My experiences in the United States of America

For the last few months I have been focusing on running a mile as fast as possible. I have gradually progressed from running a mile at around 15 minutes in Jun 2016 to under 10 mins by December 2016. The last few days have been phenomenal. On Friday, Feb 24,2017, I ran a mile in 9 minutes and 19 seconds (my fastest till that point in time). However, today (Mar 1, 2017), I surprised myself by running under 9 minutes for the first time, 8 minutes 59 seconds to be exact. Let's see where I can go with this in the coming months.

My grandfather had this remarkable habit of coming out with a couple of lines (in Tamil) on any interesting situation. Since he is no longer there and my memory is suspect, I thought it would be prudent to capture some of these below. This is not legendary writing but is very nostalgic to me whenever I think about it. So here goes: This one is on my dad -  Sekar paiyai singaro, kooti padipadhil oyyaro, saylai ondru katti vittaal sogosu pennu avan aavaann This one was during a street play - addi podi gabbu, na vangi tharai sabbu(soap), nee nalla pottu roobbu This one was on an acquaintance - Scooter sathum kaitadendru sootrum mootrum naan parthen, surundi irrundhu orru ammal shooting saivadhu naan ariyain  Another random one (has no meaning) -  ayyo passi mani oosii idhu pakkha mavarasi, kassuku onnu duthuku rendu kadakdhari mootai.

Let me begin by saying I'm not a financial advisor. However, these are some tips that worked for me and I see no reason why it will not work for you. The first rule is to invest money that you will not need in the short term i.e., at a minimum within the next one year. Instead of investing in individual shares, please invest in an equity mutual fund. Depending upon your risk propensity, you can go for a large cap fund (lower risk - lower returns), multi cap fund or a mid /small cap fund(higher risk - higher returns). The top performing funds in each of these categories are listed in websites such as moneycontrol and valueresearch. Investing in a mutual fund diversifies the risk as your investment is spread across shares of a number of companies. Also, the mutual fund is managed by a professional fund manager. Never time the market. A systematic way of creating wealth is to invest systematically on a periodical basis preferably monthly. This is commonly known as Systematic In...

My wife and I had been talking about this for the last few months but somehow were not able to visit one. Every time we thought about it something else took precedence. We finally decided to put an end to this dilly dallying and what better occasion to visit a musical than my wife's birthday. We decided to go for Matilda as we thought it would be appropriate for our daughter as well ( not really!!). The show was at 7 pm on a weekday. It was a brisk 15 minute walk from the New York Penn Station to the Schubert theatre.  We grabbed some grub on the way. Did not want to take a chance with my daughter 's hunger pangs in the middle of the show(as you might have guessed these things tend to kick in at the most inconvenient of times). We had booked the balcony ticket- seemed the most reasonable at 50 bucks a seat. However must warn you that it is not the place for anyone suffering from vertigo. This was the most optimum utilisation of space that I had ever seen. There was so little ...