Polar Bear Plunge 2013

The Polar Bear Plunge is held as a fundraiser for Special Olympics Minnesota. U.S. Bank is the biggest corporate sponsor, they even have their own special tent! This was my second year running.

[click on the 1st snap and you'll be able to view bigger photos as a slideshow]

Magnitude of a loss, or a win

I have come to the conclusion that in events where there are winners and there are losers, the losing side or party or individual experiences MORE pain, than the winning side or party or individual experiences happiness or satisfaction.

In other words, the magnitude of the loss is more than the corresponding magnitude of the win.

The wins and losses that I’m talking about here are personal ones. Not the ones that you experience second, or third, hand. For example, let’s say you’re an Indian and you were overjoyed when India won the World Cup in 2011. Would you have been equally sad (as you were happy) if India lost in the finals? Maybe, but then maybe not. But let’s suppose you are Gautam Gambhir. Would you have been more crestfallen had India lost? I think so.

This “condition” generally does not manifest itself in situations where fortuitousness plays a greater part (like gambling, lottery)  in the outcome of the event than skill or hard work.

I come to this conclusion, after suffering my share of losses. In football (soccer) games, in the recreational leagues that I play in. It is a wonderful feeling to score a goal. But the bitter taste of a defeat for the team overshadows your personal achievement. Then on the other hand, when we win there is a distinct feeling of oh-we-should-have-won-this-game-no-big-deal.

Can this be attributed to human nature? Evolutionary traits that were passed down? Any psychologists out there (budding, qualified or otherwise) who want to take a dig at this? I think I will start to make an effort to enjoy my hard-won wins more from now on.

Wealth inequality in America

An eye opener. See if you what you “think” corresponds to reality.

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Jon Stewart once said something along the lines of (and this is not verbatim, just as much as I remember) : “People say that 50% of the population doesn’t pay enough taxes. Let’s suppose you tax the bottom 50% of earners 100% of their income. Take away all their possession, you still will not get enough in taxes as you would from the top 10% . The bottom 50% simply don’t have wealth.”

The visual corroboration of that statement.

XOOM remittance

I used to use ICICI Money2India service to remit money to India. I had opened an account with them in 2007 and have since used it sparingly. After using it last in May 2012, I tried to login yesterday, and I was greeted with “You have not used our service for over a year and your account has been deactivated”. What the hell!

I’m done with that and researched for other options. Two struck my notice: Axis Bank Remittance and XOOM. The former is more along the lines of the ICICI service. The rates are even better than ICICI and probably the best around the business. The setup is cumbersome, lots of hoops to jump through and the interface is nothing to write home about.

I found XOOM to be different (in a good way) though. Though their rates aren’t top-notch, but competitive nonetheless, there was no excessive, needless information that I needed to enter. The interface is cleanest among the lot. They offer remittance to not just India, but also 28 other countries. There is 24×7 customer service available. And, this is the clincher, the money would be deposited within hours.

Here is a referral link you can use, where you get $15 after you open an account and make one transfer => link

[Disclosure: I am supposed to get $15 too for each friend who makes one transfer]

Happy XOOMing!

Update on Feb 15: The transfer is complete and I see it credited in my Indian bank account!

MPG and cost of gas

Since we got the Nissan Rogue a few months ago, I’ve been agonizing over how much I’d have to pay more in gas, as this vehicle gives approximately 3 miles less per gallon compared to the earlier Mazda6 it replaced. How will this pare out on my wallet over the course of the vehicle?

To quantitatively analyse this I’ve come up with a couple of spreadsheets which will tell me very closely how much more I’m shelling out for gas.

There are 3 variables:

1) Number of miles I drive this in a year – For the past few years I have averaged around 15,000 miles. I will make this constant.

2) The cost of a gallon of gas – I have laid out scenarios where gas is $3.00, $3.50,  $4.00 a gallon, and the price per gallon at the last fill-up before I wrote this post

3) The mpg that I’m getting out of the vehicle – The Rogue is averaging around 24.8 mpg, whereas the Mazda6 averaged 27.5 mpg over its course with us.

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So, if we assume that the price of gas would average around $3.50 a gallon for the next 5 years, my total increase in gas-money would be ($2,116.94 - $1,909.09) x 5 = $1,039.25

Which, with the added AWD and space of the Rogue, I’m okay to live with.

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To further this exercise, I have changed a few of the above 3 variables to give a broader view.

Google Nexus 4 – availability and shipping

Just wanted to put this post out on the “newest and hottest” phone out there today. Key word in the last sentence is “today”. The mobile technology is changing so fast that a phone ‘new’ today becomes ‘old’ in a couple of months.

A friend of mine from India asked me to get this phone. Since this is an unlocked phone – that can be used on any GSM network (any provider that uses a SIM card) in the world – it is not bound by any contracts in the US, and can be used anywhere.

The only 2 available buying options were either directly through Google Play or T-Mobile. The latter option is automatically ruled out as it would involve a contract with T-Mobile. When I first checked up on Google Play, the 8 GB model was sold out and there was a 5 to 6 weeks delay on the 16 GB model.

