Testing Autopost feature...

This is a test of the autopost feature of Posterous

Posted via email from yranade's posterous

Ten Indian Stock Market Bloggers & Forums

While researching on the net for more information about the workings of the stock market and in-general for my personal knowhow came across some sites which I think would be useful for all…Do NOTE these are mentioned in no particular order…rather in the order I managed to find them.

Blogs:-

http://www.blog.happionaire.com/: The Happionaire Blog by Yogesh Chabria, author of “Invest The Happionaire Way” and “Cash The Crash”. I’m reading these books currently and do find them useful, although he does tend to get repetitive.

http://ranjanvarma.com/: Claims to be the Editor for India’s first online weekly on Personal Finance and seems to have built a Personal Finance Tracker called Rupee Manager Rupee Manager.

http://www.rupya.com/: Claims to the the first blog for Indian Financial Market

http://sagecapital.wordpress.com/: A blog that does trend analysis of Indian stocks.

http://www.thinkplaninvest.com/: A blog to plan your investments

http://blog.investraction.com/: The Indian Investor’s Blog

http://valueinvestorindia.blogspot.com/: A blog for understanding and applying value investing principles

http://www.stockmarketguide.in/: There seems to be a paid blog version as well.

http://www.beyouranalyst.com/: A blog on stock market and economic analysis

http://www.ventureintelligence.in/blog/: A blog that tracks investments and business opportunities in India

I’m sure there are many more out there, and if any of you have found them to be useful, please let me know and I will update the list.

Forums and Sites:-

http://www.vccircle.com/: A fast growing website that tracks the Indian investment economy.

http://www.traderji.com/: An online community for Indian Investors and Traders

http://www.theequitydesk.com/: Indian Equity Desk. Very informative I must say and the users seem to be specialists.

Cheers,
Yogesh Ranade

Technorati Tags: Ten Indian Stock Bloggers,Indian Stock Market,India,Stock Market,Venture Capital,Investing in India,Trading,Equity

My Current Flipkart Shopping Cart

Here are some interesting books that are currently on my flipkart shopping cart.

The Intelligent Investor: A Book Of Practical Counsel
by Benjamin Graham, Jason Zweig

Crossing The Chasm: Marketing And Selling Disruptive Products To Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore

Inside The Tornado: Strategies For Developing, Leveraging, And Surviving Hypergrowth Markets
by Geoffrey A. Moore

Living On The Fault Line
by Geoffrey Moore

Out Of The Box : Watching The Game We Love
by Harsha Bhogle

You're Hired!: How To Get That Job And Keep It Too
by Nasha Fitter

Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight
by Rujuta Diwekar

Cheers,
Yogesh Ranade

Technorati Tags: Flipkart,Books,Finance,Stocks,Benjamin Graham,Geoffrey Moore,Cricket,Harsha Bhogle,Jobs,Fitness,Rijuta Diwekar,Weight Loss

lifeMojo

Came to know about http://www.lifemojo.com from the BBC mailing list. One of the founders of this site is a member here and had mentioned about it in one of his emails.

Decided to check it out, and overall I think it’s pretty decent. It stores all the walks, runs, bike rides along with the daily diet (haven’t used this as yet) and provides graphical results.

I have been maintaining my records for over a month now and my profile is at

http://www.lifemojo.com/people/yogeshranade

Overall cycling updates:-

Total Distance Covered on Merida: 2100 Kms  approximately
Total Distance Covered on Cycle: 2666 Kms approximately

Cheers,
Yogesh Ranade

Technorati Tags: Cycling,lifeMojo,Fitness

Storytelling Science and Arvind Gupta

Was reading through an interesting write up on cycling (was recommended by a BBC member on the BBC newsgroup. The article is here
http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~amit/other/iitk/cycle.txt

Found the article to be an amazing piece of writing, and seeing that it was hosted on IIT Kanpur’s servers, found that it was a personal site by Amitabha Mukerjee. Decided to dig around and was amazed at the works of Amitabha Mukerjee who teaches Computer Science at IIT Kanpur. For more details visit

http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~amit/

Extremely interesting is the Storytelling Science page and it’s a must-read. It is an amazing set of stories, you must see it, read it and assimilate the gist of what Amitabha is saying. Read it here at http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~amit/story/index.html

I actually made the paper helicopter and the paper cup, right here in office and am thrilled..I will be showing it to my son tonight for sure. Awesome.

