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.

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.

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 :)

Flipkart - a good story in making

I had a bad online book purchasing experience with  firstandsecond.com, an online bookstore in India. I ordered a book, which was not delivered. I had another bad online purchase experience in buying a flower bouquet after which I applied brakes to online purchases.

After several months of keeping myself away from online purchases, recently, I purchased few books on Flipkart (http://www.flipkart.com), a Bangalore based startup. The first order was shipped the next day. A day later, I had the books in my hand. I was impressed.

I purchased another set of books for my daughter's birthday. There were only 4 days between the purchase date and the purchase date. The book detail page indicated 7+ days of delivery. I contacted the customer service to see if Flipkart could expedite the shipping of these books. Flipkart did not promise the result. However, they were considerate enough to try and deliver the books in two installments. The first set of books arrived in 3 days time. The second (and the last) installment the next day. This is a very pleasant experience, which makes me a loyal customer of this budding site. I hope they maintain their standards. Thank you Flipkart.

Are people in Bengaluru so insensitive to Ambulance Siren?

Today, near the Marathalli outer ring road signal, I felt really bad to see an Ambulance stuck in traffic. All drivers around the ambulance were looking at the vehicle that was emitting emergency siren. None of them tried to move away to give way to this Ambulance. The traffic signal is just 50 meters away and there were few policemen at the signal. None of these policemen made attempts to clear the traffic to get the Ambulance moving.

Even after the green signal, and the traffic started moving, several vehicles tried to move ahead of the Ambulance from the sides.

Did we loose the concept of 'emergency'? Why can't we understand that we should stop on a side and give way to emergency vehicles?

Public Service Ads by Google

I was going through this website http://www.tecrec.in. Usually, I ignore the advertisements on any page. However, this advertisement caught my attention. The advertisement was about a public service organization http://www.grameenfoundation.org, and the bottom-right of the ad reads "public service ads by Google". I was happy to see organizations trying to promote something with an intent, which is other than money making.

Blogging begins !!!

Initially, I was reluctant to put any of my thoughts online. Now, don't know why, I'm thinking of putting some thoughts out. Hopefully, this log accumulates enough information for use by the rest of the world.