I put in the order on December 11, last Tuesday. And magically received the phone on December 13! Those elves were working real hard.

Now today, December 17, I went in the Play store and checked – both the 8 and 16 GB models are sold out. My friend, we were in luck (and operating in a very short window of opportunity).

A guide on how to name your child

[Right off the bat, let me make it very clear that I'm absolutely no authority on naming your child. As with a lot of posts, and post-titles, this is meant to be tongue-in-cheek]

Do you have a baby coming? Are you having sleepless nights thinking about that ‘perfect’ name for your child? Well, your search stops here! Read on.

1. Have some very basic criteria, or boundaries, on the CANNOT-s

a. The name cannot start with some letters of the alphabet

For us it was – A, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z & K

Reasoning – We didn’t want Brinda to be the first to be called out, if they were going alphabetically (from A) or reverse alphabetically (from Z). So, why eliminate T to Y, you might ask? Because our research showed that a lot of names start with S, and then they kind of taper off. You might find some starting with T, but for the rest of the remaining letters, you’re leaving it on the sample size and chance. And leaving it on chance is not something we do!

But why K? Well, in my side of the family, only boys are named with K.

This search criteria automatically reduces the number of pages (real and virtual) that you have to go through to come up with a short-list. Oh, yeah! There will be a short list, and then a shorter list, and then finally the shortest list.

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b. The name cannot be more than a 2-syllable word

Reasoning – A name more than 2-syllable long is not the end of the world. Having said that, a name of 2- or 1-syllable is helluva lot easier to say out loud. More so when you read about one of our absolute SHOULD-BEs, 2.(a).

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c. The name, in either English, Bangla or Hindi, shouldn’t mean or sound anything slang/dirty/innuendo-ish

Reasoning – Easy enough to understand. Case in point, the name Laura.  In it self, it is a darn good name. But to a native Hindi speaker (and to Indians in general who have gone to school/college – not that schools teach that stuff, but kids pick up on stuff like that) the spelling of the word corresponds to the slang for the male genitalia. Or take for example, Dipshita. Again, a very fine (Indian) name meaning ‘enlightened lamp’, but to a native English speaker, the first thing that comes to mind …yeah, that.

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d. The name could not be of anyone in the family – immediate or however distant they might be

We eliminated Heidi, as it is the name of a family member from my sister-in-law’s husband’s side of the family …yeah, we went that deep!!

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2. Make a list of the absolute MUST-HAVEs in the name

a. The name must be pronounced exactly the same way in both English and Bangla

Reasoning – Again, self-explanatory. More reason to stick to a 2-syllable name.

There are certain letters, or sounds, if you may, that are absent in either language and tongue.

Take, for example, the letter V. There is no corresponding letter in the Bangla alphabet. The closest is ‘bhh’ or ভ. So Vivian’s name (to a Bangla speaker who doesn’t know English) is ‘Bhhi-bhhi-an’ (ভিভিয়ান).

Or, take the letter ঝ্ (jhh). There is no corresponding letter in English. So a ঝরনা  becomes a ‘Jhhorna’ which is then (mis-)pronounced as ‘Jorna’.

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b. The name must mean something, preferable something good, in any language

We were not too concerned about the origin of names. We considered names from Gaelic, Nordic, Germanaic, Latin, Hebrew, Russian, Bangla, Sanskrit origin. And almost everything in between. Nothing was off-limits – only it had to mean something, and something not-bad.

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c. Each of the parents come up with names (and more names)

We had a shared spread-sheet online which we updated as and when we stumbled upon a fitting name, which met most, if not all, criteria. Those names were then debated on for their ‘worthiness’, and either summarily rejected or agreed to be fit to remain on the list.

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d. Do not share your short-listed names with family and close friends

They will have some kind of input, and you don’t want to be swayed by their  opinions and preferences. What we did do was, each of us, took our final short-list to a co-worker (who’s  more like an acquaintance) and tried their native tongue on the pronunciation of the names.

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So, in the end our short-list had 31 names, which met most of the above criteria. Six were ruled out due to them not meeting all the criteria. Trimmed down to a final 6, listed alphabetically.

Brinda 

Iris

Juhi

Lyla

Orna

Rhea

Brinda (বৃন্দা) means “tulsi” or the ‘basil plant’ in Sanskrit/Bangla. The English derivative meaning is ‘pure’ – derived from the fact that the basil plant is considered to be holy and pure in Indian culture.

Incidentally, though Brinda was the probably the first name I came up with, Rhea was my 1st choice. Vivian was not a big fan of Brinda initially, but it slowly grew on her. We had not decided on the *final* name before we went in for the delivery, we had left it at “we’ll know when we see her”-diktat, but I think both of us knew in our hearts that Brinda was the one.

For the middle name, we had left the naming process completely up to Vivian. She worked out the various combinations of initials and the monogram, with the first, middle and last names and emerged with Rose, my mother-in-law’s first name [which does not violate code 1.(d) as we are talking about middle names here and not first names].

There you have it – a complete course on how to name your baby!

Five month old Brinda