The word nerd has negative connotations and is applied derisively to describe people who focus on academics then on oh so important social matters like partying, drinking and everything that is wasteful. The Wikipedia search for Nerd suggests "...the word is derived from "knurd" ("drunk" spelled backwards), which was used to describe people who studied rather than partied.". For better definition of nerd than what is on Wikipedia, read this on NPR. While nerd calling exists widely in the west, it is not so outwardly manifested in the eastern culture where academic success is given due respect. But nerd calling does exist in the east. I know because I have been called one in both the worlds.
During high school and beyond, I was a kid who was picked the last when spitting into two teams for a game of cricket. During my Bachelors days, I had a friend who had an issue with my academic pursuits(he almost always lost). He would suggestively say that more than academic skills, practical skills were necessary to survive in the world. Few years later, I was in the USA and my supervisor at work thought it(I) was weird that I could add two random three digit numbers in few seconds without using a calculator. I was surprised at her behavior because I wasn't even the best among my friends back home when it came to skills related to basic arithmetic without the use of calculator.
With introduction and personal anecdotes out of the way, let me get to the main part. I recently read a book called "Money Ball" by Michael Lewis. I liked the authors other works(books and magazine articles on Economy of US and the world) and bought this book. It was a good read as most of his works are. Coincidentally, the movie starring Brad Pitt by the same name based on the book was released at about the time I was reading the book. Moneyball, published in 2003, is The story of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.
In this book, he describes how the traditional scouts are enamored by the looks of the athletes and judge them by what they felt were good players. The traditional scouts are very bad at picking good players. Billy Beane used computers, spreadsheets and statistics to identify undervalued players, sign them on to play for his team and was very successful in winning baseball games.
The nerds have done well later in life in almost every field, like science, engineering, technology, medicine. It is in entertainment and sports they failed to make inroads for a long time. Other than being the lead men/women, the entertainment industry has slowly but surely been taken over by professional writers, graphics artists, production assistants, technicians etc. Now shows are made with leads portraying nerds. Some sitcoms that come to my mind are '30 Rock'(Tina Fey plays Liz Lemon, a head writer), 'How I met your mother'(the lead Ted Mosby by Josh Radnor is an architect and professor), 'The Big Bang Theory'(my favorite and all 4 men are well stereotypical nerds).
The only field left was sports. Just like in entertainment, the nerds and geeks are making inroads into sports. Nerds have found a way to fit analytics((in baseball they are called sabermetrics) ,what they can do without a blink, to change sports. In baseball, other teams have tried to emulate what Billy Beane did with the Oakland As. Other sports are quickly following suite. NBA is one such sport. The current champions, Dallas Mavericks, employed analytics that helped them win the championship. They have a Basketball Analytics team headed by Roland Beech and is credited for helping the team win the championship. Here is an ESPN article on Dallas Mavericks employing data geekery to win championship. Analytics have been part of NFL for some time now. Here is short history of it. The same is the case for NHL and a good site for hockey analytics is http://hockeyanalytics.com/.
Then there is the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference that is held every year in Boston by MIT Sloan School of Business. In 2011, into it's fifth year since the start in 2007, the conference has grown to 1500 attendees with 300 in the waiting list. In 2007 about 175 attended the conference. That's a leap of 850% in 5 years and is widely covered by the print and television media now. Guest speakers for 2011 include Micheal Lewis, Malcolm Gladwell, Bill Simmons, Mark Cuban etc. This is just to say how popular this conference has become. The research paper grand prize winner for 2011 was an Indian guy Arup Sen(He is a PhD candidate in Economics at Boston University). In this paper Arup Sen provides evidence of moral hazard in long term guaranteed contracts using data from NBA. Of course this is not the first time that ‘contract-year effect’ was suggested, excepting Arup Sen showed evidence, with statistical analysis build in, that players productivity peaks in the last year of the contract and drops in the first year of their long term contract. Another favorite subject of mine is the 'hot hands' and 'crunch-time' lore. There is lot of debate on hot hand in basketball. Analytics say that it does not exists while Athletes vow that it exists. Whatever side you are on, how do counter this - Illusion of Hot Hand makes athletes take bad shots. This is supported in another research paper that professional basketball players may overgeneralize from their very recent experience to their expected future performance. Similarly it is being shown that the widely held belief that some start are better in crunch time is not so true. Kobe Bryant will surely disagree with that analysis.
There are other aspects of sports, other than the actual players playing the game, that is important at the professional level. Some of these aspects are scouting, picking talent in the draft, trading talent, managing the team, coaching etc. I don't want to cover every aspect of sports here as it is beyond the scope of my knowledge. However, there is a general perception that an ex-athlete is better at picking talent and managing the team. Back in the days, whenever India lost a match or series in the game of cricket(which was most of the time unlike now), the reason discussed was that retired athletes are not given enough role in picking the talent and managing the team. On the face of it, this argument is simple. Who better to gauge how good a player is, than one who played the sport at a high level for a long time? However, there is evidence that it is not to be so. For instance, Michael Jordan who is considered to be the best ever to play basketball, has proven so far highly ineffective at picking talent and at making the team he owns, the Charlotte Bobcats, successful. The scouts are mostly players who did not make it big and most of their picks turn out to be duds. This is true in every sport. Here is a video from the Sloan conference that discusses the Draft and how most of the draft picks are busts. The problem is scouts and retired athletes are all looking at a prospect who has the looks. They are carried away by the physical aspects and the recent good showing of the player than the actual metrics of the players athletic abilities in the sport. Analytics can chafe that information out and with technology better analytics can be produced in sports where it is lacking now.
The other part of sports that geekery is making inroads is from the efficiency standpoint of referees. Previously referees could commit mistakes(still do) and get away(still do) with it. The professional leagues levy fines on the players for expressing dissent and reduce accountability on part of the referees for their mistakes. Analysts now are trying to quantify the efficiency of referees and thereby are bringing changes to how sports are regulated on the field. Referee Analytics is now a part of what is discussed at the Sloan Conference. Here is one article quantifying referee bias in Soccer. The introduction of replay in many sports is a welcome change to minimize errors(blunders in some cases) that have direct relation to the outcome of the game. In cricket, a constant problem with referees(called umpires) is with regards to run outs, LBW and nicks. The on field umpires were making and continue to make bad calls with those cases and the television instant replay has fixed the first problem of calling run-outs. All they have to do, is make a call to the third umpire when in doubt. Instant replay is widely used in almost every sport in US. Virtual Eye ball tracking technology and Hot Spot technology address the latter two issues with umpiring in cricket and are now used in the Umpire Decision Review System introduced in international cricket last year.There was a loud outcry and the Indian Cricket management did not accept it as the technologies were not perfect. I would rather take the side of technology than humans when it comes to these close calls in cricket.
With all this hyperbole on the geek adventures in sports, a note of caution is in order. Analytics can only supplement and not take over human decisions. When taken to extremes it has proven to cause trouble. Let us take an example of Long Term Capital Management, from the world of financial markets, that was too Too Big To Fail in 1998 and was bailed out by the Fed. LTCM was a hedge fund started by John Meriwether. It had on its board Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton who won Nobel Prize in 1997 for their work on creating a model to discover the price of an option. Their work was built upon an earlier work by Louis Bachelier - He is credited with being the first person to model the stochastic process now called Brownian motion.
Scholes and Merton in collaboration with then deceased Black developed a mathematical model for the financial market called The Black–Scholes model or Black–Scholes-Merton or simply Black Model. The mathematical model they derived was a partial differential equation, now called the Black–Scholes equation, which gives one the price of the option with time variable. The problem however was with the assumptions in the model. The Brownian movement assumes that the movements are small, random devoid of external influences or biases. Plotting these movements will generate the familiar bell curve also known as normal or Gaussian distribution. However the stock markets with its risks and frequent wild movements does not behave like a gas molecule. In fact other mathematical models have been proposed to represent the financial markets. One such model supported by Nassim Tabeb of the Black Swan fame is Power Law. LTCM could not in it's mathematical models anticipate the rare events and incurred heavy losses from the 1997 Asian Financial crisis and Russian default in 1998 and deadly combo with leverage(at the height of euphoria they were levered 25:1). It had to be bailed out by a consortium of banks and the fed.
There is great debate still being waged on the caused of the recent financial crisis dubbed the great recession. Of the many reasons some blame has been levied on the excessive reliance on flawed mathematical models VaR(derived by the risk management team at JPM) and the Gaussian Copula Function by David Li. You can read more on how the Var and Copula Function contributed to the crisis here and here respectively. The weird thing is that both these models use the Gaussian Distribution as the core and are widely popular of their simplicity. They spent much time developing a simple model for a complex system with frequent occurring big risks. Both models underestimated the potential risk that they were supposed to measure.
What does mathematical model that over simplifies a financial market got to do with sports and nerds getting into it. Nothing I suppose, but I wanted to caution the excessive reliance on technology and statistical models on measuring players and the sports in general. There is a definite need for advanced statistics that measures the value of players better than the current popular metrics used. For eg., average ppg used in NBA is skewed towards players that play lot more minutes and take lot more shots than say a defensive expert whose contributions to the game are largely overshadowed with this metric. One simple metric that measures other contributions in NBA is Efficiency. A little more complex number called PER(Player Efficiency Rating) was created by John Hollinger of ESPN. PER takes into contributions almost all aspects of basketball including the minutes and pace of the game played. It is a step in a right direction and is getting accepted as a measure of player's current value. However this number has problems - it rewards inefficient shooting and can produce a distorted picture of some defensive specialists who produce few blocks and steals. Please find here a good analysis of problems with PER. I personally think that both efficiency and PER are both skewed towards offensive abilities of a player and are highly correlated with the ppg of players. Clearly a better model is still wanted in NBA.
Thankfully it does not use Gaussian distribution to predict the future value of the player so team managements can load up on a single player. But wait, some teams have already done that without any mathematical model. Eg., Eddy Curry with the Knicks till 2010, Gilbert Arenas with the Magic and Rashard Lewis with the Wizards are just examples of bad contracts. Thankfully there is the amnesty clause that came of the new CBA. Bad Contracts have one advantage though. It gives the owners a good excuse to come back to the table to discuss CBA and demand bigger piece of the revenue pie as reward for their own mistakes. I digress.
We already discussed baseball and how moneyball highlighted the use of analytics by a certain team in the sport. The book highlights the undervalued usage of the metric On-base Percentage. Please listen to this podcast that throws more light on it as I am not a big follower of baseball to provide good analysis.
Lets jump to cricket. A lot of data is collected in cricket, but most of it is centered around the batsmen or the offensive side of the game. Most Man of the Match (equivalent to MVP in American sports) awards go to batsmen. A bowler rarely gets the MVP award unless a player takes at least 4 wickets and the match is won, this too when there is no other big contribution by a batsmen. The value of a batsmen is usually measured by his batting average and the number of 100's and 50s he has scored. This to me is a very skewed metric. A batsmen that comes in the first three positions has a chance to play lot more balls and hence a chance to have better batting average and better chance at scoring more 100s and 50s. What we consider great batsmen come onto the crease at the first three positions. This however skews other important metrics like, how many wins did he contribute to, how many partnerships did he generate, how well did he rotate the bat, how many dot balls did he have, how many chances did he give away(how lucky he was on any given day) that the opposition failed to capitalize on. Similarly for a bowler, the metrics that are used are wickets taken and average runs per over given away. This again fails to measure the contribution to the win, the conditions in which he was playing, how many dot balls did he have(the more the better), how many good length balls did he bowl, did the bowler in tandem get any wickets etc. Fielding is another contribution that is given scant respect. No metrics exist on how much a fielder contributes to the win of a team. Other than who caught the ball when a player gets out, nothing about fielding is measured. A good thorough review of some concerns related to cricket stats can be found here.
