girls cellphones dinosaurs elephants homosexuality

Most girls (90%) end my calls by saying that they're getting a call from their home which obviously they have to take. Most of the remaining 10% tell me that they have some urgent work to take care of. A few even say they'll call me later, which they never do.
The most common excuse (70% of the cases) made by girls for not picking up my calls is that they were sleeping when I called. Every girl has a bag (and interesting stuff in it), and so also the obvious excuse that the cell-phone was in the bag and she didn't hear the ring. And a significant percentage (close to 5%) even pretend as if they didn't realize I had called, until I asked. 

I don't know which gene makes girls so stingy and tight-fisted. It may be an interesting area of research. But stingy and tight-fisted they certainly are, particularly when it's their own money. And mobile service providers have exacerbated this trait of girls by offering life-time validity recharges for prepaid mobile phones. It's like a dream-come-true for many girls. Now they keep 1-2 Rupee balances on their prepaid mobile numbers, just enough to give missed-calls to anyone (read guys). And yes, not many girls keep postpaid numbers. Postpaid weakens their position, and rules out many of the standard excuses which empower them in the mobile world. Another gene makes girls want to talk all the time. So consequently they want to keep talking, but don't want to spend. And yet another gene makes them hate other girls and like boys (I'm thankful to this gene, hoping it exists). And fortunately for girls, guys have their own genetic problems, which make them do silly stuff for girls, and also leave then so confused and dumb in front of girls that they are unable to talk anything, which makes them look like good listeners, which is perfect for girls. So girls give missed calls to guys, and the guys call them back instantly. I am sure evolution has played a big role in bringing things to this state of perfect harmony.

But once a girl expresses her interest in talking with a guy by giving him a missed call, guys get over-excited, thanks to another gene. They go out of control and start calling the girl without an invitation in the form of a missed-call. And this forces girls to make the excuses for ending calls or not picking them up. 

I have come accross a few girls who do not behave as per the above rules. Must be because of mutated genes. But I've not seen many guys who do not behave like I mentioned above. 

I am curious how Dinosaurs had sex. They were so big. I am sure they caused earthquakes during intercourse. The possibility of volcanic eruptions as a result of such events cannot be ruled out. I'm wondering whether this could be the actual cause for their extinction.

Here's an interesting piece of information - Elephants indulge in a lot of homosexual activity, both male and female elephants. Here's what wikipedia/elephant says:
African as well as Asiatic males will engage in same-sex bonding and mounting. Such encounters are often associated with affectionate interactions, such as kissing, trunk intertwining, and placing trunks in each other's mouths. The encounters are analogous to heterosexual bouts, one male often extending his trunk along the other's back and pushing forward with his tusks to signify his intention to mount. Unlike heterosexual relations, which are always of a fleeting nature, those between males result in a "companionship", consisting of an older individual and one or two younger, attendant males. Same-sex relations are common and frequent in both sexes, with Asiatic elephants in captivity devoting roughly 45% of sexual encounters to same-sex activity. 

That's interesting. So homosexuality isn't all that unnatural. Why do we humans see it as an aberration. Why are we so reluctant in accepting it as a natural phenomenon?

It's Money Honey

The stock markets have been quite volatile lately due to fears of a recession in the United States. Everyone wants to withdraw his/her money from the markets. Many have suffered huge losses during the past 2 weeks. All kinds of experts have come up with all kinds of theories to explain the turmoil. It's funny to see what happens when people try to find pattern in chaos.

Many Indian astrologers have blamed the bearishness of the market on the bronze bull outside the BSE. The BSE authorities got the thing made and set it there very recently as a symbol of the bull-run that the Indian markets had been enjoying over the past few months. I heard one Jyotishi say on AajTak that a bull outside the Stock Exchange is highly inauspicious, because the bull signifies the Nandi, Lord Siva's ride and with Siva not around, Nandi is bound to get restless. I guess that attracted Siva, the destroyer to come and decimate the stocks.

Many small investors got severe shocks leading to mental depression, nervous breakdown (NBD) and heart problems as they saw their money sinking on the 22nd and 23rd of this month. There was panic all over. I tuned in to News channels on TV to listen to their analyses and understand what's the real problem with the markets. What I gathered after listening to all of them for 2-3 days was that nobody knew for sure about the reasons for the market mayhem (bloodbath, plummet, plunge...). Probably there was no single reason. The blame was put mainly on 2 factors - the fear of an economic recession in the US and the loss of liquidity due to the Reliance Power IPO. The former had pulled all the Asian stock markets to their long time lows. And it looked as if the Indian stock market followed suit. And thereafter, it has been so volatile that if it falls for half the day, it rises for the remaining half.

I am not an investor, but from what I see people doing, it seems a handful of investors take decisions on how the markets should behave (based on factors like the ones mentioned above and also perhaps on baseless assumptions sometimes) and a few others follow them, and when together they create a minor trend, the majority gets swayed by it, thereby consolidating it. And then, there are investors who always think and act opposite to what everyone else is doing, at any point in time. All that for making money...

But some people do more, a lot lot more. France's Société Générale was taken by shock last week when a 31-year-old trader named Jérôme Kerviel accepted placing $70 bn in secret, unauthorized derivatives trades hitting the bank with a $7.2 bn loss, the biggest ever caused by a rogue trader. If you understand how that happened, and what exactly happened, then you have a fantastic knowldge of finance. I don't.

