ExpertDabbler

The newly opened EXPRESS AVENUE mall has helped me immensely. I can now go to citi center and be done with the needed shopping quickly.

I am eagerly waiting for someone to open a bigger, better mall than EA so then I can then go to EA and be done with my shopping quickly.

My feedback on EA:
Full marks for parking facilities in terms of space.
Walking through the mall is comparable with the Valley Fair mall in the bay area. The ambience and the scale is world class.

Bad points:
No marks for the way the ‘podhu janam’ approach the parking. Overtaking, coming on the wrong side seems common there as well. I sincerely request folks to follow ‘tamil tradition’ by switching on their headlights while approaching in the wrong side in future.

Crowd. I was stunned by the crowd. So much so I was out of it in about 35 mins which includes 20 minutes for getting in, out and searching for my motorbike. Many people attain nirvana in crowded malls. They ‘hang out’, ‘chill out’, ‘make out’, ‘eat out’ etc. I will never hang out in such a place even if some one gives me a cup of free pulioyadharai, ven pongal with lot of ghee. I sincerely request the management to open a Pothys, Chennai silks, RMKV etc, there so that i will never come to the mall again.

My wife had a lot to complain about the restroom. The possibility of a world class mall with the best branded retail outlets in the world, and the people who look like super models walk past you co-existing with a ‘galeej’ restroom is possible only in India. No other country can give you that experience.

I have often wondered why the Indian managements are by and large opaque in their dealings with employees. Even trivial things will be hush-hushed. I realized a couple of days back thats because the average employee does not respect nor appreciate transparency. My experience tells me that we Indians worship and bow to authority (see kalaignar paaraatu vizha, JJ paaraatu vizha etc), but if the authority likes to be friendly and transparent, the folks in general back bite, talk negative and make fun of those who are trying to make things better. Sometime back we lost a very good manager because, alas, he was too open for his own good.

My wife works in a college where I think even the glass will not be transparent, and yet the organization works like a charm. The semi-literate management knows how to managecontrol a group of highly educated doctors and make them dance to their raaga. I think the maxim ‘we get what we deserve’ holds true for most of the things in life, and I think this is especially true for the management we work under.

Got this from theequitydesk.com

Vivek I has the opportunity of attending a few AGMs and except me and Chinki no one talked about the operatiuons of the companies, people were talking only about discount coupons, bonus, dividends and free bus rides to the AGM venue etc.
 
Such an approach helped us a lot because we got a chance to talk one on one - face to face with the management whereas the other shareholders were filling up empty Bisleri bottles with Instant Coffee and stuffing samosas in polythene bags!.

- Basant Maheshwari

http://www.theequitydesk.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=861&PN=123

No wonder equity investing is considered risky.

It somehow seemed odd that three guys offered to check my fortune in my palm in velachery two days back. All in a soan of few minutes. The first guy offered near IOB in by pass road. The second guy offered when I crossed the road to go to the HDFC bank.
The third guy offered when I park my vehicle in front of Axis Bank near Sutherland Global Services. I crossed the road and I spotted a fourth one offering his services to another hapless bank customer near The Karur Vysya Bank.

I had no cue how many have landed in velachery. Why near bank premises alone, on a week day afternoon? Are they really some no-income fortune tellers desperate for a scapegoat or are they part of any conspiracy theory only time will tell.

I listened to ‘Naan Mahaan Alla’ from a website which plays commercials mandatorily and songs optionally (raaga.com) today. I should I say i instantly liked a couple of songs… Blame it on my ‘matamaana rasanai’. Rasanai’ apart, I thought this Yuvan guy needs a relook from the Tamil koorum nallulagam for these reasons:

He is yet to work on any big bang project - read a Kamal, Rajini, Shankar, Mani ratnam film. He invariably works with several first timers, a good percentage of whom are not sustainable material. When the movie sinks so does the music. We are well past the days of his father when one would unhesitatingly spit at a movie like Ninaivellam Nithya, but worship it’s music.
Notwithstanding that disadvantage, I think he still holds his own. A lot of my friends still have that ‘kana varun velai.. Andhi maalai’ song sung by a dentist called Lavanya Prabhu.

Whenever he has worked on half decent directors he has given very decent music - selvaraghavan(7g, pudhupettai), Ameer (paruthi veeran).

About 15 years back, when asked about Rahman, kamal responded like this, ‘ After a big Ilayaraja, there is only Rahman’.

I dare say one can say the same about Yuvan after ARR?
Any difference of opinion?

This maybe old news to those who follow techcrunch like the way a Mylapore Mama follows THE HINDU every morning. But anyway, beware!

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/23/paypal-itunes-fraud/

I’d say de-link, and be safe. No point in crying ‘vada poche’ later on!

We have started to post on www.funvest.com, a blog for thoughts and ideas on investing in the Indian stock markets

Q:why do I like ‘kilimanjaro’?

A:One gets the tune even in the first couple of rounds of listening. Nothing complicated. No strict requirements like one should listen to that for 108 times before one ‘gets’ the tune. I don’t have the good sense to listen to something I do not like the 1st time for 107 more times in the hope that I will get it. Pardon my musical ignorance.

How come I liked Delhi 6 ‘masakkali” or ‘kandu kondein kandu kondein’ instantly? Is that because something is wrong with that song or with me? I don’t know.
Sometime back listening to music was a simple thing. That has become a much more complicated project nowadays.

So songs like ‘kilimanjaro’ are a welcome change.

The last couple of days have been quite disturbing at work, purely for non-work, political reasons. Over a period of time, a group of people who I have considered my own over time, and to whom i have been personal advisor / counsellor for free are doing their level best to tarnish my reputation

This too shall pass or I should pass up the company of this group and keep it strictly official at work or maybe it’s time to move on to something else professionally. I do not have clear answers

SSPDL is a small cap Real Estate company focused primarily on the southern markets of Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. I first came across this company based on a recommendation by HIDDEN GEMS fame Ashish Chugh.

I researched a bit more and found that company was indeed priced dirt cheap. For a company which had IT parks - ALPHA CITY, and MATRIX TOWERS in OMR under it’s belt, it’s market cap was at 40 crores. The company had debt of 50 odd crores. In total the enterprise value did not exceed 100 crores. For this price, in current real estate prices, it was a no brainer conclusion to realize the company was lowly valued.

Just to ensure the company was not a shell company, I went to the projects mentioned in the website to enquire, namely SSPDL ‘alpha city’ and SSPDL Crescent apartment projects. When I enquired, the apartments in Kelambakkam road was almost sold out and construction activity was going on. They had just announced a villa project called LAKEWOOD. Each villa was priced at close to one crore,and they had 26 villas in that project.

All along, the stock was just unbelievably cheap. Here’s a business which was worth much more than a few hundred crores and was selling at less than hundred crores. Buying when the prices are so low is incredibly counter intuitive.I wrote about this company to the Capital ideas club but never heard back from them.

When the idly and chutney is too good at home, I am always tempted to have one more idly. With exactly the same mentality, I bought a small number of shares in the company in my personal account. Nothing happened for six months, and then last week there was a news that inter serve, a uk based construction major with revenues of about 1.9 billion pounds has bought a 50% stake in SSPDL subsidiary.
The stock has been hitting upper circuit ever since, the value has already gone up by 50 % and I am cursing myself for not buying more then (is not everything so crystal clear in hind sight?).

In the market, nothing is a sure thing, but when we get something as close to sure thing, we should bet heavily. That is the lesson for me.