With all this I have to conclude with the saying from a superhero nerd aka Spider Man comic strip - 'With Great powers come great responsibility'.
While nerds are making inroads into sports, they are making inroads into the fashion business with their looks. Look for athletes like Dwyane Wade, Lebron James, Kevin Durant who sport the nerdy look quite often. Kevin Durant has taken it a step further with a back pack in tango. Grantland has a feature on this new trend in NBA - The rise of the NBA nerd. More power to my peeps.
A few more links of interest can be found below.
Redistribution: Blocking the Revenge of the Nerds?
Who’s a Nerd, Anyway?
The beauty of the geek
Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Recap
Will Kuntz '06, Real Life MoneyBall "Scout"
Shane Battier - The No-Stats All-Star
Prof. Daniel Kahneman - Nobel prize winner for prospect theory
Reinforcement Learning and Investor Behavior
The Gambler's and Hot-Hand Fallacies: Theory and Applications
Recency: Hot-hands and the Gambler's fallacy
The hot hand belief and the gambler’s fallacy in investment decisions under risk
Success Rates of Traders
What Makes a Rogue Trader Tick?
Hot Hand in Sports
Option Traders Use (very) Sophisticated Heuristics, Never the Black–Scholes–Merton Formula
Warren Buffett on LTCM
Eight Days - The battle to save the American financial system
Monday, December 26, 2011
Friday, December 2, 2011
Fat fingering, flash crash and all the fun stuff called investing
I am not a stock trader, but I occasionally burn my fingers attempting to do just that. This post is a look into the rearview of my experience with trading in the stock market. It has been a while since I bought or sold into the market. I incurred severe losses in my attempts to make money in the stock markets during the years 2008 and 2009. I was long in 2008 and short in 2009. Yes, stupid right. Needless to say, I had better success at trading in a flea market. I wouldn't be writing this post if I made money in those years.
Date: May 6th, 2010.
Subject: Fat fingering could save a trade.
By Noon that day, the markets have lost about 5%. I had entered a trade the previous night to execute at $22/share. I don't remember the security nor do I remember the number of shares. So anyway, when I was taking a coffee at around 2:30 PM, a colleague mentioned that the market was tanking pretty bad. I also recieved a phone call from my friend to deliver the good news. I was worried that the trade I had entered was executed and deeply in red from the broad market tanking. One of the reasons for the markets to crash, I heard during that day, was that an unidentified futures trader had fat fingered a sell order for $5 Billion worth of securities while he meant only to palce $5 million worth of them. An extra zero never meant so much to so many people around the world like it did on that day. I went home and eagerly logged into my trading account to find how much loss I had incurred on my trade. Surprisingly, I did not see the security in my account. I checked the order status and it showed that the order was cancelled. I checked the trading range for the security to see if for some reason the secruity did not hit my buy price. The security did go to as low as 13 bucks. I reviewed my cancelled order to find that I had set my buy limit order at $12.00 and not $22.00 as I had intended. This casual mistake of mine kind of saved my day. However I did feel a tinge of disappointment because, had the security gone down to $12 and my order been executed, I would have made 33% on that day for my fat fingering error. How is that possible? When right after what is now called flash crash the market rebounded, recovering most of the losses between 2:30 PM to 3:00 PM. The security I was interested in buying rebounded to $16.00. While I was happy, I did not suffer a loss of about 30%, I was also unhappy that my mistake did not make me rich by 33%. Well the way my trades were going, the only way I was going to make money was by mistakes. Alas it was not meant to be.
Note: It was later revealed that the cause of the crash was not fat finger, but a sell algorithm that executed the sell order of S&P 500 futures. The report by SEC was be viewed here -http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/2010/marketevents-report.pdf.
So with that preview in mind, I have to go a bit earlier into my life of trading. Why did I get into this mess to begin with? It was that one odd year when for the first time in my life I discovered I may have to payback Uncle Sam on my tax returns. It turns out that I was being withdrawn less taxes in my paycheck and hence would have to pay back those taxes. One of the ways to avoid that was to open a traditional IRA account. So I did just that. This was 2008 and the market was tanking. Now opening an IRA account opened a whole new oppurtunity to prove to myself that I could make more money outside my profession.
I began reading books, a lots of them, by Benjamin Graham, John Bogle, Warren Buffett, even Suzy Orman. Since I began with books by value investors, I took a long only approach and stocks for life approach. Besides the word value in value investing kind of appealed to the way I approach life. So I did some screens for low P/E ratios, high dividends etc and put money in those. It was a time when commodities were bullish. I did not buy any when the market was going up as I felt they were expensive(read - I tricked myself into thinking like a value investor). So when the market began to crash, I began to buy them assuming there was capitulation and that I need to go in when the market was falling. I also did cost averaging as the securities were losing more and more. In 2008, the pit was bottomless. All the theories I had read were becoming useless and fear took over. I realized that times have changed and every recession is different. I also recognized that the market way ripe for shorting.
However I could not short since the account I was trading was an IRA account. I could not buy put options(which was the one way to short a market in an IRA) as my account was not setup for options trading. I could buy inverse etfs(that shorted the market), but since most inverse etfs are shorted on a daily basis, the gains from shorting the market were lost by the inherent defects of the etf. I had applied to change my account to allow option trading and opened a regular trading account with another broker. (Yes, more money and less restriction would fix everything and now I could go on to be a millionnaire shorting the market. The irony is that easy access to more money, hence leverage, and lax regulation were the causes of the current recession.)
I realized the lossess in my IRA account about the end of 2009 and began shorting the market with option puts. I also bought leveraged inverse etfs. With these moves and the economy still tanking, things turned around a bit in my account for some time though the losses were not completely recovered. From losses in thousands to have recovered within hundreds was a major achievement. I was euphoric and once on a phone call to a friend of mine said this "value investing has no place now. In this age investors have to be nimble". Clearly I was overconfident and not following my own statements.
The market turned around and I did not realize the gains in time. I failed to stagger my profits. Instead I was still stuck in the bear mode. I said to myself that the market was irrational, the fundamentals have not changed and hence it was only a matter of time before the market begins to tank again. It wasn't meant to be.
Weeks become months and market takes an ascent I havent seem before. I begin looking into technical analysis as everyone on the web was talking about it. It was also widely said that Hedge funds with their HFTs use largely technical analysis to make their trades. The S&P500 index hung around the 200MA for a few days and it gave me hope that my thesis could be right and the bear market was set to begin. Well, ever a contrarion indicator, the market broke through the 200 moving average and began it ascent with greater vigor. That was it for me; I took my losses, which were now more than when I began to short the market.
I stayed away from trading the market for about 6 months. Infact, I did not get back into it until 2010. Well the rally was slow in 2010 compared to 2009 and 2011 was deja vu all over again. Only the player now is Europe and not US and I am long the market only this time in my 401K accounts. I cant do much there which probably is a good thing.
In all this, I tried almost everyt trick. Well! not everything; I havent developed an algorithm for automatic trading with back testing. Other than that I have done everything and for every recommendation I have proof that they wont work. I attended webinars, earnings reports(live as well as transcripts), did screeners for etfs and mutual funds. Bought etfs, straight and leveraged, long and short. I did market orders, limit orders, stop loss orders, trailing limit orders. I did options both calls and puts. I did not go into covered calls, spreads and other exotic option trading. Nor did I deal with forex trading and futures trading, well not directly(but did so through etfs that use forex and futures trading). In all this the only thing that I learned was that, there is no formula for successful trading. A recommendation by a successful trader/investor is no guarantee for success. Infact it can be guarantee for failure as was in my case.
With so much rumination on things that have failed, I feel obligated to disclose what worked for me.
1. Buy No Load, No Transaction Fee Mutual Funds only. Avoid transaction fees in anyway you can.
2. Avoid futures derived commodity etfs, leveraged etfs, short etfs, options unless you know clearly how these are valued and how they work.
3. Buy Big Cap dividend players.
4. Buy index funds or index based etfs.
5. If you can pick a bottom or if you are sure the bottom has passed, buy securities that are oversold due to certain events. For Eg., BP was a good pick a few months after the oil spill. In these cases, the markets sells more not knowing what the impact would be of the event.
6. Realize your gains when they are. There is merit to the statement 'ride your winners', but it is only a matter of time before your winners become losers. So try layering your sell orders when you have profits.
7. Cut your losses at the earliest. Have some percentage and time based rules for getting out. Follow them strictly.
Of the above, the last rule is most difficult to implement. I have most trouble implementing this rule. I still have a few securities that violate this rule and are sitting blood red in my account as of now. The problem for me is that, the securities that I have sold have done a volte face as soon as I have sold. Also losses are difficult to realize. You hold on to the losers in a hope that things may change as soon as you sell them. Sometimes you are waiting for the market to turn around to minimize the losses. You say to yourself, this security is oversold. Let it turn around a bit and I will sell. When they do, you dont know when to sell. Your mind plays tricks. Do you let your mind rule your trades or do you let the rules mind your trades. Experienced traders say it should be your rules.
Date: May 6th, 2010.
Subject: Fat fingering could save a trade.
By Noon that day, the markets have lost about 5%. I had entered a trade the previous night to execute at $22/share. I don't remember the security nor do I remember the number of shares. So anyway, when I was taking a coffee at around 2:30 PM, a colleague mentioned that the market was tanking pretty bad. I also recieved a phone call from my friend to deliver the good news. I was worried that the trade I had entered was executed and deeply in red from the broad market tanking. One of the reasons for the markets to crash, I heard during that day, was that an unidentified futures trader had fat fingered a sell order for $5 Billion worth of securities while he meant only to palce $5 million worth of them. An extra zero never meant so much to so many people around the world like it did on that day. I went home and eagerly logged into my trading account to find how much loss I had incurred on my trade. Surprisingly, I did not see the security in my account. I checked the order status and it showed that the order was cancelled. I checked the trading range for the security to see if for some reason the secruity did not hit my buy price. The security did go to as low as 13 bucks. I reviewed my cancelled order to find that I had set my buy limit order at $12.00 and not $22.00 as I had intended. This casual mistake of mine kind of saved my day. However I did feel a tinge of disappointment because, had the security gone down to $12 and my order been executed, I would have made 33% on that day for my fat fingering error. How is that possible? When right after what is now called flash crash the market rebounded, recovering most of the losses between 2:30 PM to 3:00 PM. The security I was interested in buying rebounded to $16.00. While I was happy, I did not suffer a loss of about 30%, I was also unhappy that my mistake did not make me rich by 33%. Well the way my trades were going, the only way I was going to make money was by mistakes. Alas it was not meant to be.
Note: It was later revealed that the cause of the crash was not fat finger, but a sell algorithm that executed the sell order of S&P 500 futures. The report by SEC was be viewed here -http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/2010/marketevents-report.pdf.
So with that preview in mind, I have to go a bit earlier into my life of trading. Why did I get into this mess to begin with? It was that one odd year when for the first time in my life I discovered I may have to payback Uncle Sam on my tax returns. It turns out that I was being withdrawn less taxes in my paycheck and hence would have to pay back those taxes. One of the ways to avoid that was to open a traditional IRA account. So I did just that. This was 2008 and the market was tanking. Now opening an IRA account opened a whole new oppurtunity to prove to myself that I could make more money outside my profession.
