Evony and market place

These days I got hooked up to my laptop again and reason for that is not a new laptop but new online game. www.evony.com offers new civilisation and strategy game. Its fun to be part of the game. Although the game server keeps ticking when I am offline, yet I end up spending 2-3 hrs continuosly trying to figure how I can progress faster.

The game is like age of empires where one has to build cottages, farms, people, townhall etc. But it is much more than that. It offers reason to login each day and check your progress. The concepts of amulet and market place is good. The site offers unique way of quest to offer help in guiding what to build. I am currently in 7 day protection period where no one can attack me and I am getting ready to defend myself and attack others.

The best part which I want to talk about is the market place. I am into financial market in real world but I do commodity trading in virtual evony world. I actually made a spreadsheet to track if the offer and bid prices are high or low. I made 120% profit in stone trading by buying it when it was at low price and then offering it at high price. While I was sleeping the demand for the stone increased and people bought stone at higher price. I made good amount of gold from it.I have to make manual entries into it and you can have a peek into it at "Google Evony trading sheet". Gold can be gathered either my levying taxes on my people or buy selling item. I cannot tax my town man a lot so I resorted to building stones and trading them. I guess everyone in the game will have some strategy and mine is to make use of market place.

If I was a programmer I would have thought of making a ticker for evony world and offered my stock exchange. Who knows in coming days this is what will happen. May be its already built and I just have to advance in my civilisation.

I am waiting to reach level 9, level 10 in each building and see what is next for me. Its like thinking what is nirvana. What is next when you have achieved everything. In real life I may not have the answer or I may not be satisfied thinking I have got everything I wanted. But I hope in virtual world it will be done in short time and the feeling will help me find the answer - What next?

Garima's birthday

The most wonderful gift that I could give after working for 10-12hrs a day is full week at home. From July-11 I was at home with Garima. It added more challenges to me as I couldn't plan for her birthday. We two went to all places togather and I had no choice of buying or selecting a birthday gift for her. I managed to buy small cake and wine and a big soft toy. I had plans of a surprise party which I could manage with Kapil's , Saurabhs and Rupa's help. They arranged for dinner buffet, arranged for big cake and party items. Our friends - PK, Sush, Rajnish, Reema, Aahana ( Rajnish's little one), Bharat, Varsha, Hansika (Bhartats sweet little daughter), Arijit, Arshad, Kapil, Saurabh, Rupa and John Anthony made for the surprise party. The video below doesn't capture all the moments but here wishing to my wify - Happy birthday again.

May you be host of such wonderful parties and gathering all your life!!!

Health care debates of 2009 in US - Its hot again!!

Debates on healthcare reforms in US heated up after President Obama made speech in Green bay, WI "http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN1151437220090611".

President is not pushing for any specific plan of his but is asking congress and everyone to think on reforms and finalize the plan to cover all 50 million uninsured American's. I wonder if it’s the way healthcare developed in US which is causing increase in the medical cost. They are discussing public plan sponsored and funded by Government (like Medicare and Medicaid) and co-operative plans. Co-operative plans, as I see, is private plan (co-operative of few members who can gather the Money) and stamped by Fed.

If I think from practitioners, hospitals or providers in general, the rising cost can be explained by multiple factors. They need insurance to cover from law-suits (I think law suits are biggest trouble). They are entrapped in a whirlpool where they need to keep receptionist, claim filing person and other office staff. They have to track multiple transactions to ensure they are paid for past treatments done to patients. They need software to help track them. Improvement in medical techniques and sophisticated surgeries surely increase the cost of peculiar illness. The gap between offering the service and getting paid completely for it is in weeks and may prompt providers to further increase the price to cover for current expenses.

But I wonder won't it be better if all practitioners were employed by Government and paid nice salary, benefits and other comforts. Then a lot of IT cost of payment tracking will be taken away. A patient would visit a doctor, get treated nicely and come back home in good health. There will still be need of quality checks on practitioners but they can get rid of lot of office overheads and staff. Government or some other agency will have to monitor few parameters - quality of practices followed by doctor, patient to doctor ratio in the area and wait time for patients.

It’s surprising to see that general care of also a lot costly in US. Being from India I can surely say that general medical facilities are far better than what is present in US. In US even emergency person have to wait for hours to get Doctors attention. Getting treated for general ailments like high fever, severe stomach ache also cost more than hundred dollars. If one has insurance then yes you just have to pay co-pay but still it’s ridiculous to see that doctor charges huge fee for treating general ailments.

Like everyone, I am keeping an eye on how the reforms take place (if at all!!)

People become more reckless when they feel safe.

I was reading a nice article on how more safe feeling can be cause of more trouble. Its humane to be less vigilant when we feel its all secure.

Lets study road safety. We remain less focused on road when you feel its safe. People tend to divert attention to cellphones, music, ipods while driving and check traffic less frequently. This can cause major accidents. On the other hand if you are through narrow roads or heavy traffic you pay more attention to raod and become vigilant.

Next lets take traffic lights. We all take traffic signals for granted and assume they will work properly. Studies have shown that when traffic lights are converted to stop sign drivers pay more attention to the road. Traditional square intersection with lights are considered less safe then roundabout circular intersection. Driver talk to other drivers by hand and eye contacts more on such circular intersections. It has added bonus of no traffic lights and no maintenace of lights.

With auto insurance and home insurances in market, people tend to accept greater risk.

Financial markets have shown similar tendency. With insurance on losses, market fall, credits financial institution have shown tendency to invest money in high risk areas and seem to have lost.