The Reserve Bank of India has increased the repo rate to 7.5% now, a move that most financial analysts say they have been expecting. This is now the highest repo rate for the past 4 years. The reverse repo however is still at 6%. A move that is meant to curb inflation that seems to be increasing exponentially, I am glad they have finally started to try and curb the credit growth.
The most hit by inflation this year have been the poor and middle-class, the prices of foodstuff - raw and processed has an increase of almost 30% now which means that basic needs of people have begun to get affected.
GDP growth rate expected is around 9 - 9.5% and if inflation is not controlled, this is going to be tough to achieve.
On another front, import duties are being reduced to tackle price rise here. Hopefully, we should see some sense coming in.
S & P has finally finally finally (finally repeated nth times, you get the idea) increased the rating of India to investment grade (BBB/A-3) which has been long due.
The things deterring S & P have been fiscal deficit (which is one of the highest in the world, we must conceed that) and regulations.
However, with India becoming a more open market, capital markets booming, its the in thing now to invest here. Fingers crossed for a great year for the capital markets and a slight dip in real estate prices so that I can afford that flat I want to buy soon.
Wednesday, January 31
Tuesday, January 30
Appraisal time
Its that time of the year when the noisiest folk tend to lower their voices, the work-shy people start turning up at the office on time and the nerds begin to work on their communication skills - its appraisal time in short.
Since our firm became a part of this MNC, the yearly appraisals are done based on Jan - Dec performances and the bonuses are paid with your January salary. However, any salary raise will be effective only from April, the start of the Indian financial year.
Being the only person in my division to work away from Mumbai, I knew that my appraisal would be last and thankfully, just when I thought of ditching patience and calling my boss and demanding an appraisal immediately, he called me to check if I was available for a 30 minute discussion. Was I ever???
So the head of my sub-division (product development and implementation) and the director of my division logged into conference calls and after a long introduction to the appraisal system at the office, time that I used to jot down important points that I should remember to bring out during the call, we got down to business and all I can say is, it was beautiful!!!
My director called me a "role model" which was flattering, though they would not tell me what that meant in commercial terms (aka salary raise) which I tried to wriggle out of them.
They agreed with my points and I got a great appraisal, so April, come soon and shower me with some good news. Only thing is, you do not know the hike they are going to give you till March end, so thats something that I need to watch out for.
On the visa front, I finally got the call that my courier has reached Mumbai safe and sound, which means that my passport is safe now.
Since our firm became a part of this MNC, the yearly appraisals are done based on Jan - Dec performances and the bonuses are paid with your January salary. However, any salary raise will be effective only from April, the start of the Indian financial year.
Being the only person in my division to work away from Mumbai, I knew that my appraisal would be last and thankfully, just when I thought of ditching patience and calling my boss and demanding an appraisal immediately, he called me to check if I was available for a 30 minute discussion. Was I ever???
So the head of my sub-division (product development and implementation) and the director of my division logged into conference calls and after a long introduction to the appraisal system at the office, time that I used to jot down important points that I should remember to bring out during the call, we got down to business and all I can say is, it was beautiful!!!
My director called me a "role model" which was flattering, though they would not tell me what that meant in commercial terms (aka salary raise) which I tried to wriggle out of them.
They agreed with my points and I got a great appraisal, so April, come soon and shower me with some good news. Only thing is, you do not know the hike they are going to give you till March end, so thats something that I need to watch out for.
On the visa front, I finally got the call that my courier has reached Mumbai safe and sound, which means that my passport is safe now.
Monday, January 29
D - for a dreadful and dreary day
I got the news on Friday evening that I needed to get to South Korea by 6th Feb for a meeting. Now the visa process takes about four working days and since I need to start on the 5th from here to reach Seoul on the 6th, I was beginning to get a tad worried.
To top it, the administrative staff at the Chennai office refuses to get involved in the process- “Oh madam, that is all Bombay work. If you want we can arrange for forex for you”.
So after frantic calls to my Mumbai office, I finally sweet talked an old acquaintance in the admin department into handling the process for me. Getting the documents to the Mumbai office however would be cutting it too close, so I decided to check if I could not do it from Chennai itself.
