Welcome to Scameville!

This is the my eighth speech for toastmasters. The objective was to improve vocal variety. I delivered this speech as a role play. The audience were supposed to be attending new hire orientation for a fictitious company called Scamville Corp. And the speech itself is in conversation mode, because it allowed me to use different voice pitch/accent/volume for each character. My previous toastmasters speech is here.

Fellow scammers, Welcome to scamville! After completing your BS and MS degrees, Bachelor and Master of Scamming, that is, you have made the wisest decision to join to join the best scamming company in the world. Here, at this company, not only we train the world’s best scammers in the latest in scamming, but also encourage them to discover new innovations. Today, I will show you some basic techniques that you can use everyday. The best way to explain those techniques is by using examples.

Lets say, you have zeroed in on your target. You will need his phone number and address. Here is how your conversation might go.

“Good morning Mr X. I am calling from Scamville Incentives. I want to let you know that you have won a $200 gift card at Walmart.”

“But I never filled any raffle or purchased a lottery ticket”

“Mr X, we have our booths in every mall in your neighborhood. Are you sure this is not you or your wife? All you need to do is, to verify some basic information and then we will send you the gift card”

“Well, we do have a mall nearby and my wife does visit it quite often. What information do I need to verify”

“Your name is X Y Z?”

“Yes, it is.”

“And you live at 123 Main Street, Los Angeles, CA?”

“Yes, that is correct”

“And, you number is 555-123-4567?”

“Yes, that is also correct”

“That is all I needed to verify. Now, to cover shipping, you need to send a check for $1.50. Or, to expedite it, you can tell me your banking information and I will send it to you right away”

“Sure, here you go”

So, my friends, you see, how easy it is to get information from people?. There are two very important things that we can learn from this example. The first lesson is, make an offer that is not too good to be true, but too good to refuse. As opposed to some of our Nigerian competitors, we don’t offer millions of dollars, instead just a few hundreds.

The second lesson we can learn from this example is, do some research about your target to get some basic information about them. And then, use it to convince them of your authenticity so that they become ready to give more important information, such as bank account number to you. After this session, I will give you a tour of our state of the art lab where you can use this information to generate forged checks.

Now, lets take another example. You see someone putting up an ad on craigslist multiple times for something he is not able to sell. Your conversation, possibly over email, might go like this.

“Hi, I am interested in buying your antique painting circa 2004 that you have listed on craigslist. Do you still have it?”

“Sure, when do you want to come to see it?”

“I am absolutely in love with this painting. I don’t need to see it. And at just $2000, it is a bargain. I can send someone to pick it up. I will send you a check in advance. Will you be able to hand it over to my delivery person?”

“Definitely! As long as I receive the check in advance”

“I will send a check for $3000 to you. $2000 is for the painting and $1000 is for shipping. My delivery person only takes cash. Will you be able to give the remaining $1000 cash to him?”

“No problem.”

This example shows how to use our third rule: Capitalize on what your target wants to get and hasn’t been successful after few attempts.

Just to summarize, the three techniques we learned today are, first, Make an offer that is too good to refuse, not too good to be true. Second, do some research about your target and use it to get more important information from them. And third, choose your target wisely, someone who is desperate. I hope you will use these and many more techniques in your everyday work and have a long and rewarding career!

 

A Russian Fort in California

While on a recent trip to Bodega Bay, CA, we happened to visit this place called Fort Ross. It is in the middle of nowhere on highway 1 (about 15 miles north of a town called Jenner). It turns out that it was a Fort build by the Russians in the 17th century. California was under Spanish rule at that time and the Russians, traveling from Alaska, set up this post to trade with them. Its interesting how two imperial powers crossed half way across the globe. In the end, the Russians sold the fort to a local person. Wonder what would have happened during the subsequent Mexican-American war had the Russians decided to keep the fort it and defend it against the Americans.

Another interesting observation is that, the fort is nothing more than an area surrounded by four walls, with just 2 observation towers on opposite corners and just a few buildings. The walls are neither too high nor too strong to thwart any enemy, but still the fort was considered unconquerable. I can’t help but contrast this fort with huge and magnificent forts back home in India. Rajasthan practically has a fort in every small city and even Alwar has a fairly impressive fort. I never gave much thought to it, but compared to Fort Ross, it definitely has much longer history and architectural importance attached to it.

Check out some of the pictures of Fort Ross that I had taken during the trip.

