Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction is a myth!!! There is a lot of hue and cry about job satisfaction among working professionals.
But if one closely analyses, Job satisfaction is not just about the quality of job description but it is more on the extraneous factors like your colleagues, work culture,office facilities and suprisingly to a great extent even your personal life.

People who don't have a happy personal life are the one who gets easily upset by a bad day at office and crib about job satisfaction.Ideal job for everyone would a enjoying a sun bath in the beaches of honolulu but then best things in life has a price attached to it!!

Few people feel being on bench and drawing salary for doing nothing is the best job that one can ever have. Some other people opine having quantitative work involving intelligence gives job satisfaction. There is also a third category who think meeting people and job involving lots of travel is the best job satisfaction that one can ever have!!

Well, the point is, the definition of job satisfaction is highly subjective and it depends on the kind of person one is.Imagine a free rider as described in the first case above landing up with a highly quantitative job profile or a sales profile or vice versa.Every one is gifted with certain skill set and certain likes and dislikes.So, one must do what one enjoys doing NOT what necessarily is a better job to be happy at his job.

But people even get bored of always being happy and satisfied  which leads to job dissatisfaction. People crave for spice in their life and such content, happy but monotonous life for a long time leads ultimately to boredom!

So, you see Job satisfaction is a myth, ain't it?

Trading lessons for dummies!!

Well, I am myself quite a newbie in Trading arena but here I would like to jot down few lessons that would come handy for every "greenhorn" who is just getting started with Trading. I would just limit this post to stocks. I wouldn't describe the techniques of stock picking as these can easily be found in any of Trading books/related websites. I would focus on the behavioural aspects, most of which I have experienced in last few months of Trading.

• First and for-most don't get emotionally attached to your stocks. It's important to book profits at the right time. Blindly obeying the fundamental theorists and believing in the adage that in long term, stocks would provide the highest returns might leave you disenchanted!

• Never go for impulse purchase in case of any stocks. Impulse purchase is no less than Gambling.

• One strategy I have found quite useful is to have your own benchmark for returns. For e.g: Expecting a 15-20% return before you book profits. This is a very good strategy for short term traders. Being too greedy and delaying your profit booking might be at the cost of short term liquidity of your stocks.

• Buy low, Sell high is still the best strategy. Complicating stuff with intrinsic value and current market value comparison might expose you to the vagaries of artificial demand-supply dynamics.Advanced mathematics in fundamental analysis looks good in excel and makes you feel satisfied that you have utilised your MBA knowledge but these involve mutiple assumptions which might be flawed. Basic analysis like company fundamentals, whether the stock is underpriced or not, projects in pipeline etc is good enough to start with. For e.g. Most of the auto stocks have zoomed inspite of most of them reporting losses in last few quarters. Most of the analyst opine that there is a huge mismatch between the intrinsic value and current market of the auto stocks which is led by irrational exuberance.

• Don't put all your eggs in the same basket. Easy profit might lure you into putting all your money into stocks but remember losses are equally likely as profits in the markets and hence, its important to diversify with other asset classes.

• Invest in the industry which you understand or atleast track closely. This would help you to take an informative call and read between the lines of any news in the media.

• Lastly, to get started with Trading, it's important to start with your own money. No matter how many articles or best practices you read or get hands on numerous virtual stock trading games, without experiencing the ground realities of Trading, one can't learn and grow to be a seasoned trader over time!

Happy Trading :)

Life Post MBA

After almost 10 months of completing my MBA, I have finally taken the pain of scribbling in my blog. 

MBA was an amazing experience and life post that is infact more amazing as well as amusing!! After 2 years of grinding, MBA grads enter job market with great fan-fare but very soon feel MBA wasn't worth it because what they are made to do post MBA is sheer crap as compared to what they did prior to MBA.

Inspite of all the disillusionment associated with MBA, I feel MBA is worth every penny. MBA makes you versatile and gives the confidence and knowledge for every damn job that's on offer!

It's not that what average pay-packets MBA from good B-schools get can't be matched without MBA degree as many smart engineering folks end up earning more but the fact of the matter is doing what you are good at and what you enjoy doing is what makes one successful.

Life's post MBA is more comfortable as well as intellectually gratifying. It's not fair to seek intellectual gratification from just routine job. One has to be really lucky to land up in a job which challenges your wits every day but there is life beyond your office hours. Tracking the market, beating the analysts forecast, analysing the fundamentals of a stock , putting your hard earned money into market(however small!) and see it fetch returns makes you realise all that you have read isn't waste!! Even habits like reading a business newspaper every morning and staying abreast of latest happening is something which is by-product of MBA. We put up many small little habits which has the potential for big changes in the way we see and approach every day problems in life.

It's not that MBA produces people with only "fire in the belly" :)
It also produces people who realise that it is equally important to enjoy your life, take care of health, give time for family, do what you like doing, sleep like a corpse, work hard....instead of being single mindedly be career oriented, realising when you grow old that you haven't enjoyed your own wealth and success!!

The curious case of Year Books...!!

Yearbooks are a fairly recent phenomenon in Indian Campuses.Before yearbooks,it was slam books which ruled over all the campuses.Then yearbooks replaced them by collating the information of the entire batch in a booklet.But in today's era of social media,they have in a way have become redundant.Well,this post doesn't intent to discuss the relevance of yearbooks but rather discuss the crazy stuff that goes into it!

