Far more nail-biting than IPL!

This IPL season, there is one real nail biting and interesting match I am eager to witness.

The real India Pakistan match.

And how India is going to thrash the Pakistani military and its puppet govt.

India will go with Military action this time too. The question is when? Tonight or tomorrow night or day after night? The bets are on!

India has already flooded a district of PoK last night.

What is different this time is the context.

External to both these countries, the state of the 2 biggest associated countries - China and USA and the 2 running wars.

China usually supports Pakistan militarily and has been against India in multiple fronts including the trade front. But this time, if India gains some key areas in PoK, the China invested area in PoK for the Belt and Road Initiative would be for India to destroy or overtake. This would be interesting to see how China would respond: Whether it would ask India to not destroy their investment or to deter India, start a parallel military campaign on India-China border. The other change this time is China's slowly warming to India after many years of the military standoff as its trade war with USA is raging.

USA this time is very different than all the historical USA. With an indifferent Trump at its President who has very weird goals, (like making Gaza a tourist spot) and not getting USA into any new war and trying to end the Russia-Ukraine war. But, unfortunately, as usual, USA has supported Pakistan again and given USD 400 million aid to Pakistan to sustain its F-16s. Mostly, USA wants to watch the 'fun' from the sidelines and then ask India to invest more into its Apaches, AWACs, F-35s and other military platforms.

Wars are not anathema in today's world. The Russian war on Ukraine saw the first fulls scale war in history in Europe after 60+ years. The Israel-Palestine war is also running. People are not so against war and reasonably expect it in case of retribution.

This time, the Indian govt. is more determined to take action than the previous govts and is willing to make use of all the historical mistakes it has done previously and turn it around.

Best case scenario: 

1. Breakup of Pakistan into an independent Balochistan (40% of Pakistan territory) and the rest of Pakistan

2. Retaking of PoK by India

3. Destruction of China's investment in PoK worth billions and stopping China in its tracks

Only if Pakistan was not nuclear armed, all this could have been achieved with much ease.

Fingers crossed and waiting to read the books on this war and the strategies employed a few years from now.

Give free, remove competition, Increase prices

The 3 step process:

1. Give for free or at less price
2. Remove competition
3. Increase prices

The above process has been deployed by all late comers to gain marketshare and change the industries. Startups do this constantly. It is famously called the "Loss Leader" strategy. Be it Amazon or Flipkart or Uber or innumerable other startups.

Costco does this with its USD 1.50 hot dog for which the price has not changed, believe it or not, since 1984.

China used this strategy consistently and has killed other countries' competition in multiple industries.

Interestingly and sadly, the India's tax department has brought this strategy to UPI transactions.

The once great UPI which brought about Digital payments revolution to millions of Indians unlike the pre-historic west and eased the way to do business from small to medium enterprises is now going to be taxed (with the government finding ever increasing ways to tax and deliver less).

May your force beat you back

One of my senior colleagues at one point in time who practised Taekwondo, told me that "one of the keys of Taekwando is to use the force of the opponent itself to subdue him."

The above is a powerful statement. Reread and think about it.

The opponent: USA

Opponent's move: USA issues 125% tariff on products from China with immediate effect

China was anticipating this move after the tariff war during Donald Trump's first presidency.

The countermove:

Today, Chinese companies are sharing where the US's top luxury branded items are made, their materials, methods and costs and are asking the world to directly work with them and make things cheaper for consumers instead of buying them from the top Luxury brands.

The top US companies have used and sometimes exploited the Chinese to make the huge profits and become some kind of a poly (monopoly or duopoly or oligopoly).

How does this move work:

The US's outsourcing and demand for all these years have helped built the Chinese manufacturing ecosystem for luxury products. Now, by using the credibility of the brands (minus their tags and prices) - (The opponent's force), the Chinese are hoping to sell their products to the world at a lower price point where they would continue to manufacture and customers would buy them worldwide. In one way, this is open-sourcing the proprietary luxury products

This would also force the luxury customers to start evaluating the value they are getting after the exclusivity is gone and when they see 100s more of these same products with everyone. This in turn would loot and ruin the luxury brands the most.

