Surya Sripati

Everyday motivation

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:03:00 +0000

From Ricky Ponting of Australian cricket team

".........I still get nervous before every innings and I think that's a really good thing. If the day comes where I'm sitting in the change rooms and haven't got sweaty palms before I bat then it probably means that it doesn't mean enough to me."

This he said in an interview after his century on 1st day of Adelaide test on 24th Jan 2012.

Now, my bit:

If you deeply value what you are doing - no matter how long you have been doing the same thing - motivation to do well will be there automatically.

Rahul Dravid's speech at the Bradman Oration

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:07:00 +0000

The last full cricket match that I watched was on 2nd April 2011 - World cup final between India and SriLanka. Heart is still with Cricket but not my eyes. Seems like I started developing interest in non playing aspects of Cricket - like understanding the science behind Duckworth-Lewis method, alternative suggestions to D/L method etc.

Yesterday's lecture by Rahul Dravid at the Bradman Oration was one such thing - Here is the speech and transcript. No wonder he is respected world over - This bloke is god darn intelligent!

Expressions

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 03:56:00 +0000

Was on a call at midnight with a friend in US to catch-up after a long time. He was visibly upset with two things - First, his boss and second, with my sleepy talk.

Being the salesman he is, woke me up with two fantastic expressions to make me realize how frustrated he is with his boss' smartness (In fact, the lack of it) - Here they are:

Smart enough to count to twenty with his shoes on
A big fat idiot who couldn't find his ass with two hands in the dark

I don't care if these were his own expressions or borrowed ones. But I quite enjoyed the usage of these to make a point to me that 'I do want to talk about my frustration and if you are feeling sleepy, I will wake you up.'

When we are frustrated we do want to ventilate it out with people that matter to us and if that person doesn't pay attention, it makes even more frustrating. Some people in such situations withdraw but some others persuade. Friend of mine had an easier option of hanging-up but didn't - he chose the option of persuading me to listen and chose humor as the medium. Quite thrilled with that!

We talked for another 45 mins and concluded that friend of mine also has to persuade with his boss! No withdrawl.

Should I go for a Diesel car?

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:09:00 +0000

I was pondering over the same question 6 months back (I decided against it!) and I was approached by 3 people with the same question in the last week.

While there is no right answer for this question, with the way pricing of Petrol and Diesel are managed in India (that in itself is a separate post later), there are bound to be more people facing this dilemma.

If you are one of those in similar situation, might make sense to spend few minutes on this spreadsheet. For those who live outside India, this is %^&*()#@! (My shorthand description of Greek n Latin)

To sum-up,

Dont jump because there is a difference of about Rs. 25/- per liter between cost of Petrol and Diesel
Understand your travel needs
Spend time researching on the car that suits your requirements (Comfort, Performance, Safety, Style, Servicing requirements & Network, Style Quotient etc)
Do take into consideration 'Re-Sale' value of the car
Not all Petrol cars are great at the same time not all Diesel cars mean cheap cars that don't have style quotient
Finally, understand 'Total Cost of Ownership' (not just cost of fuel) for the life of the car

Irrespective of the car that you buy, Be responsible! Don't Drink and Drive!

2012 Formula 1 - More champions

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:54:00 +0000

I was thrilled to hear Kimi's return to F1 circuit. If there is one driver that I almost instantaneously fell in love it is Kimi. I developed my liking to Schumi and Alonso over few races for Ferrari but with Kimi it was instantaneous. Not that there aren't any great racers other than the three that I talked about (I quite enjoy Vettel, Button and used to enjoy Kubica), but I entered F1 audience as Tifosi and I remain a Tifosi for ever. So, you will always find me talking more about people who drove a Ferrari.

Kimi's return to circuit will mean 6 champions racing in 2012 - Vettel, Hamilton, Button, Alonso, Schmi and Kimi. Kimi may not have any realistic chance of winning 2012 championship with Lotus but I am looking forward to Kimi-Alonso-Hamiltion fight - All three very aggressive natural racers.

Coming into F1 from Rally and that too after 3 years will be one heck of an adjustment to do (Schumi, for all his abilities and experience, was not able to come to grips even after 2 years). Not that Rally is easy but you race against time in Rally and in F1 you race against other racers and teams. Getting used to F1 car is not easy and Kimi has to invest a lot of time in setting up his own car. Then, there is grueling schedule starting March 2012 - 20 races almost every other weekend! In Renalut, Lotus have a good partner on whose engine they can rely but F1 regulations have changed dramatically in the last 3 years and Lotus has started racing only in 2011. Both Lotus and Kimi have a lot of work to do but I am confident of good show in 2012. If Lotus finishes in Top-6, that would a very good achievement.

Good luck Kimi. My loyalties remain with Scuderia Ferrai, as always though!

