Micromax to Maximise my reading pleasure.

My new year’s resolution is to ensure that I catch up on my reading. Reading is my hobby and my passion. One way by which I can definitely ensure that I am able to pursue my passion would be to use the Micromax canvas tab P666. The 8 inch screen would give me an edge and would enhance my reading pleasure whether it be to write my blog or read through a novel while traveling.

The Micromax Canvas tab P666 has an Intel graphics media accelerator which would allow greater media interface.

I personally believe that photographs, maps, graphs and other pictorial representation of facts and figures give an extra dimension to what I am reading and enhances the pleasure that I get from what I am reading exponentially. I believe the Micromax Canvas P666 with its high 800 X 1280 pixel resolution would be an ideal tool that would enable me to view photographs, maps or graphs with greater clarity and would hence be an ideal tool for the bookworm that I am.

As an avid reader one thing that is critical for me is space to keep my books and the quality time to be able to read them. In this the Micromax Canvas tab P666 is a world beater. With 325 hours of standby time and 6 hours of browsing time the Micromax canvas ta P666 is a great friend to have to read through an entire novel or an important editorial piece at one’s ease. With almost 6 hours of browsing time one is able to devout one quarter of the day to one’s pleasure. Since this device also provides a standby of 325 hours we can stagger the manner in which we read throughout the day.

This is extremely important especially those who are frequent travelers and need a device whose battery has great performance both in stand by and in browsing mode.

The Micromax Canvas tab P666 also has great storage specifications. With an internal memory of 8 GB which can be expanded to 32GB I would be able to store my favorite novels as well as save any recent post which I find interesting for my later reading. Sometime due to work pressure I am often unable to read current publications but now with the Micromax Canvas tab P666 I will be able to save these interesting publications which I can then then read later on.

Since the tab also comes with a whole host of preloaded apps, booking a ticket for the movies or checking on my insurance premium payment would no longer be a hassle and this would free up much needed quality time for reading.

The high performance Intel Atom processor (1.2 GHz) which comes with the latest burst performance technology would ensure that I am able to download and read through articles, publications and editorials seamlessly. Gone would be trouble of the tab hanging and the frustration of closing other apps when I want to concentrate on reading something which I find pleasurable.

Visit the Mircomax Canvas Tab P666 page

This post has been written for Indi Happy Hours in association with Mircomax

Be truthful, be brave :

“Satyameva Jayate”, these two words synonymous with our freedom struggle are as important today as they were during our fight for independence. We are taught in school the importance of “Satyameva Jay ate” or “truth alone triumphs” and indoctrinated to abide by it throughout our lives.

However, the reality is much more different.

Quiet often we are faced with the predicament of either speaking the truth or facing the consequences or to tell a lie to save our skin. There was this one specific occasion that I recollect vividly where I had to face this test.It was in class ten when I was around sixteen years old.

It was a hot sultry summer day when the results were announced for our final examinations which determined whether we progressed from class ten to eleven and more importantly the subjects we would be entitled to choose which would be the key to determining our career.

 Having put in months of effort, I like all my fellow students was expecting good scores. This would also enable me to choose science and become a doctor which I always aspired to be since I was a kid.

The scores that I got finally were abysmal! I had barely passed in Mathematics and had scrapped through Physics and Chemistry.

As I was pondering the best combination of subjects that I could select for my pre university classes, I was suddenly stuck by the thought of what to tell my parents on the results.

Would I lie to them about my scores or do I tell them that I did not want to take up science any more.

Or even better tell them that I was cheated out of good scores due to the favoritism of the teachers.

I tried to weigh the different options in front of me.The pros and cons.I felt that telling my parents that I had been cheated from what I deserved would be the best way out. Yes , blame it on the teachers  I said to myself !. Were there not amongst us those who took private tuition with the intention of getting better grades in the school exams.

As I fine tuned my lie while plying home from school to my home I was suddenly struck by the fact that in the end I would be lying to no one else but myself. Who would gain from this lie?

Could I face my teachers many of whom slogged it out to help us attain good scores in our exams?

No. I could not do that.It was not the right thing to. I needed the courage to stand up to my parents and more importantly to myself.

And So I did. Yes, the consequences were severe, I got a sound hearing from my parents, escaped a beating but realized that by running away from the truth would not solve my problems.

It also ensured that in the future I could always relate to this incident when I was a teenager and get strength to tell the truth.