I am very bad in matters of money. I find a lot of usual things quite meaningless. I don't find it very exciting or interesting either to save or to invest. My friend Lugai and almost all of my female friends (who know that I don't invest) call me a fool, coz I don't invest, and try to coerce me to do it. Lugai even uses terms like "Capital Appreciation" to make it look sensible to me. But I am either too lazy to put my brains to it, or am too dumb to grasp it at one go. I also lack an internal urge to do it, which probably comes from my inability to find meaning in it.

Besides being meaningless, money irritates me in many ways. I hate to see articles which mix currencies, but these days we find it all over in the Indian Financial Dailies. Revenues are reported in Dollars and Profit in Rupees (or vice versa). Lacs & Crores, and Millions & Billions the very next moment. I get confused sometimes when I see numbers, whether to read them as Lacs/Crores or Millions/Billions. The commas help sometimes, but only if whoever writes cares to put them in the first place. As an Indian, I have been living all the time with such mixtures of all sorts - Telugu at home, Hindi outside, English with girls (unless she is kind enough to try Hindi) and in office. My mind has to handle the same information in different ways, and then have some way of correlating and comparing, so that finally I have pure data which my mind can interpret in it's basic language, which I am not sure exists. But my mind now is too unplastic to handle new forms of such complexity. I cannot think in terms of Dollars and Rupees at the same time, nor in terms of Billions and Crores. I cannot read $2000 as 2000 Dollars - I see the $ sign first, I'd want to read it first.

These are just minor problems when I compare these to the total incomprehensiblity of all the Finance which everyone seems to be playing with these days - Shares, Derivatives, Options, Futures, Hedge Funds, blah, blah, blah... Long ago, I used to consider myself a normal human being with an average intelligence and average physical abilities. I haven't got a chace to test all my physical abilities as yet, and there is still hope. But my intelligence disappoints me big time when I see everyone doing Finance and I find it hard to grasp. Perhaps people do stuff without any understanding. Perhaps they fake knowing the stuff too. But I find it impossible to fake, with my limited knowledge. Don't know how others do it, if at all they do. Perhaps faking is another ability which I lack. Perhaps I am too masculine to be able to fake well.

The RBI is meeting today to review the credit policies and decide on that for the future. Many business people, who talk economics, are asking for an interest-rate cut by the RBI, in line with the 75 basis-points cut by the Federal Reserve of the US. The Fed is also going to meet by the end of this month and is likely to cut the rate further. These days the markets rise and fall based on speculation as to whether the Fed will cut the rates or it won't. Silly. I recently read the book The Age of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan, the former Fed Chief. And what I gathered from the mota book is that the main job of the Fed (or the RBI) is to play with the Interest Rate figure to keep the inflation and the money supply in control. Excess money (caused by very low interest rates) will lead to inflation. High interest rates which lead to less money supply will slow down the economic activity. So the real challenge is to keep the inflation in control and at the same time manage as much economic pace as feasible. There are too many variables, known and unknown, that govern. And therefore, it is almost impossible to get at the right figure to achieve the best economic health at any point. Historical data and trial-and-error help. No wonder all the biggest banks got their calculations so wrong thereby leading to the subprime mortgage crisis. It is affecting the lives of millions, and many say there is a lot more which is yet to come. The banks themselves have registered huge losses. Well, seeing the best of the banks in the world with the best of the people goof up so badly in handling their money, I am forced to conclude that nobody understands money well enough.

Money is our own invention. It has made life easier as we grew in numbers and needed to distribute the scarce resources of the earth fairly among ourselves. But it seems like it has grown in ways that have complicated the concept of money and the associated matters. Money has also changed our lives more than anything else. But now, I am not sure whether money is making life easy or it's making it more difficult and complex. I cannot confidently proclaim the former, for sure.

Big Monkey

Symonds says Bhajji called him a Big Monkey. It is hard to believe that a sardar called a gora a Big Monkey. I can think of lots of Hindi gaalis that, if uttered quickly enough, would sound like Big Monkey in the Australian accent. Andrew Symonds has definitely misunderstood Bhajji's gaali. It is a cultural issue, actually. We Indians either swear by our genitals or abuse of incest. Calling someone a monkey doesn't mean abusing him/her. Monkey is our God. Jai Hanuman!. So let Bhajji play...for God's sake...

And what if Bhajji really called Symonds a Monkey? My girl-friend calls me a Monkey all the time. (I mean I'd imagine she would if she existed ;-)...) And actually I look like one. And so does Symonds. It is not at all a racial comment. It is a compliment, acknowledging our ancestral origins. Who stopped Symonds from calling Bhajji a Chimpanzee or Gorilla or Orangutan in return? Monkey-Monkey Bhai-Bhai! And Hisaab Baraabar too. The world would be a simpler place to live if everything worked the Indian way.

And what's the big deal if Bhajji called someone Monkey? God will punish Bhajji if he is really wrong. May God make him a Monkey in his next birth and Symonds a Sardar. We must ask Symonds to focus on his karma and not worry about the fact that somebody called him a monkey though he actually isn't. I can understand his problem. I also feel uncomfortable when girls call me a genius, coz I know I am not. But in Symond's case, it really does not matter, coz everyone knows Symonds is not actually a monkey.