In my engineering yearbook,each person had to write about what his philosophy of life is and what he would remember the most about the college.People used to copy some catchy lines from internet and paste it in the yearbooks.Banal statements like "I believe in "Work hard..party harder' ...I believe in "Working hard..honestly..respecting elders..bla bla bla..Strangely such statements used to come from people who actually didn't even work hard or party..just wrote for the sake of it.The design of the yearbooks used to be very rudimentary.In our days,even a guy with basic knowledge of Photoshop used to be dubbed as "Design Guru'.Things have changed a lot these days with the popularity of SLR cameras and social media whereby more people are taking up designing.Using photoshop, people make even a street dog look royal and beautiful :)

The B-schools yearbooks are much different from that of engineering ones.The design is outsourced to some specialized firms who are into the business of designing and printing.As any other activity in business schools,even this doesn't come cheap.It does cost a bomb to design and print yearbooks for the entire batch.The designs are much fancier than the engineering ones but they aren't changed every year.Even the introductory words by the top administration of the institute is the same every year.The content of the yearbook comprises of testimonials that your batch mates write about you.These testimonials are much boring than the content of what you see in the engineering yearbooks.People write the same crap for all!

Girls have starting lines like "She is a happy-go-lucky girl spreading happiness all around her and bailing humanity out of gloom and morose"

Other banal statements would be " She is beauty with brains...don't get fooled by her tough demeanour..she is like a tender child from inside"

Guys would have statements like "He is a honest..harworking and believes in high thinking..low living...most eligible bachelor in the batch....a perfect connoisseur of good food..Tom Cruise looks bla bla bla..."

Slam books in schools did a much better job as the person filling it was much more candor about the person to whom the slam book belonged.When the stuff gets distrubuted with the entire batch,it's when it all starts get boring!

The truth is when you turn the pages of yearbook and go through the pages of your batch mates,they look all the same..like the candles burning at the altar of a church!!

Malai Kofta

Ingredients

For the Koftas:

1 cup paneer crumbled;1 tablespoon maida,a pinch of baking powder,2 green chillies chopped,

2 tablespoons coriander chopped and salt to taste

For the gravy:

4 medium tomatoes,1 cup milk,1/4 cup cream,1 tablespoon kasuri methi,1 tablespoon oil,salt to taste

To be grounded into a paste:

1/4 cup onions sliced,3 cloves garlic,2 green chillies,2 dry red chillies,2 teaspoons

coriander seeds,1 teaspoon cumin seeds(jeeera);1'' ginger piece;2 cloves(laung),1'' stick cinnamon(dalchini)

For the garnish: 2 teaspoons chopped coriander

Steps:

For the koftas:

• Mix paneer,plain flour,baking powder,chillies,coriander and salt.
• Shape it into 8 small rounds and place them on a greased microwave safe plate.Microwave on HIGH for 45 seconds and keep aside.

For the gravy:

• Pierce the tomatoes lightly with a fork,place in a microwave safe dish and microwave HIGH for 4 minutes.Remove and cool.
• Blend the tomatoes to a smooth puree and keep aside.
• In another microwave safe bowl,add the oil and the ground paste and microwave HIGH for 5 minutes,stirring once after 2.5 minutes.
• Add the tomato puree and microwave on HIGH for 5 minutes stirring once in between after 2.5 minutes.
• Add the milk,cream,kasuri methi and salt and microwave on HIGH for 2 more minutes.

How to Proceed: Just before serving,add the koftas to the gravy amd microwave on HIGh for 2 minutes.Serve hot garnished with coriander.

Some of the Pics

Source of recipe: Samsung Book of Indian Microwave Cooking by Tarla Dalal

Besan Ladoo

Besan Ladoo is an extremely simple sweet item that can be made in just a few minutes.

Please follow the steps religiously else ONLY you would be responsible for the gastronomic disaster :)

You would need:

• 1 cup besan
• 1/3 cup ghee
• 1/4 teaspoon elaichi powder
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar

Steps:

• In a microwave safe bowl,add the besan and ghee and mix well.Microwave on HIGH(750W) for 3 minutes,stirring after every 1 minute.

• Reduce the power to 70% and microwave for another minute stirring once after 30 seconds.Remove and let the mixture cool completely.

• Add the elaichi powder and sugar and mix well.

• Divide into 10 equal portions and shape it into laddoos.

You can then garnish it with pista badam or anything else as you find suitable.

Source of recipe: Samsung Book of Indian Microwave Cooking by Tarla Dalal

Newfound Hobby--Cooking

Out of terrible "Vellapanti",I have discovered a new found hobby Cooking.It's extremely easy to cook.Cooking a great dish involves 3 simple steps:

• Google for some delicious recipes like Paneer Tikka,Besan ladoo etc.
• Follow the step by step approach as outlined.Don't use your creatively in tweaking the proportion of ingredients else that would be a recipe for disaster!
• Enjoy the delicious food with your friends and family :)

In the next few blog posts,I'll share some of the mouth watering recipes of dishes that I have tried myself and have proved to be a great success :)