 

Creative ways to balance California budget

This is the my fifth speech for toastmasters. I delivered this speech as part of humorous speech contest for our club on September 2, 2009. I did not win the first prize but did receive many positive comments. My previous toastmasters speech is here.

California recently announced that its lawmakers have finally agreed on a deal to close a $26B budget gap after several rounds of negotiations that resulted in tax hikes and across the board spending cuts. Does anyone else think that $26B is so small that all that drama wasn’t necessary? I certainly feel that way. When I started thinking about it, I came up with so many creative ideas to balance the budget. I will present some of those ideas today for you to judge for yourself

My first idea is to play the too-big-to-fail card. Just like the big banks have already shown it successfully, claim that you are too big to fail and if you fail, the whole political system will fail, there will be chaos everywhere and so federal government must assist you in the bigger interest of the society. Or perhaps, like the automakers, they could make the case that a failure will lead to millions of state employees to go out of work and their unemployment benefit would cost the federal government much more than $26B, so they must step in. If these arguments still fail, they could start a bank holding company just like Goldman Sachs and American Express did earlier, and apply for money from the Trouble Assets Relief Program, or TARP bailout money. Easy, huh?

In case the lawmakers are not able to convince the federal government, we have another resource we can tap into. A significant part of the budget goes into paying interest for our debts from a bunch of creditors. And those creditors are another opportunity for us to exploit! All you have to is, to threaten to default on your loans. And also claim thatif you default, the value of California’s goodwill will go down and it might affect the neighborhood and may be Nevada, Arizona and Oregon will also default then. Think what will happen if all the states default on their loans. Apocalypse! So, better rewrite the terms of the loans.

Default on the loans and ask the creditors to rewrite the terms of the loans. Or, before defaulting, claim that if you default, the value of California’s goodwill will go down and it might affect the neighborhood and may be Nevada, Arizona and Oregon will also default then. Think what will happen if all the states default on their loans. Apocalypse! So, better rewrite the terms of the loans so that we can save more than $26B every year.

Just in case our lawmakers are not so good at convincing other people, I have my third idea that does not involve trying to convince anybody. All you have to do is, turn into a real estate broker yourself and sell the city of San Diego to Mexico and solve budget problems for several years to come. Some of you might thing that San Diego is too beautiful to lose. Let me tell you my friends, it will only be a temporary loss. Once we get out of our budget problems, we can always retrieve it later by claiming that Mexico is hiding weapons of mass destruction in San Diego!

So, you see, there are so many creative, but well proven ways to balance the budget without doing any spending cuts or increasing taxes. In another 6 months, when we have another budget crisis at hand, I hope our lawmakers will look at some of my ideas. And for those of you who have been procrastinating on that trip to San Diego, I will suggest that you visit as soon as possible!

 

Paradise on Earth

This is the fourth speech in the toastmasters competent communicator manual. The title is ‘How to say it’. The objective is to pick vivid words to describe your topic and use creative sentence structures and other constructs. I delivered the speech below on August 12, 2009. My previous toastmasters speech is here.

16th century Mughal Emperor Jahangir had once said, “Gar firdaus ber ruhe zamin asto, hamin asto, hamin asto, hamin asto”. This translates to “If there is paradise on earth, its right here, its right here, its right here”. He was referring to Kashmir in India. Today, because of rampant terrorism, today’s Kashmir cannot do justice to those immortal lines. If I were to say those lines today, I would pick Switzerland as one of the top contenders. It offers some astonishing views, appetizing food and affectionate people. It provides a taste of French, Italian and German cultures and cuisines without having to visit 3 different countries. We grew up watching Bollywood movies, which show so many exotic Swiss locales, that Switzerland was always a dream destination. Juniper’s mandatory shutdown provided us with a perfect opportunity to realize that dream.

