24.12.2006

• Problems of plenty in realty sector
• Small and medium players have mushroomed in the last one year. As against 1500 to 2000 in 2004 developers that were there in the fray, now the number is about 6000.
• Overbooking has resulted in crashing of realty prices
• Tier III cities have seen prices come down by 20 to 25%
• Small developers will slowly fizzle out in a tough market
• About soccer clubs
• European football club culture is beckoning Indian corporates.
• Corporate sponsorship has two reasons: a genuine interest in the sport and brand building for the corporate. If the club can generate its own revenue, then the corporate gets free brand building.
• Pramod Mittal recently bought the Bulgarian football club CSKA, Sofia.
• Indian corporate sponsored clubs
• JCT
• Churchill Alemao
• Dempo
• Salgaonkar Industries
• Kighfisher East Bengal
• McDowell Mohun Bagan
• Global clubs which are business ventures in their own right
• Chelsea of Roman Abramovich
• Manchester United of Malcolm Glazer
• Juventus of Fiat’s Agnelli family
• India Pakistan agree to conduct a joint survey of the Sir Creek area
• The Sir Creek is a 96 km (60 mile) strip of water disputed between India and Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch marshlands. The creek, which opens up into the Arabian Sea, divides the Kutch region of the Indian state of Gujarat with the Sindh province of Pakistan.
• The Sir Creek dispute hinges in the actual demarcation "from the mouth of Sir Creek to the top of Sir Creek, and from the top of Sir Creek eastward to a point on the line designated on the “Western Terminus”. From this point onwards, the boundary is unambigiously fixed as defined by the Tribunal Award of 1968.
• Sir Creek is named after the British representative who was requested to mediate in a dispute between the ruler of Sindh and the Rao of Kutch over a pile of firewood lying on the banks of the nearby Kori Creek.
• Being politically correct in celebrating Christmas
• We in India really enjoy all festivals. Whether they have a religious connotation or not. It is very normal for us to greet people from other religious faiths on their festival days.
• But the West suddenly seems to have developed cold feet even in celebrating their very own Christmas publicly for fear of offending people from other religious faiths. Sounds very weird to me.
• So they stopped saying “Happy Christmas” and instead saying “Happy Holiday season”. In a similar vein some funny words being totted about for being politically correct in greeting others:
• Chrismahanukwanzakah: This is combination of three. Christmas, Kwanzaa (a 1960’s invention of a black American activist, purporting to be celebration of pan-African culture) and Hanukkah (the Jewish celebration)
• RamaHanuKwanzMas: For Ramadan, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Christmas.
• Some of the world’s costliest pens
• Louis Cartier – ~Rs. 50 lakhs
• Montegrappa - ~Rs. 28 lakhs
• Mont Blanc - ~Rs. 7 to 8 lakhs
• Visconti - ~Rs. 2 lakh
• Computer game rating agencies
• PEGI – Pan European Game Information
• ESRB – Entertainment Software Rating Board
• Most of the authorized games sold in India follow the rating by one of the two above.
• Why do you need rating in the first place? Because many of the games being developed by the geeks contain violence, sex and bad language.
• New dinosaurs discovered
• Called the Turiasaurus riodevensis, it was discovered in Barrihonda El Humero, near the village of Riodeva in Spain.
• It is estimated to weigh as much as 6 elephants.
• World’s obese people stats
• It is estimated that about 2.1 bn people in the world are overweight. Of them 1 bn live in the developing countries.
• Ajeet Bajaj
• One of India’s rare species – an adventure sports person.
• He is the first Indian to have skied to the North Pole. His next mission is to touch the South Pole.
• He is into skiing, rock climbing, snorkeling, sea kayaking, scuba diving, bungee jumping and canyoning.
• Canyoning (also known as canyoneering) is travelling in canyons using a variety of techniques that may include walking, scrambling, climbing, jumping, abseiling (the process of descending on a fixed rope), and/or swimming.