Fun stuff!

I was watching a British series called “Doctor Who” and it’s a real fun series, for all those cultists and science fiction fans! I mean which other series would have a tacky blue telephone booth for a time and space traveling device and a time lord, called the Doctor who looks human, a human companion, ostensibly a female, on all his travels, and supervillains like another time lord, the Master, the Daaleks(metal cans who are apparently indestructible), metal men(human robots). It’s a real fun series to watch and suspend your thinking for a little while atleast. You get to watch end of Earth in 5 billion years, the end of the universe, the paradox machine, a spaceship crashing into the big Ben, Agatha Christie, Will Shakespeare, really anything short of the super ordinary.

Also for those book fans out there, Peter F Hamilton’s second book of the Void trilogy is out(I posted about the first book, the Dreaming Void a while back). Its really good, just read it last night, and boy does he really weave an intricate story across the universe, both real and unreal.

Ok, beyond all this, I just re-read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand again, that being one of my favorite books. For those of you who have not read it, you are missing something in life by not reading this book atleast. I might forgive you for not liking any books, but not for not reading this book. At the very least, go through John Galt’s speech at the end of the book, which in itself contains a philosophy of living.

Also, with the financial crisis going on around me, I guess we are living through history now, with the countries bailing out their banks in a huge way. Whether this is socialist or not, it possibly could be only fending off the coming Gotterdammerung. I tried following the news about this by watching CNN-IBN, instead all I get are one line statements saying, people shouldn’t worry and people should have more confidence in their government and its ability. That India’s fundamentals are very strong and we should continue to invest. This shows that the government’s attitude is that the Asian market’s are decoupled with respect to the globalized economy which could very well be the case. Certainly after the Asian market meltdown in the late 90’s, banks in each countries have worked to make it so, but decoupling is not 0 or 1, that is, black or white. For more details on the decoupling issue, read the paper from Deloitte’s website. Eventually with the global recession, it may have direct effects, but secondary effects will certainly bog down our GDP growth rate. Recently in the newspaper, I think under the column of Swaminomics, MS Swaminathan made a case for why its not the GDP growth rate that’s important, but the fact that our GDP growth rate has fallen which is. Since with decreased global demand, our export markets are certain to be hit which could have huge fallouts in other sectors as well. I am more interested in seeing what kind of social fallout will this recession have, since spending has been at an all time high, and curbing this will be harder to do. Anyway, I hope someone can shed light on this issue...I am no economist to make any predictions and neither am I a fortune teller with a parrot or cards.

Oh, and the song Californication has been stuck in my head for the last couple of days…find myself humming or singing this out…But it’s a fun song, and listen to it!

So beyond all that, I wish you all happy holidays for this month, and enjoy!