There is a saying that we learn from our mistakes. In my case I learned from the day I had the courage to speak the truth as I thought it was the right thing to do.

As the great Rabindranath Tagore has put it so eloquently "Facts are many, but the truth is one.”

source: Kinley

This post is written for Indi Happy Hours in association with Kinely

Wanderlust with Family and Kids

The English dictionary defines wanderlust as the urge to travel. The human urge to travel to unknown places, to explore new worlds and seek new adventure is as old as the human civilization itself.

This “urge to travel” is imbibed in our very genes and this ensures that we often take a break, pack our bags and visit near and far places.

As many of us have families it is imperative that we are cognizant of the wishes and desire of our family members when we plan and eventually undertake travel. This is especially important when we travel with kids. The perception of kids to life is totally different from that of us adults and this spills over to their perception to travel as well. While we may travel to get away with from our dreary desk jobs, kids on the other hand look at travel as an opportunity to visit places they have either read in the books or have viewed on the television, to explore uncharted territory and to seek adventure.

Hence I believe, it is a great idea if we allowed them the responsibility of choosing the place where would visit as it is important that they are made a part of the travel right at the stage of  its inception. Further apart from choosing the place that we as a family would visit we should also allow them to share their ideas on planning the trip. For example they can research on places that are to be visited in the course of our travel. This would not only make them excited but the research they would need to put in would also increase their knowledge.

Kids seek enjoyment and it is important that we allow them freedom and the chance to have fun during our travel. Once must be careful in today’s world but at the same time ensure that the fun aspect of travel is not lost at the altar of fear. Let the kid enjoy, let them run up a hill if they want to , smell the wild flower or  splash in the cold sea water. These are small little things but they will cherish these moments for the rest of their lives and will thank you for allowing them too forever.

Laughter they say is infectious and soon we will start to enjoy the pleasures that the kid is enjoying.Their inquisitiveness should not anger us or irritate us, it is in their thirst for knowledge that we should appreciate and understand. Instead of try to shutting them up we should try to understand their innocent questions and in this way we will gain knowledge as well.

Trust me kids do not cause problems during a travel if we trust them, encourage them , give them responsibility and allow them to enjoy and have fun.It is our perception and misconceived ideas that is the roadblock.

This post is written as part of IndiHappy hours in association with
http://membership.clubmahindra.com/TeddyTravelogues/index.html.

Rising above Fear - It's okay to beat fear sometimes!

As a child I remember going on various holidays in the hills. No Bengali vacation is ever complete without a trip to Darjeeling or Gangtok. This was back in my childhood when I visited Darjeeling. The Mall Road in Darjeeling is quite famous for some great restaurants, scores of handloom shops and quite a big population of horses!  Going for a horse ride through the entire stretch of road there is the favorite past time of all tourists in Darjeeling. And I gave in to it and went for a horse ride. I must be some 6 or 7 year old that time.

This horse riding is nothing like a horse riding that we understand from the movies or anything. They simply strut and walk in the slowest pace possible and you get to enjoy the scenery of the lush green hills around you. Now these horses have this uncanny habit of walking on the extreme edge of the road. I don’t know if they are trained that way to give you a scare or something else. So every time I pushed it towards the road it came back walking on the earthen stretch that you have between the road and the deep gorges. And the sight of the depth of green scared the hell out of me. It was a scary horse ride of the life where any moment you could have fallen down the slopes.

When I came to Bangalore later with work we used to plan several weekend trips with friends. Bangalore is a lovely place with great connectivity to many tourist spots. We went rock climbing at one instance. The fear of height was like a latent force in my mind and I had forgotten almost about it. We trekked for a few hours and then climbed up this hillock. As we started climbing up – the first moment I saw down I felt the fear rising through my body. Can I do this? What if I fall? What if I broke my legs? Too many thoughts clouded my mind. But I held on to my nerves. It’s best to resist looking down or looking back. And without shifting my eye sight anywhere other than the top of the hillock I climbed up along with my friends.

Reaching the top gave a huge joy and boost to my morale. The light breeze the morning sun shine calmed us down. I dared to look down the depth from top and it definitely was scary. But now that we were on top the fear was little less. May be I had just risen above my fear. We sat there chatting on top for a long time and the trainer explained how many groups of youngsters came climbing there and how some of them always waited at the base and never muster the courage to climb up!

And guess what I have done. Much later when we were planning to buy our own apartment in Bangalore we picked up one on the 12^th floor!! So now I don’t mind looking down from my 12^th floor balcony and enjoy the awesome view.    

