A Very Happy Diwali and A Prosperous New Year and some more on us crisis!!!!

I m totally not feeling the urge to write a word. Maybe thats what they call a writer's block (keeping the fact in mind that I m not much of a writer as well). I just discovered that I m as old as Extra Terrestrial ET (almost, it was made in july and me born in december, but the year remains same). I even share my birth with India's Asian games (wow it is a bit lesser achievement but it is still an achievement).

Anyways dropped in to wish everyone A Very Happy Diwali and A Very Prosperous New Year too (thats if you havent received my sms, which I sent to almost everyone in my  phonebook, including the locals!!!!!)

As usual is the case every year, went to the food festival at Munyonyo, didnt quite enjoy it, actually didnt quite booze, so the enjoyment fazed out. Ok the food was good, the environ was good. People were good, it was fun to see all those people out there having fun and rocking life's cradle forgetting all the worries they have been having through the past days. Well I actually felt a bit sad after seeing all that and missing my special one (which for the time being is only in thoughts and there's only a mental picture of her). Well  hopefullly next year I would be there with the special one (and as the big pessimistic ass I m, the year after surely would be with her, fingers crossed).

In other things, the US thingie of crisis doesnt seem to subside, now it doesnt seem but it has already taken the whole world with it in drowning. It has actually got me on a backfoot and all my plans have been shelved for the time being. This has got me thinking that how can someone else decide what I should be doing. What the big boys of American financial market did all the way gambling away the money, making profit on shoddy housing estates amply supported by the successive US Administration and then gaining bonuses which can't even be thought of in a lifetime by people like me and you, has got me and you affected like never before. Its a pity, the common man's fate in such a stupid world. Its needs a lot of thinking and I m a lesser mortal to comment on things of such great magnitude, so lets end it there itself and proceed with our life taking whatever comes our way.

A gloomy cheers to all

happy holidays to everyone in India and a happy working week to people like me!!!!!!

santosh

PS: Last week I came to know that I dont know to talk to people(quite inadverently for that matter). I really dont care what people think about me!!!! so please stopping making that point to me!!! I WONT CHANGE!!!! I LOVE WHAT I LOVE AND I HATE WHAT I DISLIKE!!!!!!! As simple as that.

Movies and World Financial Crisis and some pics

Thats the National Bird of Uganda-The Crested Crane. Its beautiful
That is ME with a precautiously close Pelican
Thats a Monitor Lizard. It was scary even though it doesnt do anything
That is the Ganesh Temple, we visited.

Alas I touched 80....ya its a feat on my bike, which on normal roads cant go beyond 50....I had to do this for quite sometime..did it last week....

In other things, I have not been able to any worthwhile Hindi movie in a while now. I had a premtion about Jane Tu Ya Jane Na and Rock On, but both of them have elluded me. I m regretting not watching both of them, especially when I heard about the reviews they have got. Now I have a presumption about Hello, but sadly I wont be able to watch that too..

In other things, I had a couple of holidays last week and I visited Jinja and Entebbe. I had been to Jinja once but then this trip also I enjoyed not bearing the fact that climate in Jinja is very hot compared to Kampala. On another occasion I went to Entebbe. We could visit only two places there. The Botanical Zoo and the Ganesh Temple. Picture of both I m putting below. The Zoo is a worthwhile place but the entarance fee is a bit over the head. Its 10,000 UGX (abt rs. 250) per person. It was a necessary evil and we went there, but have to say it was worth spending that much moolah.

On other things, world markets are crashing and the world is going into recession. I do see a bit of it here too, but according to so called experts it should not effect Uganda as our financial institutions are not really connnected or have a say in the US or European markets or Real Estates there. Thats what they say. I sincerely dont believe them and for that matter Indian Financial Institutions too. I just cant digest the make belief stance of Indian financial institutions that they havent invested in US market. 

Lets take a  simple case. If I know that everyone in my vicinity, absolutely everyone is earning something out of a situation (like the housing market in US), so why would I be behind and not earn like everyone. I will also invest atleast something in that sureshot thing, where everyone is winning. I expect the Indian financial institutions to also have done the same thing and am waiting till their quarterly and annual reports to be out, so see some skeletons out of the closet.

