Can I donate blood if I have had Hepatitis A?

Hepatitis A infection is most often identified with Jaundice (typically yellow colored eyes) symptoms. I had this in mid 1990s. Couldn't trace the reasons for my infection. It got cured in 2-3 months time and I'm healthy as ever after that. Good thing about this disease is that it leaves anti-bodies in the blood stream which will protect you from further infections (that is what the literature says).

Few years after I was cured of Hepatitis A, I used to go to medical camps for blood donation. The first thing I mention is that I had "Hepatitis A" in mid 1990s. Doctors in medical camps were not sure whether they should collect blood from me or not. I was not aware about the recommendations by the medical councils. Fortunately, because of insufficient information and doubts created by my questioning, I was told that they'd not want me to donate blood. Good that I did not donate blood !

This morning, I was thinking of going for a blood donation for my colleague. I searched the web once again and came across this CDC link http://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/a/aFAQ.htm. It says "If you had Hepatitis A when you were 11 years of age or older, you cannot donate blood. If you had Hepatitis A before age 11, you may be able donate blood. Check with your blood donation center."

Now, I have no more doubts. It is very clear that I should not donate blood. A request to everyone who had jaundice or Hepatitis -A, please refrain from donating blood because the recipient might not be immune to Hepatitis-A virus.

Some non-compete clauses unenforceable in India

http://publication.samachar.com/pub_article.php?id=8979992&nextids=8980746|8983625|8981065|8982327|8979992&nextIndex=0

The above link points to a news article that describes some of the conditions in which the non-compete clauses are not enforceable in India.

"However, Indian courts have consistently refused to enforce post-termination non-compete clauses in employment contracts, viewing them as 'restraint of trade' impermissible under Section 27 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 (the Act), and as void and against public policy because of their potential to deprive an individual of his or her fundamental right to earn a livelihood." -- Majority of Indian IT companies make every (mostly senior) employee (who exits the company) sign the non-compete agreement. Some of them make signing this document mandatory at the beginning of employment along with the non-disclosure agreements.

Majority of employers do not enforce this by taking a legal route. So, what's the point in making employees sign these agreements and increase the overhead for the company?

Also, employees do not care much about these agreements too. They join direct competitors and some disclose this future employer at the time of exit. Do these 'switchers' know that these agreements are not enforceable in India?

IRCTC : did the quota change in the recent past?

For the last few months whenever I book a ticket through IRCTC I'm always indicated that lower berths are not available. I always get a side upper berth. This happens even when the availability is more than 300. Did the quota for IRCTC bookings change in the recent past?

Another  observation is that IRCTC shows waiting list number when booking. However, on that particular day, there a lots of empty slots in the train. I had booked a ticket for my wife very early, got a confirmed ticket. Few days later when I wanted to book a ticket for myself on the same train, the status was waiting list; I had chosen not to book a ticket because the waiting list number was too high. However, to my surprise on the travel date, I had seen that there were lots of empty seats. Is this waiting list number only for IRCTC reservations? What percentage of the total seats are assigned for IRCTC quota?

Home Saver Home Loan - Watch Out!

This is my understanding of how the Home Saver loan operates (as against what is told to you when the loan product is sold).

Standard Chartered bank (SCB) offers Home Saver home loans where the home loan is linked with a Current Account where the borrower could deposit money. The interest to the extent of the deposited money will be waived (or what is called as interest saved). This is good because you'll save significant interest. However, there is a catch. The deposits are never treated as the payments towards the principal. This implies that your principal outstanding reduces at the same rate as it was with your normal loan.

For example: if you had taken a loan of Rs 10 lakhs, with an EMI of 10000 per month. For simplicity of calculation, let us say that the EMI comprises of Rs 9000 towards interest and Rs 1000 towards principal. Now, you made 2 lakhs in cash deposits in the linked current account. This deposit will make your interest payments go down. So if you're paying your full EMI of Rs 10000 per month then, your principal component is Rs 1000, your interest savings is Rs 2000 (approximately), this interest savings should go to the principal.

Going to an extreme case, let us say that you had deposited Rs 10 lakhs in the bank account (you could have cleared the loan - however, you wanted to have an option of taking that amount as liquid cash for you to use for other purposes - if required). This means that no interest is being paid. Ideally, since the EMI is being paid, all EMI must go to the principal.

