Javed Miandad has always been a pain in the rear for India. Both on and off the cricket field. And now he is getting his son, Junaid, married to the Mahrukh, daughter of Dawood Ibrahim--the most wanted criminal in India, on 23rd of July at Dubai. He seems to be one of those Pakis who loves to hate India for all the wrong reasons and do stuff to antagonise India. The former cricketer is the son-in-law of a leading business family of Pakistan in whose businesses Dawood is believed to have invested heavily; besides ever since Dawood got involved in match-fixing over a decade ago, many Pakistan cricket players were on his rolls. Miandad, in particular, was considered close to him (http://www.rantburg.com/popThug.php?ID=11527&T=Dawood%20Ibrahim).
True unholy nexus.
Invitations for the ceremony has been sent to former Indian cricket captains Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Ravi Shastri and Dilip Vengsarkar, and to Asian Cricket Council chief Jagmohan Dalmiya as well as veteran film star Dilip Kumar and Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. Hope none of them attend this wedding as the security watch dogs are hawkish.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Taxes and more Taxes!!!
Sometime it's really bewildering to find out how much of your money is sucked by the federal government as part of your taxes. Its so full of inconsistencies for H1Bholders like myself.
Your residency status for tax purposes is completely unaligned from your immigration status. You might qualify as a resident for tax purposes while remaining a non-immigrant alien for immigration purposes. And you end up paying all the taxes of a resident without enjoying any privileges of being one.
A non-resident files a special tax form, pays tax only on U.S. source income, and subject to special rates;conversely, if you are a resident for U.S. tax purposes, you are under the same rules and file the same forms as a U.S. citizen. That means you pay tax on your worldwide income rather than just U.S. source income. More fun is with the Social Security tax.
SS tax cannot be refunded, you can only claim SS benefits if you qualify. Basic qualification is reaching retirement age AND having contributed to SS taxes for 10 years. So a H1Bholder with an ambition of returning back to work in India will have no chances of ever getting back all these SS taxes; they will be enjoyed by the american baby boomers!!!! In today's scenario, the H1B worker gets the same SS benefits as an American worker who stops working in the US before 10 years, which is zero! Isn't that interesting?
Your residency status for tax purposes is completely unaligned from your immigration status. You might qualify as a resident for tax purposes while remaining a non-immigrant alien for immigration purposes. And you end up paying all the taxes of a resident without enjoying any privileges of being one.
A non-resident files a special tax form, pays tax only on U.S. source income, and subject to special rates;conversely, if you are a resident for U.S. tax purposes, you are under the same rules and file the same forms as a U.S. citizen. That means you pay tax on your worldwide income rather than just U.S. source income. More fun is with the Social Security tax.
SS tax cannot be refunded, you can only claim SS benefits if you qualify. Basic qualification is reaching retirement age AND having contributed to SS taxes for 10 years. So a H1Bholder with an ambition of returning back to work in India will have no chances of ever getting back all these SS taxes; they will be enjoyed by the american baby boomers!!!! In today's scenario, the H1B worker gets the same SS benefits as an American worker who stops working in the US before 10 years, which is zero! Isn't that interesting?
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Take me where I belong
How do you know that you have not been online for a long time just for plain surfing? When you forget your blog id's password. And when your IE address bar cache looses the blogspot address. Or may be both. Or may be lack of any comments on my writings took away the incentives from me for writing anything meaningful about my life. Anyway, the long hibernation from writing what-i-like has been very well spent doing other 'meaningful' things.
Most of the time was invested in establishing the credentials at job (client site) however also managed some time for doing many first time stuff in USA, like attending an american (read catholic) wedding, smooches in the back seat of my car (accidental), go-karting (Hot Springs), camping by a creek and kayaking (Camp Tilden). All of them were fun to a certain moment of time before they become boresome. In normal american weddings, they keep you really underfed (compared to a full blown indian wedding). Lack of space at the back seat can be frustrating sometimes. Go-Karting is good if you can go on forever and have your own race tracks..where you dont have to pay for. Camping is marvellous still you have to pack it up all and clear up the space. Kayaking is good till you get tired of being grounded in shallow water and sunburned.
Dont think me of a damned cynic. Its just that all good things must come to an end. Why?! Dont know. They just end. All types of flights (paperplanes, airplanes, birds, bees, kites etc) ultimately end on ground. Iam on ground now. Just a way of thinking may be. Ciao.
Most of the time was invested in establishing the credentials at job (client site) however also managed some time for doing many first time stuff in USA, like attending an american (read catholic) wedding, smooches in the back seat of my car (accidental), go-karting (Hot Springs), camping by a creek and kayaking (Camp Tilden). All of them were fun to a certain moment of time before they become boresome. In normal american weddings, they keep you really underfed (compared to a full blown indian wedding). Lack of space at the back seat can be frustrating sometimes. Go-Karting is good if you can go on forever and have your own race tracks..where you dont have to pay for. Camping is marvellous still you have to pack it up all and clear up the space. Kayaking is good till you get tired of being grounded in shallow water and sunburned.
