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FYI: I moved to Bangalore

Should have posted this earlier but here it goes anyway:

I moved to Bangalore two months ago. I joined SuccessFactors, an OnDemand Enterprise Software company. In Bangalore, we are a team of twenty plus now and we are steadily growing.

Today is Yogitha's last day at Microsoft, Hyderabad and she will be joining me in Bangalore shortly. Once in Bangalore, she will start looking for a job: she is looking to be an engineer in an embedded systems company (ex: ARM, AMD, Juniper, Broadcom etc)

SuccessFactors is in a temporary office on Airport Road and we'll shortly move to Koramangala. Once Yogitha finds a job and we know where her office will be, we'll find a place to live.

Kittu is currently with my in-laws at Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Bangalore. She joined a Montessori there three months ago. The Montessori started off with half-an-hour a day of school and gradually increased the hours three and half hours now. It is good place and Kittu likes it there.

Yogitha and I both like it here in Bangalore and we have now moved here for good.

Kittu December Photos

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A financial goal on my bucket list

DJ told me about the notion of Bucket List and I really liked the idea. While I always wanted to do a few things before I die, I never made a proper list. I am making one now.

And the first goal I want to write is a financial goal. If you look at 43Things.com, there are few often-used financial goals and a popular financial goal is to "become a millionaire".

While it is a popular goal, it doesn't really hold much meaning for any body. Think of it this way: is it a million because its a round figure? Or is it a million because that is what gets talked about?Does it have deeper personal meaning for you? As a goal, it offers way less for you than say "run a marathon" or "ask someone out" or "back pack through europe" do.

And I would like my financial goal to mean something to me. Luckily I have been thinking about being financially independent for a long time now and I have a personal financial goal. It isn't simple like "become a millionaire" but it holds tremendous appeal to me. Before I can explain what my goal is I need to describe something called a claim check:

Claim Check (n)	1. A receipt for property that you have claim to.
	2. A numbered receipt or part of a ticket given to a passenger for claiming his baggage at the destination.

And the following quote gives a good sense of how I want to use the word "claim check":

The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It’s like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption -- Warren Buffett

And my goal is to:

"Collect Claim Checks Worth 50 Years of Consumption": The idea is to have enough claim checks that can be converted to consumption for next fifty years. It isn't catchy like "become a millionaire" but it serves me well. By the time I reach this I probably won't have 50 years to go and I can choose to stop working if I don't feel like it and start doing things that I really want to.

Kittu's Photo By Dharma