The above story looks appealing. However, this is not how real computations might be happening. The real computation could be as follows. The EMI payment is taken as the actual EMI minus the interest saved. So, the principal deduction is very small, and happens at the same rate as if it is a normal loan. The interest savings are tracked. What effect does this have? The assumption that your full EMI is being deducted from the current account is *WRONG*. If your full EMI was deducted then the principal outstanding should have reduced rapidly because "full loan amount" is in the current account. However, since this does not happen, and the principal outstanding moves down slowly, if you'd want to close the account after few years, you'd still have a large principal outstanding. In the above example, when you have 10 lakhs in the bank account, the principal outstanding decreases (approximately) at Rs 1000 per month. Thus, after two years your principal outstanding goes down by Rs 24000. However, you'd have expected it to go down by 2.4 lakhs assuming that the entire EMI would go to the principal outstanding because you need not pay any interest. So, if you're planning to close a loan after two years, the 2.5% penalty will be applied on 9.76 lakhs (instead of 7.6 lakhs). This is a significant loss because you'd be paying an excess of around 2.5% penalty on approx. Rs 2 lakhs.

Note: Many other banks also offer similar home loan product. Most likely, they also operate the same way.

new type of internet auction sites - bid20.com

Recently a friend of mine mentioned about a new twist to internet auction sites - bid20.com. The site claims that you can win item at a very low price. Is it really true?

How does bid20 auction work? Here are some steps:

1) Buy N bids at the price specified. Each bid is prices > Rs 10, in bundles specified by bid20
2) Go to the item listing and bid one at a time when u r not the highest bidder
3) The last bidder will be the winning bidder. All the other bidders who had bid lost the money for the bids they've made.

What does the winner get?

Let us consider an item that has an MRP of Rs 1000, and assuming that each bid costs you Rs 10, here are some scenarios:
1) You are the only bidder. In this case, you'll only bid once and your cost is Rs 10, and you'll get the item for Rs 10. This is good for the buyer, and a loss for bid20. This is a very rare case.
2) When there are more than one bidder, say 20 bidders. During the bidding process let us say that each bidder bids an average of 10 bids, and you are the last and the winning bidder. In this case there are a total of 200 bids, which means the price realized by bid20 is Rs 2000, which is good for bid20. This is also good for the winner because the cost for the winner is only Rs 100 (10 bids x Rs 10). However, there are 19 bidders who lost an average of Rs 100 each, and are potentially not happy about the loss. (Note: they might recover this loss by winning another auction - gamble?)
3) Scenario same as 2. However, the winner steps in just before the auction close, and after 190 bids have come in. He has more resources to bid at because he is starting from zero and the others at an average had already bid more than 15 times. Thus, the late entrant bidder, and more importantly very sparse bidder or a bidder who spends his bids miserly, is going to benefit a lot because he needs to spend fewer bids to win the auction. Bid20 is still not at loss. The winner here will maximize his returns. However, the initial bidders will have maximum dissatisfaction.

Who is at a loss?

Often, people do not realize the potential for loss. Auctions bring out impulsive nature in the bidders. Many of them don't analyze or realize how go gain maximum out of minimum bids. Also, people are used to ebay style bidding where the bidding does not cost you, and  one has to pay only as a winner. However, in bid20 style auctions, people start losing money (except the winner) with every bid. This is where the potential for a loss exists.

Business Model for Bid20:
1) Bid20 benefits a lot because (a) it gets money upfront by selling the bids - whether the buyer spends the bids or not is not its concern (b) The price/bid can be adjusted by it at the time of selling the bids, which makes it realize the price of the item at the rate it decides.
2) It can make a loss if there are not many bids on that item. However, bid20 says that it reserves a right to cancel the auction - it can protect itself.

The only concern for this business model is the user dissatisfaction. Over a long run, users realize that they're losing money when they bid and they not being the winner. When people realize that winning is possible only if they enter the auction at the closing stages, each auction will see traffic at the last moment. However, there is a catch here. The auction can get indefinitely extended if bids are received within 15 seconds of the auction end. Thus, there is no right time to enter the auction unless you see lots of people had already bid on the item.

Conclusion: The bid20 model will work and will have a buzz factor until users realize what they're getting into, and realize that they are accumulating losses. Once the buzz factor fades away and user realization happens, the user participation will go down. The Nov'09-Feb'10 Alexa traffic plots indicate this trend. Bid20 can continue with their model by bringing in new users; however, retaining the users might be difficult in the current model. Some new aspect must be introduced into this model to make it work over a longer period.

Notes from internet Auction History: There were auction sites like ubid, yahoo-auction, etc., that had the concept of extending the life of auction when the bids happen within certain time frame of the end of the auction. All these auction sites had decline in traffic while ebay kept gaining share. The sellers were happy to have fixed-time auction because of better operation management, while the buyers were happy to set a maximum price and time for an auction, and spend less time for buying an item. May be, sites like bid20 must take some hints from the internet auction site performance history and reasons for their demise, and change the way they operate so that they can survive for longer periods.

Be diligent - Read all the contents of the documents you sign!

My learning in life so far is "read all the documents you sign". Be diligent. Try to be legally correct.