Anyways I would have loved to invest in Indian Stock Exchanges now, but I dont have the monies :(((.....and I even have some other nittigrities to solve. This market is suitably priced and is a excellent winnning opportunity for long term investors.

All this would not be of much interest to many of you, but then its my blog and i write whatever comes to my mind.... chaooooo....

:DDDD

cheers 

happy weekend to all.

santos

Frauds-an overview from here

I had been thinking abt this lately...if got a chance to fraud someone or some organization, how much would I siphone off!!!.....After a long perusal of the matter at hand, I came to a conclusion that it shouldnt be more than an Crore Rs or a 200,000 $s....thats the extreme it can go...

So based on this, when I learnt about the amount of money defrauded in the Global Fund scandal in Uganda, I was astonished, shocked, delighted (at them) and pityfull (at the country and the donors), all at the same time. Individuals scammed a total of over 210 Million US$s from the Global Fund money allocated to Uganda. The money that was to be used to buy anti-malarial drugs, to be used to eradiction of diseases, infrastructure etc. That amount in itself could be some small country's year's GDP, that money could had been brought to so may more better uses. My frustration(and many others) must have come to the highest limit when you get to know that no one found guilty of the fraud has been punished yet and not a cent has been recovered. How can some one be so blatant and blind to tolerate such a fraud. From the stories I heard, the bill for a lunch during this siphonage was UGX 70,000 each plate at a village restaurant. Thats like 41$s for a lunch. It wont even cost me that much on moon to have lunch.

Just when we were coming out of it, came the NSSF-Temangalo land saga. NSSF is a body that manages money retirement security of workers in the country. So when they were said to have bought wetlands and lands for twice or thrice the amount of normal land in normal places. What makes it more pathetic and worse than Global Fund fraud is that the money used here was from the pockets of the poor working class. The money here in question is about 11 billion shillings approx. equal to US$6, 470,000, which is a alarmingly large sum of amount. The battle is still going on for the same, so we dont actually know who is the culprit. 

So today is weekend and I would be having a bland weekend again. I dont expect to booze today and most probably wont be tomorrow too. Neither am i expected to be going to some place cool here in Kampala. So I m at home, anyone wants to have fun drop home. Anyone's invited.

cheers

santos

Goat Race-some late review and pics

hi everyone....

today I thought that I should upload the goat race pics that I took a coupla weeks back. As a continuation of my rite on the goat race, it was a total failure for me. The free booze and free food funda was true, but then to get those freebies you had to wait for what seemed like eternity. The food in particular had got finished by the time we reached there, and the drinks were on, but then whats the fun in having booze without even a starter to go by.

The fault may have been the Tent we were in. May be next time I would try to get passes for other Tents as well so that we have an alternate option, if at all Open House tent (the one which my group of company sponsors) doesnt have food.

Anyways check out the pics, and do shoot the comments.

Cheers

Santosh

My Onam

Happy Onam to all.
As a matter of fact, I had a rather bland Onam. The day started off pretty well but then it just went on going to being a real dampner. Its not that I had expected a very grande Onam, that was not at all expected. But then atleast I would had liked to have a lunch atleast. Ya true, I didnt even have my lunch yesterday, the biggest celebration for us mallus (as we dont celebrate anything else like Ganapati utsav, navratri, pongal blah blah) and I had to fast. Its not that I didnt want to eat. I just could not get back home for my lunch as I was caught up in some very bad bargaining at a client's place. I could have had lunch at their cafetaria (which on normal days is the best african lunch I ever tasted, though havent tasted many, but the point is the best I tasted), but then yesterday being Onam and me trying to be vegan on Onam had to desist from having their lunch which would had included a meat dish.

So as luck would have it, apart from the lunch, there were other things also which went amiss. The client rejected one of our presumably most ambitious prepositions in the name of sales. Rejection is not new for us but the fact that the commodity was outsourced by us and it was the closest step we could come to be labelled as a manufacturing entity makes the fact even more sour though not bitter.
Add to all this dilemma, a very strong headache in the evening and the inability to write anything when I was brimming full of ideas, made sure that the day ends in the same way as it started.

Though the silver lining was that I attended Ganapathi pooja at a neighbour's place and felt a certain peace of mind and as a result was able to sleep off the night peacefully with a much needed assistance from Tiger balm.

