Enchanting Himalayas

Himalayas the mountain range, which is so unique in nature and this place, I wish to explore at some point of time in my life. Vastness of Himalayas makes one to realize the significance of nature and the creator. Further, it have been scientifically said if Himalayas aren't their, then India could well have been a cold desert

Embedded video would give an exotic glimpse of the elegant Himalayas.

 In Sanskrit Hima (snow) and Alaya (abode) in combine to form Himayala ( Abode of Snow) and according to Hindu Mythology, Himalaya is the home of God Shiva. Nepalese call Himalayas ‘Samgarmatha’ that means ‘Goddess of the Universe’ or ‘Forehead of the Sky’.

The Himalaya, run across five countries Bhutan, India Nepal , Tibet and Pakistan, while Human race claims certain areas belong to them, Himalaya is an ideal example as none can climb that Himalayas is solely belongs to them. The Himalayan Mountain Range was formed roughly about 70 million years ago as a result of a collision between Indo-Australian and Eurasian plates. It is said to cover 612,021 sq km with geographic variation so stunning. The climatic changes in Himalayan regions change quickly. As a result, the areas are prone to monsoons, floods, snowstorms, landslides, earthquakes, tremors and high winds.

 Several greatest rivers in the world — the Ganges, the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers originate from Himalayas or from the Tibetan Plateau. The medicinal herbs found at the foothills of Himalayas are the purest of all. According to Hindu mythology Ganges is believed to originate from head of lord Shiva.

I don’t think there is any place so very unique compared to Himalayas. Naturally, this is ultimate place for me to visit. Further, during trip to Himalaya I wish the world time machine stops, so that you really don’t need to hurry up seeing the places and be back to our normal routine life. Also, I believe, the mind is the source of happiness and unhappiness.

On Himalayas, some of the places worth exploring in my list are,

Ladakh: Rock carvings found in many parts of Ladakh show that the area has been inhabited from Neolithic times (around 10000 BC). Ladakh is a region in India totally isolated from the modern world. I understand this to be an authentic land, where one finds ancestral customs of life characterized by intense spirituality. Even an Indian traveler will probably find no similarities in the land and people between the ones he leaves behind and those he encounters in Ladakh. Rich traditions of Mahayana Buddhism still flourish in the purest form in this region, which has often been referred to as Little Tibet. Ladakh's landscape has more in common with the lunar landscape than any other place on earth  

Lukla: This is the place in nepal, if one wish to take a aerial view of Himalaya through a small aircraft, Lukla has an airport. The amazing video clipping of mount Everest take you out of the world.

 (video links courtesy - You tube).

 

Finally would be glad to wound it us with visit to Gangtok, which has emerging as Ecotourism spot in India. Ecotourism is a form of tourism involving visiting fragile, pristine, and relatively undisturbed natural areas, intended as a low-impact and often small scale alternative to standard commercial (mass) tourism. Kangchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world. I would look forward for a holiday tour company like Yatra travel which can customize such trips with suitable package tours with combination of suitable flight options, self driven car or SUV and offcourse, accomodation. Such options, if provided would very much prove to be unique tour of its kind

 I would like to sign with the quote which had mentioned in my earlier travel blog post.

 It would be a treat to watch the vastness and bounty of nature which would be so soothing to mind , for one who is, confined to city life most time, where almost every inch is man-made and short lived with arrogance of 'me' associated with it.

Read more! Read more...

Indian Economy - Depreciating INR

I came across an article , providing the details about fall of INR in recent time. The illustration and explanation was excellent however outflow of FII Debt funding alone may not be the only reason towards fall in INR value. India had been a closed economy till 90's and was forced to open up the economy in early 90's due to balance of payment crisis at that point of time. In a 'open' economy the many factors contribute or triggers such fall . 

To me, the other factors which is contributes to depreciation of INR can be,

 Foreign Equity inflows (FII and  FDI) are good for open economy, not only from investment perspective it is also said generate employment. But, then at the some pint of time, there is bound to be repatriation of profit in form of dividend or other investment. So naturally there would be an outflow. No business man would like to keep the equity for ever, without appropriate returns. 

Corporate Debt: It is said debt content with major corporate has increased over the years. More importantly about 40 to 50% of debt is in foreign currency. Now with dollar appreciating, the Indian corporate have to burn more money not only in form of interest, principle but also due to depreciated INR. This would certainly increase outflow of foreign exchange in future.

