Raju Alluri’s Personal Blog

It is a virtual food festival in Hyderabad for the last one week. With all the Ganesha idols in every nook and corner of the city, there are prasadams distributed everywhere. The precursor to visiting the Ganesha idol in our apartment complex is to have dinner and go. Otherwise, you are fed with so much prasadam that you have to skip dinner. Really nice food.

Another food event in the city is Haleem. During this month, you get haleem till midnight in most parts of the city. I already had a couple of late night Haleem servings in the last few days.

Good times!

For the last few months, our car CD player stopped recognizing most of the CDs. In the last few weeks it went to a point where it is used as a radio receiver only. With lot of good audio albums around (LoveAajKal, Magadheera, Josh, …), it is not worth listening to radio during the long drives. So the CD receiver in the car is changed after about 7 years. Given the fact that most audio tracks are being released in MP3 format now, I felt it is worth going with a USB/MP3/CD player than a plain MP3/CD player. The choice is very simple on the lower end: Sonly Xplod series. So I went to the store and got this Sony CDX-GT484US installed in our car. The previous player being a Sony one, installation is nothing but a 5 minute task. Testing and configuring the player took lot more time though.

After coming home, quickly compiled songs on one of the old 2GB pendrives and I am all set to go. The track seek times on the USB drives are a lot better than the seek times on CD (understandably, no disc rotations  involved). It is a lot quieter operation too.

Last week is too hectic and there is no much time to update the blog. Thursday morning saw heavy rains in Hyderabad that forced me to carpool and work from home after hours. Rest of the week faced high temperatures during daytime and heavy clouds in the evenings, but no much rain in the area.

Heavy rains on Monday evening caused severe traffic jams and power outages in most parts of the city. Luckily, both myself and Latha reached home early enough. It is a nightmare situation for many folks who are stuck in traffic.

The day started a little lazy today. Headed to Kompally and watched Magadheera Telugu movie. After the movie, ate typical lunch (Mamus burgers for kids and assorted Indian/Chinese for others) in the multiplex itself. Then we headed to Splendid Aparna Palm Meadows, to check the construction progress of the house. The keys are not with the onsite guys, so couldn’t get into the villa. Visited Neelu’s villa and then headed to Neel’s house. Met a few cousins there. Then we met Rajkumar’s family and reached home. Here are the pictures from the day.

Anniversary2009

Saturday is a busy one, with lot of social occasions and people to visit. Met Arvind to say bon-voyage, attended RamC’s house warming puja, visited A.S. Raju’s home for lunch and attended the engagement function of Suman Varma & Preeti. Met a lot of relatives from East Godavari district on the day.

The first few hours of the day exhausted me with the kind of driving involved. Here is a quick peek of how my car’s tracking in the first 3 hours of my outing would be:

From Screenshots01

We at NetEnrich India celebrated Independence Day bash on Friday, the 14th. We planned the day as a traditional/ethnic wear day. The participation is really good. We did a nice “NetEnrich Family” photo session towards the end of the day. The pictures in this album cover people who can join the session. (Note that we run 24×7x365 desks for mission critical devices and applications, so people come to work in different shifts. Some people had to stay back in office to man the desks. Also there are a few people who couldn’t attend the session due to urgent meetings.)

WorkID2009Bash

Narayan’s presence increased the upbeat mood of the people. It is a nice festive atmosphere at work today.

BTW, there is an award for best traditionally dressed  male and I bagged it. Rupa won the female category. Thank you team, for nominating me.Thanks for all your participation.

It is a rush hour at home this morning. I need to get to work early, that too in traditional dress (on the Eve of India’s Independence Day). Spurthi has a basketball match at school. So both of us got ready by 6.30am. Here are the father and the daughter:

From Misc

France and Germany reported surprising recovery from the recession during the second quarter. Read here and here. This recovery also almost pulled the euro-zone into non-negative territory.

India Inc., is considering new tax laws from 2011. These would be “written from scratch” tax laws that change the current slab systems as well as few other deep rooted notions of taxation. Most of the proposed changes appear to be helping the individuals and the economy, except for one: taking out the benefit on interest paid on home loan (when the home is not rented.) This step severely impacts the housing market as well as the wealth planning of individuals. In the absence of appealing retirement plans, (like 401-k plans in US) people in India consider investment on home as a major component of their retirement plan. If someone gets a tax break for 1.5L every year over a period of 10 years, then that person is getting a decent tax break on 15 lakhs of rupees (close to 30K USD). That is a huge saving from a retirement planning standpoint. If the tax break is taken out, then it will discourage that sort of wealth planning.

BTW, I am looking forward to the new tax laws for the following reasons:

• Incremental tax percentages for higher slabs rather than applying the tax percentage for the entire income. For example, if you earn more than 5 lakhs today, your entire income is taxed at 30%. In future, only the amout higher than 10 lakhs will be charged at 30%.
• Ability to perpetually forward losses to future years. This will help investments in markets.