ExpertDabbler

Ever since I opened my mailbox this morning, I’m seeing a lot of ‘Great job!’ mails from almost the whole company to those who completed a project which clearly sucked from the very beginning. From here onwards I’d like to call such acts as giving a great job.

Who starts these great jobs? You guessed it right! It is the jobless middle management folks who think this is a neat way to motivate employees. So they include even the pandora residents in the DL and fire their salvo. The consequences are, human nature being what it is, predictable and repeatable. No one wants to be left behind even though no one clearly knows who is getting appreciated and for what. This is social proofing at its best. I once naively asked one of the guy who had just sent one such mail on why he did that. It was bizarre. It was not as if he had an opinion. The guy was like, ’Ellarum mail panraanga, naan mattum mail podalena nalla irukadhu…’ I guess this is part of the ‘Naai vesham potta kolachu dhaan aaganum, lead vesham potta ‘great job’ kuduthu dhaan aaganum’ logic.

Couple of weeks back, someone started to give a great job to one of my team member for an innovation award he won six months back. By the time another instance of the event had already occurred. To explain it better, it was not very different from ‘Great job’ing AR Rahman for his Oscar now. Some folks assumed he had won it yet again.
I coined an anology for this: ‘Pona varusham sethu pona aayavuku indha varusham paal oothara’ phenomenon. I need to coin a neat, english sounding acronym for this.

In addition, it is common to give great jobs to Y when X had actually worked on the project.

How to detect a great job?
Rule of thumb I follow nowadays.
- The email subject is more likely to have exclamations!!! That is a clear red flag.
- Some of my close office friends who incidentally read this blog do not fail to include quote Einstein, Sivaji film dialogues, etc in their great jobs. We need to be especially wary of such guys.
- Be always on the look out for key words in the subject – Great, Congrats, Team work, awesome etc.
- Nobody would’ve changed the subject, you are bound to receive at least 20 emails with the same subject. Be suspicious of those chunk of mails with the same subject.
- The thread would have at least two big ‘thalai’s responding to it. Has any ‘thalai’ responded to any mail of substance?

- Now, How to differentiate a great job from a genuine appreciation? First point: Not many will respond to a genuine appreciation email. The difference is in the intent. In a great job, the point is clearly not to appreciate. It’s more about to be seen great jobbing.

As a corollary, I really wanted to appreciate a guy who went out of his way in one of our project. I initiated a thread with 4-5 team folks in CC spelling out exactly what that guy did special and why he should be appreciated. Not surprisingly, no big thalai responded to the thread. I guess it’s much safer to give a great job to the world in general than to appreciate a individual in particular who had really worked hard. Since no thalai responded, no team member wanted to respond either!!!

- Karthik loves Jessy. There is nothing so attractive about Jessy’s personality that we know of. So what made him love her? The director does not have time to explain anything of that sort, that too in a love story. Very intelligently he makes the protagonist ask the same question to the audience twice or thrice and tries to get away.

- Once the heroine accepts the love, they say ‘I love you’ to each other a few times, go around in bike, eat good food, watch movies. Pa! Very different. Total class!!!

- And for the hero’s passion for film-making. There are a few references in dialogues, some shots where he carries the clip board, and voila he is a film-maker. He could’ve as well been a two wheeler mechanic, only that it would not sounded as ‘aspirational’.

- Why America? Gautam Menon knows going to America for shooting is the in-thing. So America!

- Simbu and Trisha are decent in this film. But the way the media folks rave, looks like both will get a National award. Aandava!!

- The film has ARR’s music and that’s one of the few redeeming features. ‘Aromale’ stands out for the voice and music. It’s a great piece to listen. But film music is also about conveying the emotions of the characters I thought. No? We can simply replace the ‘Aromale’ lyrics with English and we’ll get a proper English song. And the emotions in this music is at best confusing to me. Why that song for ‘that’ situation? Blame it on globalization. Local flavor does not sell as well.

