ICICI Direct Margin Trading calls sucks

If you want a 100% guarantee to lose your money, then follow ICICI Direct's intra day trading calls. Man, they suck. On the contrary, if you want to make money, just do the opposite of what they suggest and I bet you will make some decent money.

Broadband in India

The broadband market in India is growing rapidly but the service providers are not bracing themselves to the challenge of meeting this demand. Even if the number of providers are not umpteen, there are a number of small players. If you ask me how many good ones, hardly one or two.

I have been using broadband at home since November 2004. It was Airtel at first in Bangalore and then DataOne at Pune. Here is a comparison of these two major broadband players:

Airtel : (earlier was marketed under the brand Touchtel)
Customer Service : Very good. Resolve all the problems within the promised time. I have seen their excellent customer service in Bangalore as well as in Trichy.
Speed: Good. The 128 Kbps unlimited package is good.
Cost : If you go on the rental modem option, your bill would work close to Rs.740 every month which is way cheaper than BSNL.
Free Calls: Depends on the time of the year and scheme you take it under. Sometimes they give free calls worth Rs. 100. STD facility offered on the phone without any extra payment as in BSNL.
Installation/Security deposit : Many times during a year, they have promotion schemes under which you can get the security deposit waived off and you can get started by just paying for the installation..shouldn't go beyond Rs.750.
Downtime : This is one part I like about airtel. If the service is down for whatever reason, then they don't charge prorata for the time it was down.
Bill Payment : you can drop a cheque at any of the Airtel outlets or pay it online.
Service availability: Airtel had a lesser penetration as compared to BSNL. The broadband service was not available in Pune at all a year back because of which we were forced to choose BSNL. Even now, in the outskirts of cities, they do not have a service. This can be a major drawback if you don't live in a good location.
Installation time :This totally depends on where you live. If you live in an apartment that already has someone using Airtel broadband then it is just a matter of an hour or so to get you going. Otherwise, it takes them about 2-3 days to get the line and do the whole setup.

Only disadvantage: The only bad experience I have had with Airtel is in disconnection of the service. They ask you to place a request 15 days in advance and in this period it can be disconnected at any time and they fail to notify you before doing that. If they can improve their process so that the connection be disconnected on a specific day, then nothing like it.

BSNL's DataOne
BSNL's DataOne sucks. I strongly recommend against using this one. Unless and until you don't have any other broadband service provider in your area, you should not go with this one. In Pune, when we moved in, we did not have any other provider. We checked with Airtel, Tata Indicom, Sify etc etc.

BSNL is highly locale dependent so what I write here might not be applicable o where you live. i was quite impressed with their customer service for telephone line in Bangalore but at Pune, it is HORRIBLE.
Customer Service : Pathetic. They don't have a 24*7 helpline. The 1500 toll free number that offers assistance is of no use. You are redirected to a local number in the exchange that operates only between 10 and 5 with the usual chai breaks and no one answering the call. And when they do, they have no clues about your problem and put you onto another number that is so busy through the day that it took me 3 days to get through. By then the service got restored naturally.

Installation: If you can get the installation done, then consider yourself lucky. It took us 45 days, numerous visits and calls to the local exchange and sweet talk to get our land line installed. They did not have a lengthy wire nor a instrument so we gave them all the equipment they needed and to-fro transportation to get our line going. after this, getting the broadband connection was a nightmare. The same episode repeated and it was a good 4 months before we got the Internet connection at home.

Download limit -The Rs.1000 -256 Kbps option has a download limit of 2GB. It worked out pretty expensive for us. So we switched over to the unlimited 128 Kbps one. Th speeds during the day is less than 64 Kbps.

Cost : Works out to (Rs.999+service tax +modem+fixed broadband charges+telephone rental) Rs.1300 with a rental modem.

Installation Cost : Close to Rs.3500. Can't recollect the refundable part in this. They hardly ever have any offer to waive of installation cost, security deposit etc..Getting the refundable part would be another nightmare.

Monthly bill payment : You have to physically pay the amount in counters or drop a cheque. Online payment not available in Pune. They do not have tie ups with any bank either such as ICICI or Citibank. So that's an inconvenience. Bill generation is another flawed process. We did no receive a bill the first 2 months despite following up. But they were prompt in disconnecting the connection.

