I.V.M. I.V.M. I.V.M. I.V.M.
I.V.M. Yes, I have been travelling to lovely countries such as the UAE. It's so much better and so much worse in many ways. Better because it's nice and you have to pull lots of cars.
And worse because there are so few people. I just discovered that I like India because there are a lot of people around. I recently went to South Bombay to the metals market, a place called Hinti Pazar. Oh man, you have to see the bustle there even in this way.
It is just people, people, people. We are definitely going to do this in Chile. I don't doubt about it. If you stand at one end of the other station, you don't have to use your legs, because the wave just takes you from the other east to the other west.
I went to this charming little town called Manipal which I think you might be familiar with. I have some connection with it. For those of you who don't know, Nareen studied at the Moral MIT and I'm outraged that the statue is still incomplete. I studied from 82 to 86 at Manipal.
That's a sink in focus, 82 to 86. Alex Stewart told Parkview but hey, you were in your nappies. I was playing test cricket. That was Steve Wall.
This is a lovely restaurant in Manipal called Eye of the Tiger. I'm not sure if that was established. Probably the song Eye of the Tiger wasn't written when you were in. So they have this thing called ghost wings.
Basically chicken wings marinated in butchalakia sauce. I said okay I'm going to get over here and I'm going to have. I went with another friend. We split a slate of these wings and both of them were like that at the end of it.
And I in my infinite wisdom said, you know what, I'm not done yet. So I said I want one more and I want a pasta. So I took it back to the place where I was staying working on late night presentation and I said let's devour the 8th chicken wings that they have. I was like eating them like 8 spicy as you were sweating.
Well like the boss I finished in 10-15 minutes. I was like yeah man I'm lying stomach nothing can ever happen to me. Everything was fine till about 2.30 in the morning. I woke up clutching my stomach in pain like that's never happened before.
That has never happened before. So I was like okay. I go to the bathroom. I jump up and down.
I attempt to get everything out. Nothing happens. I said okay let's drink a lot of water. So I drank a lot of water waiting for some time I pee.
Oh my. That was an experience. And then I said okay let's just go back to sleep. And then I experienced something I experienced before.
It's like lava just floating till your chest. That was amazing. And another half an hour of writhing in pain. It was almost 3 a.m.
Nobody had Puddin Haral. I don't carry Puddin Haral. But now it is. Now it is.
So guys we have a few things that we'd like to talk to you about. So by the time we're here this is going to be Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.
Why do we celebrate Christmas? It's a Mother of Jesus Christ. He's the original Messiah of peace. Because before him there were very few religions which really spoke about loving your fellow human being.
All the earlier religions were rooted in the rock of the gods. So Jesus said no. God doesn't. He's not going to wreck vengeance anymore.
He loves you. He didn't ask him for you. So it was a big change in the attitude. And that's why we.
That's one of the reasons. Even a lot of people who are not Christians do celebrate Christmas. It's a very merchandised religion in that sense. It's morphed into that.
And it brings cheer for many people. Like you said Christians and families who get to come together. But the people who celebrate the most I think are people in sales and marketing. Not so much in India but in Western countries what is called the golden quarter.
Extending from Thanksgiving all the way to the end of the end of the New Year. A quarter of all personal spends in the US happen during. It happened on Christmas. And there are still 1.9 billion Christmas cards being said in the US.
Which is a charming. In this day an example. Physical cards. Physical cards.
Bank food is what's that percent as huge in the US as it is in India. Can you imagine the number of. Merry Christmas family groups. A few other things about this whole Christmas economy that I was reading about.
You're aware of the concept of dead weight loss. A lot of gifts are exchanged and more often than not these gifts are unwanted so they become sort of white elephants. There's a lot of economic inefficiency over here because the giver of gift has spent more than what the receiver would have wanted to pay for. This whole spending season really starts with this thing called Black Friday.
There's still a little bit of confusion about the office. So all the sales just happened on the day right after Thanksgiving and it was always a Friday. So a long weekend. So shops used to encourage people to come and buy.
So there's always a lot of shopping associated with Black Friday. Before it got as merchandise as it is right now. So there always used to be a lot of traffic and this traffic really was a cause for some journalists to start calling it Black Friday. That's why the origin of Black Friday is Black.
It's because the brand is the killer. So the reason that I read recently was because of so much sales. That's a time when a lot of companies start breaking even for the year. So their books go from red to black.
So that's the most charming one. That's a nice description which you would feel confident of asking in a quiz. Of course we've all seen Black Friday videos. People just wait like hungry lions outside stores and then the gates open.
And then these guys just Russian grab toys, TVs, iPhones ripping at each other's hair. Yelling at each other. And the security guards just running. So there's a video that I saw very recently of this thing happening.
I thought oh this is probably a Black Friday video. There's a big gate and there are two security guards just holding on. Looking at them. Obviously waiting for a particular time.
Lot of people just waiting. Milling around. Milling around. Milling around gives a sense of people in top hats.
How do you do? What's for when all that. This wasn't milling around as much as a feeding frenzy waiting to break out. And then finally somebody gives a whistle a whistle.
These guys just open the gate and the guards run to the sides for their lives. The gate just crashes open. And this flock of humanity just goes and crashes around. That's what I realized.
This was a video from Kerala when one of the webcos had opened up for one of those few non-bride days that they have. Hilarious. Yeah so no. One of those you know you have.
We studied physics. We all engineers here. I saw different kind of forces. So there are strong electromagnetic forces.
