Veerasamy - the absolute nadir in Tamil movies

Last sunday, Sun TV took the honour of unleashing Veerasamy - the T. Rajenther made classic on the Tamil public through the medium of Television. Without a doubt, it is the most pathetic movie ever made. A movie intended to be a tear jerking classic turned out to be one of the best comedy movies through a combination of unbelievably crappy casting, extraodinarily poor direction and above all, absolutely pathetic acting. I took a few minutes to collect the various reviews that have been published on this classic to give you a view on this calamity. I would strongly recommend this movie to any person who is depressed and wants to be cheered up.

Review by BBthots ( a balanced review)

Review by Dandanaka (this guy writes the best reviews ever and this is a 8-part classic review)

Senthil's wordpress

Mouthshut Review

The mystery of the Great Indian Name

Had an interesting experience today. A colleague called up and enquired if she was talking to thyagi. It was a little strange since this was a short form of my father's first name. I had to politely remind her that this was my father's first name and my surname. It set me thinking about a few idiosyncrasies in Indian names. By the way, it was not a first time as i once got mistaken for a terrorist in the USA when i failed up to show for a selective profiling before a flight as the announcer called me as Mr. Thyagarajan.

• Most of the Northern, Western and Eastern states are pretty much aligned with the western model of naming which follows a <First Name> <Surname> approach where the Surname is the family name. Examples are Sharma, Patel (only non-English name in the top 100 British surnames) etc.,
• The south offers its own flavour with different communities having their own variants. My community, for instance uses the father's first name as the Surname and this is a primary reason for the confusion caused above. However some of the others use the community as their surname. Examples would be Main Shankar Iyer, Sundaram Iyengar, Mohan Reddy etc.,
• There are a few communities which have a family name derived from their native villages but they just keep adding more alphabets with every generation, especially in our neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh. An example would be an acquaintance who goes by the name of Mr. PSKRV Rao. It just gets mind blogging to even ask him to elaborate on the abbreviation which has a mix of first names and surnames. The easiest is to address him as Mr. Rao.
• One of other neighbouring states (Kerala) offers a couple of interesting variants. You have a category of names where nobody is sure whether the word in the name is the surname or the first name. Sometimes, you are pointed out that a specific word is the first name but nobody agrees on which word is the surname. An acquaintance goes by the name of Ernakulam John Arul Vincent Kochan. We address him as John. But nobody is sure which is the surname. Bear in Mind that Ernakulam is also the name of a city in Kerala
• There is an interesting category of folks who tend to augment their first names by adding the name of a place to their first name. A relative goes by the name of Kolathur Subramaniam, where Kolathur is the name of their place of origin. There is yet another bunch which adds the name of their origin city as their surname. Example Chitra Mysore.
• An interesting trend is the nature of some of the anti-social elements in my state (Tamilnadu)
  to augment their names with a few words. These could be derived from
• Their weapon of choice (Blade Pakkiri, Bomb Shekar)
• Their locality where they spread their menace (Nochukuppam Mari, Adyar
  Arumugam)
• There was a recent popular Tamil movie, Thirupaachi where the villains go by the name of Saniyan Sagadai, Pan Parag Ravi and Pattasu balu.Now Ravi and Balu are perefectly normal names while nobody understands what Sagadai means. Looking at the objectives, Saniyan is the tamil equivalent of Satan, Pan Parag refers to a chewing tobacco based product and Pattasu translates into firecrackers. These names are just there to impress their self proclaimed importance on the common man.
• Another interesting observation pertains to the first names which clearly do not specify the sex of the individual. Good examples are words like Kiran, Kripa, Suman etc., where the names could apply to Gents as well as ladies. So you need a voice or their personal presence to even figure out the personality that you are addressing.

So next time, you hear an Indian name, make sure that you get good clarity on how to address the person.

Beware!! Big Brother is watching you!!!

A colleague of mine just forwarded this link.

http://aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf (Make sure to turn your sounds on)

It is indeed scary to even think that such a sophisticated system would be in vogue for ordering Pizzas. As they say, we are in the middle of an information revolution. Do i hear the skeptics of Mr. George Orwell turning in their graves? Hope CRM doesnt stand for Confidentiality Rigor Mortis.

XIRR – A godsend for calculating Return on Investment

Most users of Excel would be familiar with the IRR function. This function returns the internal rate of return for a series of cash flows represented by the numbers in values. These cash flows do not have to be even, as they would be for an annuity. However, the cash flows must occur at regular intervals, such as monthly or annually. The internal rate of return is the interest rate received for an investment consisting of payments (negative values) and income (positive values) that occur at regular periods. The catch here is regular intervals.

Consider the following example:

Assume that you have an investment pattern which is based upon having surplus cash at the end of the month. You have chosen to invest your surplus amount in a mutual fund. Bear in mind that this is an adhoc investment and is done only if you have surplus cash available at the end of the month. Let us assume on 1-Jan-2008, you had 500 Rs surplus and invested it in buying 50 units of a chosen MF at a NAV of Rs 10. You did not have any surplus cash during January and February 08 and your next investment was only in March 08 where you used a surplus of 1000 to by 80 units of the MF at a NAV of Rs 12.5. You also ended up with surplus cash in April to the tune of 550 Rs and bought 50 units of the MF at a NAV of Rs 11.

So your net investment pattern would be as shown in the table below

Let us assume that the NAV of the mutual Fund on 1-May-08 is Rs 15. This means that the Net Value of the overall investment on 1-May-08 = (180*15) = 2700. IRR will not help out here as the irregular nature of the payments will result in a wrong value. Step in Mr. XIRR. The formula takes in 2 sets of parameters, an array called values and an array called Dates. So to model this example, consider the following usage in Excel

As you can see, IRR assumes a yearly pattern by default while XIRR factors into account, the periodicity element by using the dates.

Who killed Westinghouse?

I was trained at one of the leading management institutes in India where we were constantly challenged to think through the eyes of a CEO. In my opinion, a CEO's fame as a strategic thinker is only made in the future and in most cases, long after they have ceased to be one. This article gives a very detailed insight into the journey of one of the leading industrial giants in the United States and the important strategic decisions that ultimatley lead to its destruction. I would recommend it to anybody who is even vaguely interested in corporate strategy.

http://www.post-gazette.com/westinghouse/default.asp

Resuming my blogging

my blogging started out in quite an ambitious manner but then fizzled out like most of my childhood pursuits. FYI, i did an amazingly mediocre job at learning Tennis/Cricket/Chess/Mirudangam/Rowing/Karate (all through formal Learning) and never reached anywhere. However did not want my blogging to reach a similar state. So restarted my interest once again