Check out this video by Mountain Dew on a very similar incident

Visit https://www.facebook.com/mountaindewindia for more awesome videos. 

This post of mine has been written for Indi Happy Hours in association with Mountain Dew India.

Let us clean our Neighborhood

So everyone is taking up the cleanliness drive these days – from celebrities to politicians to sports personalities and even corporate houses. That’s a good initiative. But is it okay to take a drive for 1 day and leave it at that? I was going through some celebrity photos of their cleanliness drive and the only dominant element in their large bins of garbage were dried leaves!!! Now the question is  - do you just see dried leaves on the streets?? I see a whole lot of things – old clothes, stale food, wrappers, vegetable peels, scrap metal, dead rats and just about everything. Definitely much more than just dried leaves.

Our apartment community had taken a cleanliness drive in our neighborhood in Bangalore once to free our streets (the then pot holed roads) of nails and metal parts. Many of our residents had participated in the drive and there was an incredible amount of metal junk collected from a stretch of 2 km road! Think about all the cars that have been plying on the busy road. We went up against the odds and started this drive early morning on a weekend so that commuters didn’t have a problem. We could do that because we stood up. The corporation, municipality turns deaf and blind in these situations. But should we stop at just that? Isn’t it our responsibility too to take up the responsibility of cleaning up. We don’t have a problem in cleaning our own house, terrace or balcony. We only use the roads – then why can’t we help in cleaning them?

When we travel abroad we take care not to throw a gum wrapper or a coffee cup on the roads, we take care to throw them in the designated bin, but as soon as we reach our own country we don’t think twice to throw a coffee cup on the roads, or spit on the roads. We learn to do what we see around. No one is throwing a single thing anywhere other than the bins so we don’t litter. We behave like a responsible citizen as we step into London, Paris or Singapore. And back here we don’t mind throwing the cigarette butt anywhere – because everyone around is doing the same. Wrong. We need to learn to a responsible citizen in our own country first. What legacy otherwise will you leave for your next generation – a country full of filth (pun intended)!

Let’s drive a campaign to clean our neighborhood. Let’s be responsible citizen. Strepsils India has come up with this campaign to encourage Indians to speak up against all the wrongs that we see around us. #AbMontuBolega. Join the campaign and lets stand up against all the wrongs – harassment of women, or littering roads. Lets strive to make the society a better place to live.  Visit their webpage, FaceBook Page orTwitterHandle 

http://www.abmontubolega.com/

This post of mine has been written as a part of Indi-Happy hours  on Indiblogger in association withStrepsilsIndia #AbMontuBolega

Being Better Citizens

This is something very close to my heart.

How can we Indians restore and build  up a fractured society and leave behind an endearing legacy for our future generations.

Yes we have a corrupt government but so do most countries around the world. Yet in most countries there is a sense of belonging to the place where one resides. Unfortunately this is not the case in India.

We strive to keep our kitchens and living room clean but would not blink an eye lid if our child throws garbage on the streets. At the same time complaining how dirty the streets are.

Community groups in most countries would gang up to clean neighborhood  parks,water bodies  and plant trees. They would sacrifice their weekends to restore old structure, paint the local library or clean up the already clean streets.In India Community groups (apartment society groups) are more inclined to get busy during festival dates to create noise pollution and go about ringing doorbells asking for donations.Why not also ask people to work together to clean up the local park and collect fund to renovate the Government school library next door?

I have nothing against enjoying festivities but the same time and money can used for the betterment of our society the fruits of which we all will savor in the future.

In the UK there is a concept of community gardening,local government provide plots to citizens to allow them to grow their own vegetable,flowers and fruits on government land.If we so want to ape the west why not we have our own version of a community garden within apartment complex’s most of us reside in?

We talk about racism being a western phenomenon yet we Indians blatantly abuse a North Indian residing in South India. Although I admit this is mostly in the case of autorickshaw drivers who are the scum of society ,a necessary evil so to speak.

There are many more things that we as Indians should be doing to protect our fragile society all ready under attack by politicians, bureacrats, corrupt police.But lets make a start on the issues which I have written about as above.

We owe this much to our great country and our future generation!