The required documentation also included an original bank statement for the past six months and this stumped me. For some time now, I have been relying just on emails sent by my bank to my account and so called up to confirm if I could just take a print out of these statements and submit them. Unfortunately, the person replying was not too enthusiastic about the idea and asked me to go to the nearest branch and get the statements from them. I called up customer service of my bank and put in a request for my statements, which I was told would cost me about Rs 28 per page, so the total of 10 pages would cost me 280 bucks and of course that was exclusive of the service taxes they would charge! Being an emergency, I asked them to go ahead and after registering, the agent confirmed delivery of the statements would be in 8 working days!!!
No arguments about it being a life or death emergency would sway them and I decided to go to the branch directly.
I logged on to the net and the Tamil Nadu government website provided a list of consulates in Chennai and their addresses and I was happy to read that there was a South Korean Consulate in Chennai and that was on Kothari road in Nungambakkam, which is pretty close to my office.
I called Harry and asked him to help me out and he, being my knight in shining armour for perhaps the zillionth time, came to my office by around 12 in the afternoon. We first went into the bank for the statement, waited there for about 30 minutes while I enjoyed the novel experience of actually entering a bank for business, all my contact with the bank being through ATMs, telephone calls and the internet. The statement was printed at the same cost, Rs 28 per page and I was wondering whether they did that to try and get back the depreciation cost of the printer, paper definitely does not cost that much!!!
Once I got the statement, I called up the customer service to cancel the request I had made earlier and was refused on the grounds that they had already started processing the request!!!
(So now I pay twice for the same information and that is information on the cash flows in my account!!! No wonder the private banks are showing such neat profits, they make their money in all these small ways.)
We then proceeded to Kothari road and started to search for the consulate. The odd thing about Chennai is that you keep coming across house/plot numbers that seem to change, when you ask for number 28, they ask you – the old number or the new one? and its impossible to find out the place you need unless you have a contact number.
Since we did not find any number, we went ahead asking security guards of different buildings and not surprisingly, we came up with zilch. This meant that I needed to get things done from Mumbai then.
It was 3 by then and I still needed to track my tax returns. I came home and began to rummage through my files and they had disappeared too….finally had to call human resources and ask them to fax me the copy they had.
Then returned to office at around 5:30 and then sent my courier to Mumbai with my original passport in it…keeping my fingers crossed since I know that is like the worst thing to do, but desperate times call for desperate measures!!
.
To top it, the administrative staff at the Chennai office refuses to get involved in the process- “Oh madam, that is all Bombay work. If you want we can arrange for forex for you”.
So after frantic calls to my Mumbai office, I finally sweet talked an old acquaintance in the admin department into handling the process for me. Getting the documents to the Mumbai office however would be cutting it too close, so I decided to check if I could not do it from Chennai itself.
The required documentation also included an original bank statement for the past six months and this stumped me. For some time now, I have been relying just on emails sent by my bank to my account and so called up to confirm if I could just take a print out of these statements and submit them. Unfortunately, the person replying was not too enthusiastic about the idea and asked me to go to the nearest branch and get the statements from them. I called up customer service of my bank and put in a request for my statements, which I was told would cost me about Rs 28 per page, so the total of 10 pages would cost me 280 bucks and of course that was exclusive of the service taxes they would charge! Being an emergency, I asked them to go ahead and after registering, the agent confirmed delivery of the statements would be in 8 working days!!!
No arguments about it being a life or death emergency would sway them and I decided to go to the branch directly.
I logged on to the net and the Tamil Nadu government website provided a list of consulates in Chennai and their addresses and I was happy to read that there was a South Korean Consulate in Chennai and that was on Kothari road in Nungambakkam, which is pretty close to my office.
I called Harry and asked him to help me out and he, being my knight in shining armour for perhaps the zillionth time, came to my office by around 12 in the afternoon. We first went into the bank for the statement, waited there for about 30 minutes while I enjoyed the novel experience of actually entering a bank for business, all my contact with the bank being through ATMs, telephone calls and the internet. The statement was printed at the same cost, Rs 28 per page and I was wondering whether they did that to try and get back the depreciation cost of the printer, paper definitely does not cost that much!!!
Once I got the statement, I called up the customer service to cancel the request I had made earlier and was refused on the grounds that they had already started processing the request!!!
