If finance interests you...

My sleep cycle is all over the place. I haven't been able to get a full nights sleep for over a week. I have way too many projects due this week, and groups in five of my six classes ( except poetry. I'd actually appreciate a poetry groupwork right now. Anything that wouldn't be so "real world"). 

The one I actually am excited about is this project we are doing for one of our finance classes. We have to go sign up for this website called StockTrak, an online investment portfolio manager. It gives us a million dollars, albeit imaginary, to invest with. Personally, I'd love to invest in the market. Yeah yeah, I know how nothing is going right with the market, and it hit a 20-year low yesterday and blah blah, but this is the perfect time to do one of two things:

1) Buy historically overpriced stocks that are at a low now, but will expectedly regain their value

2) Short sell stocks. You literally have nothing to lose.

For the first, take the example of  Berkshire Hathaway. I don't have much information on this company, but what I do know is that it was trading at around 135,000 this summer. Even though now it is hovering around 75K, it's potential is huge. If you have time (read 8-10 years), buy this stock and hold on to it. You may see this dip to much lower levels (if you can predict these, then wait and buy then - win win situation), but it will rise. 

As for short selling stocks  - why not? The market is slipping. Almost every company has seen its stock price drop. Short selling is the best and safest way to turn profits. A short sale is when you "borrow" shares and sell them, so you have an account that you have to settle at a later date. Let's take the example of Apple. On the 9th of Feb it was trading at $102.51 per share. If you short sold say 1000 stocks on this day, you would be 1000 shares in debt, but $102,510 richer. Today, the stock was trading at $86.95. All you would now need to do would be to buy the 1000 stocks you owe for a low low price of $86,950. This will settle your account of 1000 shares in debt. And you just turned a profit of $15,560. In two weeks. In other terms, you just made more than an entire year's worth of in-state tuition in two weeks. Or my rent for the next two years, in about two weeks. What do you need to do this? Probably just an account on e-trade and a few thousand for the margin. 

Why the long nerdy tirade on investments? Because I AM learning in my classes, despite what some of my grades might suggest. And because my dad reads my blog, and maybe this way he will agree to loan me the money I need for the margin. 

Kelley's not just teaching me how to survive on an hour of sleep. I know what I'm talking about, dad. Trust me. 

Weekly Poem#4

This weekend we celebrated valentines day, while I celebrated a multitude of other things: Stay in bed all day day, Singles Awareness Day, Happy Bailout Hallmark day, If I see another happy couple on the streets I'm going to scream day... you get the point. So, in keeping with this mother of all non-holidays, here's a poem that goes against all love poems by Pam Wagner (who, in all honesty, I had not heard of till my googling "Anti love poems" about 10 minutes back). 

(Sidenote: If anybody reads this and says or even thinks "grapes are sour", I will squish you. Much like a grape.)

Against Love Poems

Let Love Turn its Cheek

Love is a stranger, a curse, a gift
I have not given or taken,
neither in drabs
nor in abundance,
demanding soft collapse of skin on skin
flesh quickened, anticipation
I cannot parse or feel 
but as a worm writhing in palms 
of human curiosity
the parching sunlit desert
that sucks and kills.

I feel bereft
not of love's sheer
agony, leisures, pleasures, joy 
but of the touch
of earth's crumbling warmth
wormy between my fingers
the sweetness of gravid loam 
buttered with seed,
hopeful root hairs rooting in darkness, 
star-nosed moles blindly
snuffling out the delicacy
within each clod.

Love is, if only, a word
twisted, double-tongued,
bladed to cut more than it cleaves, 
an avowal of falsity and pomp,
of circumstance always changing,
like lies, rotting fruit,
an overblown cabbage rose.

Send me instead friends
of the aspens quaking-yellow patience, 
spruces loyal-true,
a dark, moon-drowned sky
prickly with stars that neither love
nor claim to know my name.
That will do.
While the earth still slides around the sun
they will neither die for me, 
nor remember me when I'm gone.

Let love turn a moldy cheek
and over in its grave.