Service Availability :The service is available even in the suburbs so that kinda works to their advantage against other players.
Downtime :The service is down atleast 2 days in a month and no one seems to be aware of it either. You just have to wait it out till it gets fixed.

I have not personally used Sify, Tata Indicome or Iqara. From what I hear from friends, Sify was good earlier but is not recommended anymore. Tata Indicom was never good. The same with Iqara. So before you go for one, enquire in your locality or city as to what is good to stay connected.

Las Vegas revisited

Would you believe if I said I've been visiting Vegas atleast 3 times a week the past month? May not in the literal sense but it is a trip to Vegas every bit every day experience wise. It was December 2003 when we first visited Vegas, a day after Christmas, to be precise. We had a lot of fun in that trip, thanks to the Casino hopping.

My tryst with the stock market began two years back when a former employer allotted 56 shares in the form of ESOPs. I got them into my Demat account and never did much with it. Thank god for that. It was a golden goose that just sat there and reaped us over 100% profits. Then it all changed in December 2005 when our fondness for the markets grew. It was also a coincidence that I began work on a project for Credit Suisse around the same time and we started putting together our finances well, so I started getting a grasp of the fundamentals of banking, capital markets, trading and such. Our interest in the secondary market grew and V pursued it. With Lil General on the way, one thing led to another and I left it mid way to pursue it again now.

If you want to know how to lose money, ask me for tips :) I've lost more money in the last 3 weeks than I've gained. Ofcourse, I've not lost a lot because I don't play big. If you don't play big, you don't win big. This is why I said it is like visiting Vegas everyday. At Vegas all we did was spending time on the slot machines with a $20 bill every time. What do you expect of an Indian techie on a project on a H1 visa? Whatever you win goes back just to lose some more. You never have enough of it. I call it quits to day trading everyday just to go back the next day. It is addictive.

Day trading is exactly like this for me. I don't play big. I don't know the rules of the game. I am learning the tricks by playing small. I had my first small success on a margin trading call today. That kind of squared off all my losses till date.

At 7 months, LG is a crawling machine

Not much has changed, except that he has grown bigger, stronger and old enough to slap us. I had no clue that you get so much strength on a formula-baby cereal diet, that I'm seriously contemplating giving up my three time meals to switch over to Nestum/NAN.

Lil General got a new buddy - Snoopy - a white Fisher Price dog. I wish Snoopy was a real dog. Poor thing, he gets kicked and beaten everyday by LG and still keeps making bow-bow sounds.

Vivek and I have become the full-time clowns for LG making bow-bow and quack-quack sounds as he giggles and drools.

The biggest milestone of all - crawling, happened this month.

He continues to fall off the bed for fun only that I catch him on my lap now. Sometimes he thinks he can fly and reach for the objects he eyes like TV from the bed.

You know what, I get this feeling he doesn't like our laptop much for we spend way too much time on it. One day, Vivek was composing a mail and he got this eerie feeling to see the words disappear slowly from the screen, only to realise the ghost was right there at home hitting on the Del key. Don't be too surprised if this is the last post you see on LG for I'm not sure if the laptop will be hale and healthy by next month.

He is a crawling machine now, wants to climb on top of 2 pillows in the middle of the night.

Battles are fought everyday between V and LG. It is LG who usually wins.. V has to be happy with some war wounds on almost every part of his body right from the nose to arms. LG's secret weapons are his teeth.

Talking about teeth, after the first bottom pearls of white, it is now the turn of the top 4 incisors.

LG also got a pram this month and he isn't too happy going for his evening rides on it. Mom's shoulders are comfy, its just that mom thinks he is heavy for her to carry him all the time.

We have a home-grown Tansen who is content listening to Mozart every morning in a thinker-pose - with the fingers on his chin.

LG says ---

Diapers - oh I HATE them. So what if momma wears it..I know how to turn away from her and furtively remove the straps and then smile sheepishly.

I smile more at strangers than at mom.

I love getting up at 4:30 a.m. everyday, playing for a while and then going back to sleep, only after ensuring my parents have lost their sleep and are wide awake.

And I give that dirty look when mom gets funny trying to read me Cinderella / Goldilocks fairy tales.

