Rate Adjustments in China

The moderates in the American treasury department counted one more in the win column for their diplomacy with China, when the Chinese announced a 2.1% readjustment of the Renminbi (why not just call it Yuan and make it easy on the rest of the world?). The Chinese also unpegged the RMB from the USD and let it float - sort of. The RMB will be allowed to fluctuate +/- 3% in a given day.

The American euphoria was short lived because the Americans realised that this was well short of free floating RMB. It was just an effort by the Chinese to counter any criticism of an artificially cheap RMB. The demands for more stringent tariffs against Chinese imports have started making their rounds again after a few days of silence.

Tariffs on the Chinese would be hypocritical of the Americans. China's economy and their fiscal infrastructure are not mature and they cannot afford a full currency float just yet. The fact that a relatively weaker Indian economy can do so is a different story and speaks volumes about the stronger maturity of the Indian fiscal infrastructure. Americans still artificially hold up their dead textile and steel industries by penalising imports from India, China and other developing countries.

If America wants the market-forces to truly define the economies of the world, it is high time that America starts practising that in its hinterlands what it preaches to the rest of the world.

Tennis Elbow

After a really long winter break, I started playing tennis again last week. There is a big group from work that plays regularly and some of the guys that play are bordeline state-level players. So, you can easily imagine me getting pummeled and that would be entirely factual. The best set I have played so far, I lost 6-4.

Inspite of my victory starved pursuits, I really love both the tennis and table tennis. With Tennis, I get some inexplicbable pleasure in hitting the ball around especially when the ball hits a tightly strung racket and makes the "thump" sound.

Next 3 months will be fun - till September atleast. The weather will be mostly great and I will progressively get better at tennis. Then it will be winter - I will stop play and ergo loose the touch - and I will start next summer again. It's all good.

Having played on and off for 4 years now, I think it is time for a better racket than the beginner's I-too-can-play-tennis class racket.

Freakonomics

A rogue economist's attempt to reveal the hidden side of everything falls short of explaining it all but is a very interesting read nevertheless.

This is not a book about macro or micro economics as one is wont to expect from an economist teaching at the University of Chicago. Steven Levitt , the economist, and Stephen Dubner of New York Times have produced this unusual book - unusual in that the book targets the lay person but manages to be very data driven.

The book deals with disparate subjects as incentives, the power of information and how these drive human behavior. The examples they choose to explain these ideas are singular and interesting. While sumo-wrestlers and public school teachers help them explain the concept of incentives, the seemingly polar Ku Klux Klan and Real-Estate agents are used to explain how experts hoard, abuse and use information to their advantage.

Most people who routinely accept conventional wisdom without questioning the data underneath would do well to do read this easy but inforrmational work.

Bemusing Pakistani denials

Spate of suicide bombs in London and Egypt. All the terrorists with either proven or suspected connections to Pakistan and how do the Pakistanis respond?

After the London bombs, Pakistan's foreign minister said that Britain should examine how the British society might have contributed to such a terrorist attack and that they should not blame it on Pakistani Madarassas.

Yesterday, Musharraf averred with blind optimism that the Al-Qaeda's command and control center has been completely destroyed and that Al-Qaeda now did not have the organisational wherewithal to plan and execute such co-ordinated attacks.

I don't know what Musharraf is smoking but I sure would like to try it. It is just empty bluster. Whether or not Al-Qaeda carried out these bombings, the fact remains that Pakistan has a huge terrorist problem. Pakistan is America's "ally" in the war against terror. This friendly label is one of desperation on the part of America. A desperation to find a neighbouring country to wage war against Al-Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan. Since America has had some history with Pakistan since the cold war it naturally become the "ally" and not because Pakistan is a beacon of liberalism, democracy or plurality.

