I have pretty much stopped (ok, cut down significantly is the right phrase) watching movies for the last couple of months. Movies are a general source of entertainment for me and the thrill mostly is seeing the movie in its first weekend. Good movies, bad movies (and all the rest which fall in between and are way more difficult to categorize) - but movies have been my lifeblood for a long long time now.
I used to watch a lot of them at JNTU, alone or with a group of friends. In Indore, one always had the LAN to look forward for any sort of interests in movies. At Morgan, we all shared the same love for movies (or atleast the popcorn), so we gobbled up those movies - as they came in .
But now, I have a problem, any decent release at most theatres costs 240+ on an opening weekend. Now with the weight of promotions & the economics I understand that the producers/distributors want to recover money ASAP, but I for one find the prices ridiculous. I think the producers are taking the low cost airlines route, keep increasing prices irrespective of the serivce on offer, hoping that new clientele will drop in where existing ones have dropped out.
Movie ticket prices have seen a 100% (or more ) run up in the last 2 yrs. What justifies this hike? Should the revenue patterns of muliplex es be seen as viable? At 240+ bucks, defnitely not me. I think more people will start realizing that its not worth it very soon.
What do you think?
Saturday, November 15, 2008
I was on TV !!!
That's definitely a first for me. I would have loved the topic to be something that I am interested in currently, but a few minutes on live TV on "Perspectives beyond CAT" in the A-List B school series is good enough for me.
Trutec, Raghav Aggarwal is one awesome chap. He and his kid bro (Raghav is 21!!) run a education startup solution that helps s get across question papers/projects etc online. Once this is done, its only a matter of time before you start using the hosted data for a host of applications. The interesting part is that, they run India based servers and are able to sell the pay-per-use concept. These concepts were not gaining traction I thought. Clearly proves that I am possibly out of touch on this.
But yaay I came on TV.
Trutec, Raghav Aggarwal is one awesome chap. He and his kid bro (Raghav is 21!!) run a education startup solution that helps s get across question papers/projects etc online. Once this is done, its only a matter of time before you start using the hosted data for a host of applications. The interesting part is that, they run India based servers and are able to sell the pay-per-use concept. These concepts were not gaining traction I thought. Clearly proves that I am possibly out of touch on this.
But yaay I came on TV.
Rajiv Gandhi International Airport - Redux
Visited Hyderabad after a long time. While the facilities at the new airport remain excellent and the structure can be on par with global airports, the transaction cost is going to screw customers significantly over the coming quarters.
First, the shuttle service has moved from 100 to 150 into the city (maybe the earlier rates were teaser rates), roads are definitely better but really 50% escalation in 6 months? The user development fee (UDF) of 375 that one pays on entry to domestic airlines will increase the transaction cost some more.
When the passenger growth was going up up & away, this was not a problem. But a cost structure of an additional 500 bucks/head might make most families to choose trains instead.
Train time: To station: 0.5 hour, hyd-mumbai: 14.5 hrs, mumbai local travel: 1 hr: Total 16 hrs
Flight (assuming someone is flying strip down airlines (for lack of better terminology): To airport :2 hrs, check in hyd check out mumbai: 3 hrs, mumbai local travel 1 hr: Total 6 hrs
So, even though there is a clear 10 hr saving, for a decent size family (4) burden could be too much. Maybe some thought needs to go from the GMR guys to ensure that the UDF is not a simple number. Else they will end up hurting more during these troubled times.
How much did the udf have to contribute to the viability of the project? Whats the experience been globally? Need to look those up.
First, the shuttle service has moved from 100 to 150 into the city (maybe the earlier rates were teaser rates), roads are definitely better but really 50% escalation in 6 months? The user development fee (UDF) of 375 that one pays on entry to domestic airlines will increase the transaction cost some more.
When the passenger growth was going up up & away, this was not a problem. But a cost structure of an additional 500 bucks/head might make most families to choose trains instead.
Train time: To station: 0.5 hour, hyd-mumbai: 14.5 hrs, mumbai local travel: 1 hr: Total 16 hrs
Flight (assuming someone is flying strip down airlines (for lack of better terminology): To airport :2 hrs, check in hyd check out mumbai: 3 hrs, mumbai local travel 1 hr: Total 6 hrs
So, even though there is a clear 10 hr saving, for a decent size family (4) burden could be too much. Maybe some thought needs to go from the GMR guys to ensure that the UDF is not a simple number. Else they will end up hurting more during these troubled times.
How much did the udf have to contribute to the viability of the project? Whats the experience been globally? Need to look those up.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Adios.....Ganguly
Saurav "Dada" Ganguly, say what you like about the man, but he should single handedly take credit for what Indian cricket has been for the last few years. Of course the man has his idiosyncrasies, but then this is India - every nitwit and his father have gone to self-trips in course of power mongering.
But "The Prince of Kolkata" was different, he was a break from the tradition. His batting relied on hand eye coordination and in his return tour to England after a prolonged hiatus he was spectacular, his batting would rank next only to those Azzu bhai innings against the poms. When he is on the pitch, you will be forced to focus on what he is doing. Maybe thats the difference between Azhar and Ganguly. Ganguly knew where the focus would be and made sure that he made a positive difference there.
