Do you run?

This seems to be the first question folks from Austin ask.

And they are not necessarily talking about reasonable distances like 200 m. They start from half-marathons (13 miles and change), and go on to full marathons (26.2 miles) and ultra marathons (a hundred miles through hilly terrain?). I'm impressed. But I have to think for a while. I like my knees. :)

Most Austin folks run as if their life depended on it. I've been spending a lot of time with the folks who volunteer for AID and ASHA. I have to say that they are a very very cool bunch of folks. And I've gotten introduced to some very very nice efforts that are underway in India both in the infrastructure development and the educational outreach areas. Last Friday for example, there was this lady from India, Kanchi Kohli who works with this NGO in Delhi called Kalp Vriksh. She gave a talk on how major initiatives in India go through without a good idea of the impact they would have on the environment. And the impact they end up having is usually quite disastrous. Google her up. I'm sure the Google God will bring up more on her than I can hope to express in this column.

Notes from Austin

Every new place brings with it its own charm.

Austin is nice. Austin is probably the only place one would want to be in, if one had to stay in Texas.

Texas is, in some ways, like Punjab. And Texans are, in many ways, like Punjabi folk. They mean well. I think. They just lack polish.

Anyways, folks in Austin are urban. And the amount of culture in this town has to be seen to be believed. Wikipedia calls Austin the live music capital of the world. And if what I see around me is anything to go by, that might be true.

I haven't had chance to walk in and stay for any performance around town so far. I'm hoping I can correct that this weekend.

The synagogue

So now its hello from Austin, Texas.

No I'm not going back in time. From a political point of view, Austin is still blue. It is, however, a teeny tiny blue dot in a huge red sea that is Texas. And yes, people here say you'll. But seem nice and educated in general. And they don't ride horses to work. No.

So I went to a synagogue yesterday. A new Rabbi was being installed. A colleague was gracious enough to invite me to the event. And I have to say it was fun.

Now this was my first first time at a Jewish service. It was quite similar to a Christian service. Recitals. Good Music. Speeches.

No altar.

The podium was called the beema. There was the ark, under which the children gathered. And they were blessed by the community as a whole. The boys were supposed to have lives as rich as Abraham. The girls were supposed to follow in Sarah's footsteps.

Interestingly Abraham makes an appearance in the Islamic tradition as well, as one of the Prophet's ancestors. Abraham == Ibrahim.

And the Rabbi training program is quite similar to grad school, I must say. For starters, they go to school and write a thesis. This particular Rabbi, was a jolly old woman who's thesis was on the holocaust. After school, they do an internship. The end of the internship is when they start interviewing for positions.

These positions are filled by search committees, who interview a few candidates and select one. This person starts out as an assistant Rabbi, moves on to becomes an associate Rabbi, and finally becomes a Rabbi.

And that is a very very academic route. Phew.

Anyways, laters.

Californication

It's the edge of the world
and all of western civilization
The sun may rise in the East
At least it settles in a fun location.

- Red Hot Chili Peppers

A cup of coffee

So I went to this small coffee shop on State Street last week. I had heard good reviews, and was curious.

There was this fairly old gentleman at the counter. That struck me as odd. At a place like Starbucks, you would expect high-schoolers to run the show. Oh, well.

I ask him for a Cappuccino. And there began a series of questions:

Single, double or blah: And he showed me how big each one was going to be. Single, I said. Reasonable question. My mistake for not having been more specific. Shrugs.

I turn around to people watch.

Whole milk, reduced fat milk, or fat free: I look at him like, "I don't care," but say... "Reduced Fat." A pretty girl enters the store.

Regular or Soy Milk: Regular. Annoyed. But irritable people turn away pretty women... or so I've heard. And so I smile.

Decaf or regular: Regular.

Ethiopian, Nigerian or blah: Whatever.

Foam/No Foam: Pretty girl or no. I'm irritated by now. I wouldn't have minded this at another time. But I was on my boss' clock then. I say, "Foam's alright" And manage a smile.

Couple minutes later, I get my Cap. The old gentleman looks at me, and says, "I'm sorry young man! We like to make our coffees exactly the way you want it."

"But," comes the killer closing line, "We're not like Starbucks."

"We don't teach the customer how to order!"

I smile.

Pretty girl smiles.

And the whole room smells like fresh coffee. :)

Nigerian.

This weekend was history in the making as far as Wall Street was concerned. America's fifth largest investment bank, Bear Stearns, collapsed... over a period of 16 days.

On Feb 29, apparently, it was trading at $80 and change. Over the last weekend, JP Morgan bought Bear Stearns at $2 a share. I don't think a company of the size of BSC was ever sold over a weekend, especially at a little over 1 percent its estimated worth.

This is *huge*! If the financial infrastructure goes down, everything else goes down...

The US Fed is trying everything it possibly can to avoid catastrophes. Over the past weekend it stepped in to tackle the Bear Stearns issue, and did something that it hasn't done ever: accept mortgage backed securities as collateral for its loan to JP Morgan.

The next few days will be very very interesting...

The IPL player auctions

I woke up in the middle of the night... and with nothing better to do, ended up at cricinfo.

Now, I've taken it upon myself to follow the fortunes of the Chennai team. Yeah, I'm jingoistic! :P

Looks like the we've landed Murali and Matthew Hayden. Two of my all-time favorites. And surprisingly enough, a $1.5 mill Dhoni. Stephen Fleming. And a bunch of fairly useless players.

I do think Dhoni is a very gutsy player. But $1.5 mill?

Just to get a sense of what else $1.5 mill could have bought us:

Shane Warne (US$ 450,000)
Anil Kumble (US$ 500,000)
Adam Gilchrist (US$ 700,000)
Mahela Jayawardene (US$ 475,000)
Kumar Sangakkara (US$ 700,000)
Ricky Ponting (US$ 400,000) - (If Punter travels to Pakistan, he doesn't get to play at all... that explains this number, somewhat.)
Kamran Akmal (US$ 150,000)

At first glance, I think I like the way most of the other teams look. :( Chennai has three stars, and then some.

Moving on, I think the bidding process itself is quite interesting. Auctions are places where value is decided by what something is worth to the second highest bidder.

This auction becomes somewhat more interesting because there are caps. Every team has a cap on how much it can spend in total. So what they're looking at is to form a good team within that amount. When you already have five batsmen, someone like Shahid Afridi becomes more attractive than Ricky Ponting.

The other objectives are quite obvious too... The amount spent is incomplete without countering in expected payback: Financially and otherwise.

This post is incomplete. I don't think I've completely digested what's happening. But this does seem like fun stuff.