Mobile Apps

Mobile apps are becoming ubiquitous. And I've always wondered if this is a passing fad. Until I found that they are able to help in ways not possible otherwise.

Here is  list of 5 apps that I use regularly and have made a huge difference to me.

1. Gaana
Gaana.com is a commercial music streaming service providing free and licensed music. It provides both Indian and international music content. Gaana.com features music from 21 languages including the major languages such as Hindi, English, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and other Indian regional languages.

http://gaana.com/


2. Headspace
Headspace is meditation made simple. Learn online, when you want, wherever you are, in just 10 minutes a day.

https://www.headspace.com/


3. Zenlabs fitness
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Just beginning your fitness journey? Join this community to receive motivation and tips from fellow amazing enthusiastic members. Anything from dieting tips, proper workout technique, to favorite workout attire can be asked and found here! 10K Trainer is the easiest program to get beginners from couch potatoes to 10K distance runners in just 14 weeks.

http://www.zenlabsfitness.com/


4. Sworkit
Sworkit (derived from Simply WORK IT) is a fitness app that takes you through 5-60+ minute strength, yoga, pilates and stretching workouts requiring no equipment. We strive to provide the simplest way to get a workout in anywhere, anytime, with no room for excuses.

http://sworkit.com/


5. Uber
Uber is the smartest way to get around. One tap and a car comes directly to you. Your driver knows exactly where to go. And you can pay with either cash or card.

https://www.uber.com/

The Big Short

Last week I saw "The Big Short", a movie based on the novel of the same name by Michael Lewis.

I'm a big fan of movies, and always preferred movies to the books. Mainly because I'm not a good reader, but enjoy watching films.

This was an exception. Hollywood disappointed. The movie had a great cast, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt. And they introduced several famous personalities to simplify what they considered complex concepts. And that didn't work either.

Having said that, The Big Short is an amazing book and is a must read for anyone who has any interaction with the finance markets. Come to think of it, it actually is a great read for everybody.

And for those of you who are thinking of skipping the book in favor of the movie, think again. This is one of the few unique scenarios where what almost always works, doesn't.

You can check out the details:
The Book
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short

The Movie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short_%28film%29

The 1.5 Billion Dream

Wednesday, January 13 was the drawing for the largest lottery ever in the US, possibly in the world. At stake was a jackpot for 1.5 billion dollars. Yes billion with a B.

I normally do not gamble. So I surprised myself when I got 10 tickets for the Powerball on Wednesday afternoon, spending $20. The probability of getting the numbers in the jackpot was 1 in 292 million. The probability of getting all of it, was less than 1 in 900 million.

So with odds so low, why would so many people including me, waste or invest, depending on your point of view in the Powerball. Like almost every interesting question, an Economics school has published a paper on it.

The School of Economics and Management at the Technical University in Lisbon, published "Why do People Buy Lottery Products ?" The paper examines the lottery sales of 99 countries in order to explain gambling consumption around the world. You can download and read the paper at:
https://ideas.repec.org/p/ise/isegwp/wp12009.html

Americans spend more on lottery tickets than they spend on America. John Oliver explains in his inimitable style why Americans buy lotteries and who benefits

Several people makes several assumptions about the Powerball. I have a simple solution. Don't assume. Check out the most authentic source on the Powerball. The organization that organizes the Powerball. In addition to a well designed site, the webmaster has a brilliant sense of humor. The FAQ's in addition to being informative are funny.
http://www.powerball.com/

That still doesn't answer the question, Why did I buy the Powerball. This brilliant article from Business Insider, a part of which I'm giving below explains why. Well almost.

"
...
Powerball and similar lotteries are a wonderful example of this kind of random process. As of October in Powerball, five white balls are drawn from a drum with 69 balls, and one red ball is drawn from a drum with 26 balls. As an aside, that rule change is why prizes can get as big as the current record jackpot: The probability of winning the jackpot is much lower than it used to be.

Prizes are then given out based on how many of a player's chosen numbers match the numbers written on the balls. Match all five white balls and the red Powerball, and you win the jackpot. In addition, several smaller prizes are won for matching some subset of the drawn numbers. Powerball's website helpfully provides a list of the odds and prizes for each of the possible outcomes. We can use those probabilities and prize sizes to evaluate the expected value of a $2 Powerball ticket. Take each prize, subtract the price of our ticket, multiply the net return by the probability of winning, and add all those values up to get our expected value:

At first glance, we seem to have a positive expected value at $3.45. The situation, however, is more complicated.

Annuity vs. lump sum
Our first problem is that the headline $1.5 billion grand prize is paid out as an annuity. Rather than getting the whole amount all at once, you get the $1.5 billion spread out in smaller — but still multimillion-dollar — annual payments over 30 years. If you choose to take the entire cash prize at one time instead, you get much less money up front: The cash-payout value at the time of writing is $930 million. Looking at the lump sum, our expected value drops dramatically to just $1.50.