I began reading books, a lots of them, by Benjamin Graham, John Bogle, Warren Buffett, even Suzy Orman. Since I began with books by value investors, I took a long only approach and stocks for life approach. Besides the word value in value investing kind of appealed to the way I approach life. So I did some screens for low P/E ratios, high dividends etc and put money in those. It was a time when commodities were bullish. I did not buy any when the market was going up as I felt they were expensive(read - I tricked myself into thinking like a value investor). So when the market began to crash, I began to buy them assuming there was capitulation and that I need to go in when the market was falling. I also did cost averaging as the securities were losing more and more. In 2008, the pit was bottomless. All the theories I had read were becoming useless and fear took over. I realized that times have changed and every recession is different. I also recognized that the market way ripe for shorting.
However I could not short since the account I was trading was an IRA account. I could not buy put options(which was the one way to short a market in an IRA) as my account was not setup for options trading. I could buy inverse etfs(that shorted the market), but since most inverse etfs are shorted on a daily basis, the gains from shorting the market were lost by the inherent defects of the etf. I had applied to change my account to allow option trading and opened a regular trading account with another broker. (Yes, more money and less restriction would fix everything and now I could go on to be a millionnaire shorting the market. The irony is that easy access to more money, hence leverage, and lax regulation were the causes of the current recession.)
I realized the lossess in my IRA account about the end of 2009 and began shorting the market with option puts. I also bought leveraged inverse etfs. With these moves and the economy still tanking, things turned around a bit in my account for some time though the losses were not completely recovered. From losses in thousands to have recovered within hundreds was a major achievement. I was euphoric and once on a phone call to a friend of mine said this "value investing has no place now. In this age investors have to be nimble". Clearly I was overconfident and not following my own statements.
The market turned around and I did not realize the gains in time. I failed to stagger my profits. Instead I was still stuck in the bear mode. I said to myself that the market was irrational, the fundamentals have not changed and hence it was only a matter of time before the market begins to tank again. It wasn't meant to be.
Weeks become months and market takes an ascent I havent seem before. I begin looking into technical analysis as everyone on the web was talking about it. It was also widely said that Hedge funds with their HFTs use largely technical analysis to make their trades. The S&P500 index hung around the 200MA for a few days and it gave me hope that my thesis could be right and the bear market was set to begin. Well, ever a contrarion indicator, the market broke through the 200 moving average and began it ascent with greater vigor. That was it for me; I took my losses, which were now more than when I began to short the market.
I stayed away from trading the market for about 6 months. Infact, I did not get back into it until 2010. Well the rally was slow in 2010 compared to 2009 and 2011 was deja vu all over again. Only the player now is Europe and not US and I am long the market only this time in my 401K accounts. I cant do much there which probably is a good thing.
In all this, I tried almost everyt trick. Well! not everything; I havent developed an algorithm for automatic trading with back testing. Other than that I have done everything and for every recommendation I have proof that they wont work. I attended webinars, earnings reports(live as well as transcripts), did screeners for etfs and mutual funds. Bought etfs, straight and leveraged, long and short. I did market orders, limit orders, stop loss orders, trailing limit orders. I did options both calls and puts. I did not go into covered calls, spreads and other exotic option trading. Nor did I deal with forex trading and futures trading, well not directly(but did so through etfs that use forex and futures trading). In all this the only thing that I learned was that, there is no formula for successful trading. A recommendation by a successful trader/investor is no guarantee for success. Infact it can be guarantee for failure as was in my case.
With so much rumination on things that have failed, I feel obligated to disclose what worked for me.
1. Buy No Load, No Transaction Fee Mutual Funds only. Avoid transaction fees in anyway you can.
2. Avoid futures derived commodity etfs, leveraged etfs, short etfs, options unless you know clearly how these are valued and how they work.
3. Buy Big Cap dividend players.
4. Buy index funds or index based etfs.
5. If you can pick a bottom or if you are sure the bottom has passed, buy securities that are oversold due to certain events. For Eg., BP was a good pick a few months after the oil spill. In these cases, the markets sells more not knowing what the impact would be of the event.
6. Realize your gains when they are. There is merit to the statement 'ride your winners', but it is only a matter of time before your winners become losers. So try layering your sell orders when you have profits.
7. Cut your losses at the earliest. Have some percentage and time based rules for getting out. Follow them strictly.
Of the above, the last rule is most difficult to implement. I have most trouble implementing this rule. I still have a few securities that violate this rule and are sitting blood red in my account as of now. The problem for me is that, the securities that I have sold have done a volte face as soon as I have sold. Also losses are difficult to realize. You hold on to the losers in a hope that things may change as soon as you sell them. Sometimes you are waiting for the market to turn around to minimize the losses. You say to yourself, this security is oversold. Let it turn around a bit and I will sell. When they do, you dont know when to sell. Your mind plays tricks. Do you let your mind rule your trades or do you let the rules mind your trades. Experienced traders say it should be your rules.
Labels:
Investing,
stock market,
trading
Thursday, July 28, 2011
A debt crisis of my own
While the USA senate is waging a debate on debt ceiling (more details here), I am working on resolving a crisis of my own with my debt . To some it may be small and to some a matter of ridicule, but to me this is gaining big on the guilt land. Please continue to read as I narrate my story.
Recently in one of my evening commute back home, I was involved in a fender bender accident. I wont go into the details of it as it is not much relevant to what I am about to say. Besides, Big Brother Gordon* is watching the web 2.0 saying 'you have the right to remain silent, whatever you say(post) on social media can and will be used against you'.
After the accident, making sure the other passenger was fine and the insurance information exchanged, I set off on my much delayed commute back to home. It was about 7:30 PM now and had been three hours since I started from work. I was only few miles from work with many more miles to go. It was a really bad day, with overcast conditions all day and incessant downpour at that moment(to contrast the past two weeks are extremely hot and I long for the rain like the other day I am narrating here). Basically it was a perfect weather to cause myself to dig into accident induced sorrow and self pity.
I began to think all sorts of things; it was the punishment for the poor decision I made. I moved from this neighborhood(where I was driving now) about a month ago and never had a problem until now. It was a busy road that winds past the public library. I thought of the library about a mile away and realized the whole cause of the this messy situation. The library has a used book sale in a small room at the back. A week before I moved, I had bought three books there. While checking them out, I handed a $20 bill to the librarian there. The guy said he did not have the change to break my $20 bill. So to date I owed them $1.25 for the three books - two adult paper backs $0.50 each and one kids book $0.25. He had asked me to pay when I return. Return I never did. Since the day of purchase, lot many things were to be taken care of and I lost track of the library and the money I owed them. Also the library was quite far away from my current commute.
So now that fate had me driving through those roads, I recollected that I owed the library $1.25. The goddess of learning has decided to teach me a lesson. I decided to pay for the books and possibly do a donation for the library. As I came on this decision to atone for my bad karma, I was at the library now. To my dismay the library was closed. I forgot that the library closes at 5:30 PM and it was close to 8: 00 PM now. So I kept driving past the library while watching the closed sign on the library. The two glass windows appeared like eyes and the branches of the tree in the front waved to and fro towards the library entrance doors. It was as if the library was gesturing "I am watching you" through the trees and the windows. It creeped me out.
I drove past the library, feeling dejected. A few miles passed in slow motion with the traffic being still heavy. I decided to take a break and get some coffee. I bought myself a soup and medium sized coffee. It helped me relax and half an hour later I was on my way home. It was about 9:30 PM. I reached home at about 10:30 PM and the kid was fast asleep. Suits me for bargaining the time with family for chores.
Here is what happened on that day between 4:30 PM(the time I left work) and 7:30 PM. I set out from work without an umbrella on a day with rain forecast. The sky was cloudy when I came out of the building. By the time I reached my car in the parking garage(couple blocks away) the rain began to pour. I set out in that bad weather to drop off a cable and Internet modem I was renting from my previous cable provider. It had been more than a week since I shut off my account and I received a reminder from my Cable service provider to return the equipment. The service center was deep in the city and I had to go through severe congestion and roads with traffic lights all over. I reached there 5 mins late at 5:35 PM. The security guard was signalling me away shouting that the building was closed. With drooped shoulders, I sat back in the car and began my drive home.
The drive from the service center to the nearest interstate turned out to be as bad as my previous segment and it was 6:30 PM when I saw the interstate traffic at standstill. I sighed and decided that I will take a 30-40 minute break and start again. I drove past the ramp to the interstate, which was heavily congested and slowing moving forward like a slug, and came by a small mall. There was a bank next to the mall and I have an account there. Thinking it would be good way to kill time, I stood in line for customer service to update my address in the accounts I had with the Bank. Was that stupid or what. The customer service needed a utility bill or a lease with my new address on it. I had neither of them on me. This after I waited for half an hour. I was depressed and began my drive back home at about 7:10 PM. I came close to ramp to the interstate and the traffic was still congested. The rain pour was incessant, I skipped the interstate and took the local route home. Fifteen minutes or so later I was in a fender bender.
About a week passed. I was driving home after work and few miles later the traffic came to a stand still again. I was close to the same exit as that on the day of accident. I hesitantly took the exit and drove through the same roads that I took on the rainy day. I drove past the intersection where the accident happened. The rainy day image popped in my brain for a second, but I was shrugged it off. I drove past the library, but it was closed again. The trees and the library windows were reminding me of the debt I owed to the library. This I could not shrug off. I have to take this exit again sometime soon to repay my debt to the library; all of a buck and quarter.
Rational Reasoning: The cause(s) of the situation I found myself in could be two fold. The first was the bad weather. I should have waited the rain out somewhere. But I didn't. It is weird how bad weathers makes humans make bad decisions. It is a common scene for roads to be filled with cars and grocery stores filled with people during times of bad weather. Second, I was trying to recoup some of the lost time by squeezing in some productive work out of it. So instead of reasoning out the rational way, my mind was playing drama filling me with guilt over a $1.25 that had no relation to the incident. But who said humans make rational decisions.
*Gordon is the first name of Gordon Gekko(played by Michael Douglas) in the famous Hollywood movie Wall Street. The last name rhymes with the mascot of a famous insurance company.
Recently in one of my evening commute back home, I was involved in a fender bender accident. I wont go into the details of it as it is not much relevant to what I am about to say. Besides, Big Brother Gordon* is watching the web 2.0 saying 'you have the right to remain silent, whatever you say(post) on social media can and will be used against you'.
After the accident, making sure the other passenger was fine and the insurance information exchanged, I set off on my much delayed commute back to home. It was about 7:30 PM now and had been three hours since I started from work. I was only few miles from work with many more miles to go. It was a really bad day, with overcast conditions all day and incessant downpour at that moment(to contrast the past two weeks are extremely hot and I long for the rain like the other day I am narrating here). Basically it was a perfect weather to cause myself to dig into accident induced sorrow and self pity.
I began to think all sorts of things; it was the punishment for the poor decision I made. I moved from this neighborhood(where I was driving now) about a month ago and never had a problem until now. It was a busy road that winds past the public library. I thought of the library about a mile away and realized the whole cause of the this messy situation. The library has a used book sale in a small room at the back. A week before I moved, I had bought three books there. While checking them out, I handed a $20 bill to the librarian there. The guy said he did not have the change to break my $20 bill. So to date I owed them $1.25 for the three books - two adult paper backs $0.50 each and one kids book $0.25. He had asked me to pay when I return. Return I never did. Since the day of purchase, lot many things were to be taken care of and I lost track of the library and the money I owed them. Also the library was quite far away from my current commute.