This is 100%

 When someone asks you to give your 100%, this is what 100% looks like.

https://x.com/ShangguanJiewen/status/1902842590497513481

But if you look closely, it would be 99% as who is going to clean the solar panels on the cleaner?

Reopening Mysteries

It is weird that even after so much advancements in Science & Technology, many mysteries are not solved yet.

The latest reopening of mysteries include the discovery of pillar like structures below the pyramids using LIDAR and reopening the search for the remains of MH-370.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/egypts-pyramids-hide-a-shocking-secretscientists-reveal-whats-below/articleshow/119352661.cms

The search by Ocean infinity is for a long period of 18 months using its state of the art technologies of deploying multiple mini-submarines for detection. This agreement with the Malaysian government is to search with a no find, no fee structure and USD 70 million if the remains are found.

This amount is pretty high considering a new Boeing 777 starts at USD 310 million.

Is the value of finding the debris and the reasons for the dissappearance of the aircraft and bring the closure for the families worth USD 70 million dollars?

Understanding the big game of world economics in 2025

The below link involves a lot of macro economics and helps explain the rationale of the trade war initiated by USA.

https://medium.com/@mcnai002/the-sovereign-wealth-effect-americas-new-tool-for-rebalancing-the-global-trading-system-363176816035

There would be multiple questions for the readers after this article on the hows, whys and the impacts.

It also helps predict the future, but no clear answers on what to do exactly depending on what is your locus standi.

Can one person change the world?

It is difficult to fathom that in today's world of democratisation of internet and communication where anything secret or plan or thoughts can be dissipated to millions in minutes, with so much interconnectedness with all things and anything can come back and bite you immediately, that one person can overcome all these and get do something unexpected again and again.

With so much interconnectedness and checks and balances and democracies, it should have been almost impossible for someone to change the world's dynamics so fast.
Yet, Donald Trump did it.

Many of the countries of Europe after millenia of fighting against each other and USA came to the mature conclusion of not fighting with each other and rather saving the millions of national resources to better uses like education, lifestyle enhancement, technology and progressed substantially after world war 2 until 2023.

Now, all of a sudden, 1 man is creating havoc almost on a daily basis and causing distrust among things that were built layer on layer for so many decades of trust and effort.

Surely, many would be in disillusionment as was all these years of trust and work just a fake and was it worth it?

The same kind of disillusionment that happens when trust is broken with someone for selfish reasons.

How would humanity look upon this 100 years later? Does this instance change of course of history forever where no country would trust another or just a blip in the overall maturity of having more non-fighting friendly relationships?

Do you have a voice in your head?

Most of us believe that we all have a voice in our head that we listen to.

This "voice in your head" is called "Inner Monologue".

It came as a surprise to me when my friend told me that many people do not have this inner monologue.

More on this research here:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/not-everyone-has-an-inner-voice-streaming-through-their-head/

Thinking about designs

 How does a design team come up with a good design?
 How does a design team come up with a good commercial design?

There is a vast difference between these 2 above questions.

Any good designer can do new designs. All it needs is creativity and taste.

But a good designer worth his/her salt should be able to make good commercial designs.

What does this entail? 

2 constraints of Reduced cost and a chance to sell it at a high price.

So, there are 3 parameters for a commercial good design.

Look & Features, Price and Cost

A high Look & Features, high Price and low Cost is the success formula.

The long slowdown

 India is witnessing a long winded slow down in retail.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retail/retail-chains-restaurants-shut-stores-as-consumption-slows/articleshow/119054679.cms?from=mdr

This has been in the news recently after a year or so of the slowdown which the retailers have been experiencing over a year now.

Many retailers across segments, clothing, shoes, belts, vendors across India have clearly been able to witness it firsthand. A few days or weeks have seen sales as low as during those of the covid lockdowns.

The reasons however, were never clear and many attributed it to the following:

1. Hot weather to shop

2. Lack of cash as the general elections were there in 2024

But the real reason is somewhere else.

1. Saurabh Mukherjea suggests stagnant earnings, automation-driven job losses, and an ongoing economic slowdown after the covid revenge shopping.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/income-down-debt-up-saurabh-mukherjea-gives-three-reasons-why-indias-middle-class-is-facing-a-major-crisis/articleshow/119419834.cms?from=mdr

2. Secret back door rate increases profitting the companies at the cost of the people of India.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHtBQHnyryO/?igsh=am4zeWwzcTd0bDBs

Maybe there are more plausible reasons.

