Venkat's Weblog

New Working Conditions

Great News is We are expanding our existing office. We broke the wall and invaded our neighbour...Literally

And the present working condition is a bad news for sure:

Back to form

"I am back….yes to blog and after a good run on 26th July 2009. The Quarterly ECR Run organized by Chennai Runners was a good show in itself. Though I had shuttled between cities in these past two months and have been working at a mad pace, I had promised myself that I would run the ECR Run, and run I did.

The experience in itself was different this time, I had endured cuts (due to rubbing of skin and cloth) on my chest and it was quite painful to run and had decided to stop at the 17th Km , then resolved myself to finish the half marathon and this endurance made me complete my 21KM run. The best part was I ran the last 4 Kms "Topless"

It was a memory that I would cherish especially the shower after the run....PAIN & BURN was something I experienced in excess....INXS ;)

As I mentioned before, it has been quite a hectic and busy schedule for me and am quite happy with things progressing for us at INXS and Market Simplified.

Last 6 months was a quite a good time with downpour of customers. We signed and launched optionsXpress one of the leading Options broker's in the US. We also signed Choice Trade and PFG a Futures broker. Currently we are also working with one of world's leading Forex broker's apart from POC for the largest retail broker in the US.

Now with 6 of the top 20 US brokers as our clients and we becoming the leading company in the US, I really hope we set the stage for becoming the World's leading mobility platform provider for the broking space. Keep watching this space for our growth plans.

In New York for SIFMA

Reached New York after a long tiring journey for the SIFMA conference. This time Market Simplified is exhibiting in the conference and our booth number is 1842. Theme this time is "Go mobile in 6 weeks"

Will update more with pictures from the conference.

My Blog, my RUN and my life

I have faltered in keeping up with my blogging, but have promised myself to begin with a new vigor and hope you would encourage me on my new resolution!

Well I cannot definitely keep you updated on the day to day happening for the past five months that I had not blogged, but to put it in a nutshell it has been going great guns!

Market Simplified has been touching new pinnacle at every stride. Do check us out.

Meanwhile on my running, the story is I had a great year to begin with but like every other professional runner I am recuperating from week muscles and hope to recover and run again....man getting up everyday and seeing your shoes and NOT running is the most depressing thing in my life. By the way Dr told me that this happens to all runners who take a break from running. Some chemical goes to brain when we run or do some cardio exercise and when this stops it puts you in to depression. Hope I am out of it soon. Today I have a review with the Dr and will know when I can start my run again.

So far so good, will give you a more detailed version of happening around me and REGULARLY!

Auroville Marathon- THE runner's Heaven

Auroville is a place everyone seeking peace should be in. Basic living, no hype, no big requirements and expectation, hence everything is as basic as it can be. To commute people use cycles. Everything is oriented towards being green, clean and more connected to nature.

People who organised the run were all runners themselves and most of them from Auroville. Makes a HUGE difference when runners organise a marathon and added to it was the fact that the caring people were from Auroville, the green community.

Result- GREAT GREEN TRAIL MARATHON.

Started with previous night (Sat night) a great pasta party where we could meet people from the running community. Good food to start with and sensibly organised for runners to carb load themselves.

Me and Praveen all set to run

Chennai Runners at the start line

Personally it was a great run for me, clocking 2 Hrs and 18 min. For sure I could have done better, if not for my 3rd consecutive ankle injury. Damm....not AGAIN!

Senthil (runner, biker, Motorbiker, trekker) pushed me till the 12th KM and it was real fun run with him. Then I had to slow down a bit with my stomach discomfort. Then caught up with Karthik Vijaykumar (IBMer) and did 2 or 3 kms with him. Then started pushing myself leaving Karthik behind with his knee pain(he said some IT band, which sounded like some music band). At 18th KM met with Rajesh (Satayamyte) when I was walking from 17th KM. He pushed me not to walk just push myself to the finish line running. Then started running again.