Even assuming that there has been a volte-face in governmental policy (i.e. a new will to actively curb Islamic fundamentalism) it is impossible that Musharraf has succeeded in this. It would take decades of educating the people - not the kind of blind education dished out by some of the Madarassas but meaningful, diversity embracing, forward looking education. There are illiterates in many countries. But, the reason why the Islamic illiterates are falling prey to fundamentalism is because of the bigoted, misguided education of certain Madarassas. Complicating the scenario is the underdeveloped economy of most of Western Pakistan. Although certain regions of the country and certain sectors of the economy are doing well, most of western Pakistan is grossly underdeveloped.

A bigoted education + lack of jobs means that the chances of becoming a fundamentalist are pretty high.

Musharraf and his government have done nothing to address these issues. Au contraire, he is viewed as the lap-dog of the Americans by many Pakistanis. This has enfeebled him and left him powerless to drive any meaningful change. Given such realities it would be better for Musharraf to shut-up and help the investigations in the UK and Egypt than to make meaningless, blatantly deceitful claims.

Table tennis rediscovered

I played TT after a long time. I prefer the Indian way of saying TT rather than the American version of ping-pong.

Growing up in India, I was aware of many sports and games. However, like millions of other Indians, Cricket was the only passion and every other sport merited only a quick update through the sports pages of The Hindu. 1987 changed this - the world table-tennis championship games were played in India. The Venue was New Delhi's Asiad stadium, I think. It could have very well been Talkatora stadium too.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was cups awarded to the men and women - Men's Champion was awarded the Swaythling cup and winning woman took home the Corbillion cup. For someone who knew only of trophies with names like Duleep, Buchi Babu, Ranji, etc. these names struck as curious and cool. The other cup which has an equally curious name is the Venus Rosewater Dish - awarded to the Woman's Champion in Wimbledon. Then there were all these curiosly named players - Zoran Primorac, Ilija Lupulescu, Eric Lindh etc. I was in 6th or 7th at the time of these games and exposure to anything outside Southern India was minimal.Add to the mix two commentators with Rhyming Bengali and Parsi names - Partho Mukherjee and Farukko Daiji. It was a veritable name-fest and for some plesantly inexplicable reason these names had a very mellifluous ring to them.

Lastly, the game itself enthralled me. The hand-eye co-ordination of all these players was beyond belief and the game had a sublime grace to it. There was no brute force required and even the most powerful smashes had more to do with technique than power. The ball touching the table between these fast rallies created a sharp stuccato like sound. I used to watch all these games with my mouth agape. Eversince then I have been a big fan.

During 10th tand 11th standards, I spent many a Saturday at school - playing TT, having conned my parents into thinking that I am at school attending special classes. Special? They were indeed. Classes? No way.

Travesty of House Wines

I am not a wine expert but I love wines and herein lies the problem. I don't believe in Wine ratings that the experts so blithely state. The only exception being Jancis Robinson's column in the weekend edition of FT. I don't believe in wine pairings either. When your food is vegetarian, especially the spicy Indian kind, wine-food pairings targeted mainly at the meat eating western population doesn't make much gastronomical sense. So drinking good wines has mostly been a game of chance. A good bottle of wine followed by a couple " oh, not so very good" ones.

Last week, we were eating at Mezbaan (where the food is really mazedaar) and they served excellent Cab. Sauv. and Pinot Noir. I partook the Pinot (thanks to Sideways) and Paavana chose the Cabernet. I was all excited and asked the hostess to part with the names of the wines. She rattled off the names and my spirits, thanks to the spirit imbibed, were high.

"And Sir, these are house wines", she remarked happily.

Feeling happy at possibly buying two nice Reds, I asked, "Nice selection, where do you get them from?"

"Oh, these are sold exclusively to the restaturants. You can't buy them in open market."

"Oh, I see."

Bummer! And the quest for nice Reds continues.

Disappointing Tamil Movies

Once in a blue moon - that is how often I get an urge to watch a Tamil movie. It is usually the urge to watch something Tamil that drives me to rent a Tamil movie. Last Wednesday, I had one such urge and rented two movies - Thenali and London Dreams. Now, I rue having rented those movies.

