The type of account you open really depends on what you need/intend to do.

1.    What is the difference between NRE and NRI account? I understand I can get this information on the internet but I am still inconclusive.

Both NRE and NRO accounts hold your deposits in Rupees. Other accounts such as FCNR hold deposits in foreign currency (e.g. USD).
-    In NRE accounts, your deposits and interest earned are fully repatriable back to US and you don’t pay any taxes in India.
-    In NRO accounts, there will be a tax deducted at source (TDS) as you are liable to pay taxes in India on interest earned. Repatriablility back to US is limited (I forget specifics).
-    NRO accounts offer a much better interest rate than NRE accounts (e.g. 6% vs. 3.5%). Both offer rates much better than FCNR (e.g. 1%)
-    NRE accounts are good if you’ll only be making Rupee withdrawals/payments out of the account (or transferring back to US) and not receiving payments in Rupees.
-    NRO accounts are good if you have income in Rupees (e.g. rent from a home you rented out to someone) that you want to deposit in an account in India.
-    NRO might also offer other products such as fixed deposits other than the simple checking account.

2.    Can I pay my Indian home loan EMI using NRE or NRO a/c?

For making home loan EMI payments, both NRE and NRO accounts can be used.

3.    Do I still have to using Remittance facilities such as Xoom, SBI and Remit2India to transfer US dollars to NRE/O account?

You don’t need to use separate remittance facilities. Most banks offer simple ACH transfer or checks to transfer to your NRE/NRO account. Citi offers the ability to instantly transfer money from your US Citibank account to any other Citi account anywhere in the world (including a Citi NRE/NRO) online. Exchange rates may be based on daily rates, amount of money transferred, amount of deposit held in the NRE/NRO account (more the better) and account type (regular/preferred). Transfer back from India to US is also pretty fast and can be done online.

4.    Do we have to pay any US/Indian taxes on holding an NRI account here in the US?

Since you don’t pay taxes on interest in India in NRE, you are expected to report taxes in US. For NRO, you will be liable to pay taxes in India (there will likely be a TDS).

5.    Which is the best bank to hold an NRI account: SBI, HDFC, ICICI, Any other?

I like Citi because of ability to instantly transfer funds online.

6. How can I open a NRE/O a/c from here in the US?

Go to www.citinri.com and fill out the online form. They will likely contact you and send you the application to print and fill and will also send a UPS shipping label if you wish. They also have an office in Santa Clara you can visit instead. Initial deposit can be made by cheque or ACH. The form requires a photo and copy of valid ID (Driver’s License) to ensure that you are indeed residing in US. There is usually an initial deposit and deposit maintenance minimum, but sometimes maintenance minimum is waived so check with their customer representative. Also, there used to be two type of accounts (regular and preferred) with different minimums but that may have changed now.

5.    Can I transfer money from my NRE/NRO a/c using online banking to my parent’s Indian a/c?

Yes. NRE/NRO account is like any other account in India so most will have online banking and transfers to other accounts/banks nationwide. I have used this with Citi NRE –> SBI in different cities and transfer is usually 2-3 business days maximum, sometimes quicker, for a small fee of Rs. 50/- or so.

Other notes:

-    For many, the botheration of filing taxes in India and the TDS outweighs the benefit of higher interest rates offered by NRO, especially, if you don’t expect to receive any other income in India, rather only transfer money one way to India and perhaps move the deposit back from NRE to USD if needed.

-    If you use the NRE account as an emergency/remittance account and know that the 3.5% interest rate will probably be undercut by the varying exchange rates you’ll pay when transferring money to and fro, but it will hopefully still beat the meager 1.35% you can get in the US. So make sure you are not losing more money in currency conversions than any potential increase in earnings. If your aim is to save/invest, think of Rupee as stock – buy low, sell high, and be aware of the volatility.

-    If you or your ultimate beneficiary (parents/relatives) already has a Citi account in India (or anywhere in the world), and you  are thinking of opening an account solely to transfer money to them, you need not bother opening NRE/NRO. The Citi global transfer works from any US Citi account to any global Citi account (yours or someone else’s). Might be much easier to open a US Citi online savings account with no maintenance fee. Or use the multitude of remittance options available (I have not tried any of them though).

Frankly, I didn’t expect they would care to open the link and try to read through and understand the issue (I didn’t mention anything about the issue in the form – just the link to my blog entry). I was actually pleasantly surprised that they did, and got back to me within 24 hours. It looks like the issue was handled by someone from Amazon Web Services. The response follows (links and names removed).

Greetings from Amazon Web Services.

I’m sorry to hear of the difficulty you had while on the phone, and the difficulty with your account. We do allow users to create multiple accounts with the same email address but different passwords. This allows our customers to have, for example, a company account and a personal account, or a personal account and testing account, among other variations customers may choose.

