Mobile Doodles

The pleasures of doodling on the mobile is varied and by far the most significant for me was the freedom to doodle wherever I was.
Especially in cases where either I didn’t have the forethought to carry all the sketching and painting materials or the nature of travel didn’t allow for such luxuries.
I have used Samsung Galaxy Note to draw these pictures. The vividity of the digital colours is striking and is more suitable to cartooning or pictures involving block colours though I did try some sketches of Kerala scenes.
One of the key challenges is to get used to the slight offset between the Pen and the screen and adjust accordingly.

Some features I would have loved to have, is for the application to recognize colours and to be able to reproduce the same. To be able efficiently mix colour shades instead of having it standing out as discreet colors.Another useful feature is to have some of the standard drawing functionality available in MS office applications.

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

The incident of the Jam Bottle

I closed my eyes.

I could feel the sunlight against my closed lids as I watched the different hues of orange and small specks floating down inside my lids. The sunlight filtering through the trees was warm on my face and I could hear the flies buzzing nearby. Life was bliss as my Class 3 summer vacations had begun.

My parents were doctors in a small town hospital affiliated to a steel plant and I was left to my own devices for the majority of the day, in the care of my maid. I was having a great time doing nothing when my friends called me to play.

I dragged myself home after I could no longer ignore the repeated hollering of my maid to come and eat my lunch. I hated most food but what I just couldn’t stand was food that was healthy and bland. Ugghh ! the Kaddu ki sabzi kept in front of me seemed more threatening by the minute and whoever had invented the blasted thing wasn’t going to be happy when he or she met me. When my maids back was turned, I quickly dispatched it to where it rightfully belonged – the dustbin. But I was still hungry and the fridge looked inviting with its promise of food that could be.

My dad was not the type to take chances, so he locked everything lockable inside the house which included the fridge. That wasn’t a big deterrence for me as I had found a particularly extremely handy nail cutter with all sorts of appendages sticking out of it.

I had the fridge open in a jiffy and rummaged around for something edible when I spotted a loaf of bread and a big bottle of Kissan mixed fruit jam. My stomach was, by now, virtually talking to me. I hurriedly pulled the bread out and balanced the big jam bottle with the other when the dratted thing slipped. I saw horrified, the bottle falling in slow motion and heard the sickening sound of splintered glass.

I knelt down to examine the carnage and found that it was irredeemable. My parents had some weird ideas about being careful with stuff, discipline etc. and I would definitely have some explaining to do about picking the lock and chucking the food as well. My life was hanging by a thread and the clock was ticking.

I sat down and tried to whip my brain cells into overdrive. I went to the store room and looked at the rows of miscellaneous bottles and jars neatly stacked on the shelves. Suddenly I saw it. An old Kissan Jam bottle with some masala in it. I quickly emptied and cleaned it and ran back to the crime scene. In a jiffy, I had spooned the spilt contents into the bottle.

There ! The deed was done. My hide would still be on my back. Just when I was about to replace it, I noticed the label which looked old whereas the other one had looked new. So I held it under the water and scrubbed it with all my might till it was spotless.Huh, now who was to notice anything amiss?

Couple of days passed without incident and then, it was the day of the bread again and out came ‘The Bottle’. We all spooned the jam on the bread and I waited with bated breath. No sign. Things were quiet. Suddenly the silence was broken by the sound of my father biting into something hard. He gingerly took it out. A small glass piece glinted in the sunlight. I was getting redder by the minute.“How could a glass piece be in the jam! I am going to talk to the shopkeeper and see what to do.” he said

I tried my best skills to dissuade him but to no avail.So off he went the same evening to meet the shopkeeper, Mr Phoolchand.

I spent some tense moments waiting for him and when he finally showed up, he marched right in, with me in tow and told my mom “I am going to write to the company.” My heart was in my boots. I consoled myself with the thought that nobody would be bothered about a complaint from a small town, for a one off incidence. Probably that was the end of that.

Life again turned leisurely with my mind far removed from the jam bottle incident.

And so it was, that one evening when I came home after play and found couple of strangers in the living room, I was caught off-guard to know that they were from the Kissan company.Dad was talking to them and sure enough, there was the dreadful bottle kept on the table. I slowly inched my way behind the drapes and willed my ears to listen as closely as possible, which was difficult considering that my mom chose just that minute to call us for dinner.

They were asking Dad if we had the label, as they wanted to check the batch number and the date. Well, I had taken care of that all right. After long last, they got up and left,I burst into the room to see Dad smiling and say “Well..they said it was probably some isolated bottling mistake and they would figure it out. And see what they gave us absolutely free. A jam bottle, a tomato ketchup bottle and a squash bottle.”

The next day we had samosas with the tomato ketchup and I hadn’t tasted anything better than that..

Somebody was shaking me. It was my son. I had been day dreaming of my childhood again. I smiled at him and hoped he wouldn’t take us for a ride like that.

(My actual childhood experience which happened sometime around 1983 and my parents jaw literally dropped when I finally told them the truth after I had a child of my own.

All pictures are painted using my Samsung Galaxy Note )

Is fiction an escapism ?