Investing for your retirement – Part 2

4. Prepare a budget built around your savings –

 This means when you build up a budget first put in the amount that you are going to save for your retirement and other investments and then put in your expenditures. Unfortunately we tend to do it the other way round. This also does not mean that if your net take home is Rs50,000 per month and you set aside Rs10,000 for retirement you are going to spend Rs40,000 on shopping !.No way! This means that after setting aside for your retirement funding you set aside money to buy your own house or car or for funding your child’s education or marriage and then with the available balance you can go out and do your shopping. In short start spending or planning to spend only after you have saved up for the month.

When you build up a budget ensure that you segregate investments for your child’s education, marriage, EMI’s for your house/car and retirement separately.

Do not touch your retirement savings to fund your EMI’s and dare I say your child’s education or marriage. This is a tough choice but remember that your child if required will be able to fund his own higher education with a loan and enjoy tax benefit on the education loan but no bank will provide you with a loan after your retirement.

5. Investing in the stock market –

Be careful when you invest in the stock market. Do not get swayed by the analyst appearing on television or articles in the newspapers. A decade ago Satyam was a darling of the stock markets, retail investors who had invested in Satyam saw their investments nearly wiped out when the Satyam fraud was unearthed. Always remember that those advocating allocation of your savings to the stock market may have their own hidden agenda. It is always better to do your own analysis of individual stocks before making an investment. Do not under any circumstance invest more than 5% of your net take home in stock market. If you are unable to make an analysis of stocks then it is better to invest in a Mutual fund. Even then keep tracking the stock prices or the Net Asset Value of the Mutual Fund on a regular basis. If you have made notional profits of 20% , book the profits and exit, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush!

6. Systematic Investment Plan – SIP

   Do your own Systematic Investment Planning – Investing in SIP does not mean that you need to do it only via Mutual Funds through your broker or dematerialized  account. You can set aside a certain sum of money each month and invest it in gold, PPF, VPF or even blue chip stocks .Ensure that your SIP is a long term investment and should be utilized for your retirement planning. However ensure that although the investment is long term in nature you need to track the market value of your investment regularly.

Watch out for global events apart from domestic policies which may impact the value of your investments.

7.Projecting your post retirement expenses

 This is probably the most difficult of them all.

Projecting your future expenses in an environment where you stop earning can be an interesting

experience. You should start with listing out your current expenses that you incur. Take out expenses that you are not likely to incur post retirement  such as rentals (assuming you own your own house to by the time you have retired),keep a separate line item for medical expenses which would balloon up post retirement. Other expenses would include food,clothinig,electricity,internet and mobile telecom expenses.

 Ensure that the expenses are inflation indexed which means you need to factor in inflation which is currently at 10% while projecting your retirement expenses. So something which costs you Rs 100 today might end up costing you Rs 700 after 20 years. Include one off items such as travel ,purchase of household and electronic equipment, spending  in your budgeting. Once again remember that planning

for your children’s education and marriage should be done separately.

This should not be difficult. Start noting down your current expenditure by month and factor in inflation.

Annualise the expenses and then add one of items that you incur once or twice a year. Ensure you keep a 10% buffer by adding 10% of the above computed annual projected expenses.

As stated in one of the previous points you should ensure that you have paid all your outstanding EMI’s by the time you retire. Now that you have a reasonable idea of your post retirement expenses expense you now need to look at your projected income to ensure that your budget balances.

Remember the steps that we had taken previously (saving up a portion of your salary,start saving now etc).Revisit the amount to set aside for your investment if you think that your amount is too small to meet your expenses post retirement.

Your modeling may not be accurate so ensure that you get a second and if necessary third opinion.

You can ask your spouse or your friend to look at your post retirement budgeting. They would not only want to genuinely help you out but also would have a fair idea of your spending habits, medium long term plans etc.

Revisit your plan and assumptions made regularly , at least once every 3 months. Change assumptions such as inflation rate, rate of returns on your investments etc. Ensure that you are prudent while making your assumption. If you end up assuming a very low rate of inflation you might end up saving much less than what you require post retirement.

8. Second line of Income –

Think about a second line of income which you can continue even after  retirement. The added benefit could be that it is something that you enjoy. Providing tuition or selling photographs or designing websites could not only add to your bank balance but would allow you to do

Something which you truly like. You can save up a portion that you earn from your second line of income for retirement purposes.

With this I conclude my blog pertaining to retirement planning.Hopefully it was informative as well as helpful for retirement planning. I will relook this important topic in the near future to include points that I might have overlooked this time around.

Please write back and provide your feedback.It is extremely valuable.