Thursday, October 10, 2013

When a security gets delisted - SELL it : or how TCL screwed me,

This is a story of how I lost a bunch of money, ~$12000 on TCL, Tata Communications Limited. Once  a high flier of the Indian ADRs, TCL was one of the biggest operators of the undersea cables. I bought it when it was relatively low priced at $11 in 2011, then for couple of years it went no where and in early 2011 it started to trend lower. On May 15, company announced that it was going to delist from the US ADR program. I was not aware of the news, but the prices started to fall, I looked at the finance.yahoo.com top news for then TTCMY, and there was no mention of delisting. Unaware of this when the price went down to $5.50 I bought some more. See, this is a huge company with billion dollar  valuation and a Tata brand behind it. So I never thought that the company would disappear, but it had a huge problem, it had a debt of 1.5 billion dollars. I still believed that one day when the indian Internet market matures all this infrastructure will pay off. Sadly that day never came, On Sept 10, 2013 company liquidated my all 2000 shares at the paltry rate of $2.50/share, even though the day the shares stopped trading in US was on Aug 2.

Few lessons to be learned here.

  1. Investing in ADR needs extra attention, all the news from local markets does not make it to US news networks. 
  2. When a company is getting delisted, SELL and run away from it, there are only more troubles ahead. 
  3. Run away from companies that have a huge debt compared to their revenue. 




 

posted by Vijay @ 11:35 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Scuba Diving Adventure

7 August 2013

After trekking the Grand Canyon from Rim to Rim I was looking for a new adventure. I found a Scuba diving facility close to home and thought, hmm, why not try this. I had seen beautiful pictures of the underwater world and always wanted to see those beautiful coral reefs. So I went into the store and asked a few questions. Then the lady mentioned that they are running a Groupon deal, it was very tempting, just $150 for open water ANDI Diving certification. I signed up. "What if I don't know swimming very well", the lady said "oh, you will be fine"; my confidence soared, I was ecstatic. So here I am today, I have completed the first two days of the week-long class. Last two days we went over the bookish part of it. Today, I will going in the pool with full gear on and learn breathing with the mask on.

Its going to be interesting, I am a little anxious. I don't like losing control of myself and knowing that my life depends on a flimsy mask and a cylinder of compressed air makes me very nervous. I will report how I feel tomorrow but for now, It's killing me.


8 August 2013

So yesterday afternoon, we did the first test of our swimming, water trading skills. We were asked to trade water for 10 min, now I have never done this before, ok...FAIL, right. Well instructor said that back float will count. So I survived floating on the water for 10 min, while going "is it time yet?" Next, swim 8 laps around a small swimming pool, okay that was not a big problem. Next, put fins on and swim without using arms, then put mask  on and swim with a snorkel, now dive to the bottom and pick a sack from the bottom of the pool with fins, snorkel, and masks on. This was the hardest part for me. I managed to get the sack but could never get myself to go vertically down in to the pool. 

After the pool excercises were done we got to get our scuba equipment ready, i.e. tank, secondary tank, RBS, floatation device, and so on. With all gear weighing at 25 Kg, this thing is starting to look scary to me. Last night I got up at 4AM wondering how am I going to go down 100 feet in water, what if my mask gets fogged, what if my mouth piece comes out of my mouth, what if the mask gets flooded, what if I need to cough, I was going crazy thinking of all the things that can go wrong. How do I make myself comfortable under water. 

During the day I went and bought a more comfortable swim trunk, as if that's going to help me. Then I researched some snorkels and nose clips to see how to practice breathing with mouth only. 
 

posted by Vijay @ 2:49 PM 0 comments

Friday, July 13, 2012

Vikas progress

Vikas Admission

Via http://www.divinecaroline.com/22113/54757-an-open-letter-college-bound-son#ixzz1UANqXzHv

Indian higher ed
http://www.studyplaces.com/information-center/article/wakeup-call-4-iits-fall-rankings-top-world-universities

http://ekikrat.in/Top_Engineering_Colleges_Rajasthan

http://www.infinitecourses.com/Top-Architecture-College-In-India.aspx

CBSE
    Math :     42/100
    Chemistry:     72/100   
    Physics :     61/100

    Overall Percentage: 58%

RPET
(Physics)  23/40
(Chemistry) 19/40
(Maths) 13/40

Merit General              12481
Merit OBC                  4500

Got a job with Suzalchem in July 2015, Pune starting at around 15k/month

posted by Vijay @ 7:59 AM 0 comments

Monday, October 10, 2011

ssh and scp

silently ssh into another vm without being prompted for password.
save the output of the following command to a file named authorized_keys,
$ssh-keygen

copy this file into the remote user's home dir's /.ssh folder on the remote systems.
if the authorized_keys file already exists then append your key to the file.
chmod 700 authorized_keys on the remote system.

that's it.

posted by Vijay @ 10:17 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

5 Ways to take on More Responsibility at Work

This is an awesome post that I came across recently.


http://blogs.forbes.com/prettyyoungprofessional/2011/04/19/5-ways-to-take-on-more-responsibility-at-work/?partner=yahootix


posted by Vijay @ 10:32 AM 0 comments

Monday, March 21, 2011

Places to see before I die !

  1. Mt. Rushmore
  2. New Orleans
  3. Smokey Mountains
  4. Skyline Dr in Shenanhoah National Park
  5. Travel down the road parallel to Mississippi River btwn Baton Rouge and New Orleans
  6. Fredricksberg near Austin: National museaum of Pacific War. Top it off with Armidillo races in Luckenbach
  7. Big Bend national park, you will know what silence is
  8. Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah
  9. Pittsburgh: George Washington's battle with French and Frank Lyod Wright's Falling water
  10. Ashfall Fossil Beds State Hostorical park in Nebrasks skeletons of now extinct animals
  11. Drive to Key West from Miami

posted by Vijay @ 7:25 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Computer skills - level 1

This is a list of basic skills anyone should know to navigate our increasingly electronic world. This applies to both laptops and desktop computer but not to smart phones and tablet PCs.


  • Turn computer on/off
  • Learn to use the mouse, like scroll, click, double click, right click
  • Learn the keyboard layout, cap-lock, tab, shift key, control keys, number keys,

Internet

  • Connect to the Internet
  • Start Internet Explorer or Firefox browser
  • Search any thing on Google and find the more relevant link in the search result
  • Refine the search using better words / phrases to narrow down the result set.
  • Go to back / forward / refresh page
  • Use of browser tabs, how to keep multiple tabs open
  • Set your home page
  • Visit a specific website by typing the URL
  • Close the browser application and importance of it (your session cookies will be destroyed so no one can steal your account)


File System

  • Know what a file is, File attributes: size, type, name, location.
  • What is a byte, kilobyte, megabyte, and gigabyte ?
  • Directory or folder : tree structure
  • Well-known directories : My Documents -> My Photos, Downloads.
  • Open a PDF file, JPEG, and GIF file, MP3 file and audio files,



Email

  • How to know that you are connected to the Internet. Then disconnect and reconnect.
  • Check you email
  • Reply and "reply all", to an email
  • Forward an email
  • Email safety: recognize spam
  • Keeping your email account/password secure, not sharing it, don't write it on any paper,
  • Attach a file/photo, multiple files
  • Download a attachment and open it if it's safe
  • Logout from email and importance of logging out.



Keyboarding

  • Learn to type with more than one/two fingers at a time
  • Type fast, atleast 10 wpm (words per minute)
  • Copy and paste

posted by Vijay @ 10:52 AM 0 comments