My favorite afty activity is to put my fingers inside mom's nostrils while she is asleep. How much fun can that be?

Cat on the mat got hit

Every monsoon sees a spurt in the population of cats and dogs. As a consequence, you can hear the mother cat crying and haunting the neighborhood in search of its lost newborn ..this happens year after year. Last week, one rainy day, as Vivek opened the front door to pick up our packets of milk, he noticed something crawling from the mat over his leg finding its way upstairs. It was a small white cat finding shelter from the downpour and some place to keep itself warm. He let it in the veranda but blocked it from entering the house. He was all excited and I went over to see the cat. Small, pristine white, piercing eyes that can scare anyone.

I am not too fond of pets - be it dogs or cats. But Vivek loves dogs and after all these years it has slightly rubbed off on me and I love seeing this trio from the neighborhood go for a walk every morning. Many people around where we live have nice breed of dogs. Some day when we think Lil General is alone and needs company, maybe we will get a dog!

I was scared to let the cat inside the house because of LG but let him stay in our premises. I don't know when he ran away..I keep track of him until late that morning and spotted him in the neighbor's car park keeping himself warm under a car. He seemed happy..I don't know if his mother was still alive and looking for him. I forgot all about it later.

The next evening when the rain god had taken a break for a nap, I went out for my evening walk with a friend. She suddenly spotted a dead cat on the side and cautioned me. It was run over by a passing by vehicle...it was a sad sight and I felt bad ...

My first article gets published

I've not felt so happy in a long time. Seeing your name in print gives that kind of a high which is hard to compare with anything else. People who have gone down thiseaded this road before will know what I mean. All you long for is to see your name in a Letter to the Editor or in the byline of a local newspaper to start with.

I wanted to do something about my writing, atleast try submitting an article. So one lazy Monday afternoon while I was lying with LG, a thought struck me of starting with something small, so I contacted the editor of a Times Of India Pune supplement newspaper. I was impressed with the gentleman and promptly submitted an article 4 days later. I don't have the luxury of sitting down for hours on stretch these days so the idea was conceived in shower, words formed in the head while cooking and the article written between 5:30 and 5:45 p.m. one Thursday evening while LG was napping and sent the next morning after proof-reading for obvious mistakes. It was quite natural to get frustrated when the article didn't get published the following week. Not too familiar with the rules of the publishing industry, I followed up once before giving up with encouragement from V. And what did I know, I saw the article in yesterday's edition, published without being edited even for a single word.

The article is titled "Store-age!". It is not up in the online version yet. Once it is, I will update this post. Until then, I am going to revel in my happy land with the words "Lakshmi Nagarajan" in print swimming in my head.

Among the best Indian Blog

"Reflections" has made it to the list of best Indian blogs maintained by Amit Agarwal under the General category. Naturally, I am surprised. I wrote about this in a post titled "LG's mommy also rules". Lil General Rules blog is featured in the Mommy/ Children category. I wasn't surprised with LG Rules being listed despite its readership being a miniscule of this one and somewhere honestly I think it deserves it but this one was a surprise. I wouldn't imagine changing a thing here like allowing comments as the purpose behind writing this one, hasn't changed after all.

Eating on the edge

It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon, an unusual one as it was not raining at even half past noon. The rain gods do not spare Pune on weekends confining families to stay indoors and get bored of seeing each other's face or the stupid reality shows on Television with the exception of a Formula 1 race weekend. So yesterday with the overcast still in sight threatening to pour anytime, we bravely made plans to lunch at the new restaurant, Gayatree, that opened up in the neighborhood just three days back.

This was a big event in itself, for this was the first time The Seniol and I were going to dine outside with LG. And I guess we would have to be one of those odd couples/parents who have not gone out for a goddamn 7 months after the baby was born. I would like to think that I'm either a very good cook that we don't feel the need to eat out or that LG keeps us entertained at home that we don't feel like budging out. How I wish the former was true to bloat my ego, but the reality is it is the second one and that both of us are too lazy to chalk out plans.

Don't get me wrong, we have been out with LG before to friendly places such as a relative's place, traveled all the way from Trichy to Chennai, visits to a friend's place etc but never to a location that is totally strange to him in its setting and which is not home-like except the hospital. So I know what to pack in his bag and what to carry and what not to. But the trip yesterday was a total disaster.

