Manoj's Review on Books

I don’t smoke but my friend Vikas is quiet a bit of an addict to smoking. Well, that’s what I thought about his smoking habit. So I asked him if he could by any chance control his intentions to smoke and thought that an obvious or an honest reply would be a ‘not really’ or just a plain ‘no’ but instead he said a ‘yes’. Surprised by his matter-of-fact like gesticulation in his ‘yes’, I simply asked him how he controls himself and his reply was quiet a stunner to me. By the way, Vikas on any given day smokes 5 to 6 cigarettes a day but on the day he wants to control himself he smokes only half of them by sharing the cigarette with his colleague. Looks like a simple way to half your cigarette consumption but please don’t jump into any conclusion so fast, our Vikas actually claims that he zeros his smoking intake that way. Now this is how he goes about his trick, on the day he wants to control his smoking habit, he calls one of his colleagues for a puff in the morning before starting their...

Countless number of times I ve wondered how a quack religious saints puts an act publicly and still ppl believe him to be the incarnation of God himself, how a politician wears a mask so very openly and still ppl believe him as a true leader towards their destiny and how even after scores and scores of ignominious scandals being exposed about their own leader, do these subordinate and subservient partisans still render their relentless support to him. Little do we know that it’s the Maculinea spirit on act, the force against truth and the most unfathomable segment in the design of nature. A butterfly of European aborigine christened as Maculinea Rebeli, in its initial phase of life called the pupa stage, which is an inactive stage of development, intermediate between larva and adulthood, produces the exact scent and mimics a similar sound that is produced by a Queen Ant to cheat an entry into the ant’s nest and the ants society at large. The worker ants treat this pupa stage caterpil...

Hi friends, I had taken my CFA level 1 exam on June 08 and thought that my insight and perceptions on level 1 could help you all prepare better for the exam. * CFA material is pretty voluminous that’s probably because it’s designed to be a 6 month course. * Schwezer material is much more precise and more than enough for level 1 * CFA material or Schwezer material alone is not enough, you will need the full length question papers and question bank. * If you are able to solve about 2000 questions, then you should feel confident on giving the exam * The examination focuses on application of the concepts. * The problems are pretty simple if u know how to solve them, there would be no lengthy or complex calculations. * There are totally 10 sections and its better if you show competence in all the sections. (i.e) score at least 50% of marks in each section. Else you may have to cover if it up in other sections. * The total time given for examination is 6 hours which is split...

In about the mid nineteenth century, in an era of quacks and inept American and European doctors, arose a problem of identifying the dead from the alive because pple where not skillful or knowledgeable enough to confirm for sure whether a person was dead or was just unconscious and they didn’t even know that cardiac arrest could be reversed. As a result, there were a lot incidents, wherein a person was buried alive not knowing that he was just unconscious and to compound the problem further, there were a few occasions when a person who was considered dead, got up and started to move just when the person was about to be buried. In one such incident, a little boy of about 10 years of age, got sick and fell unconscious, the boy didn’t get up or move even after several attempts by those quacks and inept doctors. Hence he was considered dead and all arrangements had been made by their parents to bury him the next day. The next day, with a heavy heart, the parents took their son’s body to b...

" I have told you a 108 times not to do that and why the hell did you do it. ", this was one of the most common statement of the yesteryear and i have often wondered why pple specifically pick 108 to express something or sometimes anything, i thought 100 was much more a wholesome number than 108 but little do we know the significance and profoundness of such a number, rarely do we understand that 108 is the base for everything. Now let me start my explanation with an interesting tale associated with 108. 108 Pitha { Sacred Placed } Long ago, when Lord Shiva was in deep and incessant meditation, his asceticisim was creating a great heat all over the Universe. As a result, everything that then existed were in a huge peril of being destructed, so Lord Brahma to save the Universe requested Maa Shakthi, the mother of the Universe, to use her strenght and wile to seduce Lord Shiva. Maa Shakthi was then born as Sati, the daughter of Shri Daksha. Years passed by and Sati turned out t...

A trip to Delhi can always be as exciting as one can expect it to be and that too when done with half-baked hindi it just adds a bit more spice to the fun and frolic, thats exactly what myself and appu experienced. We boarded a 4:45 pm flight to Delhi and were warmly greeted by 3 cute looking airhostess to whom we definitely would have looked like two clumsy characters for just the manner we carried ourselves (we couldnt control our excitments you see ...). I still can't forget how we gulped and munched everything the airhostess gave us in a fruitless and senseless attempt to catch their attention. The two and a half hour comical flying experience came to a halt at the Delhi airport. We immediately caught a blueline bus that took us through all the centre places of Delhi and landed us near the New Delhi metro station. With whatever hindi we knew we managed to get the directions to go to the Delhi metro station which was metro of an amazing standard, the metro has really redefined...