Reaching There

A Financially Naive Beginning It was 2006 when I came to the US as a young student from India, with some scholarship money and a lot of financial loans that my father helped me with. It was the first time I had my own credit card with a 300 US dollar credit limit which seemed a lot at that time. It wasn't until 2007 (yes, a year before the big recession of my generation) that I stepped into the stock market.  I still remember that I used Computershare to buy stocks of some large US companies. It was all new to me and I had never tried any kind of investing before and I had the luxury of having no firm financial goals. Luckily there was a message ingrained in my head that I'm investing for a long haul. I joined a training program where I learned what investing meant and how P/E ratio can help me with that. It was the basics that I had to begin with rather than a notion that investing means day-trading or a get-rich-fast scheme. I'm no expert but I would definitely say w...

If you search Hinduism, there are millions of different definitions and descriptions that are available. From the mysterious Rig Vedas that include the gods of Fire, Earth, Air etc. to Shri Krishna that gave the world the Bhagavad Gita (Song of God). Is it a collection of philosophies that delve with theological and psychological questions on the nature of 'I'? Or is it a collection of hymns in Vedas and Upanishads that talk about the rituals that need to be performed in a sacrosanct way to ensure prosperity and success of human actions.  Is it Vishnu, Krishna, Shiva, Hanuman, Rama or is it Tulsidas , Buddha, Mahavira, Surdas , Kabir, Mira? What is the meaning of being a Hindu or a believer in this ocean of philosophies or theories that seem to contradict each other? Is the relevance of Brahmin, Shudra, Vaishya or Kshatriya still a valid distinction of human beings? Is D vaita and Advaita philosophies contradicting each other? Am I an Aryan  coming from Turkmenistan...

Somebody rightly said that pictures are worth a thousand words. And by that magnitude a moving picture is perhaps worth a million times more. I can only imagine the impact the first motion picture created over a hundred years ago would have had on someone. It's something about motion that attracts the mind; whether it's a river flowing over the rocks making it's way to the ocean or some gyrating to the sound of nothing. Technology has advanced from Eadweard Muybridge's photography to Thomas Edison's motion picture to modern day movies from across the world that include works of art cinema, drama, documentaries, pornography to rovers walking on planets thousands of miles away! And the technological advances continue with every new model of phone or camera. As the world adopted the technology everything in last few decades got recorded on either a magnetic tapes and finally onto silicon chips in form of zeroes and ones. And somewhere on the course of this ad...

As I look inside me I can see all my biases swirling around inside my head (metaphorically speaking). And in a world filled with human beings we fluctuate between rationality, pragmatism, love, pessimism, indifference, hatred and conflict for almost all aspects of our lives. So it is very important to at least listen to a different point of view. As the first reaction is generally indifference or complete disdain. As I was browsing through news one of the topic that comes up frequently is Climate Change. I will not go into the politics of the issue or try to persuade anyone to accept or deny the premise or theory or fact or rumor or whatever someone considers it. My hands moved away from the remote and typed "Climate Change" on YouTube search and then for some reasons (maybe I was thinking about scientists) I added Carl Sagan to the search.  And behold, there was a keynote speech of Carl Sagan  before the 5th Annual Emerging Issues Forum at North Carolina State U...

It's difficult to manage personal finance when the goals are fluid. In fact, as a someone in the thirties the financial goals are constantly changing. One day you're looking long term to save for a house or any other big investment and next minute you're trying to balance the credit card debt because a big expense suddenly made its way through.  And as a millennial and someone who appreciates technological assistance; a lot of financial planning is based on phone apps. I think it's the ability to have everything on phone and also having the ability to slice through the data; makes it "cooler" and informative at the same time. As someone working in software field I'm aware of the power of dashboards and various workbenches that helps make complex data 'user-friendly'. But is there a more educated approach to managing finances through apps? As a journey should begin with fundamentals, a simple search reveals that there are multiple areas of...

We love to be with someone, whether it's your friend, wife, partner, love, parent or even an imaginary friend. As an introvert I would like to dispel the misconception that introverts don't like a good company. I love a good company, it's just that the company is generally one or two close ones...that's enough for having a good time.  And there is another partner I think we deserve to have. It's silence in our lives. It's easy to be surrounded with constant buzz of appliances, traffic, emails, Facebook, television and even people that sometimes overwhelm our lives. And it is necessary to drown out that noise and just enjoy a few moments of silence. OMG! Are you trying to say to shun out everyone from my life? Not at all, I'm just saying that sitting next to your companion and having a silent moment is the best moment perhaps you will ever going to share with that person.  Imagine sitting next to the person you love and enjoying a silent moment....