So now that fate had me driving through those roads, I recollected that I owed the library $1.25. The goddess of learning has decided to teach me a lesson. I decided to pay for the books and possibly do a donation for the library. As I came on this decision to atone for my bad karma, I was at the library now. To my dismay the library was closed. I forgot that the library closes at 5:30 PM and it was close to 8: 00 PM now. So I kept driving past the library while watching the closed sign on the library. The two glass windows appeared like eyes and the branches of the tree in the front waved to and fro towards the library entrance doors. It was as if the library was gesturing "I am watching you" through the trees and the windows. It creeped me out.
Here is what happened on that day between 4:30 PM(the time I left work) and 7:30 PM. I set out from work without an umbrella on a day with rain forecast. The sky was cloudy when I came out of the building. By the time I reached my car in the parking garage(couple blocks away) the rain began to pour. I set out in that bad weather to drop off a cable and Internet modem I was renting from my previous cable provider. It had been more than a week since I shut off my account and I received a reminder from my Cable service provider to return the equipment. The service center was deep in the city and I had to go through severe congestion and roads with traffic lights all over. I reached there 5 mins late at 5:35 PM. The security guard was signalling me away shouting that the building was closed. With drooped shoulders, I sat back in the car and began my drive home.
The drive from the service center to the nearest interstate turned out to be as bad as my previous segment and it was 6:30 PM when I saw the interstate traffic at standstill. I sighed and decided that I will take a 30-40 minute break and start again. I drove past the ramp to the interstate, which was heavily congested and slowing moving forward like a slug, and came by a small mall. There was a bank next to the mall and I have an account there. Thinking it would be good way to kill time, I stood in line for customer service to update my address in the accounts I had with the Bank. Was that stupid or what. The customer service needed a utility bill or a lease with my new address on it. I had neither of them on me. This after I waited for half an hour. I was depressed and began my drive back home at about 7:10 PM. I came close to ramp to the interstate and the traffic was still congested. The rain pour was incessant, I skipped the interstate and took the local route home. Fifteen minutes or so later I was in a fender bender.
About a week passed. I was driving home after work and few miles later the traffic came to a stand still again. I was close to the same exit as that on the day of accident. I hesitantly took the exit and drove through the same roads that I took on the rainy day. I drove past the intersection where the accident happened. The rainy day image popped in my brain for a second, but I was shrugged it off. I drove past the library, but it was closed again. The trees and the library windows were reminding me of the debt I owed to the library. This I could not shrug off. I have to take this exit again sometime soon to repay my debt to the library; all of a buck and quarter.
Rational Reasoning: The cause(s) of the situation I found myself in could be two fold. The first was the bad weather. I should have waited the rain out somewhere. But I didn't. It is weird how bad weathers makes humans make bad decisions. It is a common scene for roads to be filled with cars and grocery stores filled with people during times of bad weather. Second, I was trying to recoup some of the lost time by squeezing in some productive work out of it. So instead of reasoning out the rational way, my mind was playing drama filling me with guilt over a $1.25 that had no relation to the incident. But who said humans make rational decisions.
*Gordon is the first name of Gordon Gekko(played by Michael Douglas) in the famous Hollywood movie Wall Street. The last name rhymes with the mascot of a famous insurance company.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Father's Day: What does it mean to be a Dad
I am not into celebrating days like Father's day. It always felt corny. There are so many generations that have been parents and went on with their lives without celebrating this day. It just feels like another day for marketing and selling products. This year is however different and cant help but think what I could done differently last year on this day.
This is the first Father's day without my Dad. It is hard to believe that months have passed since he is gone and in couple more it will be an year. As time passes, memories fade and wounds heal they say. I am not sure if either of them will happen, but I wish they do. I know one thing for sure, that he wanted me and my family to move on.
He was very devotional and philosophical man. He believed in karma and doing good. He never failed to visit an orphange and make donation on my grandma's death anniversary. He wanted to give back to the society by donating to the school and temple in the village he was born and grew up. He did his prayer every day without a fail in the morning. He never gave up this habit even when he became weak and lost a lot of weight from his CKD. I think his faith and belief in God gave him the strength to handle the pressures of life and his bad health.
My Dad was a very humble man. People took advantage of his soft spokenness. He brushed them aside by saying 'paddavadu yeppudu cheddavadu kadu'. I felt rage at those people and more at my Dad for tolerating the idiots. I had expressed my anger to him about the way people would take his help and not even convey their gratitufe. He would just say 'edaina asinchi manchi cheyyakoodadu. manchini gurthanichani vadide tappu kani manchi chese vadidi kadu'. I never understood his philosophy.
One thing, he never told us how much he loved us. It is typical of his generation and mine to grow up and know that there was love and effection but no mention was ever made of it. Sadly, I never said the same to him. That is my only regret, I wish I had that one extra moment to tell him how much he meant to me. How much we as a family still needed him, may be he would have had a reason to fight longer. But that is just wishful thinking, I know.
He was great with money. He put to good use of it, with the limited income he had. He got us educated and built a house for the family. Unfortunately, he also gave away money as loans to people who asked for help. He trusted people to be good just like him. Hopefully, the world will not break the trust he had.
He was very uncomfortable when it involved matters dealing with the public office. There is a lot of haggling, nagging, repetitive visits and under the table dealings that one has to be involved. He hated it. I did not understand that growing up. Now I understand after dealing with these people. It plays with your conscience and there is a certain kind that can live with it and some that accept it. He could do neither, but did the chores when necessary and go more and more uncomfortable as grew older.
He was persistant and never gave up hope, be it his career, personal life, health. He never expressed his anger at his superiors for bypassing him . He hoped one day he would get to be an Accounts Officer. Inexperienced, young kids got promoted way ahead of him. He would move on. The only way he knew was to put in his time and earn every penny of his salary. He was content knowing that his livelihood came from his hardwork. Playing hard was the only way he know and playing 'smart'. Just about a month before his official retirement, he did get the promotion to become an Accounts Officer. I could feel the happiness and contentment in his voice that day.
I had rarely seen him cry. I had heard from my Mom once about it. It was the time when he was about to undergo his first angioplasty. Apparently he had a tear in his eyes, when the doctors told that his heart condition is hereditory. He shed his tears not for himself, but over a concern he had for his kids and their future.
Growing up, I did not understand why he did certain things the way he did. Now a little older and having a daughter of my own, I understand him better. He would deliberate on things and I understand that deliberation is not all that bad. Most times in life, a thoughtful inaction is better than a hasty action. Hopefully I can keep learning from his memories and lead a fulfilling life as he did.
I dont know why but I am reminded of a poem 'Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost that I learnt in my childhood in school
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
I am sure my Dad would want me to go miles and miles longer.
This is the first Father's day without my Dad. It is hard to believe that months have passed since he is gone and in couple more it will be an year. As time passes, memories fade and wounds heal they say. I am not sure if either of them will happen, but I wish they do. I know one thing for sure, that he wanted me and my family to move on.
He was very devotional and philosophical man. He believed in karma and doing good. He never failed to visit an orphange and make donation on my grandma's death anniversary. He wanted to give back to the society by donating to the school and temple in the village he was born and grew up. He did his prayer every day without a fail in the morning. He never gave up this habit even when he became weak and lost a lot of weight from his CKD. I think his faith and belief in God gave him the strength to handle the pressures of life and his bad health.
My Dad was a very humble man. People took advantage of his soft spokenness. He brushed them aside by saying 'paddavadu yeppudu cheddavadu kadu'. I felt rage at those people and more at my Dad for tolerating the idiots. I had expressed my anger to him about the way people would take his help and not even convey their gratitufe. He would just say 'edaina asinchi manchi cheyyakoodadu. manchini gurthanichani vadide tappu kani manchi chese vadidi kadu'. I never understood his philosophy.
One thing, he never told us how much he loved us. It is typical of his generation and mine to grow up and know that there was love and effection but no mention was ever made of it. Sadly, I never said the same to him. That is my only regret, I wish I had that one extra moment to tell him how much he meant to me. How much we as a family still needed him, may be he would have had a reason to fight longer. But that is just wishful thinking, I know.
He was great with money. He put to good use of it, with the limited income he had. He got us educated and built a house for the family. Unfortunately, he also gave away money as loans to people who asked for help. He trusted people to be good just like him. Hopefully, the world will not break the trust he had.
He was very uncomfortable when it involved matters dealing with the public office. There is a lot of haggling, nagging, repetitive visits and under the table dealings that one has to be involved. He hated it. I did not understand that growing up. Now I understand after dealing with these people. It plays with your conscience and there is a certain kind that can live with it and some that accept it. He could do neither, but did the chores when necessary and go more and more uncomfortable as grew older.
He was persistant and never gave up hope, be it his career, personal life, health. He never expressed his anger at his superiors for bypassing him . He hoped one day he would get to be an Accounts Officer. Inexperienced, young kids got promoted way ahead of him. He would move on. The only way he knew was to put in his time and earn every penny of his salary. He was content knowing that his livelihood came from his hardwork. Playing hard was the only way he know and playing 'smart'. Just about a month before his official retirement, he did get the promotion to become an Accounts Officer. I could feel the happiness and contentment in his voice that day.
I had rarely seen him cry. I had heard from my Mom once about it. It was the time when he was about to undergo his first angioplasty. Apparently he had a tear in his eyes, when the doctors told that his heart condition is hereditory. He shed his tears not for himself, but over a concern he had for his kids and their future.
Growing up, I did not understand why he did certain things the way he did. Now a little older and having a daughter of my own, I understand him better. He would deliberate on things and I understand that deliberation is not all that bad. Most times in life, a thoughtful inaction is better than a hasty action. Hopefully I can keep learning from his memories and lead a fulfilling life as he did.
I dont know why but I am reminded of a poem 'Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost that I learnt in my childhood in school
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
I am sure my Dad would want me to go miles and miles longer.
Labels:
Dad,
Father's Day
Friday, June 17, 2011
Exploring the success of Indians at the Spelling Bee?
Yet again an Indian wins the spelling bee. Give it up to Sukanya Roy from Wilkes-Barre , PA. 7out the 13 finalists in 2011 contest were of Indian origin. It has become astereotype of sorts for a kid of Indian ancestry to win the US National Spelling Bee championship. About a year ago, in an article titled Indian Buzz at the Spelling Bee, I pondered on the success of Indians at this competition. In this post, I will explore the possible causes of the success.This post however is not an attempt to explore the why of the success, rather the how of it, may be? Before we begin analyzing the success, I want to take a small detour into the history of the Spelling Bee winners who are of Indian Ancestry.
The first Indian kid to win the championship was Balu Natarajan in the year 1985. He did it by spelling the word milieu. He went on to become a Physician in Internal and Sports Medicine with a fellowship in Sports medicine. He practices inChicago Chicago
The list of all Indian Spelling Bee Winners is below
1985 Balu Natarajan
1988 Rageshree Ramachandran
1999 Nupur Lala
2000 George Abraham Thampy
2002 Pratyush Buddiga
2003 Sai R. Gunturi
2005 Anurag Kashyap
2008 Sameer Mishra
2009 Kavya Shivashankar
2010 Anamika Veeramani
2011 SukanyaRoy
For a full list visit http://www.spellingbee.com/champions-and-their-winning-words.