I got sent home from class :(

I've been slightly sick over the past few days (weeks?), and I finally decided to go see a doctor yesterday. I figured it was a routine cough running it's course, but when my voice started to resemble Kermit's and I ran through an entire bottle of NyQuil without any respite, I figured maybe help was needed. With the health center being so close to the business school I figured I'd just go in to see the doctor, and be off to classes. How long was it going to take? 40 minutes? To be safe, I scheduled my appointment with the doctor an hour before class. Much like most things in life, this didn't work out. The pharmacy was backed up, and I reached class half and hour after it started. The doc told me I had a flu-like disease, and I was to get rest and some very potent medication. I left the health center thinking he had completely overreacted to a few coughs. He had not. How do I know? As I walked into my class, the first thing my prof said to me was "Are you sick? Go home! Lie Down!"
I thought he was kidding.
Nope.
He actually ordered me out of class, and told me to make sure I was wrapped under a blanket immediately. I had to go to work right after class, so I went there. Pretty much the same conversation happened there, and I figured I must look like a corpse if every one was treating me like a pariah. So I did what they wanted from me. I went home, curled up with some hot soup.
That was just about when my computer crashed.
CRASHED!

Being 20.

So, it's been about 2 weeks since I have given up being a teenager. People say old habits die hard, and this being a teenager habit has been especially hard to kick. I had been plagued with these visions of what I would now have to do now that I am in my twenties. Get a car, find a job, buy a house, have a life etc etc. Fortunately, none of these big heavy ideas have come to fruition in the past 14 days of me being 20. 

Since IU had a snow day the day of my birthday (while everybody likes a day off, the actual snow was a bummer), I had a lot of unexpected free time. And by free time, I mean time I should have spent catching up on the insane amount of work I have, but hey who works on their birthday? Anyways, I figured 20 was a good number for me to quit some of the habits I had had for a long time. Like, when my birthday would be about a month away, I would start to mark of dates on a calendar. I'd set up countdowns counting the number of hours, minutes, seconds to the exact point of midnight. But one of my bigger traditions was one I started around my 15th birthday. This was 2004, just about the time the 10 year sitcom run of Friends was coming to an end, 10th grade was upon me and most of my friends, people I would die for, were either leaving, or moving away to different sections. The night of my 15th birthday, I came up with an idea. I decided I need a theme song. I have a song playing in my head when I wake up  anyway, I figured it might be good to have a feel good song of the year. Something that I can listen to when things are rough, and it will always remind me of how sweet and optimistic I felt the night of my 15th birthday. I ended up picking "I'll be there for you", the theme from friends. Yeah, not that imaginative. But, over the last 5 years, this concept evolved into more of a song of the year, something that sets the tone for the entire year. 

This year I didn't make a calendar. I didn't set a countdown. I was physically dreading this big event, so much so, I didn't even pick out my song. When a friend asked me on 27th midnight what my song was, I just said, "I think I've outgrown that."

But here's the weird thing. I hadn't. Turns out turning 20 is pretty much like turning anything else. The initial shock of being 20 was done, and now I'm just excited. I may not qualify as a teenager anymore, and I'll never be able to use the "I'm just 19, how would I know" excuse. Pretty soon, people are going to care whether I have a full time job, what car I drive, how big my apartment is, what my life goals are, et cetera,  et cetera. But for the moment, all that is long term.  For now it's a brand new day. Keeping in tone with that, this is my birthday song: Brand New Day by Joshua Radin. 

 

Weekly Poem #3

Here's the Vikram Seth poem I consider to be one of his more memorable works:

Round and Round

After a long and wretched flight That stretched from daylight into night, Where babies wept and tempers shattered And the plane lurched and whiskey splattered Over my plastic food, I came To claim my bags from Baggage Claim Around, the carousel went around The anxious travelers sought and found Their bags, intact or gently battered, But to my foolish eyes what mattered Was a brave suitcase, red and small, That circled round, not mine at all. I knew that bag. It must be hers. We hadnt met in seven years! And as the metal plates squealed and clattered My happy memories chimed and chattered. An old man pulled it of the Claim. My bags appeared: I did the same.  Vikram Seth

 Seth makes this poem very very relatable. Who hasn't been on a flight with the inevitable crying baby and the turbulence that strikes just as the hostess hands you your drink. And then, haggard, tired, worn out, you reach the baggage claim. And then the entire mundane experience turns brilliant. A sign of a blast from the past. A meeting, a friend you hadn't met for seven years. You get excited, images of the past, and what you will say to her start running through your head. You replay your first opening line, where the rest of the evening will go, what all you will discuss, everything that will happen. And then, just like that, the entire idea disappears. An old man, comes out of no where to claim his bag, and takes away all these thoughts with him. With the slight tinge of embarrassment, you too make a hasty exit.