There are force of gravitation. There are strong inter particle. Oh man. Van.
Van. Van. Van. Van.
Van. Van. Indians are the band Oasis. It's called you're my band that are called.
Oh well. E. By the way they are worth. But are you know this whole.
And just how American video of people just rushing to storm. P. I was apologizing to your listeners to not being an opportunity to strike with a blunt object. But.
I'm the only one who knows how to empreмотрate. And the writer also wrote the應該. И kind of trying to strike fellow Vladimir Subço Asia's Rossabub. So.
James Imclick on video yes they're trying to get scarce. Just and thinking this is a gumor for Indians who have been booking ta'tal tickets for a long vin. And then imagine a million people all waiting at their computers. from 9.55, 56, 57, 58, and then seconds, and then at 10, everything just breaks loose.
The number of tickets from Bombay to Andabar, Tathkal, goes from 75 to 2 in a matter of 3 seconds. So Black Friday, physical sales in India, I don't think there'll be too much of a problem really. But it just goes to show that the only true religion is really funny. I think, I mean, here I must say, I find it incredible that the mere lowering of price can drive people to buy things.
I don't know, I'm probably one of those weirdos who, you know, I don't want that mobile phone at 18,000 rupees, I still want it at 17,000 rupees. How can I want it all of a sudden to become that 16,500? What possible impulse could that be? I'm not going to be able to.
But women in particular, they are, I mean, I mustn't say that because in case she hears it and she'll probably break my knees. But yeah, my wife is an absolute, you know, she has these few brands that she likes, and she waits all year for the sale. And those sales, she's a member, so she gets an early warning. No, she gets an early warning, but you get the early warning.
So it's like, you know, it happens, so at 11 o'clock the store opens, she's there, and usually I tag along because I have the very important task of sort of telling, yeah, yeah, this looks nice, doesn't know. So I do the very random responses. So I have no clue what looks nice and what doesn't. So I completely have one small randomized function.
So this whole thing starts with Black Friday, and it sort of ends with this thing called Super Saturday, which is supposed to be a Saturday before Christmas, so the golden period of sales and whatnot. This is an interesting term I came across, the Christmas price index. So you're aware of the Christmas price index? Of course I'm hearing of it.
It's really cool. You heard the song, the 12 days of Christmas, my true love said to me, 12, something, 11, something, whatever, all the way. So the Christmas price index is an index that they calculate for the price of all the things in that song, which is 12, whatever, whatever, 11, whatever, all the way down to a partridge in a pear tree apparently. And they've been tracking this all the way from, so somebody, I forget which body is doing this, but they've been tracking this all the way from 1985 to 2015.
So it's very nice, on the Wikipedia page of Christmas price index, they even say where they have sourced each of these items from. I mean, they standardize the places from where, so the partridge from a particular pet store, and the pear tree from a particular place. There's something called 11 jumping lords or something, for which they contact an actor company or artist management company and ask them how much they cost and stuff like that. There's something called 10 maids or something, and which they assume is just general household type maids, so they just calculate minimum maids for that.
So they actually calculate this index, and while it's just one of those fun indexes, like you've heard of the Big Macs, the McDonald's index. You've heard of the hot waitress index? No. I'll tell you about the hot waitress index.
So they just calculated, so obviously it's gone up from whatever it was, 1 million or the way it's 55 million or whatever the number is right now, for those who are actually interested, please go to the Wikipedia page. But what it shows was the cost of goods has generally decreased, but the cost of labor has increased over the last 15, 20 odd years. Now they've been calculating this. Pretty interesting thing actually, this Christmas price index.
So hot waitress index is this. If there's a hot chick, and this is American obviously, in times of a boom economy, she would easily get a job as an office assistant or an intern or anything like that. Because, you know, face it, most employers are male, and hot chicks get in. And if the economy is really down, the manager cannot afford to hire her even though she's really hot.
So she ends up becoming a waitress. So the number of waitresses per thousand that are hot, if that number increases, that's the measure of how bad the economy is. That is the hot waitress. So if it's like a 17.3 per thousand, and last year, and now it's gone up to 25, it means your economy is that much worse.
It's a sign of the amount. And you know what the Big Mac index is? Which we don't deserve. People who visit this podcast are intelligent enough to know what the Big Mac.
It's a nice. It's like the purchase of parity. So it gives you a very good idea of how bad your economy is. So there's one more index that I was thinking about.
That is the honest politician index as an indicator of the morality of the prime. So the worse the morality is, the lower the index. But it's been a constant zero for the last seven decades now. The capital is globally or just in India?
I think Indian. I think globally, yeah. Global average also. If it's just Indian, I'm actually surprised that they managed to keep it to zero.
Yeah. It doesn't go to the other side. I'm not even thinking that. I'm thinking imaginary numbers actually.
I'm not even thinking negative. Like, root of minus one is what about this idea. So we wanted to end this little segment with a Christmas Carol. What we are celebrating over here is a few landmark decisions that have been made recently by the courts.
A famous actor, which may not be named, has been let off after clearly committing a crime. You might have heard that a lawyer earlier in the year got drunk and ran the car and killed family and now she's just got her driving license back. And of course very recently the juvenile accused in the case has been let out. Okay, here we go.
So, see you people. See you guys. And have a great vacation. Happy New Year.
We'll be back with maybe the best of 2015 and what to look forward in 2016. Very soon. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year. Happy New Year. You