Thursday, August 31, 2006

What do you know of the world's oldest profession?

Up to now, when someone referred to the term ‘the oldest profession’, I interpreted it as you would do. For, by now I had come to know what, the user of the phrase, wanted me to understand. But, recently I came across another article which claims to challenge this. It says that ‘commodities trading’ is the one which should be holding the title. The title goes as:

“The idea of a commodity future in the true sense is not an invention of the 19th and 20th centuries but goes back over two thousand years. One of the earliest recorded types of commodity derivative was in options. Around 500 BC, a copper mining industry developed in the Mediterranean. When Phoenician traders had guaranteed a sale of material, space was limited on board the Greek ships to deliver their goods. To avoid this problem and put themselves in a position to trade, the Phoenicians bought options on vessel space to guarantee their business, at the same time allowing them to fix the price the customer would pay for the copper.”

A look at the Wikipedia entry for prostitution gives:

“Prostitution is often described as "the world's oldest profession." It has been thought prostitution (at least in the modern sense) cannot have emerged before the emergence of money, which can only have taken place after the emergence of several trades, and it has been claimed that midwifery, or perhaps gardening or teaching, are really the world's oldest professions. However, prostitution in exchange for goods or services may have been common for many thousands of years and may date to early man. Additionally, prostitution has been noted in Bonobo chimpanzee behavior based around access to food and gifts of food, and in penguins in regard to access for suitable stones for nest building. Until the age of industrialization the world was basically agrarian, so goods and services were most often obtained by barter.”

I think the claim makes sense, at least for the case of humans. If the concept of prostitution to be the oldest profession is based on the assumption that it may had been used for exchange of goods, the exchange (or trade) of these commodities were taking place. In addition, commodities were considered to be kind of important, as people were virtually agreeing to do anything for this. So, the concept of ‘commodities trading’ has to be born before the so called ‘the world's oldest profession’.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Long time no C (mostly perl and java)

For a long time the only one speaking on this blog was probably Silence. Yes silence speaks... learnt that recently from some reliable source.

Anyways, since the last time I posted (that would be long long ago, when there was a king...) , things have changed drastically. I got employed and relocated to hyderabad. Its almost two months now and I have sort of settled. Till now I am satisfied with the work I do and the work I don't do here.

So today my friend Mr. SS (also a contributor to this blog) sent me this. If you have seen the Matrix trilogy and your thoughts did not wander on similar lines, you must now consider watching only Karan Johar + Shahrukh "cult" movies, because you were easy meat (rather batteries) for the machines. Yes you are mere power resources.
I can go on and on on this topic, but I choose not to, reason being going on and on sounds like the job of Amaron batteries, and it would be amusingly ironical to do that after calling most of you easy batteries.

Moving on... the title of this post should give an idea about the work I do here. Although it may sound as a plain old coding job, but we have to have some knowledge about the financial world that our codes deal with and hence we are not totally like the "techies".

The first month we joined here was spent in training and apart from perl and java and some other technical stuff, we enjoyed foozeball to the extent of breaking down one of the two tables and one of my two thumbs... Now our cricket team has got active and I am really excited about that. Heard there is an intra company match this weekend and some corporate tournament starts the weekend after that.

Well I'll try to keep posting here and hope other contributors too start doing so more frequently.

Friday, August 25, 2006

Friday evening stock market report

As I mentioned, I have joined an investment bank. So, my posts have got to be influenced by what I do (or at least am trying to do). This post is the first in what would probably be a long series of posts related to things I do. But I would definitely try to keep it on the lighter side rather than giving you something, you are not expected to comprehend. Below was a Friday evening stock market report. (Courtesy: one of my team members)

Stock market report

Today's Stock Market Report:

Helium was up, feathers were down.

Paper was stationary.

Fluorescent tubing was dimmed in light trading.

Knives were up sharply.

Cows steered into a bull market.

Pencils lost a few points.

Hiking equipment was trailing.

Elevators rose, while escalators continued their slow decline.

Weights were up in heavy trading.

Light switches were off.

Mining equipment hit rock bottom.

Diapers remained unchanged.

Shipping lines stayed at an even keel.

The market for raisins dried up.

Coca Cola fizzled.

Caterpillar stock inched up a bit.

Sun peaked at midday.

Balloon prices were inflated.

Scott Tissue touched a new bottom.

And batteries exploded in an attempt to recharge the market.

Friday, August 04, 2006

I am back, but for how long

I have this amazing ability of persuading myself to avoid doing something which I would love to do. This sometimes happens due to consideration for others. However, at the centre of the ultimate intention is my own self. This ability which has grown into a habit has been with me for a long time now. It has grown and expanded encompassing newer and newer things and widening its scope. Sometimes, I feel like getting rid of it but after some reconciliation I realize that on the balance, I believe it to be an asset; one that has helped me a lot.

Blogging does not come under the above category; but is definitely becoming a strong contender given my performance and consistency. I posted a long time back. Then one of my colleagues Mr. SS was good enough to come up with something or else the blog would have become unheard of.

A lot has happened meanwhile. I have officially started my career with an investment bank. Definitely, not a bad to place start, some would like to say for anyone but I have my reservations about that. I have moved to Mumbai, in many ways my home town. I am back with my family; but the family I had been a part of for the last 4 years have been disintegrated, but only physically (I hope).

But even during this gap, I never stopped thinking of blogging. I was sure that one day I would return to it. I have even went as far as to note down many points on which I definitely would like to blog, ones which I came across and did not want to miss the opportunity to speak about. So, you can expect my posts to cover these points. But it will all depend on the frequency with which I blog. I cannot promise but will try to be as regular as possible.