Speaking of exits, ciao! 

So, I saw Slumdog..

I caught Slumdog Millionaire over the weekend in a surprisingly packed theatre here in town. I have to say, the direction, storyline, and perspective of the movie astounded me. The movie was a good one, and far more entertaining than usual oscar fare. I liked the movie, I did. But I can't help but think about the overall impact of a movie that has become as big as Slumdog Millionaire. 

There are some very specific things in the movie I have a problem with. For one, the movie is unnecessarily cringe-worthy. The development of the story was brilliant, and the locations picked stayed in tune with the movie one-hundred percent. But the way the story played out was definitely a little too povertized. A lot of situations young Jamal and young Salim get into would never happen in India, and if it did, it would be extremely improbable that they all happen to the same kid. The same thing applies to a lot of the situations the growing kids get into. 

But my biggest issue with the movie lies in the way India comes across. Almost all the things that happen to the kids in India, happens to kids in India. Everything that happens to the tourists in India, happens to tourists in India. The fact that the movie shows these scenes without any explanation, or any indication that this is not the norm in India, is an issue. I have read multiple reports about people asking how indians can treat indians like this, after watching the movie. Every country has a dark underbelly, and I don't like India's exposed for the world to see and judge. India has an image as a dirt ridden country, where call centers are. The movie does nothing to abolish this stereotype, it builds on it. The older Jamal works at a call center, the best an uneducated Indian can get, right? Religious tensions abound in India, right? Is that why they changed the character from Ram(from the book, Q&A) to Jamal?

The part that really got me was the song-and-dance at the end. Really? I mean, really? Absurd much?

Why is it that every movie that shows India has to do it in a poor light? Every country has its negatives, why does India's take the forefront? This winter, while in Belgium, I discovered that Belgium is nothing short of a mothership for pickpockets. So much so, that there are signs warning of pickpockets at literally every tourist spot. When was the last time a movie showed that? 

It may seem trivial, but it is demonstrates my point. India has a lot to offer, and what slumdog shows is nothing short of a series of unlucky events, culminating in an extremely lucky ending. The bad brother redeems himself. Villain dies. The guy gets the money and the girl. Everyone dances. Everyone's happy. Great big sunset. 

Can anybody say every bollywood movie ever made?

Random thoughts of the grumpy student aka don't read this if you're easily annoyed

I just got done with my first class of the day, and am in class for the second one(I have five classes today - bad scheduling decision). I have my first midterm of the semester today, which is fine except for the fact that I have a quiz today. AND I had a pop quiz in my very first class of the day. The class I barely made on time thanks to the buses being packed like the only suitcase you're allowed to carry onto a flight without a surcharge. Wait, no, the first one also costs 15 bucks. 

The website the textbook for my class is on, isn't opening. I've been trying for hours. I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, somebody fix it. I need to read one last module for the quiz, I can't legitimately BS something I know nothing about. I have the midterm in about 1 hour 15 minutes, which is exactly 30 minutes after my current class ends. That ends an hour and a half after it begins, at 2:15. My quiz, the one the website won't work for, is at 4:00. Which is exactly 15 minutes after my finance class ends. Maybe there's a quiz in that one too. 

My professor just walked in. Looks like he has sheath of paper with him. Maybe it's an updated syllabus that substitutes all exams for free cookies. I need coffee. With cookies.  Or a spinach bagel smeared with 3 inches of cream cheese. Toasted. Maybe I'll get one when I get time. Probably after my last quiz today. At 5:15. Between classes that end at 5:15, and work that ends at 11.  

Well, there's a bright side to all this. Tomorrow's friday. I love fridays. See there's a silver lining to every overbearing dark thunder cloud. the weekend's supposed to get warmer. I'll be able to sleep for more than 4 hours without feeling guilty. Maybe I'll actually catch up with that finance class that's gut-punching me twice a week. Maybe I'll catch that House marathon on sunday, and watch all the superbowl ads. There's some interesting leftovers in my fridge, maybe I'll take a dig at making something interesting out of it. Or bake those cookies. Sugar cookies with M&M's and chocolate dough cookies with---

Oh, it's a pop quiz. 

