Most addictive game ever

4 months, 3 phones, countless hours, I finally did it. I completed Level 100 of the most addictive game ever, Frozen Bubbles. It's beauty lies in its simplicity as well as the fact that it is ideally suited for the limited mobile phone controls.

It's available for S60 Symbian phones here

If you've got a non-Nokia phone, you can get the Java port here.

If you do download, watch out for levels 70 and 80. They're tough to get through, but once you do that, it'll be smooth sailing till level 99. 99 and 100 require a lot of patience and luck!!!

Video: A Malayalee girl

Video from the program on national integration held at Stepping Stones on January 26

School Admission

School admissions are one of the biggest challenges for any parent in India. The rush to get your child into one of the "good" schools starts when the child reaches 3 years when they become eligible to join Pre-nursery. The general wisdom is that it is your best chance of getting the child into one of the school as vacancies in the later classes is extremely limited.

The entire admission process serves as a good revenue generator for these schools, they issue 5000+ forms at around 500 rupees each and rake in a cool 25 lakhs. The selection criteria and procedures are always a secret, as it allows the school to use its discretion to accommodate the "influential" members of society. If you don't have influence, they you need money and lots of it, schools routinely charge 30-40K as building fund or something similar, and all of it is taken in cash and unaccounted. It's a money spinning business raking in crores which is why so many politicians and bureaucrats have set up schools in the last few years. The fact that you get control of large pieces of land at throwaway prices is just the icing on the cake.

One of the schools that is a refreshing change from this racket are the National Public schools. However, I see a few things that are different about them
- They do not take donations. They are upfront about their fees and provide a receipt for the entire amount
- They do charge a higher fees than most schools, but are open about it and seem to pay their teacher's well above the market wage
- Like other schools, their admission process is opaque. Based on evidence, I could see that they overwhelmingly go for children of professionals and give preference to children of alumni and teachers. A few of my friends with significant influence were unable to get a seat there, so it does seem like who you know seems to matter less than in other schools.

I may seem a little biased towards them and with good reason. Between me and my brothers, we spent almost 30 years at NPS Indiranagar. Nisha is set to join the NPS ranks next year, having got an admission to UKG at their newest school in HSR Layout.

IPL rights

A couple of things really bug me about the IPL rights

- This is India and our currency is the Rupee. What the hell are they doing announcing the winning bid in dollars?
- What exactly will this do to ticket prices? If these jokers have paid upwards of 300 crore for the rights, will the tickets be affordable? I've already lost hope for the TV coverage, with the dough that Sony has coughed up, we'll be lucky to see more than 3 balls an over.

Mother of all crashes

It’s been a couple of days to remember (or forget) for the stock markets. It takes me back almost 10 years to 1998, when the Asian financial crisis unfolded. I clearly remember that I was in Chennai at that time and was watching the live quotes of the Indonesian Rupaiah on CNBC and watching the freefall of the currencies and the stock indices. The feeling was similar yesterday and today. There was no other topic of conversation throughout the day in the office.

Luckily for me and my group of friends, we never did venture into the market when it was playing at the 20K+ levels, our investments were made at much lower levels. Of course, we've seen our profits vanish, but it's nothing compared to the thousands who were seduced by the media to begin investing, misled into thinking that the market could only go up and up and are now left without the shirt on their backs. It's happened before in 92, 95, 2000 and will happen again in the future.

One silver lining is that many stocks are so far off their highs that they make very sensible investment decisions. Take IT for instance, you've now got Infosys and TCS available for 15-16x FY08 earnings and 12-13 times FY09 earnings. These are extremely profitable companies generating 1000s of crores of cash each year and yet the market is totally ignoring them. I think it is a very smart decision to buy into them right now. I would, if only I hadn't fallen for the hype and put so much money into the Reliance Power IPO:-(

Best pictures of 2007

I've come across quite a few best pictures lists, from National Geographic, various newsmagazines etc. Here is one more, which spans a number of subjects

What Indian cricket must do

All this talk of boycott and calling back the Indian team is bull. Even if it were the right thing to do, one doubts if BCCI has the capacity or the guts to take such a hard stand. It would also not be right, as it would cause irreparable damage to Indian cricket and we would forever be tagged as whingeing losers who could not take the heat. The right thing to do is for the country to get behind our players as one and support them through the rest of the series. This includes the fan, media, TV and BCCI. Let's not forget that the team really fought well in Sydney and with a bit of luck could have held off for a draw.

We should also show the Australians where they get off. Write to the newspaper editors and TV channels to stop taking any comments or articles from the members of the Australian team. Boycott any products endorsed by any of their team members and ensure that they drop them.
Revoke any contracts signed by the Aussie players with the IPL. Hit them where it hurts and I'm sure that they will change their rotten ways.