Share yours thoughts in the comments

The future of work

About 8 years or so, I have listened on the "Future of work" from Vivek Wadhwa.

At that age and time, his view was "interesting" at most, and his predictions seemed coming true, but his predicted times looked optimistic to me.

Mainly because we all think linearly, the predictions looked optimistic.

He has mentioned the exact last statement in his 2013 interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3LS4PithoM) where he also goes on to also say that when 2 different technologies converge, entire businesses are wiped out.

Technology has changed rapidly and exponentially from 2023 with the advent of Chat GPT.

In today's news, "Researchers just unveiled an AI model called ECgMLP that identifies endometrial cancer with 99.26% accuracy from microscopic tissue images—drastically outperforming human specialists and current automated methods."

With this, the medical "Radiologist" role is almost wiped out.

The same is happening to Lawyers and other professions.

The future looks like this: Govt. paying everyone to live comfortably with no work and few would work on new technologies and earn like crazy. 

My prediction: The middle class is going to diverge into the rich class or the poor class.

I had a very fruitful discussion last week with a close friend of time who is good in technology and we were sharing our views on the future of work. He shared that if the next generation is only going to use the existing generative AI to learn and produce works, thereby being lazy and reducing their thinking, nothing new is going to be made in the next 5-10 years. With nothing noteworthy of contribution, this means that we have already reached about 98% or so of all that AI can ever learn from in the current AI.

The only people who would have work are the creative people who are deep generalists who can inject their creativity into a new converged field and show value. This is something Dan Koe predicts.

The rest would be forced to sit at home with no work. 

FYI, Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari is a book I plan to read where he attempts to paint an image of the future. I am currently listening to his book Sapiens. I would add to this post, on completion of both these books.

Why some people always make money?

I have come across a few entrepreneurs who always make money in each of their ventures. They are serial entrepreneurs and or multi-tasking entrepreneurs. They may have had failures, but it is less.

It took many years to understand the reason - There are a specific set of knowledge and skills required to make money. If we have that, we make money.

As someone I heard put it nicely, give a Rubik's cube to all the people. Only the person knowing how to solve will solve it. The rest of the people irrespective of any amount of time, will not be able to solve it.

Unfortunately, these skills and knowledge are not thought commercially at one place. Very few places teach that in parts.

New age service professions

In Japan, there are many "Rent a boyfriend" services for quite a long time.

Just before covid, "Professional Cuddling" started as a profession. Now, there are many Professional cuddlers around the world.

In today's world, there is coaching for everything. Including many things we don't even know exist. For any sports, there are coaches, for relationship issues, there are relationship coaches.

But what came to a surprise to me is that there are even "polyamory coaches". I am sure some of you would even look up that word.

I wonder how are these people are trained, how much is their knowledge common or varied. 

Is there any course to become any of these?

Understanding the world in different ways

Where do babies come from?

This hilarious conversation between a smart kid and a doctor is no doubt hilarious.

The key thing to notice here is how both are able to give completely different explanations to the same situation/ reality and all attempts to counter the logic fails.

Sometimes, we are in the kids domain and we perceive the world in a way. Maybe, there is an alternate explanation to things.

We need to be on the lookout and not oppose their logics without understanding keenly and questioning our assumptions.

China is the No.1 Technology King

 This month, China has overtaken USA as the No.1 Technology king with 3 announcements in different fields of Technology:

1. Deepseek outperforming OpenAI alternatives

2. Chinese Quantum Computers beats Google benchmarks

https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/china-achieves-quantum-supremacy-claim-with-new-chip-1-quadrillion-times-faster-than-the-most-powerful-supercomputers

3. BYD unveils 5 min EV charging

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/byd-unveils-battery-system-that-charges-evs-in-5-minutes

RIP USA! Our condolences!

What to do in Hyderabad?

"What to do in my city?"

This question is in the mind of thousands of any city dweller who wants to go out of office and out of home to relax, enjoy, get out of the daily scene every weekend to enjoy life.

Fortunately, Hyderabad has grown into a cosmopolitan city with multiple cultures imbibed to give you a refreshing taste of multiple ways to perceive, understand and learn things.

