Zha Cafe - Adyar, Chennai

As a tribute to the city that I enjoy living in, I have decided to start a new category in my blog which is "The must visit places in Chennai". I have been in this city for the past 5+ years and blogging for the past 3+yrs and Iam kinda shocked why on earth I did not think to write about the fun and unforgettable places. I am a person who love hanging out in different places, tasting different kind of food and enjoying the ambience of the place.

To start with, I will share my thoughts about Zha Cafe in Adyar since I was in this place a week back and was literally stunned by the way the cafe is presented. Gives you an "at home" and a peaceful atmosphere to spend time with your loved ones. It is a house which they have used it as a cafe with each rooms in each traditional style. One room represents Kerala with seat made as a boat house, another gives an office atmosphere, another with cushions layed down where you can sit and chat with your friends and also watch TV which is present in almost all the rooms.

A stunning atmosphere worth visiting. And about the food, If you want to take a break from the chats and pizzas, well then definitely drop in to Zha Cafe to taste the traditionally made filter kaapi, adhirasam, buttermilk in mud pot and more. It gives you a good break from the routines and also reminds you of home made food. Ambience and service are exellent. Customer friendly too.

The Place is owned by Arasi and I got to meet her in person last time I visited the place. She often gets in touch with the visitors and makes sure they are comfortable.

Get to this place and share your experience with me.

Happy Blogging!

How I met your mother Season 6

For the viewers of How I met your mother : Season 6 is just more than AWESOME. The best till now. In case you have not watched it yet, do it asap.

For those who have never watched it, well spend some time and try seeing the show.
After a day's work, when I come back from office I would love to do something (or anything for that matter) which is not even remotely connected to my routine work. For this I will start watching How I met your mother, the latest being Season 6. It makes you laugh,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,laugh,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and laugh.. Seriously can u afford to miss it?

I felt one episode that I felt I was so connected to. The episode was like this : When Lily and Marshall tell their friends that they are about to have kids, for a minute Robin and Barney felt very happy for their friends. But the next thought that came on Robin's mind will be "Lily and Marshall are doing something useful. God! What am I doing? Iam unemployed, still single..........I have to figure out a way." And so are the thoughts of Barney desperate to do something useful too. And so Robin rushes her decision and convinces herself for a weird and petty job that will never take Robin anywhere nearer to her dream job (which is being an anchor for the top most news channel). All she wanted was a change and she tries to push her life forward only because she came to know her friends get a change. And Barney tries to donate a huge amount for the charity. Only then Lily's message arrives saying that they are not having kids then. Both Robin and Barney change their decisions again.
On the other hand, the couple who took a big decision gets freaked out because of the sudden change in their lives and the fear of facing it. Ted screams at everyone and brings them back to reality.

This is exactly what happens to most of us in our lives. I saw this episode when I was literally mad at myself just because I felt everyone keeps moving forward and my life is stand still. I wished so badly for a change to happen.
After seeing the episode, I laughed at myself for being so stupid. But i also realized that it is not unusual :) Happens to almost everyone.
We are at a place today for some reason and change is inevitable anyway. So why rush for it?
There was a time when I waited for my college days to get over. But today there is nothing more than those days that Iam missing a lot.

LIVE THE LIFE !

Keep visiting!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

As you know, the movie is split into two parts for good just to give audience a grand finale. And it worked. The whole theatre was filled with HP fans and I found myself shouting at the top of my voice. Man,,It was amazing.
At the end, it was the same thought in everyone's mind - "Is that all? Do we not get to watch Harry Potter movies again?". Well, everything has to end at some point isnt it?

My views on the movie:

I can say Iam more of Severus Snape and Dumbledore's fan than Harry Potter's. When I was reading "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" my heart literally skipped a heart beat when Dumbledore gets killed by Snape. I was like "Dude, everyone dies? And what could possibly be in the Deathly Hallows part?"

Harry continues his hunt for the Horcruxes. They discover that the three horcruxes yet to be destroyed are the Ravenclaw diadem, the cup and the snake Nagini. Just before Voldermort begins his attack on Hogwarts, the professors create a magical shield around the castle and the way it is pictured is just more than brilliant. Ron and Hemione destroys the cup and Harry destroys the diadem thus making Voldermort weaker.

The Elder wand, Invisibility cloak and Resurrection Stone comprises the Deathly Hallows. Harry owns the Invisibility Cloak and the Resurrection Stone while Voldermort is after the Elder Wand. The Elder wand obeys only the wizard who has disarmed or won its previous owner. In that context, Voldermort thinks that Snape is the owner of the Elder Wand since he had killed Dumbledore. Obsessed to live forever, Voldermort kills Snape to own the Elder Wand.