Anyways that was yesterday and this is today, its a brand new day and I sincerly hope or rather believe that Maveli and the Gods I pray to would come to my rescue and do some unknown good things to me and everyone in general as well.
bye for now
cheers
happy weekend to all
santosh

Newspaper story

The first thing that I had to quit (well I have started more things than quiting but here its purely abt quiting things!!!!) after coming to Uganda was habit of reading newspapers in the morning. That was a tough habit to quit. I normally used to read atleast two English newspapers. Times of India was a must and was occasionally topped up with Business Standard as well. BS is a much better financial daily than Economic Times. ET just sucks in terms of the news they carry and publish. Oh India!! it was a heaven. In this country leave apart the business newspapers, you cant actually expect the normal newspaper to be prudent. BTW the reason I quit reading newspapers was not the inavailability of newspapers, but the cost factor. A newspaper here costs you a good UGX 1,000/- that is a cool 25 Rs., who in India would believe that a simple thing called NEWSPAPERS are so pricey!!!!.

So lately I have been thinking about getting into the newspaper business here...but then its too tough, as one of the newspapers here, New Vision is owned by the the Government and the other one Daily Monitor is owned by Aga Khan, and so it would be tough to get into the market even at a reduced price as you may not want to get into trouble with any of the two... So the plan has been shelved even before getting on..but may be I can act as a consultant to someone who wants to open up...good thought na..

cheers

good day

santosh

Facts, figures and GALS

Gals, gals,

Well me, I just cant understand why dont gals just leave their past and get down into the future at a leisurely pace. There's no apparent reason for writing that right now, its just that I dont have anything to do and and I got an hour to waste in office with nothing worthwhile officially to do/or I am too tired to be after the long day today to concentrate my energies on anything else in office and lo I thought I should pen something down.

Ok the story goes like this, whilst in school, this good friend of mine AG joins us in the 11th class, now as fate has it somebody links her up with aG, a guy who joined us in midterm of 11th. This goes on till we left school. The linking up was apparently for fun and for the sole purpose of only teasing aG. Now AG comes to know of this fact a bit late, may be a year or couple later. That story ends there. Flash forward to August 2008, a fews days back while talking to AG, she asked me the question as to what was the root of that link-up of her name with aG. I was a bit shocked as to How relevant that question was now after a period short of just two years to be called a decade, since the incident happened. As a matter of fact I didnt know how the story originated or who spread it. But then AG seemed so upset about the fact that it gave me some thoughts abt gals in common. It seems they dont forget everything quite easily even though it happened a good decade back. My point was again confirmed recently as well.

More on humanity and more humane things, I had been thinking to write about the gals I want to contact ten years down the line from today or 2008. Lemme pen down some names.

VV would have to be the first person, she had been my primary school crush, more due to the fact that she seemed to be the only mallu in the school(ya apart from me) and I sometimes used to meet her dad in bus routes I used to travel (:-D). She took science and got off to a seemingly good start. Last heard that she was employed by Infosys.

Second person would have to be PG, my second genuine crush. She went the same way as most of us commerce students, Bcom in a city college, tried hands on ICWA etc. and last heard that she's married away and has been off to Australia.

RR would also be one of the persons I would like to meet. and I know even if I cant meet any of the others on the list she would surely meet me. She's still in Ahd and doing good, but 10 years down the line is a very long time.

The list would be incomplete without AN, the crush or curse which has been the toughest to move off or move on and may be will never be able to move on, but thats for different entry. Ten years' good time period, do meet me people.

There is also one person from here in Uganda AM is a finance gal and a very sweet person (atleast i know her for 1 month and it seems likewise), I dont have any contact info regarding her but will get before I move on. I would surely like to get to know from her after a decade frm now (hope to get her no. and mail id as well soon :-D).

Well that seems to be of all the people I could think of in the short period of 1/2 hr's time. There are still more people I would like to meet after the decade deadline and as expected hope to find them more concentrated than me, damn I am living life on the edge without a thought for tomorrow or the day after. I really need to think things out and move on with life. God, m really crammed up and screwed. But atleast as for now I m trying to be more optimistic and waiting for something good to happen, and then again I have made a Plan B as well. Now I m really sounding wierd, ya I have been working very hard, may be thats the reason.

Anyways,

Bon Sua

Santosh