Time, effort and hardwork each of the winner put into the preparation for the contest has to be the primary cause of their success. Proper encouragement and supportive environment at home and in school plays a part. Assuming every winner had these conditions, a candidate preparing for such an intensive high
competitive event needs a training and practicing ground. To the Indian Kids this came in the form of North South Foundation(NSF). NSF has over 60+ chapters inUSA and was started in 1989. The educational contests including the spelling bee contests at the chapter level was started in 1993. These contests have kind of become a minor-league training ground for the major league level Scripps National Spelling Bee.
So far, we know that the Indian kids have been successful post 1999 thanks at some level to the intensive training grounds provided by NSF since 1993. What about the period prior to 1999? There were only two winners in the 80s and none prior to that. To that I would like to take one more detour and explore
the history of Immigration (legal) to US fromIndia
The immigration policy of US has been fairly restrictive prior to 1965. A policy change in 1965 could be termed a land mark for Immigrants from Non-Western countries to US. You can find details of the history of Indian immigration here. An excerpt from it that is relevant to the current topic is below. Italics are
mine.
A further boost to the immigration fromIndia
The immigrant Indian population in US can be seen in the list and chart below. More details here.
Year Indian born Immigrants
1960 12,296
So the immigration rules mattered. It limited the number of Indians coming toUSA prior to 1965 and 1992, thereby limiting the number of participants in the contests. With the issuance of temporary work permit visas, the number of immigrants from India to US has increased manifold since 1992. This led to the formation of Indian communities and they began to participate in the local events that symbolize something to them. Part of that is success in academic and knowledge pursuits. This has to be cultural as well as demand of the times. The 1980s and after were a period of knowledge driven societies. Service industries have grown that need well educated, high skilled work force. The lack of local workforce led to the immigrant work force from India filling the gaps. This work force came to US on the factor of skill set – good education, learning in science and technology. The immigrants from India
In a follow-up to my first post on Spelling Bee, I attempted to find if there were a set of conditions that all communities, who attained success in certain specialized fields, have. The communities that succeeded, I observed, had
•Barrier Breaker
•Willing Takers/Followers
•Continuing Success
•Network for Practicing and Competing Opportunities
Apart from the above I had also wondered if the size of the community matters.
From what I can see so far, the success of Indian kids at the Spelling Bee meet all the above mentioned observations. The question to ask next is, with the change of times in India and USA, will Indian kids continue their success at the Spelling Bee and in the large context at the academic, professional levels. Also the success is largely achieved by the progeny of first generation immigrants from India. What happened to the kids from second and third generation? Why is their participation and success so limited at the spelling bee? The second generation is fairly successful. We are beginning to see a lot of the second Indians in the movies and TV, politics, leading corporations etc. The time has not elapsed enough and there is very limited data on the third generation. That’s a topic for another day.
The first Indian kid to win the championship was Balu Natarajan in the year 1985. He did it by spelling the word milieu. He went on to become a Physician in Internal and Sports Medicine with a fellowship in Sports medicine. He practices in
The list of all Indian Spelling Bee Winners is below
1985 Balu Natarajan
1988 Rageshree Ramachandran
1999 Nupur Lala
2000 George Abraham Thampy
2002 Pratyush Buddiga
2003 Sai R. Gunturi
2005 Anurag Kashyap
2008 Sameer Mishra
2009 Kavya Shivashankar
2010 Anamika Veeramani
2011 Sukanya
For a full list visit http://www.spellingbee.com/champions-and-their-winning-words.
Time, effort and hardwork each of the winner put into the preparation for the contest has to be the primary cause of their success. Proper encouragement and supportive environment at home and in school plays a part. Assuming every winner had these conditions, a candidate preparing for such an intensive high
competitive event needs a training and practicing ground. To the Indian Kids this came in the form of North South Foundation(NSF). NSF has over 60+ chapters in
So far, we know that the Indian kids have been successful post 1999 thanks at some level to the intensive training grounds provided by NSF since 1993. What about the period prior to 1999? There were only two winners in the 80s and none prior to that. To that I would like to take one more detour and explore
the history of Immigration (legal) to US from
The immigration policy of US has been fairly restrictive prior to 1965. A policy change in 1965 could be termed a land mark for Immigrants from Non-Western countries to US. You can find details of the history of Indian immigration here. An excerpt from it that is relevant to the current topic is below. Italics are
mine.
The Immigration Act of 1965 liberalized immigration, increasing per country quota to 20,000 people irrespective of race, color or creed. The new legislation while ending the period of selective discriminatory immigration to the, encouraged a new wave of Indian immigrants who were educated and skilled and have profited from their knowledge. US
A further boost to the immigration from
After 1992, it was the relatively less noticeable route of temporary migration that started to become predominant. The 1990 Amendments, brought into effect in 1992, explicitly favored the building up of the human capital capabilities of America by fulfilling its current and future requirements of highly skilled knowledge workers, finally bringing to relevance the immigration of Indians to the American labour market needs.
The immigrant Indian population in US can be seen in the list and chart below. More details here.
Year Indian born Immigrants
1960 12,296
1970 51,000
1980 206,087
1990 450,406
2000 1,022,552
2008 1,622,522
So the immigration rules mattered. It limited the number of Indians coming to
In a follow-up to my first post on Spelling Bee, I attempted to find if there were a set of conditions that all communities, who attained success in certain specialized fields, have. The communities that succeeded, I observed, had
•Barrier Breaker
•Willing Takers/Followers
•Continuing Success
•Network for Practicing and Competing Opportunities
Apart from the above I had also wondered if the size of the community matters.
From what I can see so far, the success of Indian kids at the Spelling Bee meet all the above mentioned observations. The question to ask next is, with the change of times in India and USA, will Indian kids continue their success at the Spelling Bee and in the large context at the academic, professional levels. Also the success is largely achieved by the progeny of first generation immigrants from India. What happened to the kids from second and third generation? Why is their participation and success so limited at the spelling bee? The second generation is fairly successful. We are beginning to see a lot of the second Indians in the movies and TV, politics, leading corporations etc. The time has not elapsed enough and there is very limited data on the third generation. That’s a topic for another day.
Labels:
Immigration,
Indian Diaspora,
Spelling Bee
Friday, April 1, 2011
Dancing With The Stars: Debating Talent Vs. Diligence
The twelfth season of the reality show Dancing With The Stars currently on TV now. I follow it for reasons more than just the entertainment. A bunch of celebrities(mostly B-grade) are brought together, paired with a professional dancer to compete with one another dancing to western classical ballroom dances like cha cha, fast step, foxtrot etc.
My aim in this post is to find a pattern and predict a winner for this season based on my analysis. There are several factors that should be considered when looking into who can win the show. I have excluded the irrationality and bias of audience in picking a rightful winner. Before I do the prediction I have to analyze the factors involved to be a winner.
The factors in the contestants can be categorized into two - physical and non-physical. Both are important. Physical attributes are what the contestants have coming into the show. The show from the title is a dance show. A good dancer, in my opinion, needs to have rhythm, right body language, controlled footwork and grace in the movements with the hips, hands and legs.
There are some physical attributes contributing to how viewers perceive a person to be a good dancer. A dancer height is important - one has to be not too tall or too short. Too tall, you have movements that don't translate well. The same with being short; some moves just don't translate well. The physique of the person is also important. Not too heavy or too lanky. A good dancer is most times on the lean side.
The non-physical attributes are what a contestant has as a person. The energy, stamina, patience and perseverance to put in all those painful hours in physical repetitive practice. The show involves a lot of practice by the contestants that requires energy, stamina, maturity and will power. Each week is a new style of dance and whole lot of new routines to practice and perfect them. All this has to be in a week. Some contestants come from professions that require them. Almost all athletes, at least the ones still in their game, are used to the rigor involved, just a different kind of routine. The same can be said about entertainers who are singers or dancers. Whereas contestants who are like say businessmen and politicians are not involved in this physical rigor in their daily lives. How about the age of the contestants? Too young, they are not mature enough to carry on the seriousness and too old, not strong enough to practice and keep the energy needed for that long period of time. There is a sweet spot. Of course there are always going to be exceptions to these factors. Last but not least is the instructor; all the partners of the celebrities are professional dancers, but we all know that all teachers are not good.
Here is a list of winner and runner up for the last 11 seasons with their profession, age and height.
2005 - Season 1
Kelly Monaco - Entertainer(Model, Actress), 28, 5' 3''
2006 - Season 2
Drew Lachey - Singer, 30, 5' 6"
2006 - Season 3
Emmitt Smith - Athlete(NFL), 37,5' 9''
2007 - Season 4
2007 - Season 5
Helio Castroneves - Athlete(Race Car Driving), 1975/32/5' 8''
2008 - Season 6
Kristi Yamaguchi - Athlete(Figure Skating), 36, 5' 1''
Brooke Burke - Entertainer(Model, TV Show Host), 37, 5' 7''
2009 - Season 8
Shawn Johnson - Athlete(Gymnastics), 17, 4'10''
Gilles Marini - Actor, 33, 6'1''
2009 - Season 9
Donny Osmond - Entertainer(Singer, Actor), 52, 5' 9"
Mýa - Singer, 30, 5' 4½"
2010 - Season 10
Nicole Scherzinger - Entertainer(Singer - Pussycat Dolls), 32, 5' 5"
Evan Lysacek - Figure Skater, 25, 6' 2''
2010 - Season 11
Jennifer Grey - Entertainer(Actress), 50, 5' 3"
Kyle Massey - Actor, 19, 5' 6"
2011 - ?
What does the list tell us?
The split is almost 50-50 between athletes and entertainers. Celebrities in their early 30s seem to have won most. The average height of the winners is 5'5''. The outliers were Shawn Johnson(4'10'') and Donny Osmond(at age 52). As the seasons are increasing the outliers in age are increasing. Last season Jennifer Grey won at the age of 50, but she fit into every other pattern I had recognized earlier. I want to say that age is important, but I am beginning to feel that some contestants can overcome this shortcomings provided they are motivated. The outliers listed earlier are all examples who are either too young(Shawn Johnson) or old(Danny Osmond).
This 12th season the contestants are my view on their chances of winning.
Chelsea Kane, 22, 5'6'', Actress, DANCE PARTNER: Mark Ballas
Chance: Average, Has great energy, but I feel she needs to show maturity.
Chris Jericho, 41, 6'0'', WWE Wrestler, Dance Partner: Cheryl Burke
Chance: Good. His advantage is she has a great instructor. Cheryl Burke is the best among the instructors.
Hines Ward, 35, 6'0'', NFL Wide Receiver, Dance Partner: Kym Johnson
Chance: Good.
Kendra Wilkinson, 25, 5'4'', Reality TV Star, Dance Partner: Louis Van Amstel
Chance: Below Average. I don't she has the motivation to go far. Not mature.
Kirstie Alley, 60, 5'8'', Actress, Dance Partner: Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Chance: Good. Highly motivated. Puts in a lot of effort. She gets winded at the end of each show. Her age could be a factor slowing her down.
Mike Catherwood, Radio Host- ELIMINATED: Week One - Dance Partner: Lacey Schwimmer
Chance: Not so much as he is a already eliminated.
Petra Nemcova, 31, 5'10"Super Model, Dance Partner: Dmitry Chaplin
Chance: Confused. She fits all the attributes that I listed above. But somehow she is too lanky and her moves are not translating well.
