Satyam Everywhere

I was never a news or current affairs fanatic. But for past 2 days there is news about Satyam everywhere. So I started reading about it and following the news a little bit. I could see the mocking of the company name every where in the news papers and the news channels. I heard the news of the golden peacock award which they got in 2008 has been revoked.

It has been in the news in recent times for all the wrong reasons. The bribery case with World Bank, the attempt to take stake in Maytas and now the financial misreporting. I was personally shocked when I heard the news of the bribery case at such a high level. But the financial misreporting is something beyond anybody wildest imaginations.

In all this news there is one thing that I could not understand. Media has been reporting that Satyam's Maytas acquisition was a means to move the money to the Raju family. After reading further details, now I am seriously doubting it. I felt that it was a sincere step from Raju to save Satyam. Since Satyam had a huge deficit between reported earnings and the actual earnings, may be he was trying to correct the records with an acquisition.

It would have been something like buying stake in the company and transferring money on the records. This would have filled the gap for the deficit in Satyam's records. Now the question is how would this step help the Raju family? From the news I see that the Raju family has only a 10% stake in Satyam while they have 100% and 40% stake in the Maytas companies. So I sincerely feel that this step by Raju was a sincere try to correct his mistakes and save Satyam. As I told I am not that news follower and cannot really disagree with the whole media, but then the point here seems to be logical for me.

Now all the focus is on Satyam. But today I have seen one more statement from KPMG saying that it would be very difficult for one person to do such a huge accounting fraud. Hence this statement would raise fingers against Price Waterhouse Coopers as they were the accounting firm for Satyam and it is tough to believe that a scandal of such scale managed to avoid the eyes of the accounting firm. I got this thought after reading about Enron and as Enron collapsed in a somewhat similar situation, Arthur Andersen went down with it.

What ever may happen to Satyam or PWC, I am just hoping some good to happen to all those 53000 employees associated with Satyam.

Bad start to the New Year

We all boast of being in corporate world and read news channels and sites all day sitting at office. But do we really know what exactly is happening in the office of the chairman of a company. Even we invest in stocks just by friends word or some agency word and we doesn't really know whats happening in the company. Even the employees in the company would not know the exact situation of the company until the day it suddenly states of bankruptcy.

I am writing this post as today I have got two shocking news. One the suicide of Adolf Merckle and other Ramlinga Raju resignation with the confession letter to SEBI.

I have many friends in Satyam, none of them knew that this was going to happen. Leave the employees even the board members and the investors did not have a clue about this fraud. If this is the case then what would be situation of a small employee and a small investor of the company who simply believe in a company by reading their values written in the sites and shown in the news headlines and channels. Now I pity all those thousands of investors and thousands of Satyam employees who would be going through a trauma thinking about their future with Satyam. Does this make any sense that because of a mistake of one person so many thousands have to suffer?

Coming to suicide of Adolf Merckle, he holds the major part of Heidelberg Cement which is the worlds number 2 cement company. My friend Surya has recently joined in that company as a Associate to CEO. He was clueless about the Merckle Volkswagen investment until his CEO has told him very recently. None of the company heads knew that this situation would come for Merckle. Though I do not have much idea on this company and industry, I thought I would mention about this company because my friend may lose his job when the management change hands.

Hope these things would come to light early and people would not face any problems because of a mistake done by one single person.

Priceless !!!

Ticket to India - $1000

Loss of Pay for Leave - $650

Gifts - $350

Expression on Doll's face when I went for her marriage - priceless.
(Just now recollected the expression and thought I shall post it)

On a related note: (Read in someother Blog)
There are some things man was never meant to know; for everything else there is google.

Happy New Year to Me !!!

Oh, and to you too :P

Good Bye 2008

I’m sitting here at my office and have just finished my important task and am a bit relaxed. So I thought I shall stop other work for sometime. I have been following the test match between India and England. Due to bad weather conditions the match has been delayed. Okay, and, while I'm waiting for the match to start, I wanted to memorize as what has happened in this year.

As we get ready to welcome 2009, I'd like to take a quick look back at 2008, with a YEAR IN REVIEW.

JANUARY: I have decided that 2008 will be "my year of new things". My start for the new year did not have anything that exciting personally or professionally. I was feeling alone in Singapore getting bored with personal as well as professional life. Only new thing that I did was camping at the beach side on the new year eve.

FEBRUARY: February also went the same way. Only compensation was I was making some new friends (Nagraj, Ganesh and Vidya) in Singapore with whom I was spending most of the pass time. Thought of doing many things but as I did not really have a proper company I couldnt do any of that. This made me think of going back to Hyderabad.

MARCH: The year passed on the same way and finally searched for a new passtime, thats when I started blogging at Palwai's Blog. One more hobby started this month and thats photography. I bought a new Alpha 350 DSLR camera. I did not really work on it that much immediately.