The first mistake, we dressed him up after he had his lunch to his heart's content (who feels like going out after a heavy lunch) when it was his nap time..his eyes were drooping.It was already late and I had two choices - to put him to sleep and fix a quick lunch for us or take him along and put him to sleep on the way / get a takeaway. I chose the latter. In the frenzy of getting ready (I usually look clumsy these days like a mommy with stains and leftovers of LG's food on my dress) and making a mental note that I ought take his water bottle, I rushed down to the car with his pram and other essentials. Since the place was just around the corner I decided against taking his bag. Turned out later nothing is just around the corner with a baby. An outing is an outing and his baggage goes with it.

We reach the place all confident and put him on the pram and take him in, excitement and apprehension clearly written all over our faces when the first oon oon and the uncomfy look on LG's face. "He is not happy.", says Vivek.

The crying started even before we took our seats. Positioning the fan towards him by climbing on the table and then on the chair to get the angle of the rotating fan just about right, making stupid quack quack and bow-bow sounds letting the other people there assume we were clowns and letting all the cutlery available on the table rub against each other to produce all sorts of sounds possible saw LG quiet for a while. When we ran out of ideas, Vivek suggested he might be hungry and that I should give him water. It didn't take long to realize the mental note had remained a mental note. So he drove back home and returned with the bottle. See, going to a place round the corner is never a good idea for you are careless and the husband has to do the running around for the wife's absentmindedness.

I finished my French Onion soup sitting on the edge with spoon in one hand and the other rocking his pram. The 75 ml of water was over before our main course came in.
We stayed for 45 mins - the quickest lunch that took about 15 seconds to order and 10 mins to gobble down the food sitting on the edge of our seats. The rest was spent entertaining LG and Vivek dashing to and fro the house. Oh!we did take a minute to analyse the food as well. The Amritsari Chole could have well been renamed Bengaluru Chole for I don't know if anyone in Amritsar makes chole purely with coconut. We hope to do better next time :)

Book Review: The story of Cinderella and other fairy tales

I have never responded to a meme before as I've never been tagged. So it was a pleasant surprise to see Sukumar tagging me to do a book review meme.

I have to confess that its been over 4 months since I started reading a book and went on to complete it. Many books lie in the to-be-completed part of the book shelf among them being, Michael Moore's Dude, where's my country, Humphrey Hawksleys' The third World War and Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor.

I'm digressing now. Before I drift any further and lose your attention, the story I'm going to tell you all is that of Cinderella, not a best-selling fiction or Pulitzer winning book or something from the grapevine on the last Harry Potter book.

Baby Center's newsletter advised that kids enjoy listening to stories and develop an interest in books, when they are around 6 months old. So here, I was hunting online for a book of fairy tales and gave up because I did not find one with good illustrations, the thin big book of fairy tales with colorful pictures we are used to. So I went to my book shelf to pick up something for myself when my eyes fell on this teeny book titled, "The story of Cinderella and other fairy tales". My joy knew no bounds. A pencil note on the first page indicated I had gifted this to my husband on his birthday four years back. Who would have thought of it as a thoughtful gift then to a 26 year old?

This one, from a local publication is anything but fancy. Spanning 194 pages it has ll the fairy tales from Cinderella to Thumbelina to Goldilocks and the three bears and Snow-white and Rose-red. Neat sketches illustrate the event on every page that is complemented by text on the other page. One first look at the page and I was not too happy as it would have been too dry to get Lil General's attention minus the colors.
But this also provided me an opportunity to turn on my dramatics becoming the beautiful princess one minute and the wicked sibling the next to the charming prince the next.

What was amazing is these fairy tales have been told over and over again for ages and different reworkings have appeared since they were first told in the ninth century.But one never gets bored. It was almost like reliving childhood when I read it myself and then read it out to my brother and ow to my son. These fairy tales do take you in to the world of fantasy if only for a short while away from the drudgery of everyday life. Interestingly, these tales do have the ingredients of our everyday lives from sibling rivalry to wicked step mother to love at first sight. Yet all is well that ends well and fairy tales always end with a they lived happily ever after.

In all, I enjoyed doing the fairy tale bit. Reviews of books meant for grown ups will soon appear once I become an adult again - far away from the fantasy land.