Barcelona

Well last week, 10 April, I travelled to barcelona from Pforzheim for 3 night.. I was lucky to get myself booked on a cheap RyanAir ticket which costed me euro 10 return.. but there has to be a catch.. When you book online, 24 Euros are charged as transaction fees! plus the airport for departure was karlsruhe baden, which is good 15 euros away, and also in Spain, the airport was Girona which is about 85Km from barcelona (11 Euros away).. the good thing is Ryanair operates a bus from Girola to Barcelona centre for every flight of theirs.. and its cheaper if you buy a return trip which costs 21 Euro, rather than single which is 12 euro.. also be careful, if you are travelling on a Sunday, then all things are still here in Germany.. so I had to take a cab from baden-bade station to the airport since the first bus would have taken me to the airport at about 9-45 AM which was too late for the fight.. But the trick is you stand next to the bus stop at baden baden (bus no 205) and look reaaly disappointed.. wait for some time and you are surely going to find some other traveller who has to go to the airport.. then you can share a cab and it costs 28 euro's.. thats what we did!!

coming back....

Well.. I never was much of a writer.. But when I look back at the scanty posts by me, once in a month or two and then  a long pause (of over two years), it certainly proves a point.. that writing is not my cuppa.. just had some thoughts when i was coming back to bombay this morning after a four day shaadi break (my friend's).. Every time that I have a change of place and when i return to bombay, I think about how so many things which I usually do as part of my day to day stuff, I shall do them differently... but I hardly keep these resolutions (if I may call them so).. lets see how long (if at all) these ones last...!

berozgaari!

Well today was just another uneventful day for me, in the sense that there was an event going on, unfortunately I wasnt a part of it.. Sometimes have you felt like a dog, with someone luring you with a bone but he has kept it just slightly beyond your reach.. Ofcourse the stupid dog tries once, twice and inspite of not reaching the bone, it just wont give up.. And the entire day passes by, the dog after getting tired rests for a bit, probably doses off, but then once awake will go back to the fruitless effort of trying to reach the bone again and again until its tired and so rests again but then after a while, is back at it, with a vengeance.. stupid dog.. Well placement season in a f#ck## up economy can be a bit similar to the situation described earlier.. We are all dressed up in fancy suits clean shaven at f#ck### 9 AM in the delhi winter chill, but the day passes by without getting a chance to have a lick at the bone.. :) :)
Just wanted to write down my thoughts on this!!

No Title

wow, i completely forgot about having an account in a blog... thats because i have pretty much done total injustice to my blog since the very first day it was made.. Looking back at my last post about germany - how i intend to write frequently and make an informative blog for potential travellers to the place - what a shame.. anyways so its been a long time.. so long that the year has changed.. i am at a critical juncture of my career.. standing 2 months away from completing my mba.. mba was such a cherished dream for me.. but looking back I cant honestly answer whether it was as per my expectations or no.. Just a couple of days back I faced a big disappointment.. did not get through a very good company on campus.. well maybe if I had, my career would be on an entirely different tangent and so many of my ambitions would have been unfulfilled.. (not a case of sour grapes here, or well maybe!) but yeah I missed it big time!... well accepting defeat and moving on, these are such important virtues a man should have.. i m slowly learning too.. being postive and remaining an optimist is getting difficult day by day!!

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..