We started our vacation in Lucerne, the gateway to central Switzerland. Situated on Lake Lucerne and embedded within an impressive mountainous panorama, it offers a perfect mix of historical sites and picturesque destinations. We visited the historic Chapel bridge, the Picasso museum and strolled on the river side which was right at the doorsteps of our hotel. We did day excursion to Mount Pilatus, which offers some breathtaking views of lake and city of Lucerne. The journey to mount Pilatus is as beautiful as the destination with multiple gondola rides and the worlds steepest cogwheel railway. Next, we went to Mount Titlis, which is an awesome perennially open glacier park. The rotating cable car that takes you there, gives 360 degree panoramic views of the glaciers, the snow covered valleys and mountains. From there, we moved on to the Bernese Oberland region, which was the highlight of our trip. It has impressive mountains, crystal-clear Alpine lakes and a vast variety of leisure activities.  We took a day trip to Jungfraujoch, also called ‘top of Europe’. It is simply amazing how the Swiss have designed the railway lines by cutting through the imposing mount Eiger that ends at the top of the mountain, the highest railway station in Europe. The views from the top of the 13 mile long glacier are heart melting and the ice sculptures in the ice palace are marvelous. In a fitting tribute to Bollywood, the main restaurant at the top of Europe is called Bollywood. We also stopped at the thunderous Trummelbach falls in the middle of the Lauterbrunnen valley. It is series of cascaded waterfalls. An elevator takes you to almost the top and then you can explore each waterfall by going through carefully designed tunnels.The valley itself reminded me of the Yosemite valley back in California. Just think of the Yosemite valley but at least 8 to 10 times bigger and sprayed with many waterfalls of the size of Yosemite falls. We continued our trip with a ride in the Golden Pass Panoramic Train which takes you through one of the most beautiful Swiss terrains giving you some of the most impressive views of lush green meadows, carpets of flowers, flowing streams and snow capped mountains.

A vacation without a few sumptuous meals is like a wedding without a bride! Being vegetarian, we were a little concerned whether we will find good vegetarian food. But, to our surprise, we discovered that many Swiss delicacies would taste delectable if made vegetarian. We were already fondue connoisseurs and even make it at home. New Swiss dishes that we tried, the Rosti and the Raclette, were simply delicious. The flamed tart was the best pizza I have ever had. Among non-Swiss restaurants, there is no dearth of vegetarian options. Two of the restaurants we went to, one in Zurich and one in Bern, had over 40 vegetarian items from all over the world including some Indian delights. Both of them were highly recommended in the guide book that we had taken with us.

We had our 10 month old baby with us. He also had the best time of his life. The locals were always eager to interact with him. In fact, it provided us an opportunity to interact with locals in the trains or while walking on the streets. We found that the Swiss are extremely friendly people who are always ready to help you, whether it is to load the stroller in the train or to give directions or even to pacify a cranky baby.

In the end, I would recommend everyone who hasn’t been to Switzerland, to definitely visit this paradise on earth. When you return, bring back some fond memories and heavenly Swiss chocolates to share with your fellow toastmasters! The next juniper shutdown is just around the corner

 

Universal health care or universal health insurance

In all the talk about universal health care, I only read about government plans for providing health insurance to all. We should need health insurance for unexpected large expenses. For example, if someone is suddenly discovered with a cancer or other high cost medical condition. But I notice that we need health insurance even for routine things like seeing the primary care doctor or getting pain medication.

If I compare to India, cost of seeing a well qualified doctor is about $200-$500 in USA compared to $2-$5 in India. Similarly, routine medicines like pain killers cost upto 100 times more. In this age of globalization, this kind of pricing is atrocious and I believe that is the real cause of poor health coverage in the United States. May be it is time to start H1B type of program for doctors until we have enough qualified doctors in USA that the cost difference comes down to be at par with other fields of work.

If health care is cheap, the government does not need to worry about providing health insurance for everyone!

 

Why not a too-big-to-fail tax?

Recent news about CIT bank struggling to survive has again sparked debates about which companies are too big to fail.

We know now that some companies are too big to fail. No matter how many bad decisions their executives take, they will not be allowed to fail. And on top of that, those executives will continue to get bonuses because there is nobody else that can bring the companies out of the mess they created. This means that we, the taxpayers, will, time and again, find ourselves saving these companies.

Instead of randomly deciding who is too big to fail on a case by case basis, why don’t we set up guidelines for which companies qualifies for this status? Then we should impose a tax on those companies and their executives. This will create a reserve fund from which we can later finance failing too-big-to-fail companies. This is similar to what FDIC already does to protect public from failure of small banks.Or perhaps, kind of like the disability insurance we all pay every paycheck. Its high time they start paying for their own coverage. Any thoughts?

 

How many worlds?

If I ask you which world do you live in, you might think I am crazy. But, put another way, if I ask, do you belong to a third world country, you might just think I am just arrogant. I thought we all live in a world, all the countries on earth. What does third world mean then? Probably poor countries? Then the rich countries must be the ‘First world’. What is the second world then? How many worlds are there in this world?