When Snape was about to die, Harry comes to him and takes his memory. Snape who has been the most disliked teacher at Hogwarts by Harry utters his last words to him "You have your mother's eyes." Harry pours the  memory into the pensieve and the truth unfolds.
1.Dumbledore had requested Snape to kill him. 2.Years back,When Voldermort tried to kill Harry the spell rebound and attacked Voldermort and part of Voldermort's soul tried to cling on any living object and that is Harry himself. That was why Harry was able to talk with snakes and was able to read Voldermort's thoughts. Which means Harry himself was a Horcrux and he eventually has to die. When Dumbledore tells this to Snape, he becomes furious and he swears that he will protect Harry.3.  And Harry gets to know Snape's love for his mother too and that is the reason why Snape kept abusing Harry's father.
Snape was always at his best protecting Harry. What a man !
He has given his life for a guy whose mother he was madly in love with. AWESOME!

The war begins and Voldermort has already uttered "Avada Kedavra" and Harry dies. But it turns out that the part of Voldermort that is inside Harry gets killed instead. So Harry Potter is alive still.
According to the prophecy, a boy who is born in the end of July will be the opponent of Voldermort and Neither survives while the other is alive. Harry and Neville Longbottom would have been born in the end of
July. Neville kills the snake Nagini and now stands Voldermort with no other Horcruxes left to spare. Voldermort dies as the Elder Wand refuses to obey him because it actually belongs to Harry Potter.

The other night when Dumbledore gets killed, it was actually Draco Malfoy who disarmed Dumbledore and Harry later disarmed Draco Malfoy which makes Harry the owner of the Elder Wand. The great epic ends.

Harry marries Giny Weasly named his son after Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape as Albus Severus Potter. Ron and Hermione get married.
Now their children is all set to enter Hogwarts. :)

Doesnt JK Rowling deserve an Oscar award ?????????????



Keep visiting !

An insight into Share market- part 3

MUTUAL FUNDS:


In your attempt in knowing about the share market in the sites I have mentioned in my previous posts, you would have come across the term "Mutual Funds". So what is it? What do the Funds do? How do they play a significant role in increasing your money value?
We'l see all about Mutual Funds in this post.

Imagine there is someone willing to help you out in identifying the right shares you need to buy/sell at the right time in order to meet your needs. That is what Mutual Funds do. In the broader view, you select a Mutual Fund and give them the money that you kept aside for investing in shares and they do the rest. You will have only 2 tasks:

1) Pay them (regularly in SIP basis I would recommend)
2) Either sit back comfortably or keep tracking the performance of your fund :) I would suggest the latter. C'mon you are dealing with money.

There are innumerable funds out there. Before selecting the fund, you need to make sure of your target. It could be a short term, long term, Mid term etc. Once you are done with your Requirements Gathering(Oops! Thats a S/W Engineering term) set off to search for the fund you are looking for. Dont worry. Internet has made it a piece of cake with all the information categorized accordingly.

Steps to assist you:

• Goto www.moneycontrol.com site and select the Mutual funds tab
• Best Funds to buy, Top rated funds ets are the links you have to check out.
• Watch for the returns each fund yield for a particular period

As I said, It is a piece of cake!

In top rated funds  For eg: check HDFC Equity Fund (G). In stock market you buy in terms of shares whereas in Mutual Funds you buy in terms of units. One unit of HDFC Equity Fund today costs Rs.281.21. Each fund has its own minimum investment criteria. If Rs.1000 is the minimum investment in HDFC Equity Fund in SIP(Systematic Investment Plan) basis, you can start investing Rs.1000 every month thus acquiring around 3 units each time.You have all the freedom to withdraw the investment any time you want and you will be given the returns accumulated till that time.

Portfolio:

Click on the Portfolio tab in the HDFC Equity Fund(G) page. All funds try their best to be alive and become the most popular ones among the rest. In order to achieve this, they always stay on the side of profit making companies. Meaning, they analyze the stock market every second and buy and sell accordingly. As you saw, HDFC Equity Fund(G) has invested majorly in SBI, ICICI, TCS, Infosys, Bank Of Baroda, Coal India, Bharti Airtel, Reliance, Tata Motors and Cipla. If the fund suspects that any of these shares will go down in the next few days, the fund will sell that particular share.

