Sudipta's Life

For my readers outside California, Lucky is a chain of grocery stores similar to Big Bazaar in India or Tesco in the UK. I am a big fan of contests and sweepstakes from big and well-known brands. Those that promise $10,000 rewards just if you fill out a contest form or something. I know, I know - the chances are rare and there is almost no way of verifying that they indeed gave away the prizes they promised. I also know that a lot of times they are just harvesting emails and phone numbers - nobody actually gets any prize. But two things give me the motivation to fill out these sweepstakes and survey forms. One, if I am buying stuff from a store anyway, I might as well participate and give it a shot - I do not have to buy anything extra to get those sweepstakes entries. Secondly, I have my junk email ids which I feed into these websites where I don't care who they sell it to. Finally, rest assured there IS a zealous customer somewhere (other than the law enforcement) who will ch...

The US economy thrives on a singular concept: C onsumerism . The concept of spending money I don't have for things that I don't really need but still want to possess. It is contagious, addictive, and . This also creates a huge market for second-hand goods. Together, these two drive the market - more cash flowing through the system, more wealth being created, more debts (a revolving credit card debt of $10,000 is pretty common it seems) - and eventually, more goods being consumed. Therefore, if your TV or the sofa comes with a 5 year warranty, most people are happy with it. They will sell it or discard it and get a new one at the end of five years anyway. So far so good. In India, however, I grew up with the concept of buying things for the long term in practice around me everywhere. Or as Westerners are learning the concept so recently, we believe a lot in Jugaad technology - making do with limited resources to achieve equal ends. When I was in school, one of my friends sho...

It has been a while since I had any Apple products. The iPod which my former room-mate had given to me has been with me since then. And I repeat - really awesome sound quality, hard disk space, etc. but maybe I would never buy one myself. Apple fanboys in general are very defensive about their stuff. Actually, almost all PC users have told me at different times that once you switch to a Macbook, there is no going back. I, for one, never really got used to one. Maybe because I was already too steeped in the Windows interface, or even the Linux Gnome interface, or perhaps simply I missed using the middle finger (ahem ahem) for whatever reason. Another thing that constantly bugs me about the Mac OS is that the programs never really end. That bottom bar keeps getting cluttered more and more, and whenever I used the apple machine I had that gnawing feeling about some weird program eating up my precious memory and CPU cycles. I know, I know - there is enough (and literally plenty) of mem...

Minus the books in the picture (click to enlarge), the fruits of two and a half hours of career-expo-touring in the university career fair: 6 T-shirts (yes that car in the bottom left is one) 1 cap 3 USB drives 2 free iTunes track gift cards 4 yo-yos 4 dancing light balls 8 mint packs 2 digital calendars/alarm clocks 30 different good quality pens 12 highlight pens 2 cloth frisbees 2 packs of playing cards 1 pair of binoculars 2 flashlights 1 stapler 5 fighter jet stickers 8 post-it note bundles 2 photo holders 1 mouse pad 1 calculator 1 electronic pocket Sudoku Not bad , definitely. Fruits of labour, eh? :)

I was giving directions to my friend who will be arriving to join the university soon and I said, "Okay, so the cost of the prepaid ride will be $15, and then give a tip of about 3 or 4$ to the driver who drops you there". My friend was shocked... "You want me to tip someone 200 Rupees??!!". And I smiled, a real amused smile. My reply was, "Welcome to America!". The realization about the currency conversion rate had took over for the first time when I visited Scotland. One GBP was worth somewhere around 89-90 INR at that time, and therefore every single penny saved used to be worth a lot at that time. Our salaries used to be converted into Indian Rupees and deposited into our accounts in Mumbai, and our eyes would light up at the end of each month when the money came in: the figures simply spread cheer through the team! Every single pound spent for the company (be it a cab ride or some extra allowance) was accounted for, and we submitted them religiously e...

One of my friends recently returned from an onsite trip from the US to her home in India. As expected, she went home with twice the amount of luggage, carrying gifts for all and sundry. They were duly given out, bringing smiles on the faces of people who got the 'Umreeka se gift'. My friend was happy until she overheard one conversation where an old uncle of hers was commenting (in private) to his wife that my friend had probably bought the gifts in India itself. "See this Made in China stamp here? You can buy these things nowadays in any mall around here!". To say the least, she was very disappointed as she told me about this. My first reaction was, "Don't get anything for that old bugger from now on. In fact, rub the salt in and get gifts for everyone but that hag". But then I began to wonder why he had such a judgement. Perhaps the reason was that he had never seen the way foreign goods have flooded American markets here. Almost all clothes are made i...

In my last post , I mentioned that I had a different stand on the issue of the free stuff being distributed around the campus. So, here goes: There is no such thing as a free lunch in this world, and similarly, there aren't any free pizza, T-shirts, drinks or anything of that sort in the world. Every time I am going to walk around the campus here wearing a T-short that proclaims "Amazon.com" written across the chest, I am transforming myself into a billboard for the company. So while I walk around in a T-shirt that says "I'm feeling lucky" and decide to try my luck in wooing the next blonde that passes by, I may not be so lucky. Microsoft distributed some T-shirts as well, and they surprisingly had just a small "Microsoft" logo behind the head at the neck. But they really rubbed the salt in by putting a logo on the chest right above the heart that said: "ftr", and down below in fine print was written, "Free T-shirts Rock!!". Yea...