Didn't stop after that. The best run I have ever had. Amazing trail. Mongoose crossing me at 15th KM, seeing horses grazing ( thought I was in some other part of the world), smell of eucalyptus trees. Cant ask for a better place to run. Everything was JUST right for a runner.

Inspiring runners included a gentle man who was 69 years old and running his 614th marathon, oldest runner a 71 year old lady.

Oldest runner of Auroville Marathon.

Kids from Sagrolli Sunrise...we called them the Elite 5, the international runners in the making.

Thanks to Balaji for co-ordinating everything for us. The entire marathon was really well organised, the breakfast after the run is a luxury not seen any where except our own ECR runs. Icing on the cake (or legs should I say) was the salt water soaking place for your legs.

Thanks to Auroville. Thanks to Chennai Runners for supporting the Sagrolli Sunrise Project and the 5 kids. The half marathon men's 1st was one of them. And the women's 1st, 3rd and 4th was again from Sagrolli. I will give you guys the exact details about this shortly.

Great show by all Chennai Runners :)

Getting set for the Auroville Marathon

After injuries, laziness and every possible reason not to run, I am happy that there is some motivation to start running again. I really think we need some competition to keep kicking us from behind to do anything. This holds good for everything in life.

Now my motivation to run is the Auroville Marathon in Pondy. At least doing well for the past few days in terms of my training. Hope to do 21 KMS in sub 1hr 50 minutes this time. Let's see how this goes.

Facing 2009 - Return to BASICS

Touch late to wish Happy new year, still....Wishing a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2009.

Someone sent me a sms which read, "Happy, Prosperous, Healthy, Wealthy (of all the things in this recession), Tsunami free, Earth Quake free, Recession free bla bla bla..
Think of it I really feel this was the kind of prayer you would actually do, though surrounded by realities of recession and downturn. But who care about all that when we decide to be optimistic at least when we start a year.

We started a new year with some optimism and did not even see a few days of it, and a ton of bricks lands on your face in the name of "Satyam", shaking the entire country and the very software industry which has brought India to what it is today. First I didn't know how to react, to feel bad for the share holders, or feel bad for the 50 odd thousand employees (now even this number is under scanner) the support staff, like taxis, canteen etc, all the above's families or feel bad for the entire country which is in such a state where we give all the room to allow people to do such scams, stay calm and keep watching everyone from all sides attacking the citizens, immaterial of which religion or region he belongs to.

Last year we saw the biggest downfall in the financial industry triggered by PURE HUMAN GREED. Whats all this? Is this the world we want to live?

Take our own country. Is India actually the country what we see today! What happened to all our great culture, great ethics and great morals we had as a country praised in all history books we read today.

There needs to be some revolution in this country to bring a change. A change in peoples attitude, a change in peoples compassion towards other fellow citizens, change towards being clean by all means. And this change has to brought in only by the youngsters who's count is more in number today than all the old people with. We as youngsters should try and inherit all good values and omit the rotten systems and values carried through generations. Bring fresh change in this world as responsible global citizens. We all know what to do and what not to do, simple things like:

- Keep the country CLEAN of everything including corruption and litter
- Have road sense including respect for pedestrians
- be a responsible citizen in using any public property
- be good to everyone immaterial of his religion or caste and treat everyone on par
- VOTE, this is the most powerful medium of bringing about the change we all expect
- try and educate people below poverty line
- try and be healthy to take care of your family

Lets look at bringing about this change in life within ourselves first. Small changes lead to a big revolution.

Please save our world and give our next generation a better place to live in. Looking forward to a great year ahead.

My first Professional half marathon exp

Give it to Singapore for this truly AMAZING marathon they have organised. Forgive me for being over enthu about this, as this is my first Singapore marathon or professional marathon I would say.

From the time I woke up I was just telling myself that I need to complete the marathon sub 2 hours ( too much of asking for the bad training I did). Ran down the hotel stairs to get a taxi to the race point, my ankle twisted and I fell .....damm this is the third time and the same leg in the last 3 months. The pain in my left ankle made me really nervous if I could even run the marathon. But I just decided I WILL and went to the start point with Ravindhran, Madhavan and Hariharan from HYD.