Ralph Macchio, 49, 5'9", Actor, Dance Partner: Karina Smirnoff
Chance: Great. I love him, not because I love his movie 'My Cousin Vinny', but the effort he puts in the practice. A very likeable personality that can translate to votes with the viewers.
Romeo 21, 5'11'', Actor, Singer, Dance Partner: Chelsie Hightower
Chance: Low. Very young and immature.
Sugar Ray Leonard, 55, 5'10'', Boxer, Dance Partner: Anna Trebunsakaya
Chance: Low. He is a boxer. What can I say?
Wendy Williams, 46, 5'11'', TV and Radio Show Host, Dance Partner: Tony Dovolani
Chance: Low. Doesn't have the energy and grace on the floor.
My Pick: Ralph Macchio. But he is no Jennifer Grey. She had the most full scores ever by a contenstant, three last season when she won it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_with_the_Stars_(U.S._TV_series)
My aim in this post is to find a pattern and predict a winner for this season based on my analysis. There are several factors that should be considered when looking into who can win the show. I have excluded the irrationality and bias of audience in picking a rightful winner. Before I do the prediction I have to analyze the factors involved to be a winner.
The factors in the contestants can be categorized into two - physical and non-physical. Both are important. Physical attributes are what the contestants have coming into the show. The show from the title is a dance show. A good dancer, in my opinion, needs to have rhythm, right body language, controlled footwork and grace in the movements with the hips, hands and legs.
There are some physical attributes contributing to how viewers perceive a person to be a good dancer. A dancer height is important - one has to be not too tall or too short. Too tall, you have movements that don't translate well. The same with being short; some moves just don't translate well. The physique of the person is also important. Not too heavy or too lanky. A good dancer is most times on the lean side.
The non-physical attributes are what a contestant has as a person. The energy, stamina, patience and perseverance to put in all those painful hours in physical repetitive practice. The show involves a lot of practice by the contestants that requires energy, stamina, maturity and will power. Each week is a new style of dance and whole lot of new routines to practice and perfect them. All this has to be in a week. Some contestants come from professions that require them. Almost all athletes, at least the ones still in their game, are used to the rigor involved, just a different kind of routine. The same can be said about entertainers who are singers or dancers. Whereas contestants who are like say businessmen and politicians are not involved in this physical rigor in their daily lives. How about the age of the contestants? Too young, they are not mature enough to carry on the seriousness and too old, not strong enough to practice and keep the energy needed for that long period of time. There is a sweet spot. Of course there are always going to be exceptions to these factors. Last but not least is the instructor; all the partners of the celebrities are professional dancers, but we all know that all teachers are not good.
Here is a list of winner and runner up for the last 11 seasons with their profession, age and height.
2005 - Season 1
Kelly Monaco - Entertainer(Model, Actress), 28, 5' 3''
John O'Hurley - Actor, 50, 6-2,
Drew Lachey - Singer, 30, 5' 6"
Jerry Rice - football player, 43, 6'2'',
2006 - Season 3
Emmitt Smith - Athlete(NFL), 37,5' 9''
Mario Lopez: actor, 33, 5'11'',
2007 - Season 4
Apolo Anton Ohno - short track skater, 1982/25/5' 8''
Joey Fatone: singer, 30, 6'1''
2007 - Season 5
Helio Castroneves - Athlete(Race Car Driving), 1975/32/5' 8''
Mel B: singer, 32, 5'5''
2008 - Season 6
Kristi Yamaguchi - Athlete(Figure Skating), 36, 5' 1''
Jason Taylor - Football player, 33, 6' 6''
2008 - Season 7Brooke Burke - Entertainer(Model, TV Show Host), 37, 5' 7''
Warren Sapp - football player, 35, 6'2''
2009 - Season 8
Shawn Johnson - Athlete(Gymnastics), 17, 4'10''
Gilles Marini - Actor, 33, 6'1''
2009 - Season 9
Donny Osmond - Entertainer(Singer, Actor), 52, 5' 9"
Mýa - Singer, 30, 5' 4½"
2010 - Season 10
Nicole Scherzinger - Entertainer(Singer - Pussycat Dolls), 32, 5' 5"
Evan Lysacek - Figure Skater, 25, 6' 2''
2010 - Season 11
Jennifer Grey - Entertainer(Actress), 50, 5' 3"
Kyle Massey - Actor, 19, 5' 6"
2011 - ?
What does the list tell us?
The split is almost 50-50 between athletes and entertainers. Celebrities in their early 30s seem to have won most. The average height of the winners is 5'5''. The outliers were Shawn Johnson(4'10'') and Donny Osmond(at age 52). As the seasons are increasing the outliers in age are increasing. Last season Jennifer Grey won at the age of 50, but she fit into every other pattern I had recognized earlier. I want to say that age is important, but I am beginning to feel that some contestants can overcome this shortcomings provided they are motivated. The outliers listed earlier are all examples who are either too young(Shawn Johnson) or old(Danny Osmond).
This 12th season the contestants are my view on their chances of winning.
Chelsea Kane, 22, 5'6'', Actress, DANCE PARTNER: Mark Ballas
Chance: Average, Has great energy, but I feel she needs to show maturity.
Chris Jericho, 41, 6'0'', WWE Wrestler, Dance Partner: Cheryl Burke
Chance: Good. His advantage is she has a great instructor. Cheryl Burke is the best among the instructors.
Hines Ward, 35, 6'0'', NFL Wide Receiver, Dance Partner: Kym Johnson
Chance: Good.
Kendra Wilkinson, 25, 5'4'', Reality TV Star, Dance Partner: Louis Van Amstel
Chance: Below Average. I don't she has the motivation to go far. Not mature.
Kirstie Alley, 60, 5'8'', Actress, Dance Partner: Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Chance: Good. Highly motivated. Puts in a lot of effort. She gets winded at the end of each show. Her age could be a factor slowing her down.
Mike Catherwood, Radio Host- ELIMINATED: Week One - Dance Partner: Lacey Schwimmer
Chance: Not so much as he is a already eliminated.
Petra Nemcova, 31, 5'10"Super Model, Dance Partner: Dmitry Chaplin
Chance: Confused. She fits all the attributes that I listed above. But somehow she is too lanky and her moves are not translating well.
Ralph Macchio, 49, 5'9", Actor, Dance Partner: Karina Smirnoff
Chance: Great. I love him, not because I love his movie 'My Cousin Vinny', but the effort he puts in the practice. A very likeable personality that can translate to votes with the viewers.
Romeo 21, 5'11'', Actor, Singer, Dance Partner: Chelsie Hightower
Chance: Low. Very young and immature.
Sugar Ray Leonard, 55, 5'10'', Boxer, Dance Partner: Anna Trebunsakaya
Chance: Low. He is a boxer. What can I say?
Wendy Williams, 46, 5'11'', TV and Radio Show Host, Dance Partner: Tony Dovolani
Chance: Low. Doesn't have the energy and grace on the floor.
My Pick: Ralph Macchio. But he is no Jennifer Grey. She had the most full scores ever by a contenstant, three last season when she won it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_with_the_Stars_(U.S._TV_series)
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Another usual day
This Tuesday morning was like any other. I woke up, rushed to work, came home and slept. But something happened on this day that got me thinking. My colleague had scheduled a meeting 30 mins ahead of the normal business hours and you know how difficult it is to squeeze in 30 mins early in the day when your day is scheduled way ahead. I had made myself tentative to the meeting. The meeting however has been on the back of my mind. I woke up early and rushed out of the door forgoing the customary 'Barney hug and kiss' from my kid.
A couple blocks and a stop sign away from my home is a T junction. I take a right at this junction which becomes a commuter thoroughfare for many including me. There was a Black Lexus SUV today. I waited my turn behind the SUV. The driver side window pane was drawn down and the car appeared to be stopped. I began to get anxious while the traffic on the main path was waning and rising depending on the traffic light upstream that was located only a quarter mile away. After waiting a whole minute and half (it certainly appeared longer) I decided to overtake the car. I was surprisingly calm but anxious to go past the stopped vehicle. While I was passing the car, I saw through my car window an old lady sitting in the drivers seat. She was probably in her late sixties and appeared to be searching for something on the dashboard. Any other day I would have stopped and asked if she needed any help. Today however I did not as my mind was occupied with reaching work. The thought only came after taking a right at the intersection by which time it was already late as I had been part of the mainstream traffic and there was no turning back.
I reached the office about an hour later and was just in time for the meeting. I went through the meeting, my presence being hardly necessary, with as much interest I could muster on a really dry morning. The morning was filled with few more back to back meetings, the ones where everyone is talking. I went through the grind. Had a short break for lunch. The reminder of day was filled with calls to customers and issue resolution. Made little progress with the bigger project work while silly requests forced their way to my inbox. Before I knew the day was over. I packed and headed to my car.
I have a good 10 min walk to car from my work place. This short walk got me thinking about the day and what I had accomplished. The quick conclusion was not much. The day was just another hamster wheel. I kept thinking back to the beginning of my day. I could have spent a minute savoring the hug and kiss of my kid. I could have pulled aside and asked if the old lady needed any help. The likelihood that the old lady would ask for help was very slim - she being in a good neighborhood and driving a Lexus. If I did the right thing, I could have been just a couple minutes late to the meeting that meant nothing. Who knows, I could have gotten consecutive green lights and be early to work also. But I didn't, I was just another city dweller that had no time to help an old lady or to smell the roses.
I reached my car and switched on the radio station for my commuter news from NPR. There was nothing to lighten my mood. About a mile away from the parking lot is the interstate that takes me home. While I was waiting for the traffic signal to turn green I changed the radio from FM to CD. The traffic light turned green and couple yards later turned left to be on the ramp to join other commuters on the interstate. The CD was playing a song by 50 cent. The song played while I joined the traffic..
Go, go, go, go
Go, go, go shawty
.............................
.............................
My flow, my show brought me the doe
That bought me all my fancy things
My crib, my cars, my pools, my jewels
.............................
.............................
I joined the traffic, about an hour later I was home. As I said it was another usual day.
A couple blocks and a stop sign away from my home is a T junction. I take a right at this junction which becomes a commuter thoroughfare for many including me. There was a Black Lexus SUV today. I waited my turn behind the SUV. The driver side window pane was drawn down and the car appeared to be stopped. I began to get anxious while the traffic on the main path was waning and rising depending on the traffic light upstream that was located only a quarter mile away. After waiting a whole minute and half (it certainly appeared longer) I decided to overtake the car. I was surprisingly calm but anxious to go past the stopped vehicle. While I was passing the car, I saw through my car window an old lady sitting in the drivers seat. She was probably in her late sixties and appeared to be searching for something on the dashboard. Any other day I would have stopped and asked if she needed any help. Today however I did not as my mind was occupied with reaching work. The thought only came after taking a right at the intersection by which time it was already late as I had been part of the mainstream traffic and there was no turning back.
I reached the office about an hour later and was just in time for the meeting. I went through the meeting, my presence being hardly necessary, with as much interest I could muster on a really dry morning. The morning was filled with few more back to back meetings, the ones where everyone is talking. I went through the grind. Had a short break for lunch. The reminder of day was filled with calls to customers and issue resolution. Made little progress with the bigger project work while silly requests forced their way to my inbox. Before I knew the day was over. I packed and headed to my car.