"
http://www.businessinsider.com/powerball-lottery-expected-value-jan-13-draw-2016-1

As you can see, the expected value of a $2 ticket is 1.50 or about as close to $2, as we are likely to get. And the fun value of dreaming, priceless. And so on this rare occasion, I succumbed to purchasing a few tickets.

And for all of you skeptics, I won the Powerball.

Well okay, not the 1.5 billion jackpot, but a modest $4 for getting the Poweball number correct.

Where matters !

Last week Freia sent us a message.
"Hey fam a few months ago I wrote a piece on india and feminism for a small website called Femsplain and it got picked up by Teen Vogue today :)"

It was exciting to see Freia published. She was the first published author I knew.

Teen Vogue headlined the article as
"How Moving from India to the U.S. Helped Me Embrace Feminism".

Interestingly the original article did not credit the U.S. with the transformation and was called "The Paradox of being an Indian Feminist."

Even more interesting is the fact that none of us knew about this article, which was an excellent, well written article. Freia told us about it only after it was published in Teen Vogue. Even though it was possibly more appropriate in FEMSPLAIN.

Like most things in life, where matters more than what.

Am reproducing the original article taken from:
https://femsplain.com/the-paradox-of-being-an-indian-feminist/


"

The Paradox Of Being An Indian Feminist

I spent the first 18 years of my life in Mumbai and the last two in New York City. A lot has changed for me during my time in New York — for instance, I now call myself a feminist. It’s not that I didn’t before — I just never gave it a thought.

Over the past few years, however, a lot of incidents have come up in India that prompt discussion about women’s issues — grotesque rape cases, moral policing incidents, dress code issues, badly executed “feminist” videos —and led to endless debates about feminism with many friends, smart, opinionated people who I respect a lot. A lot of women I know and love would never call themselves feminists, for reasons I understand and respect. They are feminists, they care about equality of the sexes, but they don’t like what feminism has come to represent.

Take my family. I didn’t realize it until recently, but my parents, aunts and uncles were the first feminists I ever knew. One incident stands out in my memory is when my male cousin was asked to help my uncle in the kitchen along with my sister and I, and he mumbled something about us being girls from the back of his Playstation controller. My aunt was furious and told him off about his blatant sexism, told my sister and me to go sit down and made him help. This incident itself is something minor in the grand scheme of things, but it stayed with me for longer than I know.

Growing up, I thought I’d be many things — a lawyer, a journalist, an economist. I’d taken computer science classes, but didn’t think I’d ever want to be a software engineer. Now that I’m in college and I know I want to work in technology, I’ve been hyperaware of the complete lack of minorities in the industry. In India, I never realized there was a lack of women in STEM. Turns out, this is because my “third world, backwards” motherland is doing better than the Western world when it comes to how many women work in STEM fields. My father works at a technology company with women in all roles, including the management and leadership. Nobody ever told me that there was anything I couldn’t do, let alone because of my gender. I have grown up to understand that this was in part because of my family’s economic status and the immense amount of privilege it came with.

My grandmothers, meanwhile, grew up in a different India from my mother and aunts. For entirely too long, I didn’t appreciate my badass, hardworking mother who studied medicine and has been working at government hospitals ever since.Despite the often less-than-ideal conditions in India, I’m an idealist. I dream of a day when my little cousins can walk down the street wearing whatever they please without the regressive dress codes, moral policing, teasing and more. India is a land that celebrates its goddesses and mourns at the birth of a girl. Between child marriage, dowry and property laws, India has a lot to work on, but I’ve learned to take more time to appreciate our successes. We had a female head of state in 1966. We have some of the world’s top CEOs, engineers, doctors, lawyers and more, who just so happen to be women. We have a lot to work on, but we’ve come a long way.

The older I get, the more I learn to appreciate the progress we’ve made, the women who have helped define what it is to be a bhartiya naari (Indian woman) and the “third world country” that oftentimes treats women better than any of the Western world. India needs more feminism, and feminism needs more Indians.

Sometimes, being Indian and a feminist feels like a paradox. Most days, it’s what keeps me dreaming.
"

And finally since where matters, you can view the Teen Vogue article at:
http://www.teenvogue.com/story/indian-feminism-vs-western-feminism

2016

Last year for my first blog of the year, I made 5 predictions. And had a 100% record. I got them all wrong. So I'm guessing that forecasting the future is no longer a career option.

So this year, I'm going to keep it simple. Let me start by wishing each of you the very best for 2016.

As we start the New Year, I'd like to wish your family and you a very Successful, Prosperous and Happy 2016.

And since I'm not very good at wishing, let me share my favorite 10 wishes.

 

 

 

and my favorite wish for each of you