Clearly the finest year of the last 4-5.
First the personal side. Our little one would be arriving in a few days time. Sister got hitched in August and I really indulged in serious fun in her marriage. I am very close to my professional goal of getting Business education and I think it is imminent. So that is a huge push to my career and looks like the admission process blues are coming to an end. Missed traveling with wife this year…just one trip to Phuket and a couple to India – but all for the little one 
I have really stepped up my community activities and am now an executive member in Eunos zone 2 residents committee.
Singapore’s economy recovered spectacularly. Yes the base was low, but still 15% growth is staggering. As the PM stated in his New Year speech it will rationalize to 5-6%. The property market and USD influx would be a concern this year. Apart from the property prices, even the regular household commodities are becoming dearer. The year end sales were surely a respite 
The global scenario still looks soft to me. Currency wars, trade imbalances, environmental and sustainable development related challenges are looming large.
India has ended the year buried in a slew of scams. The UPA Government looked invincible at the start of the year; Unfortunately for Indians, Governance is now invisible. With the BJP trying to get its act together and cobbling up consensus among opposition parties and assembly elections in major states approaching, I think the Congress and the Government have a lot of thinking to do. Special mention has to be made of the Bihar elections which have played a major role in galvanizing NDA and the BJP in particular. I would not read too much into the results – specially national level effects – than that they were an endorsement of progressive and development+welfare oriented politics.
Many more things to write about specially on Technology, mobile and Android, but I have written about those in my previous posts. So as 2011 looms, I wish everyone has a great year ahead. I am pretty sure how I will be spending this year
I love this one. Courtesy: cricinfo
1905
One of the worst Test cricketers of all time was born – with a drawerful of silver spoons in his mouth. When he captained India on their disastrous 1936 tour of England, he was knighted, and so became Sir Gajapatairaj Vijaya Ananda, the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram. Vijaya means victory, Ananda happiness, but there was precious little of either on that trip, even though India sent a strong team. Vizzy sent the great Lala Amarnath home, ended the Test careers of class acts like CK Nayudu and Wazir Ali, and ordered one of his openers to run the other out in a Test. He didn’t: they both scored hundreds in a big stand – but India lost the series easily. All because of Viz, a comic giant.
Rather, a lot is wrong with Notion Ink. There is no demo on their site to look before preordering Adam. They say it will be out on 18th, but I took a leap of faith and went ahead to preorder. The preordering is one of the worst, if not the worst experience I have ever had with online shopping. Only Visa and AmEx cards accepted, mandatory area code field in telephone number which doesn’t accept 00 (I live in a city state), and upon entering all the details the site refuses to go ahead. On the 9th attempt I got through and made the payment. I got an ID for my preorder and when I enter the ID to check the status, the system pops up a message telling me that my ID is invalid. Worst still, I dont even have an e-mail confirming my order.
What the heck are people at NI doing. If you cant manage a pre-order then don’t do it dammit. You can write all sorts of excuses on your blog but facts are facts at the end of the day. I still dont know whether the product is worth the hype and the US$475 I paid for it.
I would love to study this as a case study in a B-School as how not to launch a product. No, I am not being unfair or judgmental. The whole thing sucks.
P.S.: I wanted to check out the performance of NVidia Tegra processor and other made for NI apps and that was the reason for sticking to Adam despite all this.
Update: December 15th
After a few e-mail exchanges Notion Ink has said informed me that my e-mail address was garbled up and hence I couldnt get a confirmation mail or I couldnt check my preorder status. My mistake. Apologies. However all other things still hold – no support for MasterCard, crashing of the payment gateway 8 times etc.
This blog has crossed the 10000 view mark today. I haven’t kept my often made promise to write regularly. As I mentioned earlier, I’m more hooked to Twitter. Nevertheless, I’ll make the promise again
