Anthony Tongbram’s Blog

Its been a crazy week. I guess its been three weeks. Even went home… for just a day, missed my best friends wedding, bahhh but I managed to meet my DEAD line.

Got invite for the first tweet-up. It is like a blog meet, but for twitter users. It is going to be a blog meet and a tweet-up and it sure is going to be fun this sunday.

The stock market continues to be in a hysteria. I stopped guessing a long time ago. I don’t like to see red in my portfolio though, but then who does. I kept some amount in stocks thinking I will sell off in march just in time to buy into ELSS for the years tax savings, but since they are in deep red, I didn’t dare sell. Well, this year might not be a very good year.

There already are rumours about firing freeze and IT spendings cut and what not.

India should grow though. Chidambaram’s master stroke of putting more disposable income onto the hands of the middle class might give a much needed boost to our consumer driven economy, and it might actually start to show in the second Qtr results. I am still bullish..

Thank god that my TV no more has more of Obama, Hillary and Britney Spears.

Slide got a 50 million funding. Big time valuation for a company that makes facebook apps and other social widgets. Facebook apps are getting big, even though there is no indication of any revenue in the near term. Two partners of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Bayers has already started a 100 million facebook apps only fund.

Iphone and Facebook seems like the only great invention since the invention of the wheel.

Iphone’s innovation lies in the design. But its greatness will be how people adopts it as a platform.
Facebook’s innovation lies in its platform. Anybody with a good idea can implement it on facebook. The possibility that facebook offers is endless.

Newyorktimes added mixx chiclets. Mixx looks great, the voting button makes it look so boring. They had to copy digg, but calling the button as migg or mixx would have been a downright copy of digg, so they used the more generic vote button, which made it look like the rating plugin that many wordpress users have.

Also the MIXX homepage breaks on my IE…. If you want to have the second mover advantage, you need to be far far better than the first mover. Just like Digg did to delicious.

And delhi bloggers, see you at the meet!

I usually play the FM sometimes on my drive to Office everyday, but I am not a big fan of any of the Channels or RJs. I just browse the channels at random. And there was this soft spoken RJ today who narrated an Incident. I think, she said something like, it was an incident from the time she used to work as a volunteer in a Hospital. Or maybe it was some story, but it really did touched my heart. It was about a 5 year old Boy. If the RJ knows about the boy, I would love to send some Toys and Chocolates

Let me share the story.

This little girl had this rare desease of the blood, and in order to survive she needed a blood transfusion from her 5 year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same desease, and in the process developed some anti bodies that can fight this desease.

So it was decided, and the doctors asked the boy, the 5 year old boy, if he would be willing to give blood in order to save her sister. The boy, after a moment of hesitation, said he was willing.

So, the doctors took the siblings in, and blood transfusion was started. As blood started to flow into the baby sister, and her color began to glow, everyone one in the room including the doctors and the parents smiled.

The boy, also smiled!
And then he asked the doctor, “Will I start to die now?”

All the while, the boy had misunderstood the doctor since he didn’t know what blood transfusion was. He was just 5 after all.
He thought, he would have to give his live for her sister.
And he was giving his life with a smile.

Did I say that I will start updating my blog every day? It wasn’t meant to be a New Year’s resolution, but now that I have broken it, so be it.

Anyway, 2007 would be the most uneventful year, ever. But surprisingly it went away pretty fast.

I shifted to the NCR around end of 2006, and I got fairly adjusted to the Delhi chill by the start of New Year. Oh and I learnt driving in the Fog. Visibility? Just the bonnet.

2007 new year (that was last year) was a small affair of wine and dine at my place with some close friends, and past midnight I had to go a friend’s party when there was this fog suddenly, and we had to turn back.  

I loved the winter though, but was not too prepared for the delhi heat. My AC broke down on the hottest day of that year, and swore that I wouldn’t stay another summer in Delhi, which seems unlikely, now, though. Did I mention that the power also went, just when the AC guy came after a long wait.

2007, I also made huge losses in the derivatives segment. When the market touched unimaginable heights, I went short, again and again and again, thinking that the market shouldn’t be so high, and justifying my act by telling myself that I was hedging my portfolio, even though I was buying HUGE lots of Nifty Puts. Well some people never learn. Some stocks did exceptionally well though; RPL, India Bulls, Ashapura, Sesa Goa, Era Constructions. But I was never born to be a hedge fund manager. Oh even the slot machines would agree as I learnt recently at Vegas.

2008, I will stay away from derivatives. I will stick to my good old stock picking, and once picked, STICK to my “buy and forget” strategy. Help me God!  

Blogging took back seat. 2007 was a year when I spent the most unproductive time online. Well, thanks to the social networking sites, aka orkut and facebook and user generated sites aka Digg. Now on less of social networking, except for business networking, and more of blogging.

Ah back to blogging, there will be Industry watching, stock watching, dashes of bollywood, NextGen technology, Manipur, North East India Politics and lots of personal stuff, and pop culture like the good old days. And how come a music maven never writes about music? More music to come! And Cinema!

And lots of weird WTF posts to come.

Now is the time to update your blog rolls and feeders.

Happy 2008!

Welcome to tongbram.com. Many of you know me from Anthonysmirror or Bachelor cooking! I haven’t blogged for a while now, not because I ever got bored of blogging, but I just couldn’t find the time to update it more frequently. Perhaps I had been spending too much time on the so called social networking sites. Oh Yes, If I remember correctly, it was Digg and orkut that took away my blogging time… Oh it is all coming back…

Well I am here now, hoping to be back among bloggers, and maybe wake some old bloggers like me who have been hibernating too long.. Watch your comments and emails..

Welcome me back!!!