Dont think me of a damned cynic. Its just that all good things must come to an end. Why?! Dont know. They just end. All types of flights (paperplanes, airplanes, birds, bees, kites etc) ultimately end on ground. Iam on ground now. Just a way of thinking may be. Ciao.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
The New Copernicus
No more of Hybrids. It now all about Albert Einstein and the not so recent controversies around him. I was in Princeton few months back as a tourist and walked across the place where he lived and died. And my interests in him got renewed.
He has been referred as the New Copernicus by the famous German Physician Max Planck. However its alleged what we know of him is because of the fact that two executors of Einstein's estate meticulously went through all his letters and documents and destroyed any that could posthumously tarnish his image. We now know of him as the Times Man of the Last Century; the master physicist who came out with the theory of general relativity, quantam theory; a leftist Jew and a radical thinker.
It is being pointed out by various interest groups that Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for his Quantam theory and not for Relativity as everybody knew that he plagiarised the works of his talented, older and submissive wife Mileva Einstein-Marity and claimed the paper to be his solo effort. Check out the following sites for more details on what I am referring about.
http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/mileva.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Maric
http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/classroom/lesson2.htm
Besides, investigation into Einstein's life has uncovered vibrant details of an active love life and unknown facets of his personality;Einstein divorced twice on unfriendly terms, he allowed his first daughter (probably affected by Down's Syndrome), born before his first marraige to Mileva to die or adopted due to his career pressures; and his sons accused him of not being a good father. He was a man of versatile personality and his popularity among the masses is influenced a lot by his persona and his typical outspokenness on international politics and culture of his time rather than his mathematical genius.
(http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/einstein02.html)
The lousy haircut, the cartoonish look, the enigma, the philosopher, the scientist; He Is All; and yet we should not forget that he was a human being with his own shortcomings.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Killer Apps
Sabeer Bhatia is on the roll again. There is this new cool product that bears the name of this Indian technopreneur. Check out this on http://www.instacoll.com
Its a collaboration tool that allows you to share and work with your existing documents seamlessly over the internet (it claims even over low bandwidth). With outsourcing and off-shoring kicking off faster than ever, this product could turn to be the next killer application in this domain; it facilitates sharing presentations and documents, real time.
One another killer app and a great competitor to Mapquest will be the Google maps.
http://maps.google.com/
Check them out!!!
Its a collaboration tool that allows you to share and work with your existing documents seamlessly over the internet (it claims even over low bandwidth). With outsourcing and off-shoring kicking off faster than ever, this product could turn to be the next killer application in this domain; it facilitates sharing presentations and documents, real time.
One another killer app and a great competitor to Mapquest will be the Google maps.
http://maps.google.com/
Check them out!!!
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Hybrid cars and Horses
It seems hybrid cars are the new rage. People are maintaining blogs on them. Newspapers are always reporting about them. And there are more of them on the road today than a week before.
I read up some interesting news, where used hybrids are fetching more prices than the new ones, due to the abnormal waiting period (http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2005-04-11-prius-usat_x.htm
Once that I have updated you abt hybrid, I will post here a picture of my horse ride.
Name of the Horse: Flash
Type: 3 year old gelding; Quarter Horse
Owner: Kendra Gilmore of Beverly
Ranch:4 Winds Ranch, Alma, AR
Kendra taught us (me and one of my colleague) the basics of horse riding in 10 minutes, and it wasn't difficult at all to try this as Flash is very obedient and smart. He knew that Iam a novice, so he didnt nudge a bit at start till I got him moving kicking with my heels. It was an interesting spring noon, where I learned how not to be afraid of horses and how not to get them afraid of me; how to get up on one and how to get down; how to extend your heels and test your balance; how to bend a little bit to give signals to the horse etc....
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Updates!!
My work is taking up toomuch of my 'alive' time. Besides there is the usual rigmarole of cooking,cleaning, laundry, ironing, reading and the list goes on. Life is getting more and more routineed and hence boring except for a couple of happenings. One is the job itself. Something new or the other is happening everyday to keep me at the edge. Another is the comments to my blog scripts. Some Anonymous person is writing venomous comments to my articles without letting me know his/her identity. This is interesting, as the person knows me definitely but wants to hide him/her self behind a virtual veil. It would be great if he/she let me know the name atleast.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
The Nomad In Me
I am updating my blog after a long time. I was busy grabbing and digesting my new responsibilities at my new workplace for the last one month. So a lot of updates are here all of your way.
I bought a new Toyota Prius 2005 just before changing over to the new office. I will write sometime about how I got hold of THE Car in just 12 hours when there is actually a wait of 3 to 6 months for this mind boggling 4 wheeler. Amazed!!
I drove it all the way from Chicago to down south Fort Smith in Arkansas. More amazing that I left Chicago for the new job I talked about in my last update and drove down to Fort Smith with my friend. It was long and tiring 9 hour drive and we took it; canceling all previous airline and hotel bookings as I wanted to 'run' the car a bit.
I will attach some pictures of Fort Smith's azure blue sky and my Prius. I named her and the navigation system inside as Ms Salsa Juicy. Well not much creativity here; the color of the car is called Red Salsa by Toyota and the car is juicy enough; it holds on to gas for long time say 45 miles per gallon.
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