As far as I can tell about 2012 championship, I wish I would be wrong, it will again be between RedBull and McLaren.

Random thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:43:00 +0000

Customer is King! Yes, but Kings are not always the most intelligent and knowledgeable.
If you are in mood to screw someone, screw them god damn hard! [Some people do have the habit of enjoying screwing. Even in front of them our effort should not go waste.]
If anyone says 'It is difficult to work with you', I take it as a compliment.
When India lost to England 5-0, I said 'It doesn't matter!' Now India beat England 5-0, 'It still doesn't matter!' - In my world, English cricket team doesn't matter.

Chennai visit experience

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 06:53:00 +0000

Been to Chennai yesterday after two years. All the feelings that I had about the city two years back continue:-

Best place to have breakfast (After my mother, they make the best coconut chutney - In hyderabad coconut chutney is always sweet, I hate it that way)
An airport that sucks (I dont know how international terminal is but domestic sucks big time!)
Driving around gives you a very mass appeal to the city
Intolerance to other languages

This time purposefully avoided going to any popular place - landed in Palm Grove hotel in Nungambakam which had a tiny board (understandably, they are primarily a hotel not a restaurant) 'vegetarian restaurant' and jumped-in.

On a Sunday morning at 9 AM it is hard to imagine that kinda crowd in Hyd - Restaurant is jam packed. All guests, except me, dressed like tam-brahm - worked for me though! A guy did spot 'odd man out' immediately and came to me. 'Table for one' I asked. After waiting for 15 mins, and he took me a 4-table.

I was feeling a bit out of place and said 'Is there a 2 table?', he gave me a look to look around - No table in that place is smaller than 4. Next option, took the table he suggested.

As I sat, one guy walked and placed a 'Reserved' sign on my table. I had no idea what he was doing. I started thinking 'Did he mistook me for Rajnikanth or what?'

Even before I placed my order, 2 elderly men brought their plates (This place has buffet breakfast as well) full of Idli, Vada, Upma and Pongal and sat on the very same table! Two servers rushed to the table and cleaned it again! Pointer enough to know that these two men must be either regular customers for years or they have something to do with the very hotel itself!

As it turned out, one of them is N Srinivasan - MD of India Cements, BCCI secretary and Owner of Chennai Super Kings (I couldn't recognize him at first glance) and the other is the MD of Palm Grove Hotel itself.

Owner of the hotel figured out that I am not a tamilian and suspected that I come from north india and offered help in picking what to order. I told him that I am from Andhra Pradesh and know these snacks well enough but would go with whatever he suggests.

He suggested that i should try 'Podi Dosai' and take Korma (as against sambar) and coconut chutney with it. I ended-up have two of them! Surprising both myself and them given that the Dosa is really big. Will go there again!

Without any hesitation, Palm Grove's coconut chutney is much better than Saravana Bhavan's - only issue is that Plam Grove gives you only Coconut chutney - No pudina chutney, no tomato chutney!

May be because I don't have any friends that currently living in Chennai, but I can't find anything good about Chennai other than food to talk about!

RIP? WTF is it?

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 06:28:00 +0000

Both immediately and also for the past few days since the death of Steve Jobs, all that I have heard from people all over the world is "Rest In Peace, Steve" and "Steve was fiery, foolish, rebel, unconventional bla bla bla"

Can't understand those two. How can someone as fiery, foolish and rebel as Steve Rest In Peace? Ridiculous. I would say it actually is an insult to ask a person like Steve to rest in peace, if you really understand what he is and how he likes to be.

People like Steve should not rest in peace - whether they are on earth or heaven or hell.

Steve - DO NOT RIP. Do something COOL wherever you are, whichever shape you are!

[Update: I was the first to be called by Steve after his death and he invited me as first member of his core team developing iHell - A cool new device that makes a hell out of every pleasant situation in the living world. Damn! I am excited.]

Swapnika

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 06:21:00 +0000

She has been into our lives for about 18 months now.

Just like all other kids of her age, Intelligent enough to get things her way - Fine with that.
She doesn't disturb when I am sleeping and expects the same to be done to her - Happy with that. Happy to play with me if I am home and doesn't care a bit if I am not around - Super happy with that.
Knows how to hold a bottle - Mixed feelings with that.

Keep 'em all with you girl and welcome to Dad's blog!

Probabaility, continuing trouble

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:27:00 +0000

Was on youtube for the past 1 hour. This is the best video that I saw - Damn! He is right. I had one hell of time with 'probability' in school and even now!