In short this is yet another ‘once watchable’ but pretentious, ‘no depth’ Gautam Vasudev Menon film which unfortunately gets raved about as the ‘great thing since Ulundu vadai’ in the media. The best thing one can say is that its not a terrible insult on one’s intelligence as a Vijay movie. But that apart he has imbibed all the bad aspects of Mani Ratnam style of film making. I was disappointed with his ‘Daddy Daddy ‘Vaaranam Aayiram’. I am equally disappointed with his ‘Jessy Jessy’ VTV. I now think his ‘Pachai Kili Muthucharam’ was very watchable except for the last 30 minutes.

Gautam Menon and Microsoft have one thing in common. Discerning folks in general talk good about their previous effort when compared with their latest offering.

I think it’s not the occasional flop that kills a film maker. It’s the inability to hit the RESET button every two-three films and come up with something fresh that eventually gets the better of a director. People who have survived have been able to do that. Gautam Menon must hit the RESET button NOW. Otherwise he will soon join the elite company of R V Udayakumar, R K Selvamani - folks who were once thought of as ’one of the top directors of tamil cinema’ but who did not hit the RESET button quick enough.

You can expect the following things to happen in the coming days:

Some one in the tamil print media will give a title, ‘Kadhavai thirangal…. (actress) varattum’

The Outlook will feature ‘The inside story of a journey from Saamiyaar to a Pornstar’ cover story.

India Today will feature the ‘India Today - AC Nielsen Erotic Saamiyars of India 2010 rankings’

A lame ‘Kalachaara Seerkedu’ editorial in ‘family’ magazines like Kalki, Thuglak.

A Dr.Narayana Reddy will somehow make himself available despite his busy schedule to give a deep psychological analysis on the issue to the likes of ‘Nakkheeran’, Junior Vikatan, etc.

All the while, television media houses like the Sun TV, kalaiganar TV will continue to do two things:
- safeguard the tamil culture
- run the steamy sequence in their prime time news program.

And how about the people of Tamil Nadu?

- Initially, we are only too happy to lap up anything in the name of ‘Aanmeegam’. Healthy circumspection is never our forte. So there is always the next saamiyar scandal in the offing.
- Once someone is caught in his ‘act’, we turn peeping tom and
- start lapping up each and every news item featuring the man for the next three months.

I watch movies in theatres at the rate of three per annum if and only if sponsored by friends. I watched ‘Aayirathil Oruvan’ couple of weeks back, and thought maybe I should watch only one film every four years. What a tragedy!

I hardly watch television at home, leave alone movies. Half an hour is my maximum attention span. Either I find myself in the loo or mom finds me snoring in bed. My better half on the other hand is an ardent film buff. She would talk for hours about Pedro Almadovar when I clearly struggle to get past K Bhagyaraj. So I am hardly a match for her among a lot other things. My brother-in-law is a N- IMDB*. I think he watches movies full-time and writes code only when he is free and so should be paid accordingly. I am not sure if he carries tooth brush when he is traveling, but he sure carries his mini-suitcase like hard-drive full of movies. Making me watch Inglourious Basterds was part of a long term strategy by brother and sister to convert me into a tolerable movie watcher.

As if this duo was not enough, my buddy at office, who is a N-IMDB in his own right, did effective word of mouth marketing for the movie during lunch, tea breaks. That is the second plot just like it is in the movie. The result, I watched Inglorious Basterds yesterday night.

My first rendevous with Quentin Tarantino was during a sleepless night in San Jose. I was still coming to terms with Pacific Standard Time, and my colleague offered Kill Bill parts I and II. For a guy who snores before 30 minutes into any movie if watching alone, I watched Kill Bill Part I and Part II back to back well into the night and ended up going to office the next day noon.

Lengthy conversations, slow camera pan, long shots, sometimes the camera waits for the subjects to approach it, and multiple parts within the movie. They do not sound like the ingredients of a thriller, do they? Try Tarantino.

A Nazi Colonel Landa, known as a jew hunter, visits a small village to hunt down the last jew family. The neighborhood farmer tries to protect, in vain. The daughter of the Jew family somehow manages to run in a shot very reminiscent of the way the young Shaktivelu runs with the train whistle in the background in Nayagan. How long will you take to show this on screen? Tarantino takes a cool twenty minutes, and in the process majestically establishes Col. Landa’s character and sets the stage for the film. It is a handful of scenes like this that catapults the film to a different level.