APRIL: April was a bit better when compared to the first quarter. I visited Jurong Bird Park with my Nagraj's family. This is the first time I got a chance to actually use my new camera. I also bought a dart board at home to pass time and was on full swing writing some crap on my blog. Mind you the work at my office still did not start. Was doing some minor report which was used for some management presentaion purpose.

MAY: May was exciting for me. I was a bit busy with one of my friend coming to Singapore, work being allocated to me, and my trip to India arrangements. I was accompanying mom dad for North India trip for 9 days. The saddest part was that I was in Hyderabad only for 2 days and couldn't really meet any of my friends. Last minute Brother and Bhabhi also joined us for the trip, something which none of us has expected. The trip itenary was
Singapore - > Hyderabad - > Delhi - > Nainital - > Ranikhet - > Bageshwar - > Kausani - > Almora - > Haldwani - > Back Delhi - > Back Hyderabad - > Back Singapore.
Landing in the new Hyderabad Airport was also exciting as the new airport was really good when compared to the Begumpet Airport. Took lot of pictures and started writing about the trip in my travel blog.

JUNE: This has been one of the most exciting quarter. As soon as I came from India, I left for Vietnam. This was a wonderful experience as I travelled alone and made many new friends there. This trip of mine has inspired my friends too to join me for the upcoming trips. This trip has helped me to develop a love for the travel which I tried my level best to fulfill in the upcoming months. Later at the month end I, Nagraj and Srini planned for the most eventful trip of the year. We went to Phuket. I have done many new activities which I haven't done before in my life. Along with these trips the weekends also started being very hectic and we had get together every weekend.

JULY: The excitement of the Phuket trip lasted for many a days. With the same excitement we planned for the Malaysia trip. I, Nagraj, Srini and Vidya went to KL and Genting in the mid July. This was totally an unplanned trip but some how we pulled it off very well and had a great time there. This month also ended my long wait for the F1 tickets. I also bought a new Sony Erricson P1i phone. I always wanted to buy a touch phone and finally I did it. My friend Gayatri also came from London and we had a great time for 3 days. So overall this has been again a great month with lot of memories.

AUGUST: This month was a bit slow from my end. We went to Hanoi and Halong Bay trip which was a great experience. The night at Halong Bay was very memorable. We made some new friends here also. Saw many new and nice movies this month. Bought a scrabble board even though I played only once the day I bought it :-). August was nice as I had some nice time travelling and watching movies.

SEPTEMBER: This was one more crazy and eventful month of the year. Did some thing really new, started reading novels. Read all the three Chetan Bhagat novels as they sounded just like any Bollywood Movie. I bought a new Samsung 40 Inch FULL HD LCD TV. I also got a Home theater system free with it. The movie experience in it was really great. Sep-12th was one crazy day when I suddenly felt of seeing parents and left to Hyderabad straight from office with just my passport. This month also had the most awaited weekend for the year, that's the night race at Singapore. Had a great time watching those machines run past me with such a high speeds and it was good to see Alonso win the race.

OCTOBER: This is the most important month in my life. One fine day I was called to India and was shown a girl. At the first look I thought she is the one and I decided to tie the knot with her. My parents have decided the marriage data as the Valentines Day 2009. Since then the golden period has started. Apart from the personal front even at the professional front work has been hectic from this month. Got into a new project and has been working on the latest software which was good for me.

NOVEMBER: This month has been very very hectic with work and phones.

DECEMBER: This is the month has totally gone in anticipation of what I will be doing in India when I am there. This time the whole trip I planned for Dolly as she was coming from Sweden. But later realised that many of my friends would be coming during that time and I have been planning different ways to meet everybody possible as we are not sure when we will again meet. Tomorrow I am leaving for India and will come back in the New Year.

So that's What I Did This Year. What did all of you get up to?

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas if you celebrate it, and a very healthy and happy 2009. See you around, either online or in person!!!!

Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.

Before I came to Singapore, Dad gave me many photo copies of all my documents. I kept them for more than 10 months and did not really use them at point of time. I thought its better not to keep junk at home and finally decided to throw them. Just weeks after I threw all the photo copies, I was asked for my passport photo copy by Surya for the house contract. I was not sure where near my house this can be done and hence I had to wait for 2 days to go to office and then get the photo copy done.

Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy but socially dead

I guess this is a very apt statement for anyone who wants to be social. I have personally experienced the effects of this early rise and early bed.

If I start hitting the bed as early as possible, then my night life would go totally into darkness. I will not be able to keep in touch with many of my friends who are in different countries in different timezones. Leave friends apart even to talk to my parents because of the time zone differences I will have to call in some specific timings.

Early rise is something next to impossible for me. Every night I sleep so late that I will have to fight to wake up and drag myself to the office. There are so many plus and minus of every act we do. But this early to rise and early to bed is something which depends on the individual perception.

Health is something which would go bad if you have less sleep. As I am going late to bed and rising late from bed I don't think my health would be effected by this. Many people do not understand the importance of being social and still advice me to sleep early.