While glancing through the newspaper’s editorial, I chanced upon this rather interesting piece by Jug Suraiya.The fiction readers are alleged to be escapists from reality and the author defends this on how ‘escaping’ can be considered more in terms of escaping from one’s own consciousness to the consciousness of others.

Being an avid reader of fiction for a long time, it came as something akin to a surprise and I did ponder on whether it was escapist. Fiction in the form of storytelling and folk lore has existed since time immemorial. Who hasn’t listened to grandma’s stories with its abundance of moral lessons?

Fiction could be of the speculative fiction variety like The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter where the reader is transported to the narrative’s imaginative world. As many ardent readers would vouch for, is that it requires a childlike ability to be able to live in the unreal, to be able to cast aside the shackles bound by reality and for those brief moments of time to be able to don the garb of a child again. The ability to create a pseudo-world where the rules are only limited to what you perceive them to be is imaginative thinking at its best. As the dialogue from Matrix goes “A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible”.

Comic novels written by humorists like P. G Wodehouse can have anybody, with matching sensibilities, in splits. Author E.B. White said “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”As humor writing relies a lot on hyperbole, achieving the same through a realistic reconstruction of events might not always lend itself to iconic characters like Jeeves or Bertie Wooster.

Historical novels and movies have enabled people to relate to a face, making it much more personal and involved. They have also been credited with encouraging nationalist sentiments.  Novels based on First World War or the Third Reich still abound and bring the historical/political sentiments prevalent at that time into sharp relief. Political fiction like 1984 by George Orwell brought out the extremes of a dystopian society. Along the same lines are books around social issues or ’realistic fiction’ as they are called, acted as the literary means of protest and spread awareness of abuses far beyond political boundaries.

Suspense fiction, romance and thrillers are definitely the one’s which are closest to escapism via the adrenalin way. They have purportedly acted as sustenance for the strenuous intellectuals by giving an emotional release. A lot of people would have been unaware of the thrills of life on the fast lane or gained the rich knowledge of guns and the life of spies, of glances and veiled meanings, of the underworld and mafia, of crime and detective reasonings, if it were not for the Jason  Bournes and Hercule Poirots.

Just like a bird escaping from a cage, fiction can be viewed as escapism or freedom.But most definitely, our lives would have been a tad bit dull if it were not for these characters residing in the pages of fiction books.

Elementary, my dear Watson.

Making money last..

Have you ever wondered whether what you are saving today is enough for all the aspirations you have in your life? Be it an early retirement, exploring alternative careers or going on a world tour, they need no longer be far-fetched ideas or nebulous shapes in the future. They can get as real as you want them to be. On the other hand, they could also help you get rid of fanciful notions with numbers speaking for themselves.

Financial Planning helps you map your income and expenses, plan out your entire life expenses and budget for your goals and provisions. So how exactly does a financial planning exercise help you make strategic decisions?
Where’s the money going?

The very first thing that a financial planning exercise makes you do is to put down your current income and expenses. As you start putting them all down, you suddenly see a lot of expenses you incur which you hadn’t noticed before. Expenses get bucketed based on the frequency with which it is incurred. Expenses, which many times one tends to strike off as a ‘one off’ case, suddenly start showing a pattern. There are, of course, templates which help you put down your expenses, but at the end of day, it the discipline with which you can track and understand your expenses that will help you nail it down.After you are done with your current income-expense mapping, the financial consultant will then start projecting it into the future. Projection is done by factoring in various parameters like the inflation index, salary hikes etc.
What am I worth today?

As you detail your assets like cash in bank, investment details, current property values and liabilities like the loan EMIs to be paid and paying back any money you borrowed, you get a good idea of your current net worth. How much are you worth today if you were to monetize all your assets and pay off your liabilities. This is important for the consultant to understand your corpus. There might be some assets which are for consumption like your home and others which can be liquidated, when required. It is that understanding which helps planning for cash adequacy. Would you have enough cash at the age of 90 to live by yourself in case you want to ?

Makes you think & plan beyond the obvious

There are expenses which don’t stand out. We don’t normally think of expenses which are likely to recur. Buying gadgets like a smartphone or consumer durable is not a one-time activity. The expenses have to mapped in regular intervals and their costing should reflect the cost price at a future date. If you buy a sofa-seater worth 40K now, it is likely to cost you much more couple of years down the line. The exercise forces you to think in directions, which you wouldn’t have thought of before. The amount of income, expense and your corpus is mapped out at each stage of our life with a good amount of realistic assumptions.

Prioritize & plan your goals

Everyone has goals. Goals, in financial planning terms, are anything which is likely to have a monetary impact and doesn’t figure in your routine expenses. Want to buy a cruiser for you son when he turns 18, well, that’s a goal. Buying a farmhouse, retiring early, pursuing hobbies are all goals which have to be converted to present value of money and when, in the future it is likely to occur. There are obvious goals and not-so-obvious individual specific goals. The very obvious goals like planning for retirement, child’s education & marriage, health expenses are mostly template-driven. But you have to think hard so that you don’t miss out any goals.

