Europe

I have been meaning to write about my europe endeavor from so long but then the lazy me prevents me from going ahead.. and i have pretty much wasted the past 2-3 days so i have decided to sit up and do something... Well, i am here in Germany on students exchange.. all thanks to my college in India, IIFt - Delhi.. Well student exchange is all a hum-bug if you try finding out the academic gains from it.. but for the non academic gains, trust me, they are tremendous!!

So i have decided to structure my posts in such a way so as to they come across as informative and probably someone who wishes to travel around europe might benefit from it.. (since i myself plan to travel quiet a bit - and so you can learn from my mistakes)..

Getting to Germany wasn't a problem as i booked my self on an Air-India flight from new Delhi to Frankfurt.. btw Air India is the only one which allows you an open dated return ticket for international travel..

I had to reach a pretty little city called Pforzheim, which is down south.. it is actually on the outskirts of black forest bordering switzerland! I took a train which is available right outside the Frankfirt airport, it brought me to Pforzheim after a change over at Karlsruhe.

Now its been some time here in Pforzheim and I think I will conclude this post now.. will give more specific title for further posts!!

prison break

just completed season 4 of Prison Break with a heavy sense of nostalgia.. it all started in the final year of engineering.. after completing two seasons, i had a split of about 2 years after which i randomly decided to watch the remaining two.. i started on 27th dec 2010, and finished today on 18th march 2011 with the other two seasons... what distinguishes these western TV series with their indian counterparts is with their unbiased ending.. they dont really go all out trying to finish of the serial on a happy note.. Michael Scolfield should have been dead maybe 153 times before the 22nd episode of season 4, but when it made no sense to kill him, the producers go ahead and do just that.. maybe it could be a measure taken by them to discourage them from coming with newer seasons and to close it for good at season 4... Just a guess which does make sense... anywayz, i so truly enjoyed this!! chus - as they say in German'

some economics!

Commodity markets is not a zero sum game.. everyone can make money, also everyone can loose money.. only 3% of commodity trading is between producers and end consumers, rest all are speculators.. only 20% ppl in commodity markets make money!!


some comments on burgeoning food prices, is it due to speculators or simply demand-supply mismatch? as more corn is being diverted towards production of bio-fuel, this is leading to shortage in corn.. and since corn earns better than other agro-commodities, more and more farmers are diverting their farmlands from growing other crops to corn.. this is leading to lesser production of food grains, hence the demand-supply mismatch..
if maybe a system is put in place for absolute fair pricing of these foodgrains, and there is some way by which the farmers can transfer thier risk of growing food grains, then they will have more incentive for producing the same... it is in place in the form of derivates market for agro commodities..

another point to substantiate that speculators aren't involved - price of wheat has gone down 40% from its highs of March - 2009, yet the open position in these contracts is stil the same.. which means, the speculators still hold the same amount of position..