Oil import: There is no respite for oil bills import expenses or rather the outgo of foreign exchange on Y-n Y basis. It has been on increase always. Just look at the number of vehicles registered in an RTO in metro’s, one could judge the increase in vehicle registered, so naturally consumption of fuel is bound to increase, unless the country has efficiently planned public transport. 

Gold Import: Amid all the efforts being made by the Government to curb gold imports, demand for the precious metal in India zoomed to a 10-year high (310 tonnes) in the three-month period ending June 30, according to the World Gold Council. Gold is very dear to Indian families and it is said to be second to China in import of precious metal. With return from Indian stock market not looking good in last few years and gold returns looking good in the last few years, the gold is also looked upon as an investment these days. However, this causes stress on foreign exchange due to import of gold. 

One may not know which factors can trigger a fall in exchange rate at any point of time in a global economy, unless there is a well planned and coordinated execution of growth oriented policies towards development of economy. Hence, is India really prepared for 'Open' Economy?

Also, at same time, fail to understand as how some of the developed countries even though have a higher deficit budget and with higher content of debt as percentage of their GDP has better currency exchange rate when compared to India?

Read more! Read more...

Gold bounches back

While stock market is taken a beating on Friday, gold seems to bounced back in the last few days and it was trading Rs 2946 per gram (22 carat) on Sat 17th Aug.

Apart from hike in gold prices in world market, following other factor seems to drive prices up,

•  Depreciating INR.
•  Import restriction and higher duty. 
• Condition of world and  Indian economy at this point of time.
•  Last but not the least the start of festive season in India.

Next to petroleum product, gold import is the highest drainer of foreign exchange in India. Added to this India is top consumer for gold. Further, its never going to easy for Indians to move away from attractiveness gold .

Read more! Read more...

Managing Oracle EBS implementation better.

Over the years, ERP product modules foot prints have grown and so is the complexity associated with product.  In about a decade time with increased complexities, the implementation need to take care business requirement vs module fitment for solution, shorter implementation time frame, and quick turnaround testing the solution, performance issue due to volume of transactions and accessing transaction on wide area network needs to be taken in to account.

If application is available to access though internet, it also increasingly difficult to perform load test or predict volume growth of users. It is increasing common these days, witness certain systems like Banking, Railways getting into performance issues at the peak hours as due importance might not have been given to loading of application during implementation stage. 

Appropriate product fitment to business requirement and product license of modules alone would not make an implementation successful. Implementation needs to be managed effectively right from conceptualization stage to beyond post implementation to be successful. Had earlier written about factors ( part1, part2, part3) which influence success of ERP implementation in a phased approach.

Apart from ERP product & managing implementation project, there are products available to enhance / support & manage the implementation at pre & post implementation stage better.  It’s critical the project stakeholder analyses the feasibility of using these tools. 

Brief overviews about the products, which can support Oracle EBS implementation, are, 

Oracle EBS Business accelerators: Every effort is made these days to reduce implementation time of Oracle EBS without compromising on business requirement. Hence one would find OBA quite useful during the requirement gathering & thereby automate functional set up during CRP stage (iterative process) of the implementation and thereby shorten the discovery start phase of the project.  Additionally, It provides information about flow based functionality of implementation, which is also quite critical in understanding the overall business process end to end, right at start of the project.. 

Oracle application testing suite: Oracle Application testing suite can used automate functional regression testing, Oracle Load testing. Process of manual testing can be a time consuming and hence OATS place a critical role in faster testing process and enhance productivity.

Oracle application management suite: The task of managing Applications is complex, time-consuming, and costly.   The Application Management Suites for E-Business Suite can reduce this complexity, and dramatically improve the availability, reliability, and predictability for E-Business Suite. The Suite leverages Oracle Enterprise Manager to provide enhanced system and user monitoring, configuration monitoring and change management capabilities.

Oracle Enterprise manager: Enterprise manager is quite useful to manage the entire technology stack of Database, middleware application. OEM is useful right from start to post implementation support.

