Givers vs Takers

 There are two kinds of people in this world: The givers and the takers. The takers sometimes eat better, but the givers always sleep better. 

Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others.

 (Quotes by Danny Thomas)

Never Die

 

To live in the hearts we leave behind is to never die.

- A line from a poem by Scottish poet Thomas Campbell.

Longing to return to India

 

I was talking to my nephew, who was born in America. He asked me why I would want to return to India eventually. He said his heart bleeds red, white, and blue. I gave him the example of Amrish Puri in DDLJ, who longs to return to Punjab after working in London. There is always a strong desire to return to our roots, especially if we had a happy childhood.  But the biggest pull, of course, is the family, especially ageing parents and siblings.

Sadly, a huge portion of the current generation has left India to pursue their careers abroad. The biggest losers were the parents of that generation. Initially, they all expressed joy in learning that their son or daughter has got a job in XYZ corporation and is doing well financially. But then, as years roll by, they realize that being very far from their wards is a curse rather than a blessing. Meeting them is at most once or twice a year. Is the money or the career worth it? At some point, the parents cannot travel for 24 hours.

The entire generation just went with the 'flow' and did not really question the downstream effects of their children not growing up in India. What happens 1 or 2 generations down? Would they still have links to India? Will they still follow all the Hindu rituals? At least the current generation has grown up in India and still has family there. 

The realization dawned on me quite late. While young, it is all focused on career, what to work on, buying a house, etc. As you get older, you start questioning the bigger purpose in life. Is money alone everything? What use are those 'career levels' when you get the dreaded phone call about your parents' health back in India, and you have to sit through 24 hours on a plane crying and praying? The peace of mind that one gets while being in India, closer to parents, is priceless. For some people, it is too late. 

The great sage of Kanchi used to advise everyone he met to stay in India. Maybe it is divine providence that H1Bs and Green cards are being restricted these days, so at least the next generation can stay together with their families.

Today we fight !!!

 

"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003)

This is what I tell myself on those days whenever I am down.

A day may come when the courage of men fails,

when we forsake our friends

and break all bonds of fellowship,

but it is not this day.

An hour of wolves and shattered shields,

when the age of men comes crashing down,

but it is not this day!

This day we fight!!

Divine Providence

 When I saw this ad "Every corpse on mount Everest was once an extremely motivated person.",  I got reminded of the role of Divine providence.

 Never underestimate the role of luck (read divine providence) on the outcomes of companies and people.

Pitch

 

Leo’s pitch in Wolf of Wall Street:

The name of the company, Aerotyne International. It is a cutting-edge high-tech firm out of the Midwest awaiting imminent patent approval on the next generation of radar detectors that have both huge military and civilian applications now. Right now, John, the stock trades over-the-counter at 10 cents a share. And by the way, John, our analysts indicate it could go a heck of a lot higher than that. Your profit on a mere $6,000 investment would be upwards of $60,000.

12 Movies that I remember fondly

 

1.   Summer 1989.    Apoorva Sagodharagal :   Earliest movie I remember going to a movie theatre. I went to the Alankar movie theatre in Vellore during my 3rd standard summer holidays with my cousins. The movie was not great. It was the experience that I remember, all the waiting/anticipation of going to the movie theatre with cousins.

2.   Deepavali 1992/1993:  MMKR. I remember watching this on Doordarshan in Coimbatore. The dialogues were funny.  Even though I was in 6th standard or 7th standard, I still recollect the dialogues were so funny (Bhim boy, Bhim boy,...) that it kept me glued to the TV in the evening on Deepavali.  I waited for the movie to get over before going out to burst crackers.

3.  Summer 1993.  Aladdin. I watched this movie with my cousin Narasimhan in the Apsara Theatre (??) in Vellore. I had zero expectations going in. But I was mesmerized coming out; with the movie playing out in my mind for a week later on.