Where does this help?

1. Housing loan documentation in India is a very complex process. One has to sign every page of a 50 to 100 page document that has all kinds of legal wording. One would be amazed at all the clauses written there and how each clause takes away your right to own the property for which you're taking the loan of course, in case of any default or breach of those terms. For example, I was thinking of closing the loan after 5 years. I knew that there was a clause that says that there will be a penalty if the loan is closed before 5 years. I missed an interim document sent by my bank telling me that the '5 year' limit had been removed and if you don't dispute it then you're in agreement with the modification of terms. If I had been diligent in reading every communication from my bank then I could have done something to protect my rights.


2. In the house sale agreement, my builder had written a description of the property that is being sold. However, when a sale deed is being made for registering with the government body, the description of the property had been changed (probably with a profit motive). I had noticed it before the registration. After understanding the nature of modifications and some consultations with a lawyer, I could make the builder use the same property description in the sale agreement and the sale deed.


3. Protection from fraudulent transaction on credit cards vary from bank to bank and from country to country. When I was in United States, online purchase protection used to cover even non delivery of items where, on dispute, the credit card company will refund money into your account and then follow-up with the merchant. However, in India it is different. The credit card companies wash their hands off once the credit card transaction is authorized by you. In case of online transactions this means that your money is gone the moment you've done a mouse click. Hehe! now that I understood the difference, I'm very careful (mostly, don't use the credit card for online purchase).

Decline to Vote - Election Commission of India Rule

Today I came across the following on the Election Commission of India website:

11. Can you decline to cast your vote at the last stage?

11.1 The law enables a voter to decline casting his vote at the last stage. If you decide not to cast your vote after having signed on the Register of Voters and after having received the voters’ slip from the Second Polling Officer, you must inform the Presiding Officer immediately. He will then take back the voters’ slip from you and proceed to record in the remarks column of the Register of Voters that you have declined to exercise your franchise and you will be required to put your signature under such entry. After this is done, you can leave the polling station without proceeding to the Voting Compartment

Many times, I don't like to vote for the candidates because I feel that they do not deserve to be elected. However, I don't want someone else to vote in my name (poll rigging/fraud) in my absence. Thus, I go and vote for the better candidate of the two. Now, I can go to the polling station, get an entry next to my name saying that "I've declined to exercise my vote". At least, I can avoid letting people committing poll fraud using my name.

Know this before a Property Purchase

I had purchased a flat in an apartment complex in Bangalore. I got into an agreeement with the builder in August 2005. I was given the possession of the flat in August 2008 with only the flat completed to 95%. The rest of the apartment complex is still under construction; even now it is under construction but, in a decent living condition. The registration is yet to happen. There were delays at every stage of this apartment complex during these 4+ years. Many of these delays are because of the personal agenda to be run by the builder and the landowner, where the landowner had given the builder an authorization to construct via a joint development agreement. The personal agenda is about sharing all the extra construction beyond the approved plans that is happening in the apartment complex.

In all these four years, I had learnt the following:

1. Do not buy in an apartment complex where the builder and the land owner are different entities. In my case, the builder had delays in the project construction (some speculate that it is induced by the land owner to gain maximum benefit), which required the builder to pay penalties to the land owner. In lieu of these penalties, the builder is giving right to the club house to the landowner. The landowner now rents out portions of this club house for commercial activities. In addition to this, the builder is constructing several unauthorized flats that are most likely to go to the land owner. Note: The total undivided share of land divided amongst the flats in the approved plan is 79% of the total land area on which the complex is built. This means the builder had intention of building more flats right at the beginning when the agreement was made.


2. Check to see if any litigations are pending. Most often, the documents do not indicate that litigations are pending. Yesterday, after reading a court order document, I realized that there was one pending litigation when the development agreement was made between the builder and the land owner, which the purchasers (like me) are unaware of.


3. Ensure that the sale agreement and sale deed (registered document) both have the same description of the property. The builders make initial agreement with wordings that are good to read. When they make the sale deed, they reduce the scope of the property significantly. This reduced scope allows them to build more in the same area.


4. Do read and understand the scope of Service Tax, VAT that needs to be paid. You might get surprises later.


5. Do all communications to the builder by sending a latter through a registered-post-acknowledgment-due.


6. Pay on time to avoid penalties for delayed payment


7. Insist on construction linked payment plan. This allows you to pay only when the construction happens.


8. Club house membership fee charged. Don't assume that you own a share in the club house unless the sale deed says so.


9. Finally, get/check approved plans from BDA even before getting into agreement

Note: Lawyers to legal verification based on the documents you give them, which are given to you by the builder. The builder might give only those documents that make him look perfectly legal :) Some of the aspects apply to a plot purchase.

Happy property purchasing :)