I have a good 10 min walk to car from my work place. This short walk got me thinking about the day and what I had accomplished. The quick conclusion was not much. The day was just another hamster wheel. I kept thinking back to the beginning of my day. I could have spent a minute savoring the hug and kiss of my kid. I could have pulled aside and asked if the old lady needed any help. The likelihood that the old lady would ask for help was very slim - she being in a good neighborhood and driving a Lexus. If I did the right thing, I could have been just a couple minutes late to the meeting that meant nothing. Who knows, I could have gotten consecutive green lights and be early to work also. But I didn't, I was just another city dweller that had no time to help an old lady or to smell the roses.
I reached my car and switched on the radio station for my commuter news from NPR. There was nothing to lighten my mood. About a mile away from the parking lot is the interstate that takes me home. While I was waiting for the traffic signal to turn green I changed the radio from FM to CD. The traffic light turned green and couple yards later turned left to be on the ramp to join other commuters on the interstate. The CD was playing a song by 50 cent. The song played while I joined the traffic..
Go, go, go, go
Go, go, go shawty
.............................
.............................
My flow, my show brought me the doe
That bought me all my fancy things
My crib, my cars, my pools, my jewels
.............................
.............................
I joined the traffic, about an hour later I was home. As I said it was another usual day.
Labels:
Musing
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Wimpy Squeak of a Dragon Dad
Its been sometime since I last blogged. I have not been living under a rock and have been following what has been happening around me. For all those not living under the rock, this story by Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, on Wall Street Journal must be familiar. This story titled 'Why Chinese Mothers are Superior' has caught the web and traditional media abuzz. The article, somewhere at the beginning of it, has a disclaimer sort of .
Despite the tongue in cheek style disclaimer by the author, this article provoked a lot of resentment and vitriol from Asian(taking offense citing thier own psychological damage from asian parents) and Western(defensive and vitriolic citing how Asians cant seem to produce anything of intellectual capacity) readers, parents and non-parents alike. The title of the book 'Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mom' is enough to explain the angst experienced by these readers responding to Amy's article. The author even recieved death threats and has considerably toned down her rhetoric in her appearances in talk shows on TV and Radio. Amy Chua in her article focused on the stereotypes of Asian and Westerm Parents and enhanced it with vivid description of how she parented her kids through rigorous practice, practice and practice.
While the world has become dis-harmonized by this story, life was going on fine for me. One weekend, my wife needed a haircut and I decided to give her a ride. We couldn't leave the kid alone at home, though an Indian kid she is could very well manage things by herself. She can start and stop the rhymes on my computer, and read all the numbers from one to two on the knobs of our gas stove. About the stove, a reminder for myself - Need to buy a Safety Gate. We had to take the kid along with us on a ride to the nearest mall. I dropped off my wife at the hair salon and got myself a table by the window with a coffee(Latte) at the Panera Bread next door.
I fastened my kid safely inside a high chair and took a sip of my coffee. I, wrongly assuming that my kid would amuse herself, took out a book and began to read. There were two old ladies, probably in their sixties, sitting ahead of me on the next table by the window. Between us by the wall there was another table with two chairs leaving a narrow walk way for other customers. The couple were talking about a new arrival in their family; a girl I think. Could be a grandkid of one of them or both. Not sure what the relation was between the two ladies. A few minutes later a tall stout Caucasian guy with a scruffy goatee came with his toddler(girl) and got seated by the table next to the wall.
There is something about young parents that quickly acknowledges one another. They can gauge the happenings at home and can appreciate the little moments, good, bad and not so ugly ones, that come with the newborns and toddlers. We said hello to each other and exchanged pleasantries like the age of our kids. His daughter was 14 months and mine about 4 months older. We shared complements about our daughters and let each other have the company of our own daughters. The old ladies were enamored by his daughter and quickly started a long chat with him. I continued on with reading the book.
A sentence or two into the book, my daughter began to show her expressive, demanding side. She sought my attention by grabbing the book. I tried 'Shhh..'ing her down. It was futile. I had to close the book and give her full attention. Her attention though was onto something else; she wanted a sip of the coffee I was drinking. Privately I would have indulged my daughter's request, but in public I did not dare to give caffiene induced drinks to a toddler. So I tried to distract her with something else.
I tried to interest her into playing with a rattle - She was too old for them and instantly threw it back at me. The sound of the rattle caught the attention of the old ladies and they gave a glance at me. You know the glance that old ladies give. This made me self conscious and things got downhill from here. I tried my other weapon - A picture book. 'Not interested' my daughter said.
While I was frantically looking for other options, I was hoping that the goatee gentleman's daughter would do something that would take the attention of the judging old ladies away from me. It was not to be. The kid was very well behaved and was skillfully munching of the bread crumbs her dad was feeding her from the toasted bagel he got for himself.
My failed attempts only increased the energy of my kid to grab the Latte. I tried 'Shh...'ing her again. My thought process is if a 'Shh' does not work once, try it five, ten more times. She was not afraid. I tried to induce her into eating an organic vegetable crunchy snack while holding it high so the old ladies coud see them. I wanted to show I was a responsible parent and feed my kid only the best stuff unlike the scruffy guy who feeds her highly processed bagels. The ladies turned away. This new treat, however, did not have enough honey for my Bee.
I tried the sippy cup and she pushed it aside. I tried the pacifier and she instantly spit it out. She never had the habit of the pacifier and was not going to get into it now. I was almost begging her to stay silent and obey me.
After all my attempts at pacifying my kid were exhausted, I resorted to something my wife would never accept or do. But she wasn't around and I was desperate. I wiped the flat wooden straw clean. Removed the lid on my coffee cup. Swooped a portion of the white milk foam with the straw and wait for it ... gasp ...put it in the mouth of my precious little one. Finally I was successfully in pacifying my daughter. Yeah... take that from Indian Dad you old ladies. What? In some cultures this is construed as caving in - well to that I say Tomaatoes Tomatoes.
Within a few minutes my wife came in and I was glad to share the ordeal with her. On finishing my latte and few minutes of chat, we drove home.
In few years I could write a memoir of my experiences as a Dad. It would break all stereotypes of Asian Parents and immediately restore the world peace that was disturbed by Amy Chua. The title of my book would be - 'Wimpy Squeak of a Dragon Dad'.
I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.The gist of the article is below
First, I've noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children's self-esteem....Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. ....By contrast, I don't think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents.
Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences
...........................................................
...........................................................
Western parents try to respect their children's individuality,..... By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future.....
Despite the tongue in cheek style disclaimer by the author, this article provoked a lot of resentment and vitriol from Asian(taking offense citing thier own psychological damage from asian parents) and Western(defensive and vitriolic citing how Asians cant seem to produce anything of intellectual capacity) readers, parents and non-parents alike. The title of the book 'Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mom' is enough to explain the angst experienced by these readers responding to Amy's article. The author even recieved death threats and has considerably toned down her rhetoric in her appearances in talk shows on TV and Radio. Amy Chua in her article focused on the stereotypes of Asian and Westerm Parents and enhanced it with vivid description of how she parented her kids through rigorous practice, practice and practice.
While the world has become dis-harmonized by this story, life was going on fine for me. One weekend, my wife needed a haircut and I decided to give her a ride. We couldn't leave the kid alone at home, though an Indian kid she is could very well manage things by herself. She can start and stop the rhymes on my computer, and read all the numbers from one to two on the knobs of our gas stove. About the stove, a reminder for myself - Need to buy a Safety Gate. We had to take the kid along with us on a ride to the nearest mall. I dropped off my wife at the hair salon and got myself a table by the window with a coffee(Latte) at the Panera Bread next door.
I fastened my kid safely inside a high chair and took a sip of my coffee. I, wrongly assuming that my kid would amuse herself, took out a book and began to read. There were two old ladies, probably in their sixties, sitting ahead of me on the next table by the window. Between us by the wall there was another table with two chairs leaving a narrow walk way for other customers. The couple were talking about a new arrival in their family; a girl I think. Could be a grandkid of one of them or both. Not sure what the relation was between the two ladies. A few minutes later a tall stout Caucasian guy with a scruffy goatee came with his toddler(girl) and got seated by the table next to the wall.
There is something about young parents that quickly acknowledges one another. They can gauge the happenings at home and can appreciate the little moments, good, bad and not so ugly ones, that come with the newborns and toddlers. We said hello to each other and exchanged pleasantries like the age of our kids. His daughter was 14 months and mine about 4 months older. We shared complements about our daughters and let each other have the company of our own daughters. The old ladies were enamored by his daughter and quickly started a long chat with him. I continued on with reading the book.
A sentence or two into the book, my daughter began to show her expressive, demanding side. She sought my attention by grabbing the book. I tried 'Shhh..'ing her down. It was futile. I had to close the book and give her full attention. Her attention though was onto something else; she wanted a sip of the coffee I was drinking. Privately I would have indulged my daughter's request, but in public I did not dare to give caffiene induced drinks to a toddler. So I tried to distract her with something else.
I tried to interest her into playing with a rattle - She was too old for them and instantly threw it back at me. The sound of the rattle caught the attention of the old ladies and they gave a glance at me. You know the glance that old ladies give. This made me self conscious and things got downhill from here. I tried my other weapon - A picture book. 'Not interested' my daughter said.
While I was frantically looking for other options, I was hoping that the goatee gentleman's daughter would do something that would take the attention of the judging old ladies away from me. It was not to be. The kid was very well behaved and was skillfully munching of the bread crumbs her dad was feeding her from the toasted bagel he got for himself.
My failed attempts only increased the energy of my kid to grab the Latte. I tried 'Shh...'ing her again. My thought process is if a 'Shh' does not work once, try it five, ten more times. She was not afraid. I tried to induce her into eating an organic vegetable crunchy snack while holding it high so the old ladies coud see them. I wanted to show I was a responsible parent and feed my kid only the best stuff unlike the scruffy guy who feeds her highly processed bagels. The ladies turned away. This new treat, however, did not have enough honey for my Bee.
I tried the sippy cup and she pushed it aside. I tried the pacifier and she instantly spit it out. She never had the habit of the pacifier and was not going to get into it now. I was almost begging her to stay silent and obey me.
After all my attempts at pacifying my kid were exhausted, I resorted to something my wife would never accept or do. But she wasn't around and I was desperate. I wiped the flat wooden straw clean. Removed the lid on my coffee cup. Swooped a portion of the white milk foam with the straw and wait for it ... gasp ...put it in the mouth of my precious little one. Finally I was successfully in pacifying my daughter. Yeah... take that from Indian Dad you old ladies. What? In some cultures this is construed as caving in - well to that I say Tomaatoes Tomatoes.
Within a few minutes my wife came in and I was glad to share the ordeal with her. On finishing my latte and few minutes of chat, we drove home.
In few years I could write a memoir of my experiences as a Dad. It would break all stereotypes of Asian Parents and immediately restore the world peace that was disturbed by Amy Chua. The title of my book would be - 'Wimpy Squeak of a Dragon Dad'.
Labels:
Amy Chua,
Asian,
Indian,
New Parents
Thursday, January 6, 2011
An inconvenient truth of being green
I was an avid re-cyclist, till about two months ago. I would diligently put all that is recyclable in the recycle bins. I recycled plastic and glass bottles, plastic bags, milk and juice containers, soda cans, paper, batteries and even used electronics like cellphones. I did this for almost 4 years. And something happened that altered my behavior.