Thenali was despicable - Why does an experienced actor like Kamal have to stoop so low into acting in a slap-stick lift-off of the 1991 Hollywood movie, " What About Bob?". I know, I know, Kamal has made it a habit to lift, no plagiarise, hollywood themes and dub them into bad Tamil flicks. I should have known better. The first few minutes of the movie rendered it irredeemable and it never recovered after that. I even feel insulted writing a post about it

The next movie was London - it is not worth even to comment. Pure, un-adulterated drivel. I will leave it at that. We did not watch the whole movie. Turned it off after the first 10 minutes and returned it.

Now, we are watching Bride and Prejudice. Before Paavana gets upset with my blogging, I will end this post now :).

Different names for Indian Restaurants

Every Indian living in the US knows this. The names of the Indian restaurants are uber-predicatable and downright vapid - Taj Mahal (Granted that the Taj is the most famous Indian building, but it has nothing to do with Indian food), Maharaja, India Palace, Madras Mahal, New Bombay etc.... . Infact there are only a few words and the restaurateurs combine them in finitely predictable manner. There is one close to Milwaukee called Taste of India although Distaste of India would be a more apt name. I avoid all these places except when we are desperate to eat some non-home-cooked Indian meal.

However, oflate I have started coming across restaurants with refreshing and in some cases even interesting.

Chinese Mirch, Cardamom spice, Utsav, Shaan, Curry in a hurry, Vatan and others in NYC have not only interesting names but served equally delectable food. My own MKE boasts of places like Dancing Ganesha, Saffron and Mezbaan offer delicious food in their differently named restaurants.

Milk - Indian Ishtyle

This picture reminds me of good old days in Madras, when milk used to be delivered in bottles. Many of these bottles used be delivered to people's doorsteps early in the morning. The lady that used to deliver milk in our colony was called Mangamma - really old and shrivelled but cheery. She used to deftly balance and carry hundreds of these bottles in her head. The only brand available back then was Aavin (Aa, in Tamil, means cow and Aavin meant Cow's). Heritage, Vijaya and all the other brands did not exist. The only other way to get milk was to have cow owners sell it directly to the consumer. This is what we did in our house and the milk was fresh, nutritious (no foul harmones) and tasty. Aavin milk was not quite fresh but still tasted (and does to this da) better than all the non-organic milk available in the US.

Slowly plastic became a cool material to package in, door to door milk vending stopped and private processed milk vendors multiplied. The bottles were progressively phased out. Milk in bottles is a responsible way to deliver milk. My grocery store buys the bottles back and credits the consumers the cost of the bottle. The bottles are then recycled and used again. A small but sustainable step in responsible consumerism.

It's Sambhar

One very unscientific way of rating Indian restaurants on how good their South-Indian dishes would taste is by checking the spelling of Sambhar - More often than not it is mis-spelt. It is usually samber, sambur, sambher. All the restaurants run by south Indians get it correct.

I usually have a irreprisible urge to correct the spelling but dont want to risk being labelled "salaa Madarasi " :)

North Indian Kids

Why are so many North Indian (or maybe just Punjabi kids) kids named Munna, Bunty, Babloo (the female version being Babli), Raja ? I know that all of us have had pet names growing up but rarely have they been public and more imortantly after the age of 5 these pet names sort of wane away.

Imagine the stigma of a 22 year old guy being known as Munna? Interesting!

A Quick post.

The two books I ordered online were delivered today.

Given the title, "Being and Nothingness", one would think that it is a small paperback. Paperback? Yes, it is but it is no way small. The book is some 800 pages and all of it is in fine print. Feels more like an attorney gone awry and and decided to write a fine-print legal tome for all commerical transactions.

The other book, Freakonomics, has an apple slice that resembles an Orange's innards. Now I atleast understand how the cover of the books explains the title.