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The ‘Missed Call’ game…

We all must have played the missed call game at some point. Ok let me clarify. What I refer to a ‘missed calls’ in this post are not genuinely missed calls, but calls which are made to someone deliberately and with a confidence that the other party wouldn’t receive them. A missed call is usually one or two rings at max. Why would one do that? Hmmm.. I can think of the following by observing people around me:

  • To play! Yes, I know people play this missed call game for fun.
  • To convey something without spending a penny. Some people actually use this very effectively. One missed call means ‘I am fine’, two could mean ‘call me’, three could mean……
  • It is a very popular means to pass on your number to someone. Well saves money and saves effort so why not use it?
  • To tease someone or to disturb someone (please don’t do this).
  • To show someone how many times you remember him/her in a day!!
  • Of course when you run out of balance and just have enough to be able to call. You give missed calls in anticipation that the receiver would call you back.
  • Oh I just remembered one more. When you dial a number, hit the call button and then immediately realize that you have dialled the wrong number, or you have dialled the wrong person.

Alright. I think these are enough examples some of which perfectly justify those missed calls. You can, of course, find many others. My aim is not to list down all possible reasons for missed calls on this earth.

I have recently come across a breed of people who use this as a cost cutting measure in their organization!! 95% of missed calls on my mobile are from those people. And I only share a professional relation with them. They would just give a call and ensure it doesn’t ring more than twice most of the times. It takes at least 3 rings to even take the mobile out of your pocket. So anything under 3 rings is a missed call. They know that I would call them back as I usually have a habit of wrapping a few things up in time (note that I said a ‘few’ things. I am sluggish at a lot of ‘other’ things).

Fortunately we are living in times where phone calls have become dirt cheap. Unless you run a call center, telephone calls are going to be  insignificant to other operating expenses. Why create a bad impression trying to save a few hundred bucks? While you do save a few bucks, you lose your reputation. I would prefer losing a few bucks rather than losing a billion dollar reputation.

There are tons of other ways to save communication costs. For instance use of instant messengers like gtalk or yahoo. Or use Skype, gtalk etc. for crystal clear voice calls. And all this comes free. You just need to bear a nominal fixed internet cost. So just be informed and innovative rather than resorting to the ‘missed call’ game in your profession!

Closure

It has been a while when I went to IIT-KGP for a summer project out of my interest in GIS and Remote sensing. Don’t ask me what made me interested in those subjects. For those who are not aware, I am a mining engineer by education and ended up working for the software industry. Well, that is the case with a majority of people in India these days. The software industry is bottomless. It can accommodate without an end (or it could accommodate until the recent crisis!).  I started my education around the same time the .COM bubble burst happened and hit the software industry badly. Not a good time to begin! So I had to come up with ‘Plan B’ in case I don’t end up getting placed. And my plan B was to go for an MS from a reputed university in the US.

I’ve given all the background to ensure that people don’t think of me as one of those ‘studious’ kinds who was so serious about studies. It was a ‘forced’ decision. Anyways, when I visited the concerned professor, I came to know that he was an expert on ‘Mine Closure’ and had spent almost his entire career researching and teaching the topic. Wow! Can you imagine? I could never dream that ‘Mine Closure’ could be such an important aspect of mining. However, after spending a couple of days with him, I could understand its significance. The mine closure had to be planned even before the mining starts! And if you don’t submit satisfactory closure plans, the Government would not allow you to mine. He employed the latest technological advancements like GIS and Remote sensing to plan out and execute the ‘Mine Closure’.

So what makes me write about this today? It has been almost 6-7 years now. Someone has rightly said, ‘Whatever you learn in life, does not go waste’. After spending some time getting to know the software industry, I now realize the importance of ‘closure’.  It does not matter how many projects you ‘start’ well. What matters is how many of them get ‘closed’ successfully and in time. It takes at least 5 times the focus and effort to ‘close’ a project successfully than to start it! It takes a lot of ambition and dedication to do this. ‘Closing’ out projects not only brings in credibility, but it also liberates you of the mental blockade which could hamper other ongoing projects (if you work across multiple projects). It would heavily aid efficient resource planning.

But is everything in our control? Well almost never completely. There are multiple stake holders and it could involve the client, their end clients and so on. Human nature is such that we would like to see new features and improvements until the last moment. And that often spells disaster. Another common practice is to start off new things exactly when something is about to end. Since newer things always inspire us more than what is ongoing, almost certainly they will take precedence over the ongoing activities.

I guess the argument is valid across industries. It would have taken a little for Ratan Tata to start his dream project ‘Nano’, but we all know what it took to successfully get Nano on the roads. In fact we don’t even know what happened behind the scenes to get this through. Hats off to Ratan Tata for pulling this off!

Better said than done. But remember, we won’t be known for how many things we started well, but we would only be known for what all was ‘closed’ well.

Alright, that’s enough of fundas, now let’s get back to work 🙂

On the Subprime Crisis

For quite some time I had been thinking to put up something on the topic. I am sure there wouldn’t be a person who hasn’t heard of the term by now. It has been a year since the buzz has been around. It has only *peaked* a couple of weeks ago with the collapse of the BIG financial giants. I’ve grown up hearing that United State’s economy being one of the most stable in the world only to find this sudden fiasco.

I tried to search for the term on Google and the definition itself spells doom!

  • Look at what Wikipedia has to offer for Sub Prime Lending. The term has created such confusions that Wikipedia still has issues with the article.
  • Investopedia says:

“A type of loan that is offered at a rate above prime to individuals who do not qualify for prime rate loans. Quite often, subprime borrowers are often turned away from traditional lenders because of their low credit ratings or other factors that suggest that they have a reasonable chance of defaulting on the debt repayment.”

To cut it short subprime lending is lending money to subprime borrowers (borrowers with a not-so-good credit history). To risk of default is accommodated through a higher than average interest rate.

That’s ok! But why did it result in such a big fiasco?

Well, fortunately I got an opportunity to get through a short course in financial instruments. I was amazed by the sheer complications of the various instruments floating in the markets! I guess the more complicacies one introduces, the higher is the respect in the financial community. Look at the following terms:

‘derivatives of derivatives’

‘reverse mortgage’

‘collateralized debt obligations’ (CODs)

Don’t they sound cool?

So tons of ultra-complicated financial instruments were made whose base was subprime loans. The complications grew so much, that no one could actually estimate the actual worth underlying these instruments. And when the borrowers started to default, everything started ripping apart like a castle of cards. Since the base of all the *exotic* instruments was these sub-prime debts, when the foundation collapsed, no one could have done anything to stop this.

What is money?

I never understand the fact that the Fractional Reserve Banking allows banks to print money by just keeping aside a meager percentage of deposits and lending out the rest. So the injection of currency is actually based on debts!!!!! The more indebted the citizens are, the more money gets injected into the country’s economy. Anyways, I am too naïve to comment further on this. There must be some rationale which I still have to understand. The following video is a MUST WATCH for anyone who wants to understand money:

Money as Debt

How is India impacted?

Fortunately, Indian bank’s exposure to such instruments is almost nil. So no direct concerns over there. However, with the US economy slowing down, some impact can’t be ruled out. I guess the whole world will have to slow down a bit. India seems to have definitely lost it’s shine as is evident through the Indian stock markets and general perception as well.

Why has everything to be so complicated? Why can’t things be simple? I guess the reason is human nature. We constantly look to challenge ourselves and in the process introduce complications. I hope things will settle down soon and people will be careful for a while. But I am sure all this will definitely manifest again in some or the other way in our own lifetimes!