Clinton again ? …

Looks like America cannot get enough of the Clintons. If it is not husband Bill, who is fighting for humanitarian causes for Aids / Tsunami victims, then it is his Senator wife Hillary. From the reports, it is quite clear that she is one of the favorite Democrat candidates for the White House in 2008. Take a look at the USA poll results.

Although Hillary has not said anything one way or the other, but if her current popularity is anything to go by, then it could very well lead to 4 more years in the White House for her !.

Keep a close watch on what she does (and what she not does) in the coming months – that will be interesting indeed.

Globalization and Outsourcing ….

One of the things that I like about my MBA course is that things that are taught there do not belong to a pre-historic age (many of the courses in IIT were about stuff that had become obsolete ! ) – at Santa Clara, they teach and discuss issues that are very much prevalent in today’s market place. In the Micro Econ class yesterday, we had a good discussion on Globalization and Outsourcing and how it brought the prices down. The professor believed that as long as ‘productivity’ (which is average output per person hour) is high in the United States, the US need not have to worry. High productivity is a sure sign of a good economy.

I was a little confused with this theory – you can still improve productivity by outsourcing jobs. Thus, you are improving produtivity but increasing unemployment. Apparently, the jobs that are getting lost are getting recirculated again – the net result is that it does not matter too much. Interesting indeed … need to get into the depth of this.

Making it “Memorable” at Santa Barbara

Summer is here and so is Memorial Day. So, Susmita and I are just backpacking and driving off to the warm beaches of Santa Barbara. We plan to just go to the beach and lie down and relax. Although the MBA exams are just around the corner, I am sure we won’t have that on our minds when we reach there :). Although it is a long weekend, we won’t be able to leave untill Sunday afternoon – we will have to attend an Econ tutorial, where our final exam will be discussed. (what a bad day to do it !).

Santa Barbara as a place seems to be very pricey, if you go by the cost of the hotel rooms. We reserved a decent hotel Quality Inn for $160 for 1 night’s stay. We also hope to stop by at the nearby Danish town of Solvang, which is very famous for its cookies. Let us see how it goes.

Ciao !

The Indian Coach Selection saga !

After all the drama, saga and hype that the Indian Coach Selection process generated, the decision as to who would replace John Wright, has been made. Greg Chappel, the Aussie Cricket great and considered to have a great cricket mind, is now officially the new Indian coach till the end of the 2007 World Cup.

Among the 4 in the fray, Desmond Haynes was definitely the dark horse. He claimed that he had the advantage of the West Indian pitches more than any one else and since the next World Cup was going to be held in West Indies, there was no one better than him for the job.

Mohinder Amarnath, the only Indian in the fray, was always going to have a tough time convincing selectors that Indians are actually good in coaching too. In retrospect, it is good that he was not selected because an Indian coach would no doubt get entangled in the beauracracy of the system and might not have the guts to change it.

Tom Moody, the youngest and the tallest of the lot, has been impressing everyone in his latest stint in the county circuits with his coaching. So, he was definitely a hot prospect – in fact, he is in running for Sri Lanka coach’s position too (if I am not wrong, he will surely get it). I personally was in favor of him, because he is young, low profile (similar to Wright), hard working and probably would lead by example.

Greg Chappel, of course, was a great cricket player and pundits rank him very high on his cricketing brains. He has developed a new and unique way of coaching called the ‘Chappel Way‘, which is gaining in popularity by the day. I guess, that must have clinched the deal for him.

Hopefully, the new coach will bring in fresh ideas and good results. We need to build the nucleus of the team that will be part of the next World Cup, which is just 2 years ahead. We need to start working on our areas of weaknesses – no end-overs slogger, no all-rounder, frequent injuries to bowlers etc and we must get started on this ASAP.

Greg Chappel – lead us your way !

Get Ripped !

There is an interesting and booming business coming up now-a-days. With the advent of IPOD and the numerous MP3 players, consumers are now willing to keep all their songs in MP3 formats. In fact, even music stores in India sell MP3 CDs. If you think about the mathematics, it makes better economic sense. A MP3 CD purchased in India costs about Rs 400 whereas a normal CD costs around Rs 100. So, at 4 times the cost, one can get as much 10 times the number of songs. Of course, this assumes that one has a good MP3 player at home. Given this information, it is imperative that people like me will start thinking about what to do with the countless CDs that we have bought over the years. In fact, I really pride myself on my CD collection. So, if I need to make a big leap into the world of MP3s, I need to spend enough time and effort to convert the CDs into MP3s.

Of course, there are countless software which can do the job for you – however, they are time consuming and will indeed require a learning curve. So, to make life easier, there are these bunch of companies that do the job for you. The basic idea is that you ship out your CDs and they will be RIPPED into MP3s of the highest quality – of course, you will have to pay a fee for that – but, given the time that one can save with that, it is well worth it. Businessweek actually carried a write-up on these companies – read it if you can.

So, if you have tons of CDs but want to make the switchover to MP3s, you know what to do – “Get Ripped” !