simonkayar – Simon + Kayar

An ardent fan of Dhoni

On May 3, 2025 By simonkayar In Diary

If you have watched the ‘Dark Knight’ by Nolan, there is a beautiful dialogue at the end of the movie “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain“. That is exactly what is happening to Dhoni. The funny thing is that this has been true for the past several years but no one (except Harsha Bhogle sometimes) has pointed out that Dhoni, instead of enhancing the prospects of CSK, is actually hampering them. For rational fans like me, it was tough to validate his overstay. In 2023 when we won the cup, it …

Some Interesting thoughts…

On December 26, 2024 By simonkayar In Diary

It is not like I am an avid follower or anything but this made sense so I had scheduled this post like 5 years back and it auto posted on 26th Dec 2024 🙂 Ravi Shankar suggests this five day programme to understand and improve your attitude towards life Day 1: The first role which I would recommend to you is to be a School Teacher. To teach lessons to children who are not learning, you need a lot of patience. Being a nursery or primary school teacher, even for one day, you will see how you have to increase …

Once upon a time

On December 14, 2024 By simonkayar In Tech

These days I am buzzing with excitement, it seems to me that we are on a roller coaster ride in tech currently. [In fact I had to update this post twice in the last few days to include Google XR and then again for Veo 2] Most of us are aware of ChatGPT of course, and it is marvellous no doubt. But our brains are extrapolating that things will change drastically in 20 years or so. Even the most optimistic amoung us, think that it will be another 10 years before another big thing arrives. But ‘Big’ things are happening …

Athletic Tongues

On November 30, 2024 By simonkayar In Life

Next time you are in a group – say, with friends, colleagues at work, any group at all, it does not matter – pay close attention to who talks the most. Then try to find out what percentage of that was useful information. I can bet that in most cases, 80% of the time was hogged by very few people producing less than 20% of useful information. I am not against the talkers. Some of those close around me are. In fact they are the ones who keep a conversation going, the energy level up and the world spinning. It …

Bulls, Bears and Rats

On November 16, 2024 By simonkayar In Personal Finance

There has probably been never a time in the history of Indian Stock Market like now, with such a huge percentage of the nation’s population interested and invested in it 🙂 . Everyone and their dog is discussing about how this Mutual fund has given 60% returns last year and how the other fund has under performed with just 20% – and here I was happy with 12-13% for years :-). Now, I can’t be envious that more people are entering this once niche area – it is bound to happen in a nation that is growing at such a …

The Wonder of Learning

On May 17, 2024 By simonkayar In General, Life

It is that time of the year (no, not talking about Bangalore rains) when results are announced for all public board exams in India. You have the proud toppers (with their prouder parents) who ended up – yes, you are reading it right – with 99% or more and centums in 3 or 4 subjects – even languages are not spared these days. Then you have the “not sure if they should be happy or sad” set who got above 95% and their parents lamenting how they lost the centums – a small careless mistake from their ‘almost there’ wards. …

Richard Dawkins’ Books

On April 1, 2023 By simonkayar In Books

This is not a single book review but a set of them, all about Genes and Evolution and all written by Richard Dawkins. For me, personally, it opened up a whole new world that I was blissfully unaware of. I was never a good science student with Biology and Chemistry being one of my least favourite subjects back at school. So, imagine my thrill when I found myself addicted to these books and probably rediscovered some lost part of me. I started with “The Selfish Gene” and later went through “The Blind Watchmaker“, “God Delusion“, “The Greatest Show on Earth“, …

Personal Finance Books

On March 24, 2023 By simonkayar In Books, Personal Finance

Back in 2004, when I took up reading about ‘Personal Finance’ to save myself from the clutches of an LIC agent :-), I had to scourge the internet (rediff money and later economic times) to understand even the basics like PF vs PPF, why Term Insurance is the way to go or how evil ULIPs were . Thankfully, things have improved and there are some very good books that people can instead turn their attention to. Let’s Talk Money & Let’s Talk Mutual Funds – Monika Halan A book like this would save so much trouble for people looking for …

Twenty Years Ago

On March 19, 2023 By simonkayar In General

It was exactly 20 years back that I had started to blog online. Just when we finished college, in 2001, two of my classmates from B.Tech CSE in Pondicherry Engineering College, Siva and Arun, had an idea to create a website that will keep us all connected, something better than the only option available then – yahoomail group. It is funny to think of it now, but back then they were probably on to the first social media idea (along with several others including one Mark Z you could say 🙂 ). But unfortunately their campus placement offers were delayed …

[PS5] The Last of Us – Part 1

On March 12, 2023 By simonkayar In Gaming

This game is set in the backdrop of a post-apolatypic dystopian future – specifically after a fungal infection outbreak has turned humans into something like zombies (controlled by the fungi) and dangerous. Originally made for PS3 a decade back and remade for PS5 last year, it is a visually captivating, emotionally haunting story with elements of action and adventure thrown in. If there ever was a video game that behaved like a movie that you could control and play in as the lead character this would be the one. Within the first few minutes of the game you understand that …