William Pesek talks about India

Please note that this post is quoted from bloomberg.com where William Pesek is a News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

You can read more of his works at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aci0cIyx4d94 


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Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- China and India share a dubious honor as the global crisis wanes: They are home to two of the world’s most obvious stock bubbles.
First, credit where it’s due. Both economies have done remarkably well this year, with China zooming along at 7.9 percent and India at 6.1 percent. Considering Japan and the U.S. are shrinking 7.2 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively, we must tip our hats to officials in Beijing and New Delhi.
The same can’t be said of events in Shanghai and Mumbai, where stocks are surging, with gains of 62 percent in Shanghai and 80 percent in Mumbai this year.
Investors could merely be thinking long term. Asia’s two nascent superpowers are dripping with as much potential as they are ambition. And investors do need something to buy these days other than low-yielding government debt. Yet do the prospects for the Chinese and Indian economies justify such spectacular stock rallies? It’s doubtful.
Asset prices are being driven more by unusually low interest rates than economic fundamentals. It’s time for policy makers to mop up that liquidity. That includes Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in Washington.
Australia’s Oct. 6 move to raise rates from 3 percent to 3.25 percent has markets buzzing about which economy will be next. Those betting on South Korea were proven wrong on Oct. 9 when the central bank kept rates at a record low. Attention is turning to India, where inflation is accelerating.
India’s Predicament
India’s predicament has economist Maya Bhandari of Lombard Street Research Ltd. in London calling for steps similar to those taken by former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker in the early 1980s. “India could soon need Volcker’s policy,” she says.
Consumer prices paid by Indian farm workers jumped 12.89 percent in August from a year earlier. The inflation rate for industrial workers was 11.72 percent in the same period. Add in this year’s gain in the Mumbai Stock Exchange Sensitive Index and it’s hard to argue that 3.25 percent is an appropriate level for India’s reverse-repurchase rate.
India has too much of a good thing on its hands. Bubble troubles are cropping up in real-estate markets, too, putting central bank Governor Duvvuri Subbarao in a very difficult position. Raise rates too abruptly and the living standards of India’s 1.1 billion people take a hit. Act too timidly and Asia’s third-biggest economy overheats.
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SINGWeather ®

T's one widget that is religiously look at every now and then during the day and sometimes, the first thing when i switch on the PC. I shouldn't be doing this. Everytime I do look at it, I chide myself for being foolish.

Sometimes, it catches my attention in the newspaper column & on FM too and to a lesser extent, on the local TV news.

And I gather that a lot many of my colleagues also pay a lot of attention to it.

It's the singapore weather update.

I am not weird or demented. Neither are my colleagues. Why do we keep checking the weather? Force of habit perhaps. Me? Am a mariner by profession. Meteorology runs in my blood.

On the face of it, it would appear that I am making a mountain of a molehill.
But please bear with me folks.

Those of you who have some rudimentary knowledge of Singapore, would have already caught what I am talking about.

For the uninitiated, Singapore weather is complexingly simple. I shall lay out the full complexities bare shortly.

But first let's see the background. To be honest, I am impressed with the government being more responsible than many of my colleagues and I are .

Why? hm. The Singaporean government does not have a separate Meteorology Department. casually referred to as the Met dept in the western world. The reasons will become apparent as you read a bit further.

In the West, the Met dept boffin is idolised in many movies. He/She is depicted usually as someone who wields the whip on an enormous amount of computing power to arrive at a complex weather outlook which many of us do not understand. The lead character will then ask the Met boffin to speak in 'English'. Which then results in the translation of Metspeak to English for the viewers to digest and help move the plot ahead.

Met/Weather presenters on the western news channels are power dressed fast speaking individuals who are always talking about the corner of the world that you are least connected to / interested in.

Now, back to Singapore.

Fact 1 - There are no Met / weather bulletins /presenters on Singaoporean News.

Shocking? No!
the whole Island is so small, the weather bulletin would require only about 20 seconds to complete the nation's weather update.

Singapore's size is about 1/6th of Boston or 1/2 of London or 1/4th of Paris or 1/9th of Chicago or about 1/3rd of Hyderabad.

Fact 2 - There are only 2 seasons in singapore - Normal season & Rainy Season.
Infact even if I say there is only 1 season, I wouldn't be too far from the truth.

I can summarise singapore's annual weather through out as 'Hot & humid all through the day with chances of thundershowers towards late in the afternoon, clearing later'.
The difference between the 2 seasons is that the 'chances' of rain in the rainy season is significantly higher.

Which is why I catch myself every time I look at the weather update on my desktop. I would do well with the umbrella in my backpack that's with me all the time.

chingapoo lah

dah..am in singapore now..not new to singapore..but new to working in singapore...not new but yet so new.. and this has caused a few misconceptions to be blown to bits..