Over all it was a very good run for me, Hariharan really pushed me hard all through the run, though he claimed that I was setting the trend for him ( good joke). I dont think I would have done 2:27 if not for Hariharan. Race day, ankle pain and crowd towards the end was the downside for me. I am personally happy about my performance, though could have done better.

Me at at the finish line after my race:

My Race Stats:

Truly inspired by our Harishankar, I was at the finish waiting with a video camera to shoot our Chennai runners Finish, but could get only Hari's video, he entered the finish arch and my camera battery was out.

Hari after a SUPER finish

Hari and me with our Medals

Now I am looking forward to run the full marathon in Pondy. Lets see how long this enthu stays, I only hope it stays till I train and complete the full marathon in Pondy ( of course thats the start of my marathon life)

Congrats Chennai runners for this amazing finish. Great news is every Chennai runner FINISHED the marathon. Tiger is a Tiger, Ram was Ram , Hari was HARI this time, Mohamed was Mohan......list goes on...

Chennai Runners on their way back

My focus hopefully will be to start running full marathons from now.....

Public Sector banks in the US!!

Are we all coming in to an unfortunate situation where we have to bow down and accept that the nationalization of Indian Banks a few decades back by our PM was RIGHT!

Looks like big brother is heading that direction at least for now.

Somewhere I read that "US is turning in to USSR", cause govt will be holding more than 50% of half the banks in the US is this goes for some more time. Sometimes it really amazes me when I keep reading news of how tax payers money is being flushed in to drains claiming that it is to prevent further loss to the tax payer. Its like saying "I need to give you a kick for you to forget the pain from the punch I just gave " hehe.

Now with Citi bank getting $ 20bn fresh capital from govt and a guarantee for all the TOXIC junk they hold to the tune of $306 bn.

Someone said zeros have no value, how true!

Not sure if the bail out should be done to save the economy from this fall or correction, or allow the system to cleanse itself as a free economy would do. My opinion I would say that looking at this short term's (say 2-3 years ) faith restoration may turn futile if we don't correct the fundamentals of the free economy first. Some regulations in place is a must, otherwise we are looking at the devil in the human's to act at their free will. Some people for their gains don't mind the whole world pay for it unfairly.

May be a drive towards people turning in to self managed investors is the way to go and an answer to everything, avoiding the situation where we have to depend on a few to manage big moneys.

Time will tell us whats in store for us in the coming months.

Barack Obama and The Change

Its a historic win for Barrack Obama who is bringing in a BIG change to the history of the United states and also the whole world is expecting him bring in the BIG change which is much needed. His first and the biggest task after being elected the President of the United States is to tackle the looming economic crisis. Here is Barack Obama’s version of the crisis “The fact that we are even here voting on a plan to rescue our economy from the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street and Washington is an outrage. It is an outrage to every American who works hard and pays their taxes and is doing their best every day to make a better life for themselves and their families. They are angry that Wall Street's mistakes have put their tax dollars at risk, and they should be. I am too”….’ U.S. Senator Barack Obama today made this statement on the Senate floor on the Emergency Economic Stabilization legislation (H.R. 1424)’ Wow this says a lot to the world. Shows that his priorities are well set even before he takes to his new office. According to the latest news from ‘Reuters’ “U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will not attend the global financial summit in Washington on Friday and Saturday and will not meet foreign leaders on the sidelines, aides said on Monday.” This is in keeping with his strong belief that there can be only one President at a time and goes to show the strong belief and character that the future President holds. Gentle Man I would say. Well with many speculation afloat it looks like Barack Obama's choice for Treasury post is going to be very critical for all of us. This would sum up as to how he is prepared to tackle the crisis. Well what decision that Obama takes is entirely up to him and his team but sure the world is watching and waiting for The Change