While reading the Play God make your ferocious Gecko! article noticed at the end that Amitabha mentions that this is from one of hundreds of projects in the book “Ten Little Fingers” by Arvind Gupta. Was intrigued, so a quick google search on Arvind Gupta took me to

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/

What an amazing site, all of Arvind Gupta’s works and numerous translations are available here. Take a look, read, assimilate and circulate the amazing collection amongst the kids near you. I for one will for sure.

Heartiest Best Wishes to Amitabha and Arvind for the untiring efforts that they might have spent on this magnificent endeavor of theirs.

Cheers,
Yogesh

Technorati Tags: Amitabha Mukerjee,Arvind Gupta,Story Telling,Science,Technology

Trip to Wayanad (Part 3)

Part 1 and Part 2 of the series can be found here.

Before retiring for the night, we decided that we did not want this trip to become hectic. Mrs. Seetha mentioned that Kuruva Island had been shut down due to the rains. So we decided to head out to Lakkidi Viewpoint, Pookote Lake  and then try and make it to Soochipara Waterfalls the next day.

Three of us had a pleasant sleep and got up refreshed to the beautiful aromas of tea and coffee plantations. We were provided with hot cups of tea and coffee by Mrs. Seetha herself in our dainty cottage.

We then got ready and then all of us then gathered for a sumptuous breakfast. The boys were having great fun together playing and jumping around the estate. Spent some time clicking photos of the estate in daylight..and then headed out towards Pookote lake with Vivek guiding us.

 

On the way, we stopped at a Tea estate and it was snap time again.

With that, we again headed out towards Lakkidi View point,  the roads were beautiful winding ones, decked with mountains of green and the blues of the sky and the small waterfalls all along. We stopped at one of the small waterfalls and Arjun had some fun time there…Lakkidi View point is essentially one of the highest locations in Wayanad and the road was a ghat.

We then headed towards Pookote Lake, along the way Vivek showed us the Chain Tree. We reached Pookote Lake by around 11:30 am and spent time boating, taking nice walks around the lake and eating munchies (ice-creams etc) Overall a great quality time with family.

We then headed out towards Vythiri Resorts, it seems it’s the oldest resort in Wayanad and earlier Wayanad was synonymous to Vythiri Resorts for the tourists. Mrs. Seetha and Vivek told us to atleast visit and if possible have lunch there as well. Off we headed to Vythiri resorts, the resort is reachable by a motorable but extremely treacherous “kaccha” road, and although it was only 3.5kms it took us almost 30 mins to reach the resort. The drive was amazing, that if fuelled my ambition to buy a 4*4 sometime in the future (when I can afford one).

Vythiri Resort is a wonderful resort nestled right in the jungle with a river flowing right through it. Has nice cottages and as per the locals is an excellent place. The main attraction being the hanging bridge. Tourists who do not stay there can even go and explore the resort and if hungry can snack up or stay for lunch. I wouldn’t recommend dinner unless you are staying there, since coming back through that route in the night won’t be recommended for the family types…but mind you it would be one helluva experience. We decided to have buffet lunch at the resort, Sachin and family decided otherwise and headed towards Kalpetta. We decided we would synch up with them at Kalpetta. In a way, we celebrated Sawani’s birthday, alone as a family with excellent lunch.

We had a leisurely walk across the resort, spent quality time and then decided to head out towards Kalpetta. Once we reached the highway, we stopped over for some local purchases and then met the gang again at Kalpetta. It was about 3/3:30 and Vivek mentioned that Soochipara falls is open only till 4:30pm and that it would take us atleast 40mins to reach there. That would give us about 30/40 mins at the falls, which we all thought wasn’t time enough, so instead we decided to head out to Banasursagar Dam. Vivek mentioned that we could do speed boating there as well. It was about 30 mins drive and what an amazing place it turned out to be.  Excellent backdrop and backwaters and the scenery was just breathtaking. Btw: we had to again travel by a jeep for about 3 kms to reach the dam.