(So now I pay twice for the same information and that is information on the cash flows in my account!!! No wonder the private banks are showing such neat profits, they make their money in all these small ways.)
We then proceeded to Kothari road and started to search for the consulate. The odd thing about Chennai is that you keep coming across house/plot numbers that seem to change, when you ask for number 28, they ask you – the old number or the new one? and its impossible to find out the place you need unless you have a contact number.
Since we did not find any number, we went ahead asking security guards of different buildings and not surprisingly, we came up with zilch. This meant that I needed to get things done from Mumbai then.
It was 3 by then and I still needed to track my tax returns. I came home and began to rummage through my files and they had disappeared too….finally had to call human resources and ask them to fax me the copy they had.
Then returned to office at around 5:30 and then sent my courier to Mumbai with my original passport in it…keeping my fingers crossed since I know that is like the worst thing to do, but desperate times call for desperate measures!!
.
Tuesday, January 16
The Book Quest
The entire day today was spent on what I call the "Quest for the Holy Book".
My sister had asked us to send across a book on Shirdi Sai Baba called Satcharita and we thought that would be fairly easy to track down. So went to Landmark at Spencer Plaza in the morning around 11:45 only to be told that they do not stock it.
We then went to this shop called "Giri Brothers" in Mylapore, which is supposedly well-known for all articles connected with prayers - they stock all the Pooja CDs, books, items such as the Agarbati (the incense stick), unfortunately they only had the book in Tamil.
From there, to R A Puram to Sundaram, which is the temple for Satya Sai Baba, but they informed us that they would be opening their book stall only when Bhajans took place (usually on Thursdays and Sundays).
We then went to the Ramakrishna Mutt in Mylapore and I decided to check the Universal Temple that they have built there. The architecture is great and we entered the temple and sat down to meditate the way the others in the temple were. Its calm and peaceful and you can feel your worries being washed away in that atmosphere.
Unfortunately they too do not stock the book and we heard about the book fair that was being held at Poonamalee High Road, about an hour's drive from there, so went ahead to that place. It was packed like the entire Chennai crowd was there, I never knew there were such avid booklovers in Chennai.
Unfortunately most of the books were in Tamil and the English ones were not worth a glance, moreover, the crowd was beginning to psyche us out, so we decided to call it a day and got back home at around 9 PM. By then, mum, dad and myself were all too bushed to be able to move even an inch, so we called up a few people and thankfully a family friend had the book, so we finally got that.
Seriously, I never thought a book could ever bring such agony and frustration in a single day!!!
My sister had asked us to send across a book on Shirdi Sai Baba called Satcharita and we thought that would be fairly easy to track down. So went to Landmark at Spencer Plaza in the morning around 11:45 only to be told that they do not stock it.
We then went to this shop called "Giri Brothers" in Mylapore, which is supposedly well-known for all articles connected with prayers - they stock all the Pooja CDs, books, items such as the Agarbati (the incense stick), unfortunately they only had the book in Tamil.
From there, to R A Puram to Sundaram, which is the temple for Satya Sai Baba, but they informed us that they would be opening their book stall only when Bhajans took place (usually on Thursdays and Sundays).
We then went to the Ramakrishna Mutt in Mylapore and I decided to check the Universal Temple that they have built there. The architecture is great and we entered the temple and sat down to meditate the way the others in the temple were. Its calm and peaceful and you can feel your worries being washed away in that atmosphere.
Unfortunately they too do not stock the book and we heard about the book fair that was being held at Poonamalee High Road, about an hour's drive from there, so went ahead to that place. It was packed like the entire Chennai crowd was there, I never knew there were such avid booklovers in Chennai.
Unfortunately most of the books were in Tamil and the English ones were not worth a glance, moreover, the crowd was beginning to psyche us out, so we decided to call it a day and got back home at around 9 PM. By then, mum, dad and myself were all too bushed to be able to move even an inch, so we called up a few people and thankfully a family friend had the book, so we finally got that.
Seriously, I never thought a book could ever bring such agony and frustration in a single day!!!
Pongal
Its the beginning of the harvest season in Tamil Nadu and this is celebrated with the four day festival of Pongal.
Which means offices are closed for atleast two days and I get some time off!!!
Yay!!!
Which means offices are closed for atleast two days and I get some time off!!!
Yay!!!
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