On Financial Education

I invested in the share market.

It is a kind of courageous statement for someone who had a painful answer to a rather curious question: how can I be rich? The lessons from my stock market investments have been too costly for me to venture getting the complete answer. But over time, I have learnt that investing is not necessarily the best way to learn the trade. There are other sources too! And frankly, in the kind of financial complexity that we live in, I think one needs to be aware of various investment opportunities and how they might fare well before putting in their money. Thanks to the recent developments I went through; my boss, the head of the department has recently been trained by SEBI, India to deliver such awareness sessions, and he had done one of his first few sessions in our college itself. I would not call it a complete guide to financial investing, however, it at least sets up a platform from where I can plan further.

Recalling, there were times I said, I will never again invest in stock market. Perhaps it is time for me to revisit that line and see if it is worth sticking in my head. At the moment, I just wish as I am about to experiment again, that the financial systems offered to its consumers, a way out of complexity through straight talk.

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Here is one website I have recently stumbled on, Loans.net. On the face of it, it was hard for me to identify what this was all about. But soon figured out that this was one system that integrates financial instruments for various organisations and offers the one that best fits the customers’ need. It also has lots of content that talks about different kinds of loans. Perhaps, this is one kind of place where I want to begin–draw money, and then invest. ;)

Freshers Day @ SMS, MVGRCE

Today, 1st October, 2011 would live long in my memory. And so would it be with the senior students who have organized a fabulous welcome party to their juniors who rocked the day on every opportunity presented. I don’t recall seeing such exhibition of energy and stamina in some time. Wow! That was a great day! Oh, Yes. It was Freshers Day for the incoming students at School of Management Studies, MVGR College of Engineering.

The day started at around 10:00 AM with the Correspondent, Principal, and In-Charge Head of the Department sharing a few words with the students. Performances from students shook the stage and music flew all the time. Dance, Songs, Skits, Contest to identify the best freshers…everything was crafted into the script beautifully by the seniors. Juniors have cooperated the way seniors expected them–breaking through hell with their noise. That sound is still ringing my ears. Couple of exciting things were to happen to me: one, bounce on my feet after a long time, and two, get a few roses from students (I had to be shy writing this, but then it is the effect of the day that I find new freedom!).

I am so happy to have all your love, friends.

All that aside, I promised to click a few pictures. I could do it partly, and could not do it for the significant second-half of the show. But I hope that is fine, we had many other cameras covering the event. I would have loved to cover it all, but had to save my energy to be with you all (believe me, my camera was heavy!). Of those I covered too, I am not greatly satisfied because I missed a few great moments, and on other moments I had technical glitches. Some were high action scenes where photos were spoiled, and some time it was poor lighting. Some scenes were repeatedly shot in burst modes. All in all, however, I could gun my camera about 250 times or so. I have uploaded all those pictures here using picasa web albums. I wish you find some of them good! Also, some videos I shot during the event are now uploaded on YouTube. You can watch all of them here.

I need to make a request too. Just to have all the pictures of the event accessible to every student who took part, I ask everyone who took a few snaps to upload them on their picasa web albums, make them publicly available for viewing, and share the link in your comments to this post. If you need instructions on how you can do it, go here.

Some pictures which I thought were good to go a news paper are here:

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