Misconception 1: I know the place.

well until i arrived here and started searching for a house that is...last I knew, Boonlay was the western most stop of the east-west line..

imagine my confusion when i see trains running to Pasir Ris and Joo Koon. had me reaching for my wife's bag. ( she picked up an MRT map before, i brushed her off).

Misconception 2 : I understand Singlish (local english)

Prior to this stint, I always breezed through Singapore.
I flew through Singapore. Used to visit my brother & bhabi..or gizmo shopping when ships stop by for fuelling..so on. a Tourist. that's what I can categorise myself until now.

Tourist's get to see the usual places, deal with the usual crowd who are used to dealing with tourists, shop at places where usually tourists go and get on taxis driven by drivers who speak tourist english.

Never before had i worked here and involved so closely with the local public. Now, i have to deal with a wide variety of people every day. people with a wide variety of schooling background. people who speak english, which a tourist will struggle understanding even the drift of the conversation.

phew.

the other day i was talking to a sales rep. and somewhere during the conversation, i asked her a question to which she replied something which sounded like " na-yeigh".
Me: can you get the new quote for me Tara?
Tara: am sorry...." na-yeigh"..but I will get it by the end of is week...

I didn't understand the "-" part of it..but my mind filed it away and worked on the rest of the sentence that Tara said. and that was sufficient data for me. so I just let it go.

I hung up the phone and closed my eyes and just went over the whole conversation again.
"nah-yeigh" was gnawing on my mind. I had to figure this out before I resume my work failing which, I knew, my mind would be working on it..ponder ponder..

examined the various possibilities of what "nah-yeigh" could be.

finally after a few minutes, it dawned on me: not yet.

Singlish is unique.
It is possible for some one to survive on Can, Cannot, maybe lah.

Misconception 3: the country is very neat through out.

My answer : "nah-yeigh". you just need to visit Little India and the by streets bordering the famous Mustafa mall to understand the truth.
Little India has its own rules that the government has to comply with. Here the citizen cannot be fined for littering. Jay walking is a norm rather than the exception. Open rubbish can be left in front of your shops. The list goes on.

Perhaps the only rule that the government enforces heartily is the parking zone rule. the government is only bothered because it is bothered about the open top tourist coach buses that ply these single file roads need to keep running. If they get stuck bcz some desi parks his toyota on the road, tourists will complain and the source of income is disturbed.

may be there will be a day when Little India looks like a part of Singapore. but for now - "na-yeigh"

The Anchor

Hm..so let me explain what my blog name, the anchor, is all about.

T dictionary provides the following meaning/s:

1. Nautical A heavy object attached to a vessel by a cable or rope and cast overboard to keep the vessel in place either by its weight or by its flukes, which grip the bottom.

2. A rigid point of support, as for securing a rope.

3. A source of security or stability.

4. Sports

a. An athlete, usually the strongest member of a team, who performs the last stage of a relay race or other competition.

b. The person at the end of a tug-of-war team.

5. An anchorperson.

I will only refer to the meaning in point Number 1. The anchor n a nautical way.

History of the anchor:

Earliest records of moorings come from Egyptian tomb furniture 2000 BC where ship models were equipped with conical stakes and papyrus ropes for mooring the vessels to the shore. Later tombs 1600 BC yielded ship models with grooved or perforated anchor stones. When the 1400 BC tomb of King Tout was opened anchor stones shaped in a T were found. Four hundred years later, about 1000 BC, Homeric poems still specify "anchors of stone."

Crooked sticks or wooden frames weighted with stone (Killicks] are known to have been in use in ancient times; and are still used in remote regions. Some of these crude anchors show the equivalent of rudimentary stocks. In 800 BC, two-armed hooks, without stocks, were cast in bronze on the island of Malta. A Sardinian scarab, 650 BC, shows a stockless two-armed anchor, which was probably the first anchor made of iron. Greek writers, 500 BC, mention "stone anchors with iron hooks". Herodotus relates that stone anchors were towed astern to steady ships coming down the Nile. A coin of 400 BC shows a two-armed stocked anchor apparently filled with lead.

Its form begins to approximate the "Admiralty" pattern of recent times. An anchor shown on a Greek coin of about 375 BC, includes the essentials of an Admiralty anchor, except palms. The anchor shown on a Syrian coin of about 312 BC, is even more modern in appearance.

By 300 BC vessels of the Athenian navy were equipped with iron anchors weighing up to 440 pounds.