Speaker explains in little more detail here

Random Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 04:44:00 +0000

No body was home yesterday. All alone - so called an ex-colleague for a drink. We have three common interests - Cricket, Jagjit Singh and Loneliness. Here are snippets of our discussion:

Some time back there was big uproar in cricketing fraternity over a Sri Lankan bowler bowling a wide to deprive Virendar Sehwag of his century (Sehwag needed 1 run to complete century and India needed 1 run to win the match). Same Sehwag on one occasion (may be more but I am not sure), threw a ball to boundary just to keep a lesser batsman at strike when India was pressing for a win in a test match.
Got introduced to a new (for me) Jagjit Singh song which goes like "Kaun kahta hain ki muhabbat ki jubaan hoti hai. Yeh haqeeqat to nigahon say bayan hoti hai" - Beautiful! (you can download the song here)
Two contrarian views on loneliness - "The guys who enjoy loneliness never knew how beautiful 'attention' is" "If you get attention that you don't like, you want loneliness"

Thanks buddy for a nice evening.

Cool cateract detection device

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:16:00 +0000

Dont like seeing Doctors? At least for diagnosing cateract - you probably wont have to in the very near future. Take a look at this cool project by MIT Media Labs who are working on an inexpensive way to use smartphones to quickly detect early-stage cataracts.

Catra, as the system is called, is made of off-the-shelf components. Users peer through an eyepiece (like in the picture to the left) that slides onto a smartphone or other smart device like an iPod Touch, and they view lines displayed on the screen.When the lines appear cloudy, the user presses a button. In that way, the device scans the lens of the eye to create a map of the cloudy areas, which are produced by proteins clumping together. More details of the project are here.

Here is the promo video:

Cowdrey Lecture by Sangakkara

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 04:34:00 +0000

RESPECT is the first word that occurred to me after listening to this 1 hour lecture by Kumar Sangakkara (former captain of Srilanka cricket team). As a player I always had huge respect for the skills he had and also for the way he played cricket - fierce but fair. That respect grew enormously after listening to this lecture.

His point - Cricket administrators of each country have to be as committed to nation as they (and the general public) expect players to be.

Listen to the entire lecture here (1 hour long, beware!)

Marleybone Cricket Club (Lords) is conducting MCC Spirit of Cricket Lectures at Lords since 2001 and have named these lectures after Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge, a past President of MCC, who - together with another former Club President, Ted Dexter was instrumental in the Spirit of Cricket being included as the preamble to the 2000 code of the laws of cricket. Archives of the lectures from 2004 are here.

Looooooop

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 09:37:00 +0000

Like this one. For many more of such good ones, visit Bonkers World.

Camera Capture Clip - Nice one

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 05:04:00 +0000

Those of you who pursue photography (actively or otherwise) with SLRs might find this very interesting.

You can pre-order it or just pledge. More about this project here.

Meeting notes

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Tue, 17 May 2011 05:38:00 +0000

Here are the notes that I took down in a meeting yesterday. It was one heck of meeting - we fought like hell but had good fun moments.

Brainstorming - Art of getting all brains lost in storm-of-ideas
People say distances often exaggerate value/worth. I say they are wrong. People both close and far have said I'm a jerk. Where did distance come into play?

Scary graphs! Bubble times again?

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Mon, 16 May 2011 08:16:00 +0000

[Courtesy Economist]

First, in the traditional silicon valley (US)

The, in the rising star (China)

Makes me gasp, looking at the valuations. Look at Youku (something similar to Youtube) - valuation of $5.8 Bn! Oh Boy!

Aman ki asha

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:55:00 +0000

One of best videos that I have seen propagating peace between India and Pakistan done by Two leading newspapers - Times of India and Jung Group Pakistan

Top thoughts on IND Vs PAK Semi Final

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 04:20:00 +0000

Enjoyed the result, not the match nor the quality of cricket. Both teams played below their potential.
Some Hyderbabdis (I love the very feeling of being a Hyderabadi) have gotten insensible. I stepped out of home to see the celebrations on streets. Many are shouting 'Indiaaaaa, Indiaaaa' but there are a section of people using foul language on Pakistan. Can't understand what did Pakistan do to these people. Will give these people benefit of doubt that they were high. What struck me most is 'Are they celebrating India's win or Pakistan's loss?' - It appeared, to me at least, the latter - What a pity?
Sourav Ganguly is a great addition to commentating team

Random thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 04:34:00 +0000

Very boring to see 3 sub continent teams in Cricket World Cup semi finals.
Would love to see productivity loss statistics of IND Vs PAK semi final. (BTW, I don't contribute much to this loss. Not because I will be working on that day though.) If you come across something, share it with me.
People are complaining about ad rates for IND Vs PAK match. If you are a business in need of identity (eye balls) go for it! First you need 'eye balls' to get 'conversions'!
March is the best month of every year - Start of F1 season & Kid's birthday

Andar se kuch aur

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 05:31:00 +0000

Watch the full video

A 7-min video of school kids in Pakistan talking about friction between India and Pakistan.

