Buthruu Wakes Up From Slumber

This is rather a very slow rate of publishing my views. The last post was in 2009. This doesn't mean, in anyway that I am void of ideas. In fact a lot has been going on in my head. Not sure why I didn't post any of my favorite topics.

Well, what has been going on in the last couple of years?

BUTHRUU goes SPIRITUAL.

I have been reading a lot about spirituality in the past couple of years. I think I got a gist of what a/any religion is for. What people are after and so on.
I haven't been following any particular religion/guru as such, just reading anything that grabs my attention and the occasional follow-up thinking. One thing is for sure, I strictly believe in a "One GOD" theory now, more now than ever before. According to me, these many religions we have, have their own definitions of what GOD is, but all they are describing are the same. They are all talking about the same. As for the various lifestyles recommended by these religions, the various lifestyles are analogous to various paths to a mountain top, the mountain top being "UNION with GOD". It doesn't matter which path an individual chooses, all the paths lead to the same goal. It's a different matter that the individual might not know what the goal is as in the the mountain top not being visible from where he is, but believe me everybody is going there, it's just a matter of time as to when he reaches there. The choices are immense, and every choice has it's own pro's and con's. For example one might choose the path of least resistance, going along a winding road (slower) and another might not mind climbing steep rocks (faster) to reach the summit. It's the choice of the individual, either knowingly or unknowingly, as to what path he chooses. The individual's choice is most likely based on where he is at, and what he sees ahead of him, but that's his choice.

Well, as you can see this is an endless subject. To be precise, this is a simple subject with endless explanations.

In the coming posts I will try to share all the important revelations I had along my path.

Till then, don't look for happiness, just be.

Hookworms

I came across an interesting topic today, yes, hookworms as mentioned in the subject.

What could possibly be interesting about it? Get this, hookworms could be the cure for Asthma, allergies and any kind of auto-immune disease ( MS, Type 1 Diabetes etc).

Since I grew up in semi rural India, I happened to be a host for this worm as well, read not anymore. The general theory is that, proper sanitation techniques caused this worm to be eliminated from the guts of millions of people. Guess what, once this worm, which co-habitated human being guts for millions of years, got eliminated, we have the intro to all these auto immune diseases.

The science of this is that, human immunity has been strong for a long time now, and the body attacks any foreign/local item viciously if it considers it be dangerous. Apparently the body thinks oak, dust and in some cases our own nervous system to be dangerous(MS). The result of this thinking (of the body) is typically an allergy attack, which most of us deal with in one form or the other. Enter Hookworms: as with any other foreign body lodged in our bodies, our immune system correctly identifies this "parasite" as an alien intruder and tries to attack it. But, the hookworm, apparently has a work around, it releases a hormone, leading the attacking agents of our body into believing that, that hookworm is not so dangerous. The released hormone seems to be the key here.

For people who are infected with hookworms, they have this hormone being produced in the body constantly by their friends in the gut, which helps the immune system to chill off and less allergies. There have been studies saying hookworm infected folks are 50% less likely to get an allergy attack. And I definitely did not come across any body in our village, who had asthma.

It all started around a lunch conversation at work which led to this podcast on Radio Lab. The interesting part is between 30 and 45 mins into the podcast.

This got me thinking, should I get my daughter, who BTW has serious asthma. But, I am not brave enough at this point, I would wait for some more research to be done.

Trend of companies going private

As part of my financial/Business interests I read various business related news websites, or atleast I try to. The most prominent item in this mornings news was that a group of Private Investors were buying SanAntonio based ClearChannel (the radio behemoth) for about $18B and making it private.

So, started the though process :
* Is this a trend that is catching up?
* Is this Industry specific, like just media?
* How does one company, going private, affect the overall market?
* What, if a significant number, or all, of the public companies go private?

I don't know if it's just me, but I have seen a growing number of companies going private and most of the buyout's I have been reading about are for large companies. I would vote for "Yes, there is a trend"

Is this Industry specific? Could be, there is a lot of consolidation in the media industry, there are major changes in the fundamentals of the industry. Like the good old Newspaper going out of favor for all these new Web-Based news delivery systems.

Does it affect the overall market? I may be too naive and too young in the market, but I think it does affect the market. The way I look at it: This company which was public, was an asset which people could invest in. Now that this company is private, we have one less asset to invest in. So there is an extra $18B, in cash, in the market. And who would sit on this ton of cash, NOBODY, they would eventually reinvest in the market, buying shares of other companies and driving the values up. This is good in the sense that the value of the market as a whole would go up, but more so in anticipation by folks like me, than the actual demand.

What if all the companies go private? This is one thing that bothers me the most, the reason being, I am an individual investor and the only way of investing I know, other than real-estate, is to invest in publicly traded companies, so, where would I invest my money to beat inflation? I know this sounds like a joke, and it may very well be, but there is a very remote possibility that this could happen, probably once in the next 200 years or so, but it is definitely a possibility right?

Some of you might be thinking, this guy is crazy, he needs to get a life. So, to oblige your very rational thought, I am gonna go and try to live a little. So Long.

The explorer mindset

I am just starting out with blogging (excuse me if there is a better term), I guess my "explorer mindset" is just starting to wake up on this front.

A little about me: A computer programmer by profession but I do occasionally weer into other skills/trades, not for money though. The other trades/interests I have would be personal finance, how to get rich, how to be known and last but not the least, photography.

Of course it's every ones dream to be a millionare, but how to get to that point has eluded quite a few. Those sitting on this side of the fence always wonder as to how to go abt achieving it and those sitting on the other side mostly think it's easy, they had inborn talent etc. etc.

You guessed it right, this blog will mostly have my musings on what I expressed above: how to be rich, manage personal finances and photography

So long until my next post.