Greek coins of 280 BC show anchors with rudimentary palms. An English anchor shaped from the fork of a yew-tree is ascribed to 100 BC. A Cyrene iron anchor without palms, and inscribed with the ship's name, is attributed to about 50 BC. Depictions of iron anchors of the time of King Herod, about 35 BC, show curious enlargements on the shanks believed to be carryovers from the times when cylindrical perforated stones were strung on wooden anchor-shanks, and also show palms on the arms. Sculptures on the Arch of Tiberius, about 20 AD, show similar enlargements on the shank, but no palms.

About 40 AD the ship of Emperor Caligua was equipped with a 16 foot iron tipped oaken anchor with a heavy leaden stock. This was discovered intact when Lake Nemi, near Rome was drained in 1929. At the same time there was discovered, after 1800 years submersion, a
wood-sheathed iron anchor weighing about 1000 pounds. Distinguished by the fact that it had a portable stock, which was an invaluable convenience lost to the world until "invented" again some 1700 years later and finally adopted by the Admiralty in 1854. In 88-97 AD St. Clement the fourth Pope, is said to have been thrown into the sea, tied to an anchor a method of execution not uncommon in those days. From ancient times St. Clement has been the Patron Saint of Anchorsmiths, who formerly observed his Feast Day on the 23rd of November.

Iron anchors are said to have been first forged in England (East Anglia] in 573 AD The Danish "Oseburg Anchor," about 800 A.D., had very small palms, and was constructed for use with a wooden stock.
The medieval anchor of 1066 AD as depicted in a Bayeau tapestry looks almost modern.

The Statutes of Genoa of 1441 AD required a 1500-ton ship to carry 12 iron anchors of from 1600 to 1800 pounds each. A Florentine engraving of 1450 AD shows a two-piece wooden stock of the style popular for the following 400 years.

The "Sovereign of the Seas," 1600 tons, in 1637 carried 12 anchors of 4000 pounds each. In 1690 Sir Wm. Phipps in his attack on Quebec lost a thirteen-foot anchor, (recovered in modern times]. Anchors of about 1700 had long shanks, straight arms at 50 degrees, sharp points at the crown, large diameter rings, and wooden stocks the length of the shank or longer. An anchor of this style marked "1703" was reclaimed from the wreck of a 100gun ship sunk at Sheerness, England.

In 1723 Reaumur issued in France the first public exposition of the science and art of anchor construction. In 1780 iron stocks began to emerge from the experimental stage, but the popular anchors of the period still had wooden stocks and relatively long shanks and straight arms. In 1801 and succeeding years Richard Pering of England greatly improved the quality of welds in anchors, shortened the shanks and put more curvature into the arms.

In 1804 Captain Hawke of the Royal Navy applied for an iron stocked anchor for his ship and was derided, but 1807 permitted the use of iron stocks in anchors of not over 1500 pounds. In 1818 Lieutenant Belcher of the Royal Navy introduced the tumbling fluke, later improved by Honibal and Porter. With cantpalms added by Trotman, the anchor became quite popular. From 1820 onward some hundred different types of "improved" anchors were patented in rapid succession practically all regarded today as "freaks."

In 1822 and 1823 Lowen and Lawkins experimented with tripping anchor-palms and stockless shanks, some 40 years before these features won general acceptance. In 1830 Pering adapted steam power to the operation of the heavy falling weights used in the welding of anchors. Rodgers introduced his "Patent Small-Palm Anchor and won considerable public favor. The Royal Navy now began to concede the superiority of iron stocks. By 1840 the Hawkins patent tumbling fluke stockless anchor and developed to a form approximating that of most stockless anchors of today.
By 1846 the Royal Navy completely surrendered to the iron stock and gave full sanction to the type of anchors now known as the "Admiralty" anchor. This type of anchor, also known as "Old Style" or "Kedge" is no longer used for large ships but continues in use for small boats and for moorings. Although it has great holding power in a penetrable bottom it is extremely awkward and the long stock is vulnerable to mechanical damage. When in position the upstanding arm may foul a chain or pierce the hull of a vessel. The "one" arm version is popular for moorings and is equipped with a second shackle for easier placement.

In 1852 a British Commission declared the Trotman anchor "Best". By 1859 the Mushroom type of anchor appeared as an instrument especially suited for permanent moorings. With the removal of the stock, from Mertom's anchor of 1861 and the advent of Lathem's anchor 1886 the use of stockless tumbling-fluke anchors increased rapidly. In 1866 the ball-and-socket type of stockless anchor first appeared in England.

In 1870 A. F. White stowed the stocks of "old style" anchors by sliding them down a shank designed with a quarter-twist. In 1873 C. F. Herreshoff constructed a four-piece de mountable old-style anchor for a time widely acclaimed by yachtsmen. "Freak" anchors continuously appeared; for example the Tyzack singlefluke anchor of 1877.