Just look at the current stars that we have, Yuvraj, Sehwag, Zaheer, Harbhajan, Irfan, Kaif etc were all picked, groomed, defended by Ganguly. And the 'boys' delivered for their 'dada' with a bang, that fired Ganguly into doing what he does best, ungli. Ask Waugh or Flintoff how the proverbial finger feels. Meanwhile Ganguly went on scoring runs, piles of them. He dominated the famous Sachin-Saurav combo, but for having a handicap against short-pitched bowling he would have been better at tests too.
He created a huge mess in the Chappell saga, but you cannot count him out. He planned his entrance, all the way down to the pr strategy (remember the ad?) and made a spectacular (and successful to boot) entry into the Indian cricket circus. He played the elder statesman to the hilt, Dada still lights up Yuvraj and Sehwag if you ask me. And his 300+ runs in this series buried his greatest nemesis, Waugh would be proud of him.
The best known proponent of sport mind games in India, cocksure, arrogant, the prince, the god of offside, one who played favoritism, did not play the game in the right spirit, the naghma scandal... pick your memories of him, but one thing you definitely cannot say about him, that he was an unknown fighter for an uncompetitive team. Credit to Ganguly, he has changed that forever.
For me, his ability to rally the team around him and those lofted shots over the infield shall remain enduring images.
Tradition? my foot.
But "The Prince of Kolkata" was different, he was a break from the tradition. His batting relied on hand eye coordination and in his return tour to England after a prolonged hiatus he was spectacular, his batting would rank next only to those Azzu bhai innings against the poms. When he is on the pitch, you will be forced to focus on what he is doing. Maybe thats the difference between Azhar and Ganguly. Ganguly knew where the focus would be and made sure that he made a positive difference there.
Just look at the current stars that we have, Yuvraj, Sehwag, Zaheer, Harbhajan, Irfan, Kaif etc were all picked, groomed, defended by Ganguly. And the 'boys' delivered for their 'dada' with a bang, that fired Ganguly into doing what he does best, ungli. Ask Waugh or Flintoff how the proverbial finger feels. Meanwhile Ganguly went on scoring runs, piles of them. He dominated the famous Sachin-Saurav combo, but for having a handicap against short-pitched bowling he would have been better at tests too.
He created a huge mess in the Chappell saga, but you cannot count him out. He planned his entrance, all the way down to the pr strategy (remember the ad?) and made a spectacular (and successful to boot) entry into the Indian cricket circus. He played the elder statesman to the hilt, Dada still lights up Yuvraj and Sehwag if you ask me. And his 300+ runs in this series buried his greatest nemesis, Waugh would be proud of him.
The best known proponent of sport mind games in India, cocksure, arrogant, the prince, the god of offside, one who played favoritism, did not play the game in the right spirit, the naghma scandal... pick your memories of him, but one thing you definitely cannot say about him, that he was an unknown fighter for an uncompetitive team. Credit to Ganguly, he has changed that forever.
For me, his ability to rally the team around him and those lofted shots over the infield shall remain enduring images.
Tradition? my foot.
Circuit city closing ... not good, not good at all
Have not posted in quite sometime, but things are getting bleaker by the day. Circuit City is down,
GM share is quickly moving to zero (in fact the price target from the Barclays analyst was reported as zero in an earlier report, maybe an error) and Roubini is till shouting hoarse that things will be bad all the way into 2010 now.
Back home, the steel sector is beginning the first of the large scale job cuts/forced holidays/pay cuts, not long before it starts creeping across industries. Recruitment at campuses is down, from what I can glean from the HR junta.
IT surprisingly seems to be holding out, infact folks at CTS and TCS are talking about more projects coming through, quite counter intuitive tho'.
What to make of it: Circuit City is from what I have read is good business, but lack of availability of credit can prohibit the company form putting up new goods in stores and since electronic goods depreciate very fast, the existing inventory would get repriced and costly to hold even with a small fall in sales.
For the India story there is only one option, go full stream Keynes, no better time to put money into those infrastructure projects. Will stabilize economy and provide jobs across the sector. China has taken the lead here too and that too made a big scene about it.
Brace yourself for more. One of my analyst friends wants to remove all references to the word downturn from the dictionary, I tend to agree with her.
GM share is quickly moving to zero (in fact the price target from the Barclays analyst was reported as zero in an earlier report, maybe an error) and Roubini is till shouting hoarse that things will be bad all the way into 2010 now.
Back home, the steel sector is beginning the first of the large scale job cuts/forced holidays/pay cuts, not long before it starts creeping across industries. Recruitment at campuses is down, from what I can glean from the HR junta.
IT surprisingly seems to be holding out, infact folks at CTS and TCS are talking about more projects coming through, quite counter intuitive tho'.
What to make of it: Circuit City is from what I have read is good business, but lack of availability of credit can prohibit the company form putting up new goods in stores and since electronic goods depreciate very fast, the existing inventory would get repriced and costly to hold even with a small fall in sales.
For the India story there is only one option, go full stream Keynes, no better time to put money into those infrastructure projects. Will stabilize economy and provide jobs across the sector. China has taken the lead here too and that too made a big scene about it.
Brace yourself for more. One of my analyst friends wants to remove all references to the word downturn from the dictionary, I tend to agree with her.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Holographic images from CNN rocking
A crazy crazy CNN election gimmick. But gimme some more anyday, i definitely did not know we were so advanced on this
Click for explanation
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