My advisor went out of the town so I took a break from my studies in the evening.
I received Harry Potter's Half Blood Prince today as an ebook. I read about 100 pages of it today. It contains 827 pages. Not a kid stuff anymore. My initial impression of the book is that it is almost like a thriller of the intensity of John Grisham or Jeffery Archer (the Eleventh Commandment - if you know what I mean). The characterstic humor of Harry Potter series - the fun part of being a wizard - comes only in the third chapter. The characters are more refined, no doubt. Albus Dumbledore is quite refreshing no matter how old he is or his hand had got sucked. My only gripe against the newer novels is that JK Rowling is trying hard to make new stories out of the events in the old novels and sometimes it looks that she is tying too hard. Snape is again back being a Death Eater and a whole chapter is spent on explaining his positions in all the previous years.
During dinner, I started watching Kaal online. The movie is not so good. In fact, sometimes it was funny, not in a good sense but in a ridiculous sense. I must admit, though, at times I found it very gripping. The movie could be a good timepass if you are watching it in a theatre with your girlfriend who gets scared easily. I do not like good-looking girls being killed and this movie let go off Esha Deol and then showed her dancing in the end castings. Does the film-making sense decays exponentially with the length of the movie?
Now I come to the best news that I saw today. China is freeing up its currency, chinese yuan. The currency increased by 2.1% over US dollar. Though the increase is not significant, the step is.
USA Today has a good detailed article on the implications of this significant change. I will give a brief overview. The communist government of China has always made the value of chinese yuan fixed with respect to US dollar. This ensures that the price of any chinese item purchased in US will always remain same to the US consumer (provided the item's price in yuan does not increase). Such a policy has been a major factor in the huge growth in Chinese exports to US over the past few years. The trade deficit between China and US ran over $162 billion to the Chinese advantage. Cheap Chinese goods have flooded the US markets and are also spreading to South east Asia. While the countries, like US, Japan, allow their currency to freely float in the market, other countries like India, maintains partial control. It means that when the demand of their currency goes higher (which may lead to higher value of that currency), the central bank of that country purchases some other reference currency, thereby, increasing the demand of that reference currency and thus offsetting the increase in its own currency. A higher value of the currency makes export costlier and imports cheaper.
I think I can write pages on the mechanics of the forex trading. Here, I will just mention that if the chinese currency is allowed to trade freely, then due to the huge exports of the country (a single company Walmart purchases $18b goods every year from China while India's top IT companies total turnover is around $24b), the chinese currency will shot up like anything. This is because all the companies buying Chinese goods have to pay in Chinese Yuan which increases the demand of Chinese yuan. Chinese government has been offsetting this demand by buying huge amount of US dollars from US Treasuries. The Chinese central bank has a reserve of 243 billion dollars through this way. If Chinese central bank stops doing this practice or atleast gradually reduce it, the Yuan will rise. So, my advice to you is if you have suplus cash, you should buy Chinese Yuan and keep it for five years. To get a feel of what it is like, imagine a closed coke bottle which is generating CO2 from inside over many years. Another advantage of this change, is that it will also make exports from countries like India more competitve. Indian currency is relatively free so it is not expected to increase over next few years (unless exports from India shoots up very fast). Hence, its export prices will not increase much, which could, in turn, make India a favorable manufacturing destination. More than anything else, I think this move will benefit Chinese people living in mainland. An average Chinese person, due to fixed currency, finds the cost of items produced elsewhere like electronics, etc very expensive. With more freedom in the currency, an average Chinese Jo(e) will find it easier to purchase things and thus lead a better life.