Here is a list of things to do:

There is something for everyone to enjoy and learn outside work in Hyderabad.

I have purposely left out food & drinks as there are more than 1 new restaurant/pub opening up in the city every week.

Art workshops

https://in.bookmyshow.com/explore/events-hyderabad

Art workshops include Pottery, Resin art, Fridge magnet, Drawing, Moon Lamp, Crotchet, Mandala, Tote bag painting, Djembe, Perfume making, Terrarium, Candle making, Pizza making, Canvas Painting, Gold Foil painting, Theater acting, Neon painting, Fluid art, Texture art, Pottery painting, Mixology, Pichwai painting, Body painting, etc.

Open Mics - Usually unpaid tickets for practice stand up comedy shows

Every Tuesday at Ivy mic

Every Wednesday at Street Mic

Every Friday at Moto Garage, Jubilee Hills at 8.30 pm or 9 pm till 10.30 pm (Only pay for the dinner/ drinks)

Other places at other days of the week.

Stand up comedy shows

https://in.bookmyshow.com/explore/events-hyderabad

Events (Music shows and concerts)

https://in.bookmyshow.com/explore/events-hyderabad

https://insider.in/all-events-in-hyderabad

Speed dating

https://in.bookmyshow.com/explore/events-hyderabad

Speed friending

https://in.bookmyshow.com/explore/events-hyderabad

Axe throwing

2 places in Madhapur. Call 9985739573, get location and go.

Rs.300 for 10 throws

Pickle ball

Multiple courts and rates in the city to explore

Rs.1000 per court per hr in Madhapur

La Makaan, Banjara Hills

A cultural center.

Go through https://digital.lamakaan.com, find out what interests you and go there. Mostly free shows.

Board game cafes

AM Musuem, Himayatnagar - Check hourly rate per person

Get on board cafe, Jubilee Hills - Check hourly rate per person

Rock climbing 

Crag Studio, Gachibowli - Rs.750 per session per person

https://www.cragstudio.com/

Gamepoint 100 Ft, Madhapur

Badminton, Table Tennis

Download app and book your slots.

For badminton, rates for court, racquets and shoes separately.

Table tennis all included.

Dance studios

Google and find many in the city

Music academies

Muzigal, Madhapur (15k for 3 month course of 2 classes per week of 1 hr each)

And others

Puzzle Rooms

Mystery rooms, Escape rooms - Multiple locations in the city with multiple games at each location. 

About Rs.1000 per person per game. 2-4 people per game mostly

Trove Experiences

https://troveexperiences.com/collections/upcoming/hyderabad

Cold Plunge

https://icetub.in

Steam Sauna

https://icetub.in

Go Karting

Few places - Call, check and go

Indoor Sky diving

Gravity zip - About Rs.3500 per person

AR / VR games

Multiple locations in the city

Computer games

Multiple locations in the city

Bowling

Multiple bowling alleys in the city

Snooker/ Billiards

Multiple spots in the city

Concerts (from time to time)

Previously Bryan Adams, Badshah, etc.

The Selfie musuem

Google "Hyd Selfie Musuem", next to Alankrita resort for a 3 hr trip of interesting selfies.

The Nehru Zoological Park

A good zoo with a huge variety of animals. Need full day to explore.

Cooking classes

Google "cooking classes in Hyderabad" and discover many

Meetup groups in Hyderabad

https://www.meetup.com/find/in--hyderabad/

Annual Events and Exhibitions

Kite Fest at parade grounds - January during Sankranti

Annual Numaish exhibition - February at Nampally grounds

Hyderbad Literary Fest - https://www.hydlitfest.org

Sunday Soul Sante - Feb at Hitex

Holi events during Holi - March

Hyderabad marathon, half-marathon, 10k - Aug

Navratri events during Navratri - October

National Book fair - December

Lock the box (Book fair) twice a year

Other irregular places to visit (Foreign cultures)

https://hyderabad.german.in/events

https://hyderabad.afindia.org/events/categories/events/

Films

https://www.hyderabadfilmclub.org

Sunset Cinema Club - https://sunsetcinemaclub.in/hyderabad/events

Life's simple pleasures

One of life's simple pleasures is music.