My previous residence of three years had a huge recycle container and a regular trash collector very nearby. It took care of recycling the bulky items - soda cans, plastic and glass bottles. The paper and electronics were recycled at my wife's workplace which was close by and I delegated them to her. The only item requiring a little extra effort were the thin plastic grocery bags. I took them to a grocery store nearby that had containers for recylcing them. So it worked well for me while I lived there.
About six months ago, I moved to my current location. For all the grandeur of my current rental place, it does not have any recycling containers. The residents are left to device plans for themselves to recycle stuff. The weather was fine and dandy in fall. I found a school nearby that accepted plastic and glass recyclables. The plastic bags were taken to a local grocery store or Wal-Mart. I had to take the paper, like magazines, newspaper, junk mail etc, to my work place as my wives work did not have paper recycle containers at her new job. That was extra task I had to take up on myself but I felt good about do taking the extra step.
Things took a different turn with the onset of winter. I only ventured out if I absolutely had to. Now the recycle project became a hassle. It was causing a lot of inconvenience for a morally right thing to-do with questionable good. I was emitting carbon with my extra miles driving while trying to reduce carbon footprint. I was taking an extra trip to the local school, to the local grocery store or Wal-Mart for recycling. Recycling plastic bags has been the most trouble I had with recycling. Most places including Wal-Mart are highly inconsistent in their plastic bag recycling policies. Some places do and some do not have the containers to leave your plastic bags for recycling. A place that had the recycle receptacles today may not have them the next time you visit them. This inconsistency lead me to take extra trips to multiple places just to recycle plastic bags. I was driving a ton heavy car about 5-10 miles a trip to recycle couple pounds(if at all) of plastic bags.
Similar but a slightly different picture comes into play with the remaining - glass bottles, plastic bottles and aluminium/plastic cans. Since these are bulky and I own a rental place without a backyard, they ended up piling in our small kitchen. Some like milk cartons smell really bad, if you forget to rinse off the remaining contents and thereby got me into trouble at home. My kid started playing with them and managed to open some of these bottles spilling the few drops left inside on the floor. I had to clean the floor and I hate mopping floors. Of course the hazard of my kid drinking the expired contents and putting the lids in her mouth exists. But those are trivial collateral damages for having a high moral ground. Unwanted cleaning of course is an inconvenience I cannot tolerate.
As always, this experience of mine, lead to a larger question. Is recycling worth the effort? Lets break it down.
Plastic bottles - First you have to remove the caps. The caps are usually made of different plastic and most times are not accepted for recycling. If you don't remove the lids, the odds that an employee at the recycling factory would throw the bottle away are very high. It is more work for the average Joe at the factory and he/she is not going to waste his time of separating the lids of every bottle. He is just going to throw the bottle away and it defeats the purpose of recycling. So might as well remove the lids. Then you need to rinse the bottles before recycling because the residue left can contaminate other plastic, thereby preventing your plastic from being fully recycled. You think you are done here. Well not yet; It is highly recommended that you crush the plastic bottles before you recycle for save space in the recycle bins/containers. From NPR, more on plastic recycling - For Empty Water Bottles, There's an Afterlife.
Paper - The paper recycling has it's own problems. The important being your identity. If you accidentally discarded an important document like a credit card bill or a bank statement, you risk identity theft. So you have to separate the sensitive documents from regular ones. The sensitive documents will have to be shredded and the rest could be dumped in recycle bins. Sometimes shredding alone doesn't prevent identity theft. Some smart folks could recover your shredded material and piece them together to gather information about you. So due diligence is required.
I have already listed the issues with thin plastic bags - inconsistent collection facilities.
Electronic Waste - one would think you did a good job by recycling your electronic waste. Most electronic waste recyclers will ship the waste to emerging countries like China, Pakistan, Nigeria, etc where they are valuable metal is extracted out of them. The metals are scavenged by workers with no protective equipment and breathe in high levels of toxic chemicals, which are then released into the atmosphere. Please refer to this link - After Dump, What Happens To Electronic Waste?, for more information. Not only is electronic waste hazardous, it can also cause identity theft if not cleaned up properly before recycling. In certain parts of Africa rogues can purchase unwiped hard drives for $25 - $300. Needless to say these hard-drives can contain a lifetimes worth of data - sensitive and personal.
The bigger issue however is finding a responsible recycler who does due diligence in providing safe environment for the workers and also does the recycling in a responsible manner. Currently it is not very economical for recyclers without heavy support(subsidies/tax incentives etc) from the government. Follow this link from December 2008, when everything on earth was down - Falling Prices Take Toll On Municipal Recycling. In conditions like that the economics of recycling is a not very promising. Dream of every recycling enthusiast is "Zero Waste" and getting to zero waste with recycling is only possible by making going greener more profitable - Beyond Recycling: Getting to 'Zero Waste'.
So, with all the inconveniences of recycling, I am not surprised that most folks don't recycle. Unless these inconveniences are removed, unless it becomes much more easier to recycle, no amount of promotions in the media can help increase interest in recycling among our fellow citizens. Also recycling has got to be profitable for recyclers.
As for me, I will wait out this terrible winter to get back into recycling rigorously. I have the above valid reasons to excuse myself till it is more convenient for me to recycle more.
My previous residence of three years had a huge recycle container and a regular trash collector very nearby. It took care of recycling the bulky items - soda cans, plastic and glass bottles. The paper and electronics were recycled at my wife's workplace which was close by and I delegated them to her. The only item requiring a little extra effort were the thin plastic grocery bags. I took them to a grocery store nearby that had containers for recylcing them. So it worked well for me while I lived there.
About six months ago, I moved to my current location. For all the grandeur of my current rental place, it does not have any recycling containers. The residents are left to device plans for themselves to recycle stuff. The weather was fine and dandy in fall. I found a school nearby that accepted plastic and glass recyclables. The plastic bags were taken to a local grocery store or Wal-Mart. I had to take the paper, like magazines, newspaper, junk mail etc, to my work place as my wives work did not have paper recycle containers at her new job. That was extra task I had to take up on myself but I felt good about do taking the extra step.
Things took a different turn with the onset of winter. I only ventured out if I absolutely had to. Now the recycle project became a hassle. It was causing a lot of inconvenience for a morally right thing to-do with questionable good. I was emitting carbon with my extra miles driving while trying to reduce carbon footprint. I was taking an extra trip to the local school, to the local grocery store or Wal-Mart for recycling. Recycling plastic bags has been the most trouble I had with recycling. Most places including Wal-Mart are highly inconsistent in their plastic bag recycling policies. Some places do and some do not have the containers to leave your plastic bags for recycling. A place that had the recycle receptacles today may not have them the next time you visit them. This inconsistency lead me to take extra trips to multiple places just to recycle plastic bags. I was driving a ton heavy car about 5-10 miles a trip to recycle couple pounds(if at all) of plastic bags.
Similar but a slightly different picture comes into play with the remaining - glass bottles, plastic bottles and aluminium/plastic cans. Since these are bulky and I own a rental place without a backyard, they ended up piling in our small kitchen. Some like milk cartons smell really bad, if you forget to rinse off the remaining contents and thereby got me into trouble at home. My kid started playing with them and managed to open some of these bottles spilling the few drops left inside on the floor. I had to clean the floor and I hate mopping floors. Of course the hazard of my kid drinking the expired contents and putting the lids in her mouth exists. But those are trivial collateral damages for having a high moral ground. Unwanted cleaning of course is an inconvenience I cannot tolerate.
As always, this experience of mine, lead to a larger question. Is recycling worth the effort? Lets break it down.
Plastic bottles - First you have to remove the caps. The caps are usually made of different plastic and most times are not accepted for recycling. If you don't remove the lids, the odds that an employee at the recycling factory would throw the bottle away are very high. It is more work for the average Joe at the factory and he/she is not going to waste his time of separating the lids of every bottle. He is just going to throw the bottle away and it defeats the purpose of recycling. So might as well remove the lids. Then you need to rinse the bottles before recycling because the residue left can contaminate other plastic, thereby preventing your plastic from being fully recycled. You think you are done here. Well not yet; It is highly recommended that you crush the plastic bottles before you recycle for save space in the recycle bins/containers. From NPR, more on plastic recycling - For Empty Water Bottles, There's an Afterlife.
Paper - The paper recycling has it's own problems. The important being your identity. If you accidentally discarded an important document like a credit card bill or a bank statement, you risk identity theft. So you have to separate the sensitive documents from regular ones. The sensitive documents will have to be shredded and the rest could be dumped in recycle bins. Sometimes shredding alone doesn't prevent identity theft. Some smart folks could recover your shredded material and piece them together to gather information about you. So due diligence is required.
I have already listed the issues with thin plastic bags - inconsistent collection facilities.
Electronic Waste - one would think you did a good job by recycling your electronic waste. Most electronic waste recyclers will ship the waste to emerging countries like China, Pakistan, Nigeria, etc where they are valuable metal is extracted out of them. The metals are scavenged by workers with no protective equipment and breathe in high levels of toxic chemicals, which are then released into the atmosphere. Please refer to this link - After Dump, What Happens To Electronic Waste?, for more information. Not only is electronic waste hazardous, it can also cause identity theft if not cleaned up properly before recycling. In certain parts of Africa rogues can purchase unwiped hard drives for $25 - $300. Needless to say these hard-drives can contain a lifetimes worth of data - sensitive and personal.
The bigger issue however is finding a responsible recycler who does due diligence in providing safe environment for the workers and also does the recycling in a responsible manner. Currently it is not very economical for recyclers without heavy support(subsidies/tax incentives etc) from the government. Follow this link from December 2008, when everything on earth was down - Falling Prices Take Toll On Municipal Recycling. In conditions like that the economics of recycling is a not very promising. Dream of every recycling enthusiast is "Zero Waste" and getting to zero waste with recycling is only possible by making going greener more profitable - Beyond Recycling: Getting to 'Zero Waste'.
So, with all the inconveniences of recycling, I am not surprised that most folks don't recycle. Unless these inconveniences are removed, unless it becomes much more easier to recycle, no amount of promotions in the media can help increase interest in recycling among our fellow citizens. Also recycling has got to be profitable for recyclers.
As for me, I will wait out this terrible winter to get back into recycling rigorously. I have the above valid reasons to excuse myself till it is more convenient for me to recycle more.
Labels:
Green Living,
Recycle
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Letter from my Neice to her GrandPa!
My Niece is 12 years old and during my last visit to India, I found a hand written letter from her to my Dad.
*********************************
On the outside opening fold, she wrote
--------------------------------
I want reply.
Come well soon.
:-)
Open with smile.
-------------------------------
The contents of the letter were
-------------------------------
To,
Grand Pa,
Hi Grand Pa, How are you? I hope you will be alright soon. Grandpa can I know how are you feeling now? You are the best Grandpa I had ever noticed.
For me, for us, for all your beloved, please come well soon!
From
A.XXXXXX
Note: I want reply.
*****************************
I was very surprised at the expressiveness of such a young kid.
However, the letter went unanswered.
*********************************
On the outside opening fold, she wrote
--------------------------------
I want reply.
Come well soon.
:-)
Open with smile.
-------------------------------
The contents of the letter were
-------------------------------
To,
Grand Pa,
Hi Grand Pa, How are you? I hope you will be alright soon. Grandpa can I know how are you feeling now? You are the best Grandpa I had ever noticed.
For me, for us, for all your beloved, please come well soon!
From
A.XXXXXX
Note: I want reply.
*****************************
I was very surprised at the expressiveness of such a young kid.
However, the letter went unanswered.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)