Visit www.valueresearchonline.com to know more about the fund performance. I'l continue writing about it in my next post.

Happy investing!

An insight into Share market- part 2

In the First Part we discussed about the basic facts and pre-requisites of Trading. In this post I would like to list out some shares which I came through recently that has high scope of going up in future.

But the list varies with time depending on the share market and also on the performance of the particular company.

Recommended list of shares to buy:

• Infosys Technologies
• Tata Consultancy Services
• Punjab & Sind Bank
• Yes Bank
• PTC India
• Coal India
• Divis Laboratories
• Bharti Airtel 
• L&T
• BHEL

(Note: The list is not subject to any order or grouped by any sector and is liable to change)

This is my observation after going through the market trend for few months. 

IPO:

IPO stands for Initial Public Offering. This is when a company releases its shares into the market. i.e) the lowest price it could ever be. So if you think a share would definitely go up, then better buy it in the beginning itself. For eg: Punjab & Sind Bank's IPO was released quoting Rs.70 approx. Today's value of the Bank is Rs.100. 

But how will you be so positive about a share at the IPO stage itself before witnessing the performance ?

Well you have to go through some websites and read few articles and do your part of the groundwork. Or get along and discuss with other investors in forums.

If you have missed to buy a share at the time of IPO but you are still sure of the share's growth in future, keep an eye on it and buy it when the share price goes a step down.

Besides the forum, magazines like Money (Naanayam in Tamil), Outlook Business will help you with the shares you can go ahead and buy. 

So once you have decided the good ones start accumulating them and wait for a longer period to harvest the fruits.

Happy Trading!

An insight into Share market - Part 1

I have always wanted to know about share market inside out since my college days. But the problem was that I was not ready to risk my father's money. Plus none of my friends had any clue about investing then. Very few elders who I thought would help me in this advised me to stay out of it because of the risk involved. So I dropped the idea of knowing.
Now that I have a decent income and considering the fact that Iam very bad in saving money I decided to start my mission once again. Fortunately in my company there are many people who are into investments because of which I managed to gain some knowledge.Thus my search for knowledge started again with the help of few people. And iam here to share that knowledge here. Feel easy to guide me if you are also an investor and if you are not do browse through the sites Iam about to share in this post.

Pre-Requisites

• Have a De-mat account ready (online account is preferable)
• Make sure from the bank if trading account is the same.
• Once you get a mail from the bank stating that your account is ready for trading, its done

Simple logic:

Buy a company's share when its price go down and sell it when it has reached your desired upper limit. For eg: Today Yes Bank's one share costs Rs. 295. Assuming you are buying 5 shares of Yes Bank, you invest
Rs. 1495 in the bank. Remember though you are free to sell your shares anytime you want, it is highly recommended that you consider investments for long term benefits. So set a target for the shares you have bought. Like you can sell when each share of yes bank goes up by Rs.1000. Well for 5 shares you have bought you would get a gain of Rs.5000. But again this might take time depending on the bank's performance.

Talking about performance of a company, it has equal chance of going down too. That is the risk you should be ready to take. But dont worry there are ways you can minimize the risk and stay away from losses.
Iam a person who will never ever take risk when it comes to money but I love investing. So in this case I make sure that the money I invest is safe with no risk at the same time I make profit out of it. There are ample sites which will help you but the one site that almost every investor follow like a Bible is www.moneycontrol.com. Actually there is one more which can wait for now.

Goto the website and browse through a few company's quotes and also through the performance charts. And dont ignore the comments section where people who have bought or yet to buy that particular share have a discussion. So all these will give you an idea of how the share performs in the current market scenario and if you should buy the share now or wait for some more time for it to go down.

Keep watching this space for more information.
Signing off for now.
Happy Trading!

If God was a Banker

Ravi Subramanian is the author of "If Gos was a Banker". I have a very few friends who are interested in reading books. Which means I did not have the slightest idea about how the story/author's way of narration would be. Yet I strongly believed that this book would be a real feast when I read the gist on the back cover. It was true.

"If God was a Banker" is a story which revolves around five people out of which four among them are fresh out of college and about to enter their career. The fifth person, well you can call him a mentor. When it comes to work, all of us fall under either of the two categories :
1. You do anything to impress your higher authority just for the sake of good name and publicity i.e) result oriented.
2. You do what you think is right and remain honest to yourself and follow the right path i.e) process oriented.

Sundeep falls under the first category and Swami under the second. Who wins and loses what is the main plot. Other two are the girls - Natasha and Kalpana. All of them join New York International Bank as freshers under Aditya(Head of Retail Banking) but the way they took for success is different.

