Guide to evaluate an IPO

This is a nice article that tells you how to evaluate an IPO. All said and done, an investor's job is made easy by the various presitious sites that do extensive research on these issues.

Blogging bug hits 'em all

I was relaly happy when my roommate asked me how blogs worked. He was eager to put up his own blog. Gave him some pointers and also passed on my Blog URL (Everything comes with a price !).
Hope we all can turn this into a healthy habbit.

Mystic India's Secrets - Nadi Joshiyam

I was in Seerkazhi, Tamil Nadu taking a much-needed break. Dad and I had planned to visit the famous temples in and around that town. Top on the list was the alpha-famous Vaideeshwaran Temple of Lord Shiva. This place is very famous for Nadi Joshiyam - a form of astrology that can read into the past, present and future of a person.
Nadi Joshiyam is a form of astrology based on the information written on ancient sacred palmyra (or palm) leaves purportedly authored by great ancient sages - such as Brighu, Shuka, Shukra, Agasthya, Kousika, Koumara, Kakbhusandi, Bhoga, Pullipani, Vashista, Vishwamitra, etc. It is said that the sages have jotted down information (on these palm leaves) for every human in this world. 'Nadi' in Tamil means 'to come in search of'. The information
that one gets from these sessions would be exactly applicable to the person ONLY at the point of time that he/she has this Nadi session. For eaxmple, a person's Nadi could reveal that one's dad/mom/sibling has already died. This information would be wrong if the person had visited (Theoretically) the Nadi astrolger when his/her dad/mom/sibling was alive. But it is said that the sages who wrote this knew what point in time a person would check out his Nadi and so this information would be exact when one checks out his/her Nadi.
I was curious to explore this intriguing form of Astrology. I cajoled my dad and we chose Sivasamy Nadi Astrologers. (They specialize in Agasthiya Nadi - Nadi written by Sage Agasthiya) - one of the most famous guys in this regard.

Once we had settled down, the Nadi reader asked for my dad's right thumb impression. This is the only thing the Nadi reader needs to dig out the correct set of palm leaves. Once he had dad's thumb impression, it took him just 10 minutes to find the Nadi that corresponds to that fingerprint pattern. He told us that there were 4 (I dont remember the exact number) types of fingerprints and that each of these patterns had a corresponding Nadi. He brought a set of bound palm leaves. Every person with the same thumbprint pattern would have his details in this set of bound palm leaves. He started asking dad some questions. The only answers that dad was allowed to give were 'Yes' and 'No'. He started eliminating leaves in the colection based on the responses provided by dad. The most significant item in each leaf was sounded out as a question to dad. If he replied in the negative, that leaf would be filtered out. Examples of the questions that the reader put forward were :
1. You have n living brother(s), n living sister(s)
2. You were born in the month of xxx
3. You have x kids
4. You don't have a daughter

After many such questions, he got to one leaf where all the questions were answered in the affirmative by Dad. He then told us Dad's name, Grandpa's name, Grandma's name, Mom's name, Dad's DoB with the exact time, etc. Every piece of information that he gave us was perfectly correct. I was astounded. He then showed us the palm leaf with the inscribed information. It was written in ancient Tamil. He showed us the pertinent words (he pointed out the names that he had sounded out correctly). I could make out the words easily since it was similar to the modern-day Tamil script. It was authenticy of the first order.He then asked us if we wanted to get more details.

There are 9 Kandams. Each Kandam talks about one particular part of the concerned person's life. For example, one Kaandam talks about one's past life. One talks about one's life in his/her next birth(janmam), etc. We decided to check this out. After an hour, the reader ushered us in and started reading from a journal that he had written for Dad. The journal had all the information in a poetic form. He read from the journal and gave us the name, place of birth, date of birth, profession, caste that dad would have in his next birth. He gave us a lot of information. All this information is taped in a cassette in addition to being written (in a poetic form) in a journal. We get to keep the journal and the cassette.

After the wonder faded, I started to think about the implications of this. If this were true, it means that every move that we make is a part of a pre-fabricated plan by GOd's hand. Everything in our life has already been planned.
As Shakespeare said ...
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players ..

Check out the Road Map and the Kandam Details

Anecdote from the past

I remember this funny incident from the past when my brother and I were visiting my grandparents.

There was a phone call for grandpa and my brother was taking the call on his behalf. After taking the message, my brother promptly asked the guy on the phone "Who are you ?". After he had hung up, I called my brother aside and told him that it was considered crude to ask "Who are you". I told him that a better way would be to say "May I know who is calling". My brother took note of this (.. So I thought).

After sometime, there was another call for grandpa. It would have been a perfect deja vu, had my brother not ended the call asking "May I know .... (2 second pause .. since he had forgotten the rest of it) ... who are u" :)