We then waited for about 45 mins for our turn to come on the speed boat. There was only one speed boat available which was kinda a sore point with so many tourists, the tourism deptt. could have done much better. We decided to split up since we couldn’t accommodate the 9 of us in a single ride, so the 3 of us decided to go first and then the Sachin’s would go in the next round. The speed boat ride was not thrilling really, but more relaxing. We sighted a herd of elephants in the adjoining jungles, we were lucky as per the local legend, since the rides earlier to us hadn’t sighted them and amazing they were brown elephants. It was our first time to see a herd of brown elephants. Even the boatman was busy clicking snaps on his mobile (guess it was his first time as well).

 

With our turn done, we then whiled away our time in the garden nearby waiting for Sachin’s ride to complete, and we were in for some fun moments. On their round, the speed boat had an engine failure, can you believe that, all the 6 of them were stranded in the middle of the lake on a dead boat. The local authorities took their sweet time to send out another boat (atleast 50 mins) to tow them back to safety, and the other boat also faced hiccups (stalling in the middle for some moments) it was crazy and hilarious. Sachin and team must have had one thrilling experience. By about 6/6:30 we headed out back to Ente Veedu and along the way in Panamaram I bought a nice walnut cake for Sawani and reached by around 7:30 pm. We then relaxed in the hammocks and the jhoolas to be again treated for some delicious dinner by Mrs. Seetha.

The next day  was Sawani’s Birthday and Mrs. Seetha arranged an excellent spread  of breakfast. Sawani cut her birthday with cheers of Happy Birthday from all of us. It was great and many Thanks to Mrs. Seetha for making it so special.

Later Sachin and team decided to visit Soochipara falls but we decided to head back. We decided to take Mananthawadi-Kartikulam-Kutta-Nagarhole-Hunsur-Srirangapatna-Bangalore route so we could travel through Tholpetta and Nagarhole (Rajiv Gandhi National Park). We headed out at about 11 am thanking Mrs. Seetha for her wonderful hospitality and thinking about the amazing time we had there and hoping one day to go back.

The return journey through the forests were amazing and this time around we were lucky to see herds of deer and elephants along with tons and tons of monkeys. The Nagarhole forest is an amazing jungle and to travel through it was a great experience that is difficult to pen down but rather something that one has to experience.

 

We were back in Bangalore at about 6 pm on 27th July to cap up a great weekend outing.

Cheers,
Yogesh Ranade

Trip to Wayanad (Part 2)..Ente Veedu

For the earlier post refer here

While on our way from Edakkal Caves to Ente Veedu we decided to do some shopping on the way. Ente Veedu essentially is located at about 3/5 kms from Panamarama which is about 35km drive towards from the Sultan Bathery to Kalpetta (State ?) highway.  We were told by Vivek that there were Gandhigram stores spread across Wayanad from where we could purchase local flavours. So we stopped at one of the Gandhigrams and did some minor purchases.

With the items in our kitty, we decided to head towards Ente Veedu. The drive was scenic and beautiful with Vivek giving us useful information of the locals. We reached Ente Veedu by around 6:00 pm to be welcomed into a beautiful home. Mrs. Seetha wasn’t there and we were told that she had gone to attend a cultural event nearby and would be back soon. Vivek showed us the place and provided us the keys to the cottage. We just loved the place, it was cosy, yup that’s the right word, a cosy little home stay nestled within the woods, away from the humdrum of the town, totally isolated, no crowds, no rooms and multitude of guests vying for attention, it was pure bliss.

We were served some delicious local sweets ..I forget the name, but essentially very similar to the Maharashtrian Modaks that we have, just flat, comprised of coconut + jaggery covered in rice flour engrossed in leaves. It tasted fantastic along with fresh coffee from the estate.

All of us were totally relaxed and we lazed around a bit. The estate is essentially a bungalow where Mrs Seetha and her husband Mr Raj live on the ground floor and they rent out the top floor. Adjacent to it, divided by an awesome badminton and common garden area (which is huge btw) are the 2 cottages. We had decided to stay in the bamboo cottages as opposed to the concrete bungalow to experience the jungle.