Aditya recognizes the right talent for his Retail banking in India and selects the four people to work on his project. Both Swami and Sundeep succeeded at the same pace but Swami was slow, honest and never felt jealous of Sundeep's success but Sundeep was just the opposite. Kalpana and Swami get married and so is Natasha and Sundeep. When Aditya quits both of them become helpless and thus Sundeep fall in wrong hands which he only regrets when it was too late to get back.

A good lesson for all who start their career. Aditya is undoubtedly a real hero after Swami. The book was written in such a way that the story didnt slow down anywhere in between. Hats off to Ravi Subramanian.
He deserves an applause.

Do read it for sure. Worth your time.

I have already bought the author's second book "Devil in Pinstripes" :)
Hope its good too.

Keep up the good work Ravi Subramanian.

Tough times

It has been a tough day for me. I always admire people who laugh all the time despite the problems and pressure around them. I am a happy, go-lucky person but at times my luck would get drained off and as a consequence i get depressed. To make the situation even worse, some more small things unworthy of my attention will start killing me along with the major one.
Everything i did today turned against me. I have no idea what went wrong and where. At the end of the day, it was maddening for me.

But then inspite of all the stress, a lesson which i learned few days back helped me a little. The lesson is - "WINNERS NEVER QUIT". When you sense a problem, the next thing that pops out would be "should i quit?". Then I made the decision and decided to fight with it and found a solution.

What about people? Greatest difficulty lies in the challenge of identifying who is wrong and who is not. I repeated the lines to myself  "Tough times are yet to start. If you are not willing to learn, you will never grow."
At hardships the least you would want is a person to listen everything you blabber.
Unfortunately i didnt have one today.

Few things i wish not to miss in my life whatsoever

* A walk after the whole day's work
* A smile on the lips
* Group of people who would always be there for me

It was too hard for me to resist everything and write something nice. After writing, I kind of feel better.

A note to my readers

Although my frequency of blogging has reduced considerably these days, I want to let you know that iam working on something interesting which i will be hosting online once done. I request for your co operation by giving me feedbacks and suggestions once the initial version is released.

To give you a gist of what is behind the screen

Shopaholics - It is going to be a feast for you :D

Android lovers - There is something you cannot afford to miss :)

And we dont stop here. Of course, there is lots more.

Keep watching this space

And keep motivating me.

Cheers!

Rockmelt- the social web browser

Rockmelt is a web browser which brings in the social media along with it.Meaning- You no more have to even open your Facebook/Twitter accounts in a seperate tab to use them. It is all present as inbuilt features in Rockmelt which makes it noticeable.

Well that is not it. There is some more you need to know about this web browser. To totally understand Rockmelt,lets know about "Chromium" and "WebKit" first.

Chromium is Google's open source web browser  project from which Chrome was built.
WebKit is a layout engine which renders web pages for the web browser.
To make it more clearer, Google Chrome and Apple's Safari is powered by WebKit. That is why we find many common features between the two browsers.  It is also said that Amazon's Kindle ebook reader uses WebKit for its browser. 
When i came across this information, the one question that popped up on my mind- Google and Apple uses the same layout engine for their browsers? INTERESTING!!
Initially WebKit was derived by Apple from Konqueror web browser and is now being extensively 
developed by the big shots like Google, Nokia,Apple, Bitstream and others.


Having briefed about the two important terms, we'l get back to Rockmelt browser which uses Chromium and WebKit.

Developed by   :  Tim Howes & Eric Vishria
Focus                 :   Google Search & Social Media
Launched          :   November 8,2010 (Beta version)
Rival                    :   "Flock" social web browser 


Notable Features:


i)   Facebook sidebar is present on the left side of the browser window which enables user to chat with his contacts.
ii)  The chat bar displays user's own status, display picture and his contact list.
iii) User can post on his friends' wall, message them or create favourites list without navigating to Facebook site.
iv)  Right side of the browser lets user to view his wall and notifications.
v)   Twitter is intergrated in Rockmelt.
vi)  Google search bar is present.


I know!!! All you need is here on one browser. A Feast to all social networking maniacs :) (Includes me)


Getting Rockmelt to your desktop:


i)   Goto Rockmelt website- www.rockmelt.com
ii)  Connect your Facebook account in the site.
iii) Receive an invitation mail.
iv) Download Rockmelt web browser to your desktop.


Work,have fun parallely!
Do write back. 
My comments section awaits your views. :)