Unfortunately, we do not spend time to discover new types of music which can bring us peace or uplifting spirits or make us curious. Also, when we hear some amazing music, rarely do we find out the song and the artist, store it and go home and add them to our playlist. Even, sharing of good songs has got limited in today's individualistic society.

Over the last 1 year or so, I have discovered and got into 3 music cycles.

These music cycles are "current" list of liked songs which I hear frequently keeps changing every 6 months or some based on some new discoveries and mood.

A year ago, I was in love this this artist and song and kept hearing it again and again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWOrd50HYa4

Here are a few amazing library of songs from Hamidshax on Amazon Music:
Crazy, Lose Control, In my life, With me, Together, Let it be, Wait for me, Dreams and many more

Here are a few uplifting songs with fantastic beats:

https://youtu.be/d4u_N7NU6LA?si=cup4IEZ1vB0ewI_K

https://youtu.be/6r9slZ3wKgI?si=iDxPEjUoLjvcpTAJ

https://youtu.be/tqUdnXaMPI4?si=e5YmtPvNcZBJoIo-

Growth, Order and Chaos

Sometime over the last few months, I heard a podcast which said the following:

If the challenge is greater than the capability, it is demotivating.

If the challenge is less than the capability, it is boring.

To be motivated, the challenge should be slightly more than the capability. This leads to figuring it out, learning and growing.

In the book, 12 rules for life, Jordan Peterson talks about order and chaos in the form of the famous yin and yang Chinese symbol.

One side is order and the other is chaos. 

Too much order and nothing grows. 

Too much chaos and it is overwhelming and no growth.

The middle curved line is the balance between order and chaos which leads to growth.

2 different ways to understand and express how to achieve growth.

We should be planning our goals, tasks, to be on this middle line in multiple aspects of life.

The fall of the US Dollar

Over the last 20 years, there has been multiple disquiets about the de-dollarisation. 

1. It has been stated that USA went to war with Iraq overthrowing Saddam Hussain and Libya overthrowing Gadaffi as these oil producers were exploring selling oil in currencies other than dollars, thereby removing USD hegemony.

2. Wars - The USA didn't do any favours for itself by constantly raising it's debt levels and printing more dollars and starting wars around the world directly like Iraq, Afghanistan or indirectly in Ukraine by expanding NATO countries continuously and then funding Ukraine. Also, funding Israel for it's war in Gaza.

3. BRICS - Over the last 10 years, the formation of the BRICS currency gained ground which would compete with the US dollar globally and almost all nations in the world trade with one or more of the BRICS countries.

The inter trade itself among BRICS countries itself is huge. Plus, the potential of Saudi Arabia, being the world's largest oil producer,  joining this alliance adds weight to the the new currency and more transactions.

4. Crypto currencies - The other counter weight underdog which has been waiting in the wings is crypto currencies. These have certain features of non-manipulation which is necessary to avoid the manipulation of countries and bring accountability to the countries.

The call of the imminent fall of the dollar is increasingly going up. The following are evidences. 

5. Big US based investors/ companies have accumulated crypto currencies. The current US administration of declaring to having a strategic crypto currency reserve. This means that it is moving away from Gold reserves to this.

6. The open talk by the current US administration of auditing fort Knox to check if the US gold is really there. This further highlights that maybe there is no actual gold there and it is a bogus trust. Adding Crypto currencies is a countermeasure to add value and trust.

7. Maybe, this in consonance with the tariff wars will bring down the value of the dollar and make it competitive enough to start manufacturing again. But, can the USA citizens afford the high cost of imports once the dollar goes down?

This would degrade the lifestyles and would become a true developing class nation which got hidden as a developed country just because of printing own money and having it's value just because it was a reserve currency and everyone traded in it.

I have been watching these signs over the years and for the last 2 years came to the conclusion that the USD would fall substantially over the next 5-10 years.

My prediction gets more substantiated when a famous investor like Ray Dalio starts ads on instagram on a book on the fall of nations indirectly or directly talks about the USA.

Update 4 Apr 2025: BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has joined the chorus of voices warning that the U.S. dollar's reserve currency status is at risk. Unlike most, however, he has gone one step further to suggest a likely replacement: Bitcoin.