Along with there’s a nice lounge and a small birds nest where a wide variety of birds thrive.

The view from the home stay overlooked the beautiful estate owned by Mrs. Seetha herself.

We lazed around the evening and relaxed as the sun went down and darkness engulfed us.

The 3 kids were having a blast, enjoying cricket, badminton, carrom, running around and then relaxing in the hammocks.

Sawani & I relaxed on the jhoola talking to each other..discussing so many things. It was awesome.

Around 7/7:30 Mrs. Seetha arrived..what a gregarious and gracious lady. With the round of introductions complete, Mrs Seetha was a host personified. She mentioned that whatever we needed, we just had to ask and it will be available. With tons of freshly brewed coffee and tea available it was the epitome of relaxation and pampering. At about 9pm we were served with traditional Keralite cuisine for dinner. Later after dinner Mrs Seetha took us around the house, introducing her to the family and explaining how her 3 kids stay away from them and they manage the home stay. Felt wonderful and was amazed to see the resolve of the woman who oversaw the entire operations of the estate and the homestay along with her doting husband.

Later in the night we came back to our cottage and retired for the night. Felt great and all of us dozed silently and peacefully with the forest noises putting us to sleep. Day 1 done and over…

Day 2 and Day 3 coming soon..

For photos visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/yranade/WayanadTrip#

Cheers,
Yogesh Ranade

Trip to Wayanad (Part 1)

Yeah, this one was long overdue.

Last month on the 25/26/27th of July we decided to go off on a family vacation. Sawani’s birthday falls on the 27th of July and we have decided to spend time away from home every year on her birthday. So about a week before, we started scouting for nearby places of interest. Typically being a weekend getaway, we didn’t want the place to be beyond 300kms of distance from Bangalore (sometimes it just gets too tiring travelling and quite a many times we felt more tired than relaxed after a weekend off). So we looked up Holiday IQ and based on umpteen discussions between the 3 of us we shortlisted 2 places…It was a toss up between Kabini River Lodge or Wayanad. Both the places looked equally inviting. But being July and with the rains in full flow, we came to know that Kabini river was flowing to the brim, and due to the rains chances of seeing wild animals in the awesome Nagarhole National park were bleak. Actually, it was raining in Kerala as well…so we were kind of thinking whether the trip would be a go. Anyways, my scouting out for a resort continued unabated. While going through Holiday IQ for places to stay in Wayanad I remembered the last time on our Coorg trip we had thought that it would be wonderful to stay in a Homestay and experience native hospitality of that particular region rather than live in a hotel/resort, so decided to look for an appropriate Home stay. Lo and behold, among the homestay’s that had the maximum of ratings turned out to be a nice place called Ente Veedu. Interestingly in Malayalam it means “My own home”. I called up Ente Veedu and a lady by the name Mrs. Seetha answered my phone and explained the facilities at Ente Veedu. She was so gracious and honest and mentioned that it was raining heavily in Wayanad and it would not be a good idea to visit at this time. We were disappointed but she mentioned that, we could do the booking, and she would call us if the weather cleared up…else she would refund the entire amount. Now where does one get this kind of service, in the extremely commercial world of today.  Still we were a bit unsure, and guess what, over the next couple of days, she mentioned that there was no need to make any upfront payment and we could just drive over. She would reserve a Bamboo Cottage (as per our preference) for us. It was amazing…So the destination decided was Wayanad, decked in the beautiful Western Ghats and we would be staying at Ente Veedu.

Meanwhile I also googled for routes and the best way to travel to Wayanad. Interestingly came across this site…http://www.hampi.in/bangalore-to-wayanad-by-road.shtml which gave amazing details into travelling by road to Wayanad from Bangalore, that I decided to follow the directions albeit with a little change. Instead of going by route A and coming back by Route C, as suggested, I decided it would be better to go by Route C and come back by Route A, reason being I was aware of Route C, right upto Gundlupet since it falls on the way to Ooty and having done Ooty a couple of times I was comfortable with the route. That way we would be covering 4 forests…(yeah I am aware it’s a single monolithic chain divided only by the official state demarcations)…on the way to Wayanad it would be Bandipur (Karnataka) and Muthanga (Kerala) and on the way back it would be Tholpetty (Kerala) and Nagarhole (Karnataka)…how about that eh…