4.  1996 Independence Day. Woodland Theatre, Madras. My cousin Balaji took me and my brother to the theatre. I was in 10th standard. I was watching an English movie after quite some time. My parents did not put Star/Cable TV in my home.  (It's another story that my father scolded me for bringing my friend's cable tv guy in front of him for payment without giving him a heads up). This movie was scary and mesmerizing to me; kept me on the edge of my seat. I was discussing this movie with my classmates for 2 weeks after watching it.  To watch the movie, I was looking forward to the evening for the entire day. All in all, unforgettable. 

5. Summer 1998. Home Alone 3.  Ega Theatre, Madras. I watched it with my school friends. I used to own a Kinetic Honda those days. A lot of fun, a lot of laughter in the movie. Laughed, laughed, and laughed.   I also watched Titanic with the same group of friends that summer (1998), but that did not register as much as Home alone 3. Definitely something in that movie. Fast forward to 2017, I watched this movie together with my family. I and my daughter watched it multiple times over, still did not get bored of this movie. 

6. Winter 1998 Ronin. I was on the BITS Pilani campus. We used to have both an English and Hindi movie every week screened at the main auditorium by RAC.  I still remember that after this never heard before English movie; there was a test the next day. But boy, was I  glad to have gone to this movie. The car chase scene in that movie was unbelievable; nothing I had seen so far in Tamil action scenes had been in the same category as the above movie. Once I bought my first DVD player in 2005, this was one of the first DVDs that I had purchased.

7.  1999 Summer The Mummy.  Watched it with my brother and neighbor Suchi in a theatre near Vadapalani, Madras.  All of us loved it.

8.  1999 Mercury Rising. I believe it was back to back movie screening during/after Apogee. Junta was asked to choose between this movie and Armageddon. I was ok with either, but it looks like most of them had already seen the latter, so this got a louder roar, and with a voice vote, this movie was chosen.  Thriller; it kept me on the edge of the seat at that time. If I watch the movie now, probably it will be silly.

9.  2001 Minnale. Pilani Tamil Mandram was screening this movie on QT. The same day in the main theatre in Audi, the Hindi movie Kaho Na Pyaar Hai was playing. Had to pick between this movie and that one. I was having butterflies in my stomach after watching this movie!

10.  2003, My Cousin Vinny.  I watched this movie at a friend's house in College Station TX. It was funny.  Fast forward, when I watched this movie later with my wife, she loved this movie very much.  This is one of her favorites. She always asks to watch this movie when she wants to unwind. 

11. 2004.  Bourne Identity. I watched this movie with my friend Abhiram at College Station on his computer.  It was almost additive when I saw it. This carried/built my fascination for the spy thriller movies - and I faithfully watched every Bourne movie later on multiple times. 

12.  2005, 2020. Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban. I saw this movie in 2005 and liked the story; especially the ending. I rewatched all the harry potter movies in 2020 (quarantine) with my daughter. This is my favorite among all of the other Harry Potter movies.

Dumb Money

Dumb Money

  "Paradoxically, when ‘dumb’ money acknowledges its limitations, it ceases to be dumb.” Warren Buffett, 1993 Berkshire Shareholder Letter.

Can all those index funds create a bubble by distorting the prices of a lot of companies? Lot of money happens to be invested in a variety of small companies whose shares have low volume of trades. Who will buy them once the passive funds stop investing?

On being a contrarian

Being a contrarian for its own sake is suicidal. Not being a contrarian at all means by definition you can’t outperform. Being genuinely contrarian means you are going to be uncomfortable sometimes.

Bezos abhors what he calls “social cohesion,” the natural impulse to seek consensus. He’d rather his minions battle it out backed by numbers and passion, and he has codified this approach in one of Amazon’s 14 leadership principles—the company’s highly prized values that are often discussed and inculcated into new hires

Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit. Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

Four principles for being miserable

Four prescriptions for being miserable from Charlie Munger [that you can instead invert]:

1. Be unreliable.

2. Learn everything you possibly can from your own personal experience, minimizing what you can learn from the good and bad experience of others, living and dead.

3. Go down and stay down when you get your first, second, and third severe reverse in the battle of life (i.e., if at first you do not succeed then do not try again).

