Dec 14 2006 evening - Strong wind and thunder storms hit Seattle area quite hard with winds in the range of 60-80 mph in some areas. This was accompanied with heavy rain which dumped over an inch of rain in the Seattle downtown. The famous floating bridge across lake washington ( Hwy 520) was closed for traffic and kind of "dismantled"around 10:30PM. It was already announced that thousands of people were without power. From my apartment balcony, we could tell its not just a passing storm but something very big. The trees swered left to right and some of the branches from the near by tree kept banging our balcony. Air would whistle through tiny gaps in the sliding balcony door and also through the plug points!!. With no power interruption, we had no difficulty going to bed
Dec 15 2006 (Friday) 7 AM: I receive a call from my colleague who says there is no power at his place since last evening. He asked me if I am going to the office, for which I replied yes. Only when we started driving to the office did we realize the damage done by the previous night's storm. Lot of trees and signposts were uprooted and most of the signal lights were without power. What normally takes 15 minutes drive took us more than an hour. We could see extensive damage in the bellevue area where some of the trees had landed on the houses, cars or simply blocked the arterial roads. Our office was without power and we headed back to "work from home". By then we knew most of our colleagues were without power at their respective homes. One of my friends who had power at his home setup a kind of base camp and accomodated as many of our friends as possible and provided food through out the day. According to TV reports, more than a million homes were without power!!
Dec 16 2006: Power is back in most of my friends' houses and on the road, things are limping back to normal. Still there are lot of people out there without power!!.
This reminds me of the power cuts back home in India. Over there, life without power cuts is incomplete. Power cuts provide employment to lot of businesses like electricity company( to cut and restore power), generator mfrs, candle mfrs, theives, auto repair shops ( accidents occuring due to darkness!!), etc. In India, common people have lots of fall back systems for cooking like gas, kerosene stoves, fire wood, etc. So even if there is no power for a day, things will move on. The electricity supply companies manage the power "cuts" so well, I have not seen any major protests or demonstrations in this regard. May be the people are very patient or they understand the reality and the constraints quite well.
Dec 15, 2006
Dec 2, 2006
Bangalore real estate boom
When I was a kid, it was quite common to see "money plants" in many houses, so even we had one. We took good care of it because people told us amount of money we make ( or get) is related to the health of this plant and number of leaves in it. So more leaves, more money!! I wish money making was so simple!
Well, this came up as I reading about the latest real estate trends in Bangalore & Hyderabad. Yes, these days one need not to have a physical "money plant". Instead invest in an apartment or a lot(site) in Bangalore or Hyderabad. If the purchased property has all the paper work in place, approved by necessary authorities then you will laugh all the way to the bank. Add to that, if the property is in the "IT Belt", then you will most likely hit a jackpot within 2 years of buying!!. Now what is "IT Belt"? I don't know the standard definition, however here is my version;
a)Any locality which has at least one or more major IT companies OR if at least 20 - 30 % of its residents work in IT OR
b) if any major IT company's building is visible from this locality OR
c) if you have to pass through this place to get to any 2 major IT companies
Going by the above, 50-60% of Bangalore and Hyderabad belong to "IT Belt". This belt is very flexible and increases its size everyday. The earlier Bangalore "IT Belt" consisted the strip between whitefield, marathhalli, the outer ring road and HSR. But now the boundaries are far stretched to include Koramangala, Madivala, BTM Layout, Kanakapura Road, Bannerghatta Road, etc
Some times the real estate appreciation in the IT Belt is so high you really wonder when exactly the prices go up? During the day or the night time?All said and done, how far will the real estate boom continue? Pundits predict a downfall in near future based on so many factors like excess supply of apartments, increase in interest rates and dependency on IT market. At least for now, nobody is trusting these predictions because both the owners and prospective buyers of the properties want the prices to go up!!
Well, this came up as I reading about the latest real estate trends in Bangalore & Hyderabad. Yes, these days one need not to have a physical "money plant". Instead invest in an apartment or a lot(site) in Bangalore or Hyderabad. If the purchased property has all the paper work in place, approved by necessary authorities then you will laugh all the way to the bank. Add to that, if the property is in the "IT Belt", then you will most likely hit a jackpot within 2 years of buying!!. Now what is "IT Belt"? I don't know the standard definition, however here is my version;
a)Any locality which has at least one or more major IT companies OR if at least 20 - 30 % of its residents work in IT OR
b) if any major IT company's building is visible from this locality OR
c) if you have to pass through this place to get to any 2 major IT companies
Going by the above, 50-60% of Bangalore and Hyderabad belong to "IT Belt". This belt is very flexible and increases its size everyday. The earlier Bangalore "IT Belt" consisted the strip between whitefield, marathhalli, the outer ring road and HSR. But now the boundaries are far stretched to include Koramangala, Madivala, BTM Layout, Kanakapura Road, Bannerghatta Road, etc
Some times the real estate appreciation in the IT Belt is so high you really wonder when exactly the prices go up? During the day or the night time?All said and done, how far will the real estate boom continue? Pundits predict a downfall in near future based on so many factors like excess supply of apartments, increase in interest rates and dependency on IT market. At least for now, nobody is trusting these predictions because both the owners and prospective buyers of the properties want the prices to go up!!
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