I did some research and found that the these terms originated after the second world war to group countries in 3 worlds: US and its allied (first world), Russia and its allies (second world) and the non-aligned countries (the third world). But since then, the terms first and second world have disappeared and third world has been used to describe countries which are not yet developed. Almost makes me feel as if the people in those countries are somewhat less qualified than the others, as in third class of a train compartment. This reminds me of the British colonial days when Indians were only allowed to travel in the third class of trains in their own country. The colonial days are long gone. Lets get rid of this mentality and reject this pejorative term.

 

Mac vs PC

This is the third speech in the toastmasters speechcrafters’ manual. The title is ‘Organize your speech’. The objective is to organize the speech with a statement in the beginning and then give arguments in its favor and for each argument, give examples and back it up with facts.  I delivered the speech below on June 24, 2009. My previous toastmasters speech is here.

Did any of you stand in a line to buy the new iphone 3GS last Friday? Los Angeles times reported that people waited more than 12 hours in line to be among the first to get the latest gadget. As of now, a million of those have already been sold over the weekend. Apple products always create a lot of buzz in the market and a frenzy among the fans to get those products. They indeed are fine pieces of technology with polished user interface. However, there are several reasons why my next laptop will not be a mac.

The first reason is the lack of choice. Apple gives very few options to customize its laptops. E.g. the 15 in MBP comes with only 3 CPU options with only 0.3 GHz of speed difference among them and only 2 options for RAM capacity. On the other hand, HP’s 15 in laptops have 5 different CPUs to choose from including one that is faster than the fastest one in apple. It also gives 4 options for RAM capacity. Dell has even more options and it even comes in multiple colors if you care about that.

The second reason is bundling. Microsoft has lost billions in antitrust suites settlements just for bundling its browser with its OS. On the other hand, apple not only bundles its browser and other software with its OS, but also ties its hardware with its OS very tightly. You can only run MAC OS on a MAC hardware and you cannot buy MAC hardware without buying MAC OS.

Lastly, the most important reason is price. I was able to configure almost same specs as the mid level macbook on dell and the price was almost 60% that of the MBP. Now consider upgrades. To upgrade from 4GB RAM to 8GB, Dell charges $315. The same upgrade on MBP costs 3 times that: $1000. Apple fans justify these prices based on better security and stability of its software. Certainly there are much fewer number of viruses that affect mac than affect windows, but that is to a large extent because virus makers have less incentives to create viruses for a system with low market share. The same reason, why so many applications are not compatible with MAC OS that many people, here at juniper, have to run a copy of windows on a virtual desktop. As for stability, I own a PC at home and have had a mac at work for about a year and in that year, Mac has crashed far more times than the blue screen of death of my PC.

So again, to summarize, I would like to see more choice of components, more options for software and hardware, and better prices before I consider buying a mac. I would also recommend you to do your research before you buy your next laptop.  So go ahead, be a mac, be a PC or be a penguin, either way you will be cool

 

Stop the bailout!

This is the second speech in the toastmasters speechcrafters’ manual. The title is ‘Be In Ernest’. The objective is to pick a controversial topic about which you have an opinion and try to convince the audience about that opinion. I delivered the speech below on June 17, 2009. My first toastmasters speech is here.

Since we are not having word of the day in the speechcraft sessions, I thought I will give a word that would qualify even as the word of the year. And that word is, bailout. We have heard this word so many times during the last one year that it doesn’t need the definition or example sentence. It seems like everybody from large financial institutions to automakers to hapless homeowner to some not so hapless homeowners need a bailout.

Today, I will be talking about homeowner bailouts. The crux of the problem is that some people got mortgages more than they could afford. This was done in the hope that house prices will keep increasing. When some of them couldn’t pay that, their houses were foreclosed. This caused the prices of houses to fall, causing more homeowners to default on their mortgages, creating a downward spiral which keeps pulling more and more people in.

Clearly, looks like any solution will have to break the cycle by stopping the people from defaulting. So far, all solutions that have been tried involve rewarding the irresponsible. Some of these involve a moratorium on foreclosures, rewriting mortgage terms for defaulting people and even reducing the mortgage in some cases. In fact, just this monday, California imposed a fresh 3 month moratorium on foreclosures in the state, despite the failure of such an attempt at the federal level earlier. These solutions not only are ineffective, but they are also unfair to people who behave responsibly by either buying a house they can afford or by choosing to rent. These types of solutions could also encourage bad behavior, causing further damage. For example, a homeowner who is able to pay his mortgage, might default in the hope of getting the mortgage rewritten.