4. Ignore evidence contrary to your opinion by remaining certain in your views.


http://www.thecrosshairstrader.com/2014/08/charles-t-munger-and-the-prescription-for-a-life-of-misery/

Patience and Compassion

The patience and compassion of Bhoo Devi (Mother Earth) is also praised by Thiruvalluvar.

Tirukkural 151: “Agazhvaarai Taangum nilam pOla tammai, Igazhvaarai poruttal talai”.

Meaning:

• When someone insults you or disrespects you, please be patient and do not take revenge.
• Just as the earth that bears the man who tills and digs it, to bear those who speak ill of them, is a quality of the highest respect.

I pray to God to always bless me with patience and compassion.

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Bitter guard chips

Last Saturday I made bitter guard chips on my wife's request. This was my first time.  

Turned out good.  

Bitter guard chips with mint chutney. 

Inputs to the function:

1. Thinly sliced bitter guards.
2. 2-3 cups of gram/besan flour.
3. 2-3 tea spoons of rice flour.
4. 1-2 tea spoons of Turmeric powder, Chillie powder, Salt to taste.
5. Bowl of tamarind water.

Function: 

1. Soak the thinly sliced bitter guard pieces with salt water for 15 minutes to kill germs.
2. Soak the thinly sliced bitter guard pieces with tamarind water. 
3. Mix gram/besan flour, rice flour, chillie powder,  turmeric powder, salt. Sprinkle tamarind water to make the powder mix into a batter.
4. Dip the thinly sliced bitter guard pieces into the batter and deep fry them.

Output:

Both my wife and my daughter loved this together with mint chutney.

Fear of missing out

Warren Buffett in his February 28, 2001 Chairman’s letter : "Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities—that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future—will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands."


Fear of missing out (FOMO) is driven by an innate human desire to avoid regret. They key takeaway from the 2001 bubble, for me, is that when it happens is not predictable. If it is a bubble and it does bust, the day before is like any other day. 

Do you see any "tells"? Please leave them in comments...

Frozen pond near our house

Feynman [Problem-Solving] Algorithm

1. Write down the problem.
2. Think real hard.
3. Write down the solution.

Low-flying hawk

History behind naming a new building in Seattle as “low flying hawk”

“Low-flying-hawk”: In the early days of AWS, the most vocal, highest standard, critical (of us) AWS customer was a person who called himself low-flying-hawk on the AWS Forums. We would constantly be trying to see what low-flying-hawk thought of new features, pricing, issues we were experiencing, etc. He was like a customer in our meeting rooms, without being there. One day, about a year into obsessing about low-flying-hawk, somebody innocently asked "how much money does low-flying-hawk spend per month with us?" We'd never asked ourselves that (which I liked). The answer was something like $2.37/month. But not caring about whether low-flying-hawk was a big spender or not, and treating his feedback as importantly as our biggest spenders, and trying to make sure the customer experience was fantastic for individual developers helped us raise our standards and serve the all-important (and viral) technorati well in the first few years.”  

-Andy Jassy

The difference between first & second level thinking (by Howard Marks)

Moats

Sustainable Competitive Advantage or as Buffet calls them "Moats". Moats can come from a combination of:

1. Supply side economies of scale
2. Demand side economies of scale (network effects)
3. Brand
4. Regulation
5. Intellectual property

The evidence that a moat exists is pricing power. If pricing power is dropping the moat is shrinking. 

BillG -"Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana".

If the source of the pricing power is hard to identify, the source is usually brand.  

25 percent margins

“I’ve always said 25 percent margins are not a forever thing.” Bill Gates. Forbes, February 28, 1994

Moats created by existing network effects or others factors are brittle even though they are strong. All moats deteriorate over time the only questions are (1) is how fast the process happens and (2) can the company generate a new moat with the cash flow

The Behavior Gap

"It's not that we’re dumb. We’re wired to avoid pain and pursue pleasure and security. It feels right to sell when everyone around us is scared and buy when everyone feels great. It may feel right—but it’s not rational.” —From The Behavior Gap, By Carl Richards