More India

I'm enjoying this trip. I could never live here, but I'm having a good time visiting. The food especially is amazing, especially as I am a vegetarian. My stomach was feeling a little uncomfortable yesterday, but is fine today. It seems like I'm coping ok with the Indian food!

The drive to work is so interesting too. It's about 15 minutes and I drive past some lots of construction, some slums, hotels, malls, all sorts - and with the cars, rick shaws, motorbikes, bicycles, people walking, cows, dogs, chickens (I'm disappointed I haven't seen any monkeys yet), so it is entertaining to watch. in the past 3 days I've seen 3 car accidents and a couple incidents of road rage (2 rick shaw drivers were going at each other up this morning).

There are so many people working here in the office. There is a man to make me tea, a man to walk around and pick up the cups, a man who sweeps, a man who washes the windows, a man who brings the buffet lunch - everyone has a job!

This weekend I'm driving 4 hours to the Taj Mahal.

Day 1 in New Delhi

It's been an interesting day. Nothing particularly eye opening, although after being prepped by everyone about how shocking the conditions are, I have spent the entire day in the office and not seen much up close.

I arrived on the plane from Boston (with a 7 hour stopover in Frankfurt) early this morning, about 2am. My first impression? Delhi smells like matches. It's the sulfur in the air or something.

The drive to work was interesting, but not too crazy. There were lots of people on the sides of the roads, some driving, some walking, some biking. The construction of buildings looks strange too. Everyone has these branches as scaffolding. it doesn't look that safe - although I'm sure it works fine. I'm going to try and get a photo on the way home tonight. There is no blue sky here, it's constantly white, I assume from pollution. I'm interested to see if it's the same out at the Taj Mahal.

I'm apparently going to work from about 10 until about 8pm at night, for the only reason that if you leave earlier you'll be stuck in traffic for an hour. Everyone seems to have the same schedule. The office is nice though. It's on the 9th floor, and I enjoy looking out at the houses around it - I wouldn't call them slums - although I wouldn't call it nice either. There are lots of bodies and people walking around doing stuff. There are a group of about 5-6 people digging a HUGE trench outside by hand. Next to them are these large 2-3 meter congrete pipes. I wonder if they will install them by hand too (or get in a crane).

For lunch we all had buffet indian food which is delivered to the office each day. It cost 45 rupies, which is about $1US. It was pretty good. I'm waiting to see now if I get "Delhi-Belly"...

Ironically through all of this, today is my 6th year aniversary of arriving in the states. And I'm in India.

Adventures on the Stockmarket

At the end of 2008, I entered the stock market. I decided to do this in Ocotober, my savings were starting to grow, and I decided I could afford to put some in a higher risk investment. I initially wanted to put in $10,000, and I planned to split it between 4 stocks, but the time investment in researching stocks eventually forced me to scale back. I put $5000 in one stock, RIMM, more commonly known as as the smartphone "Blackberry".

My reasoning was that RIMM was way underpriced, before the stockmarket crash in September it was as high as $145 a share. With the new Blackberry Storm being released at the end of November - the Storm is a direct iPhone competitor, and with so many Enterprise Blackberry users - I suspected the Storm would be a big hit. RIMM was floating around the $47/48 price when I started to watch it. I decided to wait until it was around $45 to buy. Finally, on the 11th November, it hit $45, and I bought 110 shares at $44.74 a share. My plan was to sell at $50. I'd seen it do this several times while waiting for it to drop to $45, so I was confident.

The stock proceeded to drop to $39. I was in the for the long haul, I wasn't expecting a quick buck, and I still wasn't worried, even though I'd lost $500. The Storm released and the stock slowly crept back up. Finally, in mid-Jan, 60 days later, it hit my target of $50, and I sold for $50.34, a neat little profit of ~$600.

Of course two weeks later it shot up to $60 a share, but I had made a good return, 12% over 60 days. No need to be greedy. As I type this it has dropped down to $47 again. If it drops back to my buy level, I will buy again.

I've included a chart of the stock price over the last 6 months.

Dunkin' Donuts

I'd definitely eat more donuts if there weren't always lines...