Phinance Paramasivam!

Let me tell you about the story of a little boy who grew up wanting to be a real doctor. He used to play with stethoscope, plastic syringes and such. And then one day, his cat accidentally scratched him. The little boy saw his own blood and fainted. Well, that was the end of the doctor dream. But very soon, he saw a small gadget that had all sorts of colorful numbers and symbols on it. And when you pressed random combinations of these numbers, it gave out wonderfully unexpected results. He saw his dad using it to do the monthly bills and his mom using it in the market to calculate the cost of 26.56 grams of garlic. Even his sister used it to smack him on his head. The little boy had just discovered the calculator and his calling in life. He knew what he wanted to do, he thought. He would grow up and be a calculator operator.

Unfortunately for him, he turned out to be an extremely bright student. He always stood first in class. No, I didn't mean he was the first boy to stand up. I meant his test scores. He cracked his state board exams followed by the engineering entrance test. Elite colleges like Anna University, REC, BITS Pilani and Angaalammal magalir munnetra college offered him a seat, with built-in potty seat and beer holder. And as it so often happens in India, faced with pressure from all quarters, our boy had to gulp down and burp his dreams of becoming a calculator operator, and went to BITS Pilani to study Engineering.

But in BITS Pilani, our boy was introduced into the wonderful world of Controls department. He volunteered to do the accounts for them, and very soon the department came to rest on his slender shoulders. He had discovered his second and ultimately satisfying love - Microsoft Excel. He loved filling in those boxes with numbers and readjusting them till the credit and debit columns matched exactly, and his eyes were bleary.

And when he moved to America, he found a 'baguth' gang that liked nothing better than to party and spend a lot of money. It was no surprise then that he took on the role of doing the 'phinance' (finance) for this group as well. He went one step further and used the power of the world wide web to upload spreadsheets on the internet. His service went beyond mere math. By managing accounts so efficiently, he had prevented all the heart ache and broken friendships caused normally over money-related issues. The group could happily throw away money and never wonder if they were ever going to be compensated. Somewhere among the giga terrabytes of data in the cyberworld were a set of numbers that accurately held the gang's account information.

These days, he has taken his love for phinance to new levels. His mastery over Microsoft Money is complete and absolute. So much so that he writes his own help manuals and refers to them. Every cent he spends is accounted for. Suddenly he started worrying about budgeting, planning for the future and crap like that. Things came to a head when he refused to take lap dances at a strip club in Vegas because he had saved the money he did not have yet to buy a Palm 650. It was another thing that he ended up spending way more on the dances and still bought the crappy 650 which makes concord takeoff level noises anywhere near civilization.

These days, you can see him poring over accounting books in his bid to earn a CMA or some such acocunting degree. In his spare time, he's building his own spreadsheet tool that would directly take data from scanned bills and receipts and would automatically assign and split them up among the right people. He says this uses his education as an engineer and his passion for accounts and phinance.

So lady and gentlemen, let's give a warm round of applause to our hero, for finally managing to juggle his passion as well as his profession. For bringing a sense of order to a haphazard group. And for his selfless service to the world of numbers. And let's give him his new name from henceforth - 'Phinance Paramasivam'...