By 1885 Baxter was stowing his Stockless Anchors in a hawse pipe. This innovation proved of utmost importance, for from that day forward, the Stockless Anchor increased in popularity until today it is practically the only type of anchor used on ships of real size.

American styles incline to be chunky, with comparatively broad and blunt flukes. The U.S. Navy's version has flukes somewhat longer and of greater area. European anchors, in general, tend to more curvature and to smaller and sharper flukes. The stockless anchor used today, on ships of size that are likely to encounter any and all types of sea bottom, reflect the experience of mariners for the past twenty five hundred years in compromising between pure dead weight for very hard bottoms and on the other hand ability to bite and to hold well in soft bottoms. The stockless anchor is ruggedly built, will handle and stow easily and readily disengage from sea-bottoms and submerged wreckage.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the stockless anchors principally used in the British navy were Hall's improved, Byer's, and Wasteneys Smith's.

In Hall's improved anchor, the arms and crown of cast steel are in one piece, and the shank of forged steel passes up through an aperture in the crown to which it is secured by two cross bolts. Two trunnions or lugs are forged to the lower end of the shank.

In W.L. Byer's plan, the flukes and crown consist of a steel-casting secured to a forged shank by a through bolt of mild steel, the axis of which is parallel to the points of the flukes; one end of the bolt has a head, but the other is screwed and fitted with a phosphor bronze nut to allow the bolt to be withdrawn for examination. A palm is cast on each side of the crown to trip the flukes when the anchor is on the ground, and for bringing them snug against the ship's side when weighing.

Wasteneys Smith's anchor is composed of three main parts, the shank and crown which form one forging, and the two flukes or arms which are separate castings. A bolt passes through the crown of the anchor, connecting the flukes to it; to prevent the flukes working off the connecting through bolt, two smaller bolts pass though the flukes at right angles to the through bolt and are recessed half their diameter into it.

Modern day:

Present day merchant ships carry stockless anchors with double flukes. These anchors provide high holding power over a large variety of seabed types.

Typically a Very Large Crude Carrier of say about 300000 tons DWT will be equipped with an anchor weighing in the region of 25 tons.

A tanker of about 50000 tons DWT will have an anchor weighing about 9 T.

MJ

hm..i was here to speak my mind about MJ. ( i had typed Jacko and amended it to MJ - didnt suit him in his death)

Just spent a while on Facebook ( here after mentioned FB ) ..and there were 4 posts about MJ's death and the poster's feeling sorry for him ( ranging from pity to grief).
Boo! God knows when he was alive how much support and love these people gave him.. they had called him a wierdo, a no hope, what not..some had even forgotten him and some labelled him a loser. ( i did - Especially after the stunt with the baby in the balcony, mocking the reporters)..

But the past few months, I had been watching MJ's revival from the ashes with interest. I was wishing him luck and strength ( I love comebacks and underdogs- I would always support Minardi F1 or Federer on clay or Hull City FC or the Bangladesh Cricket team) ..God bless him - he did go about organising his come back with plomb. London concert tickets were sold like gold bars being given away free in these recession times.

I was hoping to watch his performance live but knew I had no hopes of getting a ticket..I was happy and felt good for him. He finally shook off all the negative stuff around him and got down to do what he does best - Singing and Moonwalking. I was ready to follow online, the last solo tour of his life.

Then came the news today morning. I gasped when i read the news headline with my first cup of tea in the morning. Thought this was a PR stunt by MJ. But nope it's true. He's gone and God only knows when someone else will be able to match his charisma.

God created MJ for that and he entertained us all his life (-) 15 years.

God Bless you MJ. I will miss your show!
Go on and moonwalk the heavens now.

@))(

Wondered what the title was about? nothing to worry about..it was meant to be 2009 and by mistake i had the shift key pressed all along as well..so 2009 bcmes @))( ..

well i was here to write abt another subject but it just struck me that this is my first post in 2009. So then came @))(.

Saudi Arabia Hosts Energy Summit

In the world of oil and politics Saudi Arabia is the King to whom the rest of the world bows. At the recently concluded energy summit the Arabian Kings graciously announced they would increase oil production to 9.7 million barrels per day to help alleviate the current high price of crude oil.

The question is did they say it with a straight face?

The answer is, of course they did.

As I said they are rich and smart.

Let's do some math. 9.7 million barrels of crude oil per day times $135 per barrel is $1,309,500,000 in revenue per day.

Now for the advanced math, $1,309,500,000 times 365 days is $477,967,500,000.

478 billion dollars per year.

At the end of the "summit" the Saudis pat the Americans, Japanese, and British on the head and send them home.

Wouldn't you, if you were rich and smart?