I firmly believe that a working solution should have a downside for people who receive any assistance from the state. I propose a solution along the following lines. Lets say a homeowner has a million dollar mortgage, but he can only afford to pay a mortgage of $800,000 based on his income level and current interest rates. If the government wants to stop that person from defaulting, they will have to provide $200000. But if the government does so, and the homeowner accepts government aid, the government, or taxpayers will then own 20% stake in that home. In this case, if the house later appreciates, the taxpayer might make a profit or at least recoup some of the cost. But more importantly, the aid recipient does not get a free ride. This type of program could also be offered by banks as a substitute of foreclosure, where bank gets a minor ownership and the mortgagee gets an affordable loan and rights to sell the house at any point of time.

I would like to end this speech with a request to all of you to call on your elected representatives and inform them about how much you are disappointed by this giving away of public money and why you want this madness to stop.

 

The ice breaker

The ice breaker is the first speech in the toastmasters competent communicator manual. The dual objectives are to introduce yourself and also to get out of the initial hesitation of public speaking. I delivered the speech below on June 10, 2009.

Toastmaster manual suggests that ice breaker speech is the easiest to prepare. But when I started preparing for it, I found it quite hard. But as the famous author Elbert Hubbard has said, “The best way to prepare for life, is to begin to live. So, here I am. I was born in a small town in India. From my childhood, I always wanted to become an engineer. I was good at Math and Science and hated subjects like History and Geography so much that often times I questioned the wisdom of people who designed the curriculum.

To become an engineer, you need to get into a good Engineering college. But that is not easy in India with almost half a million students appearing in entrance exams for various colleges and universities. And quite predictably, when I tried for the first time, I failed to get into any good college. I had plenty of time to analyze the reason of my failure. I concluded that apart from lack of sufficient hard work, it was also lack of focus and direction. In a small town, where not many students aspire to get into a technical career, it is easy to lose focus. With that, I tried again with a renewed vigor and finally got into IIT Delhi.

After 4 years of engineering education, the hard decision was to choose from the options available after that. I could take up a job in Bangalore or go for higher studies in the USA. I chose the latter because I thought it will provide me with a bigger range of opportunities and also the kind of work offered to me in Bangalore at that time wasn’t particularly attractive to me. A decision that I haven’t regretted since. Well, I have regretted it on a few occasions, but those were personal reasons rather than professional.

Coming to USA provided me opportunities to do things I hadn’t done earlier. I started playing racketball and little bit of tennis. And though I believe I still have two left feet, I took dance classes I did things which I never thought about as a child. For example, I learned to ski, went on river rafting trips and hiking trips. I also learned about the promise of the silicon valley that it is possible for an individual to start a company and be successful. So, new aspirations were born.

After completing my masters, I joined an early stage startup, Sanera Systems, with lots of promise. It was exciting to work not only because it was my first job, but also because they were doing some cutting edge work. Trying to make a bigger, better device than existed in the market at that time. Unfortunately, because of the dot-com bust, and also because of strong competition, it did not do as well as I had hoped it to. It was eventually acquired by a bigger company, McData Corp, at not so attractive price. I learned through that episode how employees can get the short end of the stick through dilutions and other means when the pie itself is not very big to begin with. Overall, it was a good learning experience for me. I continued to work for the acquiring company for another 2 years to complete the product we had started and to see it being sold in the market. I then joined juniper where I again got a chance to work on a product from the start. I was hired when the product was just a concept and most of the team was still to be hired. It has been another great experience for me.

On the personal side, I got married in 2004 and had a son last year. He is just turning one and is very adorable. He takes up most of my time at home these days. My wife has been a guiding force for me. It is because of her insistence that I finally took the step of joining toastmasters.

Looking back, I think I missed some of the important skills that I could have learned well at school time. One of them is sports. Though, like any other Indian kid, we used to play cricket every day, I never gave any sport a serious thought and never played in any school or college team. Another skill that I feel I missed is public speaking. We used to have many debating and extempore competitions in school, but I never participated. With the help of toastmasters, I hope to correct at least one of those and am taking the first step towards it today and hope to become a competent public speaker.