Another thing I noticed about Tarantino, he does not attempt to explain everything. For e.g. He will not tell you how a gang of five, evidently alien, can casually enter the movie hall where the Fuhrer himself is coming to watch the film. Afterall the Fuhrer is no Goundamani. QT doesn’t care. Instead he will choose to start the scene with Col. Landa and take it from there. But what he does choose to explain, he does so with deadly effect leaving the audience stunned in their seats.

And that Col. Landa played by a guy called Christopher Waltz, this is HIS film.

On the down side, as is always the case with QT, there is loads of violence.

I am not qualified to say if Inglorious Basterds is great cinema or deserves a place in the IMDB all-time 50 rankings, etc. I never got a rank in high-school. I was told i need to pass all papers which never happened except in the finals. So me never liked ranking business. I leave that to N-IMDBs*. But as a below average movie rasigan, I watched the movie with suspense, and interest not knowing what will happen next. That to me is pure entertainment, pure cinema. The director as the designer of the film, should give a character to the film. And for that the director should have spunk and character himself. Tarantino, I think does that job quiet well. That is why he can make even the one millionth film on ‘pazhi vangum’ theme with punch.

And those aspiring to be great writers and directors, should watch the intro scene and the basement scene again and again and again. Those are Tarantino master class on screen writing and execution.

N-IMDB = Nadamaadum IMDB.

Now the second question.
At what price will an investor take the bet? I will buy a flat which fetches me a rental income of Rs. 5000 per month if some nice guy will sell it for Rs. 10 lacs or thereabouts. Assuming an EMI rate of 1000 per lac per month.
I don’t want to pay EMI much higher than 2 times what the flat fetches as rent per month.

Now, this is unlikely to happen when IT sector is booming, when water is available in plenty, when things are ‘normal’. So the investor waits till the market gives the house at this price for any of the distressing reasons mentioned or for new reasons.

More often than not, things turn around: some arrangements are made for drinking water, people move on after tsunami, cities get rebuilt after earthquakes, job market invariably gets better after ‘recession’.

For those with a better memory, there was a time when housing prices was available at the prices much below than quoted above. In 2003, I remember seeing flats for my friends @ 30 lakhs in C P Ramaswamy road, Alwarpet etc. I saw one NAVINS flat in Sri Nagar colony for about Rs. 20-25 lacs. Prices started to move up in 2004 onwards. It is sky high now.

How to make a multi-bagger investment? Well the fact is, it’s too hard to foresee. i dont believe anyone who says otherwise. This is akin to some guy buying Pantaloon retail stocks when it was real low, and ending up making 35 times (not percent) in a few years. One cannot plan for such events.
It just happens. Just like some guy making it in the lottery. But what we need to do is consciously think hard so that we do not become suckers.

My experience suggests that making 15% per annum (which is twice the bank rate of interest) with low risk is not that hard provided one can think independently and not depend on ‘popular wisdom’ which in financial matters is more or less an oxymoron. By buying assets low, with adequate margin of safety, we expose ourselves to such booms. If it does not happen, the investor need not lose sleep, because he has not paid much in the first place.

First some disclaimers:
Investment valuation is one area where ‘experts’ go wrong more often than the ‘amateurs’. I am, thankfully, no expert in this. But whatever I say can be debated and argued endlessly. Feel free to do so. I maybe an MBA but then I cleared that ‘one paper at a time’ so I am not counting on my degree nor should you.

Having said that, there is little dispute in what constitutes an investment: If you are making an investment, you should be sure your capital is safe. Plus, you should ‘get more’ than the amount you put in the ‘foreseeable future’. The ‘get more’ can be in the form of cost savings, or more cash inflows, or both. Now the ‘forseeable future’ part is bit more ambiguous. I define it as ten years especially for a flat. People who buy the stocks of power companies in IPO define it as hundred years.