Oracle Infrastructure: During implementation or post implementation, the infrastructure plays a crucial role in success of implementation. There could be a situation where, the ERP implementation from business solution perspective is said to be very effective. However, infrastructure challenges might prevent the effective implementation.  For example, tasks might take a long time to be executed, this issue may be related to network bandwidth, multiple time I/O operation, resources busy due to peak hour or resource intensive. Its critical, infrastructure is given right focus at right point of time.  Exadata machine, RAC, Data guard can be thought about and explored to overcome the infrastructure issues. Also, Saas (software-as-service) concept related to cloud computing is catching up. One of the characteristic of cloud service is Rapid elastic scalability, which means the ability to add computing capacity on demand. This feature would be useful to allocate resource for computing during peak time. 

With positioning of global single instance for multi-org operation, the application needs to be available for access 24x7 towards global operation. An application scalability suiting ever evolving business requirement is one part of it. Cost optimization in form of shorter implementation, effective testing, managing application post implementation, reliability and scalability of hardware infrastructure also plays critical part in success of implementation. Hence, naturally, one needs to look at various software tools which would enhance productivity of Oracle ERP implementation.

Read more! Read more...

Ancient Shiva temples

Some time back, I read this article, spiritual health, a nice short article. I personally feel materialistic world has taken the world by storm, which made people lose focus. However, I keep wondering there are places in India which keep spirituality and heritage live.

Many of the spiritual temples do not have date associated with it. Shiva ‘s pancha bootha stalas does not require any introduction. Apart from Panchabotha stala, felt some of the Shiva temples are so very divine and peaceful.

Kailasanathar temple, Kanchipuram: This is in outskirt of Kanchipuram (approx 80 Kms from Chennai) and currently maintained by Archeological department of India. This Shiva temple is believed to be one among the oldest temple ( more than 1000 years).

This temple withstood time in its pristine form and believed to be built through sand ('pittu man'). There is a tunnel around the Shiva Lingam (god), which is symbolic representation of Birth (crawl to get in), adulthood (walk) and finally death(crawl again). Interesting it also mean only before birth and after death one might be spiritually aligned \ view god and during living time the materialistic world (called Maya) might make us forget or not remember about god and seek pleasure in materialistic comfort. It is also believed by going around the tunnel would reduce number of re-birth.

Brahmapureshwarar temple, Trichy: It's an ancient temple near Tiruchi (approx 40 km), Tamil Nadu. It is believed Brahma (Hindu god for creation) did 'tapas' by installing 12 Shiva idols million and millions of years ago due to curse from Shiva due to ego and finally got liberated from curse.

This is one of the very few temples, which has Brahma idol prominently. It is believed since almighty Brahma's destiny got changed, any one who visit this temple would have their destiny changed, positively. Jeeva Samadhi of Pathanjali Maharishi is said to be here. Pathanjali is said to guru or father of Yoga and he is believed to be incarnation of almighty god - Narayanan. Much easier to reach by car, if you are traveling from Tiruchi to Chennai by car, its worth a visit (about 4 km from main highway) and one can spend about few hours. Some of the temple gopuram is believed to be constructed 100's of years ago.

Suruthapalli (near Chennai): Its is believed 'Pradosham' time started from here. Nice temple in outskirts of Chennai. This temple is believed to be constructed in 14th Century. The temple 'Stala' history is very interesting. In Satya Yuga (millions of years ago), during churning of 'Par' Kadal, the churning rope (snake) vomit poison.

The Devas and Asuras becomes jittery on seeing this and make an earnest appeal to Lord Shiva to save them, as the poison could destroy all living being in Universe. Lord Shiva consumes the poison and save all living being in the universe.

Further it is believed Lord Shiva feels dizzy due to consumption of poison and is said to have taken rest on lap of goddess Parvati at Suruthapalli for some time on his way back to his abode in Kailash. Hence, Lord Siva in this temple is in unique reclining posture. There is also 'Valmiki Lingashwarar' and 'Rama Lingashwarar', which is believed to be worshiped by Valmiki Muni and Lord Rama respectively.

Though, the temple is believed to be built in 14th Century, there is no date associated with main deity - Pallikondeswarar (Lord Shiva) in this temple. Very calm and serene temple in outskirt of Chennai.

Other unique temples with spiritual divinity I could associate are Kumbeshwarar Temple at Kumbakonam, Tanjore Brahadeshwarar. Heard about Darasuram near Tanjore and Gangai konda Cholapuram, which are on list of temples to visited soon, looking forwards to such visit.

Read more! Read more...