Loved the comments by the kids to the question 'why such a dramatically different opinions pre and post debate?' So true.

'maafi chahte hein' by that kid was sweet!

TED Talks - Khan Academy

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:54:00 +0000

One of the many interesting TED Talks in the recent TED Conference in Long Beach, CA is a talk by Sal Khan of Khan Academy. I didnt know of this until I saw this Video and what these guys are doing is amazing.

Watch the 20 min video below. Those of you who have Kids going to school, should try using their website to get the kids learn math.

If you are convinced that this is useful, can I ask the readers to pass this on!

Time to go grab few more beers

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 10:03:00 +0000

Yes, it is time to go grab few more beers. After all, in anything I do I dont want to be 'in the range'!

Economist published a graph on Global Alcohol Consumption last week - Though the data in the chart is dated, it was fun to read. See the chat below:

Indians consume between 2.5 litres to 4.99 litres of alcohol. Mind you, these are not litres of beer or whiskey - litres of alcohol! On an average beer only has 5% alcohol and wine has about 20%

Now my story - I am beer guy mostly and wine guy at times. I drink about 3 beers a week (each beer is 650 ml), so in a year, 156 beers. @ 5% alochol, it amounts to 5 litres of alochol (3 * 0.65 * 52 * 5% = 5.07 litres).

WTF - I am barely above the range for Indians '2.5 - 4.99' litres! Time to up the ante and be par with my US friends at least. European friends are way too far! BTW, it is not very difficult - just by adding one more beer per week, I can take it to 6.76 litres per year - Did you get the power of breaking the huge complex problem into solvable pieces!

Just one more beer is all it takes!

Who is taking a bigger bite? TCS or Accenture?

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 06:55:00 +0000

When kid goes to bed early, there is very little to do. As usual, when I have nothing else on plate, I chew some numbers and last night I was chewing 'Incremental revenue add' of Accenture, TCS and Infosys. Seems like we are headed to see TCS taking a bigger bite of the food on table come FY 12.

If the growth rates expected for these 3 companies in next financial year (FY 12) were to come true, TCS is likely to add $1.9 Bn incremental revenues and Accenture is likely to add $1.7 Bn - First time ever, an Indian IT company adding more revenues than a US IT company (I am aware that the phrases 'Indian IT company' and "US IT Company' are not appropriate at all for these companies. Chose them just to make the point - These are truly Global IT companies)

See the chart below (If you are interested in data sheet, click here)

However, there isn't a whole lot to read into or rejoice and here are few thoughts on why we shouldn't read too much into this:

Accenture and TCS/Infosys are driving in different directions. Accenture is largely a Consulting-led model and has been spending time over the last 7 years in building a delivery capability in low cost zones (today it has 60% of its workforce in low cost zones compared about 72-75% that TCS and Infosys have). Where as TCS and Infosys have been spending time over the same 7 years in building consulting and systems integration capability.
The above journey has resulted in Accenture executing more work in low cost zones which they earlier were executing from high cost zones. This would result in lesser realization per hour (No brainer - billing rates in low cost zones will be lesser than in high cost zones) and hence lesser revenue realization per same unit and hence lesser incremental revenue add.
Point to note here will be that Accenture is far more successful in building delivery capability and adopting Global delivery model than TCS/Infosys in building consulting capability.

But there is another side of the coin as well.

Customers have gotten very mature and smart over the years and have learnt to maximize the efficiency of global sourcing. Gone are the days when they called Big 5 and gave them fat, 7-year contract to manage everything. Customer have gotten better at vendor management and are happy to have multiple vendors for multiple activities under the gamut of "IT Outsourcing or BPO outsourcing"
Consulting-led business opportunity (in market size) is large but isn't growing at the same pace as the other piece.
When was the last time you heard of a company bagging $5 bn IT outsourcing contract? Here is an interesting chart from TPI - If you carefully look, Total Contract Value (TCV) in 2004 and 2010 is not a great deal different ($64.2 Bn Vs $62.4), but look at number of contracts more than $25 Mn - they increased from around 250 in 2005 to around 400 in 2010. Point here is market size is more or less same but customer are giving more smaller size contracts rather than few big contracts and this is where TCS/Infosys are catching up.

All in all, it will be very interesting to see the convergence point of Accenture and TCS/Infosys and also to see if Chandra of TCS makes any comments post March 2012.

Random Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Surya Sripati) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 03:33:00 +0000

Top of the mind thoughts of last few days:

Solitary drink in solitude is sometimes super energetic
Glenlivet + Maaza make a good combo
Interviewing a lot of people is one sure way to reconfirm one's belief that 'I am Intelligent'
Indian cricket team has no chance of winning world cup