So with all the planning done we started at around 6:30 am in the morning on the 25th towards Wayanad…via Mysore. The weather was perfect and it was great being in the car with family…chatting, laughing, joking…with Sawani and Arjun…

In no time (9 am actually) we reached Chennapatna, a small town before Mysore famous for it’s wooden toys.  We stopped for breakfast at the famous Kamat hotel on SH17 and had some delicious Idly and Wada. Sawani then indulged in some shopping in the nearby store and off we headed towards Mysore.

We crossed Mysore at about 10/10:30ish and headed towards Ooty on NH212. We rang up Mrs. Seetha and she mentioned that since we would reach Wayanad (Sultan Bathery) by around 12/12:30, it maybe better for us to visit Edakkal Caves on the way and then reach Ente Veedu by the evening, since she was not sure of the rains in the later part of the day. She mentioned, her guide would be available for us from Sultan Bathery and then he would take us to Edakkal caves. We agreed and decided we would have lunch at Sultan Batthery and then head out as planned. In the interim, our journey continued, the weather was nice and misty and we reached Gundlupet by about 11 am. From there we had to leave the road to Ooty and head towards Maddur and Sultan Bathery via the Bandipur/Muthanga forests. The journey through the forests was amazing with all of us silent in our cars, car moving slowly, looking out for animal sightings..unfortunately we were able to sight only monkeys…lot’s and lot’s of monkeys…but no deer/tiger/elephants. Oh well, the journey was awesome through the dense forests and we were thrilled. We reached Sultan Bathery at around 12:30/1:00 am and headed straight to the hotel recommended by Mrs Seetha for a sumptuous lunch of Chicken, Meals and fried fish ( I forget the name of the hotel…so much for penning down the travelogue after nearly a month..was it Jubilee..I think it was Jubilee)…We also met Vivek there, our guide from Ente Veedu..Being in Kerala we had to attack the fish, it was some local catch, fried in coconut oil..didn’t taste all that great really but we were famished and we must have chomped down a ton of rice (extrapolation personified here…but you get the picture) with amazing variety of veggies.

We were then told by Vivek, that there was another family also visiting from Bangalore to Ente Veedu and they will also be joining us for the visit to Edakkal caves. It was a family of 6 (2 kids, a couple and their parents), from Bangalore, and essentially we travelled and did the sight-seeing together. It was fun. One thing to note about Wayanad is that the places of interest are quite a distance from each other, min: 25/30 kms. Off we headed to Edakkal caves, what an amazing ride it was through treacherous mountainous pathways…The last 2 kms we had to go in a Jeep (Mahindra) since our cars would not do the climb, all 9 of us + vivek alongwith the driver were packed into a Jeep for the 2 km arduous climb to the base of the mountain. These caves are located within a mountain range, and we had to trek for about 30-45 mins to get to them. It was awesome, Arjun had a blast and he climbed the steep rocky mountains with elan. It was heartening to see him climb using the 3 point rock climbing technique at this age and without any special training whatsoever. Arjun made friends with the 2 kids and all the 3 of us were having a blast. It was one helluva climb. The caves were awesome.

 

Vivek then asked Sachin and I, if we were further interested to climb. The caves are midway through the climb, and the remaining climb was steep and dangerous for the kids, so our better halves decided to rest and soak in the view and the 3 of us (Sachin, Vivek and I) ascended further. It was one helluva climb and all of us were soaked with sweat. At one of the places, we actually had to climb a huge rock with the support of a rope. It was amazing. At about 3/4 the climb Vivek took us to an amazing spot and we decided to head back. Vivek was asking us if we wanted to climb further but we decided against that and started our descent back.

We travelled back to our cars, in the jeep and then headed towards Ente Veedu, it was 5pm and we were all famished to the core after the amazing workout and were looking forward to be welcomed by Mrs Seetha and Ente Veedu…

For photos visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/yranade/WayanadTrip#

More in Part 2

Cheers,
Yogesh Ranade