Maximizing your investments & minimizing your risk

Where is all this ultimately leading to? The entire cash flows through out your lifetime is planned to understand if what you are earning at any point of time is enough to manage your expenses at that time. The ideal would be to have your income-expenses showing a surplus at any given point of time. But that’s not always possible. Sudden increase in expenses in a particular month/ year will tilt in the negative direction, needing you to dip into your corpus. Your corpus is taken as the amount you can liquidate without affecting your basic living style, like the house in which you live in.
So, depending on the stage of your life, risk taking ability, cash flows, the exercise will tell you, how much you should regularly invest , where you should invest, how much minimum liquidity is required, how to spread your investments across various type of investment options and whether are you sufficiently covered for all types of risks.

Increasing awareness, rethink

At the end of the day, it increases your awareness of your financial capacities. It helps you do a very useful ‘what-if’ kind of scenario analysis. While calculating yearly cash adequacies, it might be a rude shock for you to know that you are in the ‘red’ after 61 years of age. You have exhausted all your corpus. Can you do something to extend your corpus ? Are those annual foreign trips going out of the window, probably they can still be accommodated if you do it once in two/three years ? Should you buy a house earlier and rent it out , instead of investing the money in some other instrument.
The list of all the futuristic goals is in front of you. Where should you start cutting back ? Suddenly the goals will resolve themselves into mandatory, nice to have and nicer to have categories.

Where to draw the line….

It is important though to know, that this is not the panacea to all your financial problems.There are some caveats which one needs to be aware of, so what is that pinch of salt.

Continuous monitoring

It is not a one-time activity. Yes, the plan can be done with what you know now with most realistic assumptions and approximations. But it is a plan which is valid for a point of time – Today. Things might change which might change a lot of your assumptions. So re-correction and re-planning needs to keep happening to enable you to come back on track. The frequency with which you should re-plan could depend on various factors – some assumptions being proved wrong with time, an important life event which has major implications, changing socio-economic and other environmental conditions.

The all-important assumptions & variables

The entire plan hinges on the assumptions you have made. Assumptions as the name itself implies, can change, implying a change to the variables factored in. It is not possible to accurately predict future conditions, therefore the best probability assumptions have to be made making the best possible use of information available with one at a given point of time.Your & your consultant’s foresight to predict some of these, would play a major role in determining how much variance your actuals have to your plan.

Don’t go overboard

This is probably very important. It is important not to lose focus and perspective of what one is trying to do. Future is uncertain and risk of your priorities changing is very real. So while, it does serve as a useful tool to understand, predict and plan for your future, don’t let the plan control you.

So tomorrow, when you think of buying that farmhouse and see yourself growing vegetables.. don’t think , put it down on your goals and make it happen. And while doing all that planning, don’t forget to live your life now.

Dis-engagement Model

Customer: I need something to sit on and relax ( hmm.. a lounge chair would be good )
Marketing: Sure, we will build a sofa and we will throw in a side table in the bargain
 
 
 
Scope Document says “The customer wants something to sit on”
 
 
 
Presales: Here are the sofa’s estimates.
Marketing: If we estimate this high, we might as well not bid at all
Presales: Here are a 3 seater w/o cushion estimates.
Marketing: You don’t get the point, do you ?
Presales: Oh OK…we will estimate for a stool and put costing for 3 days
 
 
 
Project Manager: We have got the project ! How much time would you need to complete this work?
Developer: I don’t know what I have to do (Is this a scope document ? There’s nothing in there !)
Project Manager: Make assumptions (what a moron !)
Developer: If I make the following assumptions (3 legs with a top), it will probably take 40 days
Project Manager: 40 days is too much. All you have to do is build those 3 legs. The integration of the top will happen by itself. Lets put 30 days. I will get you resources. At least 2.(I can probably get those 2 from bench one of whom is totally useless..but at least the count increases)
Developer: I still don’t think those new guys will be productive.. (Aw shucks..he’s probably going to bring some bird brains who will understand the whole thing after its over and probably that would be optimistic)
Project Manager: C’mmon.. you can mentor them, so lets make it 12 days. I am giving you 2 days buffer ! ( There !..made him feel good..didn’t I )
 
 
 
Delivery Manager: How much time are we going to take ?
Project Manager: Its going to be 12 days
Delivery Manager: This was required urgently by the business. We cannot take 12 days. Why don’t we re-use and automate, we should be able to deliver it in 6 days ( No out-of-the-box thinking these days I tell you..as it is we will overrun)
 
 
 
Engagement Manager: What ! 6 days ! we will lose the customer and our face ! Lets finish the job in 3 days ( God ! These delivery guys ! Who’s going to take the hit in costing )
 
 
 
Engagement Manager: We would need 3 days
Customer: But have you budgeted the time for me to do user acceptance
Engagement Manager: Of course,we will deliver it in 2 days and you would still have 1 day for UAT
 
 
 
Chronology of Events
Day 2: Customer begins to shout
Day 3: Engagement Manager begins to shout
Day 6: Delivery Manager begins to shout
Day 12: Project Manager begins to shout
Day 30: 3 legs with a lopsided top gets delivered for UAT.
UAT: Customer sits and ends up with a broken back and sues company for bad product.