Anyway, so for a house to qualify as an investment, The house should give me more
by any of the following:
- as rental income, or
- amount saved in rent outgo if I lived in a rented place.
- amount saved by lower taxes. I should pay more taxes but by buying a house, I get some deduction which is more cash in hand NOW (not after 5 years). Incidentally, this provision is not applicable going by the direct tax code from 2011 onwards unless the real estate lobby is successful in retaining it.

AND

The amount I would get when I sell the flat within the next ten years.

Now, the next part:
Since we are seeing into the future, we are essentially assuming some factors. Assumptions can never be 100% correct. But the trick lies in making realistic assumptions - probability of getting it right is 80%.

Assumption #1:
Rental incomes are never constant for the entire ten years. Let’s assume it goes up by about 10 % a year. The rentals increasing by 20-30% a year though true in some areas of Chennai in the recent years is not sustainable in the long run. Or let me just say the probability of that sustaining is less than 1%. So let us not count on it.

Assumption#2:
Let us also assume the inflation is about 10%. That is next year’s 110 is equal to today’s 100, and so on.

Assumption#3:
Now let us assume that the house prices will go up by about 10% a year.
Again, house prices doubling in two years, though true in some areas of Chennai in the recent years, is less likely to sustain in the long run. So let us not count on it. Don’t buy it? Wait till Chennai experiences a bad summer and people stay awake till 2 AM to get a pot of water, wait till Chennai experiences, god forbid, an earthquake, wait till Chennai experiences a telangana-like situation. These are events which you cannot predict, but will have a definite impact on housing prices.

Assumption#4:
Let us say our LICHF or HDFC gives us the home loan at an EMI of 1300 Rs. per lac on average NOW. But this goes up if inflation goes up.

So now let’s do the ‘paati kanakku’. Lets say I am considering buying the flat.

INFLOW:
The 1 BHK Nanganallur flat fetches a rent of 5000 Rs.per month = 60,000 Rs. per annum.
Since the rental goes up by 10% but so does the inflation, there is no real increase in rental income. Which means I would be getting ‘real income’ of Rs.6,00,000 as rent income in the next ten years.

Similarly, my likely sale proceeds of the flat, after ten years will be again = Rs.20,00,000 lacs in ‘real terms’

TOTAL inflow: Rs. 26,00,000

OUTFLOW:
Say, I am investing 2,00,000 of my savings and taking a loan for 20,00,000. The monthly EMI payment will be 20 x 1300 = 26,000.

Annually this will work out to: 26,000 x 12 = Rs.3,12,000. Now you may argue that for the next year the outflow(after adjusting for tomorrow’s 110 = todays 100 math) will be less in the next years. But if inflation goes up, the bank will reset the interest rates. So its simpler and conservatively sounder to assume I will pay Rs.3,12,000 per annum for the next 10 years.

NET:
Which means I will likely shell out Rs. 2,00,000 (initial savings) + Rs.31,20,000 in the next ten years, and for which I am likely to get back Rs.26,00,000 in the next ten years. Is this a profitable investment?

Now lets imagine that my grandma (this is called Paati kanaku for a reason) had left me a fortune, which is exactly 20 lacs. How about it now? There is no interest outgo.

Well now
INFLOW will read:
Rs. 26,00,000 after 10 years (inflation adjusted).

OUTFLOW will read:
Rs. 22,00,000 NOW.

That is I am likely to make 4,00,000 out of an investment of Rs.22,00,000 in TEN years. I am making a princely return of 1.68% compounded annually. Is this a profitable investment? Maybe YES. Is this a great investment? NO.

My uncle has moved to Nanganallur very recently. He currently lives in a 500 sqft 1BHK flat. His neighbors had told him about the infamous real estate boom and that it would cost about Rs. 22 lakhs to buy the 5 year old flat he resides now. That works out to 4400 Rs. per sqft. My uncle pays a monthly rent of Rs. 5000. Now, here’s my question. Assuming he is capable of buying that house through bank loans, is he better off buying the flat or taking it out on rent? And why? Deal or no deal? What do you think? I’ll tell my ‘paati kanakku’ later

This movie is a must watch. I laughed like never before

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