I'm going to go and scream now. 

Weekly Poem #2

So, after the Billy Collins poem I put on here, I got an idea. Poetry is an under appreciated art in our society. Which is weirdly annoying, given the current state of the world. Till a few years back, the world was one perfect system of a booming economy, where everyone needed money, and could easily get it. All the would be poets were under pressure to go corporate. And I fear many did. There has to be some reason the economy collapsed, right? 

The fall of the economy gets me to my next big point. As a business major, the economy and the real estate and money market problems are a mess that we all share some blame for, and something that we need to fix. On the other hand, as someone who dabbles in poetry, I have to say: this rise and fall story, it's nothing short of poetic. Think about it. It was a bull run, where everyone was making money hand over fist. People got greedy. Avaritia reared its ugly head. And now we are all knee deep in utter chaos. Oh come on, the greek tragedy is practically writing itself! 

So, poetry is poised for a comeback. And here's my part. I'm going to put up one poem, every week. Unknown poems by famous poets, or some combination of those four variables. Here's this week's.

Alone

Lying, thinking Last night How to find my soul a home Where water is not thirsty And bread loaf is not stone I came up with one thing And I don't believe I'm wrong That nobody, But nobody Can make it out here alone. Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone. There are some millionaires With money they can't use Their wives run round like banshees Their children sing the blues They've got expensive doctors To cure their hearts of stone. But nobody No, nobody Can make it out here alone. Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone. Now if you listen closely I'll tell you what I know Storm clouds are gathering The wind is gonna blow The race of man is suffering And I can hear the moan, 'Cause nobody, But nobody Can make it out here alone. Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.  Maya Angelou

Follow the blog!!

Hey, here's a quick post. If you want to follow my blog, but don't have a blogger account, I have a way. All you need to do is bookmark this link 

feed://sriatiu.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default 

If you add it to your bookmarks, everytime there is a new post, a (1) should pop up next to it. 

This should work, even though I haven't tried it. Let me know.  

My fascination with snow.

I remember wishing for snowfall while I stayed in Delhi. It'd get cold, often falling into the low 30's. 30 degree weather would be a welcome change now, but back then, it felt frostbitten. Living in cold weather, but never cold enough for it to snow felt like a cruel joke. I always wanted to see snow, see the ground go from green to white. I had seen snow before, but it was the "been on the ground forever, possibly has frozen dinosaurs perfectly preserved, it's so old" kind(yay, Swiss alps). I got my first chance during my first spring semester at IU. It was a Friday night, and around 4 a.m., it started snowing pretty hard. I was out, (dad, read:I was curled up in bed, asleep :) ) and it looked like this might be the big accumulation I had been hoping for. Next morning, by which I mean 1 p.m.( 9 a.m., mom), I awoke to find the green field quadrangle outside my dorm covered in snow. I don't remember how deep it was, or how cold it was. I remember getting into my very first snowball fight. And trying to build a snowman. It was crazy hard, and we ended up making a small 12 inch high dog-puppy shapeless thing called snowy. It was all quite exciting, and fun, till Monday struck, and I had to trek to class. It had stopped snowing, and the roads and sidewalks were clean. My brain did not comprehend this, and I fell down three times that day. By the end of that day, I was hoping for a snow month, if not, at least a snow day. It was then that I was told about IU's policy about snow days: "It's an urban legend we do not indulge in." 

But that valentine's day (02/14/07, aah, good times), IU did indulge in it. After an intense snow storm that had me stranded at the mall for over an hour while waiting for a ride, IU declared all classes suspended till 1 p.m. After the initial celebration, I realized my classes only started from 2:30 that day. Dang it.

So, you have to understand my jubilation when a storm much like the one from "The Day After Tomorrow" descended on Bloomington last Monday. I had five classes on Tuesday, three of which started before 1.  I was certain IU would cancel classes on Tuesday. I was going to be able to skip my finance quiz! But Tuesday came and went, and there was no such luck. I had my classes, and I had my quizzes(yes, plural). Then IU did cancel classes. Till noon. On Wednesday. When my only class was poetry, at 2:30. I was beginning to think IU was doing this on purpose. No such thing as a coincidence, right? But IU was listening, prayers and all, and gave us its first snow day in almost 30 years. 

So IU got a snow day, I turned 20, and the world looked like this: