

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Here’s the 2011 post. The other day, one of my colleague was telling me that a group of people who had booked in Mantri project in OMR has refused to take possession because the price appreciation has not happened the way investors had wanted it to be, and ICICI bank has been saddled with that property ( in lieu of home loans ). The colleague told me there are quite a number of apartments facing the same fate in OMR. Apparently, his friend works in the recovery department of ICICI.

I am not sure about the veracity of the statements though.

Here are some simple facts. I get paid by my employer for the work that the world thinks I do.
The payment happens by virtue of a deposit to my bank account. Now before you skip this post, read on. I am also given food coupons (Sodexo) by my employer.

The interesting thing is, my mother always thinks of the bank credit asmy hard earned money. On the other hand, she considers the Sodexo coupons as if it is a free gift given from my employer.

As a result, all the essential commodity purchase happens via the withdrawals from my bank account (supposedly from the hard earned money ) while the semi discretionary purchases are done via my Sodexo coupons (paisa vendaam coupon kudu).
Despite my telling her that my employer will not give this coupon to anyone walking on the streets, so this is given as part of the compensation, this attitude has never changed.

This attitude is prevalent among the very educated/smart/rational thinking groups too. For some reason, the salary credited is hard earned money while the stock awarded as part of the stock option is deemed free. Psychologists call this ‘mental accounting’.

The fact that paying with cash is somehow more painful than paying with card illustrates that people’s attitude and behavior towards money as in cash/currency note is different from the way they react to something which is closer to but not actual cash.

During one of my umpteen return trips from down south, I had the company of a Thavil vidhwan once.

I boarded the TNSTC bus at trichy. And he was seated next to me in the last seat. A trip in the TNSTC bus from Trichy to Chennai on a Sunday evening is, to borrow the famous FORREST GUMP line, is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are gonna get as a co-passenger. It can be a drunkard, a vattam, maavattam politician, small trader, etc. that time it was a Thavil vidhwan. For that matter it is no less unpredictable in the supposedly elite AC Volvo buses. I have listened to hot and horny stuff from well attired gentlemen seated next to me thanks to that nasty device called cell phone. More on that later.

Coming back to that thavil vidhwan, the conversation started when the supposed point to point bus took special pains to go to perambalur terminus, and then to ulundurpet terminus. I became very interested in him when he mentioned he was a Thavil vidhwan. This gentleman commutes regularly between thanjavur and chennai. He lives in Medavakkam because his wife is working here but performs only in thanjavur district. He feels it is only in that region people genuinely respect Thavil and Nadhaswaram.

As a co- passenger he shared the importance of UDHAYA near vikravandi ( that is a galeej hotel where all the government buses mandatorily stop by and all the male passengers mandatorily pee on the road side in the dark ).
He gave me company right upto Medavakkam at around midnight.

Why do I remember all this now?
This nice article on Thavil prompted my thoughts to wander.
Via jeyamohan

I am not sure what prevented me from writing in my blog. Perhaps a host of small factors had contributed. My daily routine goes like this, I wake up at 6, read something till 6.45, my daughter wakes up, and then I spend time with her till I leave for office at 10.30.
Nowadays I come home for lunch. I spend time with my daughter, have quick lunch. My wife gets back from work by that time. My mom, who till that time has the task of handling my daughter retires to takes rest. I get back to office. I wind up work by around 6.30-7, spend more time with my daughter, and then time for dinner, some quick reading and phone calls with friends and we are all done for the day.

Weekends i have the usual quota of grocery purchase, vehicle service, bank visits, monthly trip to madurai or coimbatore as the case may be. Any thoughts to travel to the city from where i live gets dropped the moment I imagine the horrible traffic, rainy conditions, bad roads. The prospect of one hour bike ride in these conditions is more like a punishment.

The Interim boss job, save for one hell of a week this month, is by and large going good. My daughter at home has made home a fun, lively place.

I am still on the look out for a car.

I bought a small white board at home and am loving it. It’s great to jot down thoughts and brainstorm ideas in a board. I never got the same feel in a scribble pad.

I think it was yesterday when I commented this immediately after breakfast, ‘idly thogayal was superb, guess its enough if we get this for life’.

Well that is not exactly ambitious of me, but yeah life is good, I am at peace, and I honestly want to grateful to those who make life easy at home and work. There is always the next storm. As much as we curse the storm, we should celebrate small yet good things in life as well.

Some of you might know that I have a special affinity towards any financial products which entails low borrowing costs. That is how chit funds concept attracted me. The chit fund model is explained in detail.

Since low borrowing costs cannot come at the risk of high risk to the principle, I had no choice but to go with an established name like Shriram Chits.

My wife tested the waters by joining for a relatively small chit - Rs.1,00,000 running for 40 months where the monthly due is around Rs. 2500. Things were fine so long as we were paying the monthly dues. At one point, we thought we can take part in auction and bid, and if the bids are low for the month, maybe we can draw the funds for our use. Honestly there was no emergency/ critical need for the cash.

We took part in couple of auctions and we lost out due to more desperate customers, which is understandable. I was very clear that I will not take this money unless the terms were favorable to me. It is tough not to get swayed by the bidding frenzy in auctions. Nevertheless we were taking part in auction on monthly basis.

Eventually, we got through one auction. And that’s were I came to know the fine print in this deal. Apparently, after paying 20 months, to take my bid amount, the company needs some sort of security. For starters, they want two sureties - I was asked to give all my personal details like address proof, ID proof, pay slip, etc. This in addition to my wife’s personal details, ditto as above. In addition to the two, they wanted some government employee to provide surety. Now, this is where I got annoyed. I did not know any government employee close enough to provide their address proof, I’d proof along with their pay slip and also provide an undertaking(surety) for this amount. Eventually I decided not to stake my claim for the bid and asked the folks to give it to the next bidder. Of course none of this was known when I joined the chit. This factor definitely irritated me. Besides my irritation, In one way I was happy that this company was having adequate safeguards before giving out the chit amount.

We continued paying the due amounts until one fine day we participated in the auction and won the bid. This time the difference was I had one acquaintance who was government employed and who was willing to go the distance with me. Really nice of him.

So this time again I submitted all the documents, and staked my claim. There began the arduous journey. It took me two months and 20 visits to the Shriram branch office in , after submitting all the papers. Still there was no signs of it. One fine day I lost my patience and created a scene in the branch. The service levels were pathetic, the staff words especially the manager’s cannot be taken for granted. They lie with abandon and without remorse. The top management may be good.
Eventually I got my bid amount. Now, I do not see how the customer profile will improve if these guys provide service like this. Fortunately for me, there was no emergency, otherwise the customers are purely at god’s mercy. These guys are worse than government offices when it comes to doing work.

I still believe in the concept of chits, but not in the Shriram variety.