Please note that it’s not possible for a third party to gain access using your email address. What would happen is they would simply create a brand new account, but would be unable to gain access to your existing Amazon.com account without your personal information.

All that said, I have passed your feedback about our login process to the appropriate department. It’s feedback like yours that helps us shape and strengthen the Amazon Web Services Program. We will make every effort to evaluate the information you have provided, and if it leads to program changes or enhancements, we’ll let you and the rest of our Web Services community know.

You may also communicate with the AWS developer community on the Developer Forums: http://aws.amazon.com/forums

Thank you for your feedback.

Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:
If yes, click here: (link removed)
If not, click here: (link removed)

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our web site.

Best regards,
(Name removed)
http://aws.amazon.com
=============================
Amazon Web Services

Meanwhile, a good friend of mine was also able to talk about the issue with one of his contacts at Amazon, who also stated that it is indeed a know, valid, supported scenario.

I am glad that Amazon looked at the issue and promptly responded, though I personally still find it to be a very messy design, which though not necessarily a “security” issue per se, could lead to all sorts of mix-ups in some corner cases and is probably best avoided.

Happy with the service so far, yesterday, as I was configuring the client on a new machine (technically just a new OS partition – Vista running on my Macbook), and went to fetch my AWS keys from my Amazon Web Services (AWS) account, I realized that I had to re-type my e-mail address to logon to Amazon (since there were no cookies stored). No problem – I put in the e-mail address and password, I logon, and, to my surprise I’m greeted with a message that I don’t have an AWS account and if I would like to create one. For the sake of explanation and privacy, let’s call this e-mail address raj@foo.com, and password pwd1.

Surely that couldn’t be right, since I have been using AWS/S3 for a while now and have logged on to the account before! Next, I decided to check if I used a wrong e-mail address, cause I faintly remembered having created a different Amazon.com account couple years back which I stopped using afterwards. So I try the other e-mail address and what I think is the password and find that I cannot logon with that at all. Again, let’s call this address raj@bar.com. Note that this didn’t let me in though.

So I log back in to Amazon.com, with the credentials that did work, and see what my billing/shipping information, my order history and my saved items etc. look like. They had nothing on ‘em since 2007, and the addresses were also 2 years old. Surely, this couldn’t be right too, since I have been using Amazon.com regularly!

Did they mess up the data somehow? Is this a temporary error?

Confused, I log-out (clicking the usual “Not Rajat?” link), and try logging back in with raj@foo.com, only this time with a different password, pwd2. To my surprise, I can still logon (note, with a different password now). And, I now see everything as I expected – my latest shipping info, my latest orders from 2008 and 2009, and yes my AWS account and keys.

I hope you noticed the issue by now – 1 username (e-mail address) with two passwords yields two different (both mine though) Amazon accounts – yikes!

It was late, and at this point I was happy to be able to access AWS, and I configured my backup client and decided to forget about it for a couple hours.

This morning, I decided to play around with the problem again. And yes, I still saw the same behavior! So what exactly happened? Here’s a brief timeline. All dates are imaginary – only their ordering is relevant.

Jan 2005: Rajat creates an Amazon.com account  with address raj@bar.com, password pwd1. Continues to use this for all sorts of purchases. Call this Acc A.

Jan 2006: Rajat decides for some reason, that he needs to check something out, and hence needs a new, separate Amazon.com account, with a different e-mail address, raj@foo.com, password pwd2. Call this Acc B.

March 2006: Rajat gets bored of whatever he wanted to test, and stops using  Acc. B now. Forgets about it.

May 2007: Rajat decides he wants to stop having to check his 5-year old  raj@bar.com e-mail address altogether. Hence, it only makes sense that he updates his e-mail information on Amazon.com

At this point, this is probably what the Amazon.com user DB looks like (guessing, simplified for example).

AccNo   FName LName EMail Password
111-000 Rajat Ahuja raj@foo.com hash(pwd1) -----> Acc A
222-555 Rajat Ahuja raj@bar.com hash(pwd2) -----> Acc B


May 2007: Rajat  logs-on to the Amazon.com account he wants to keep (Acc A) with these credentials: raj@bar.com, pwd1. Next, he goes into his account information page and updates his e-mail address to raj@foo.com (which happens to be the e-mail he checks regularly). Password remains the same, pwd1.

At this point, ideally the system should complain that e-mail ID raj@foo.com  already exists in the system, and hence I cannot change Account A e-mail address to raj@foo.com. But it doesn’t, probably because it only checks if the combination (EMail,PasswordHash) is unique and not whether EMail is unique.

Now, after the edit, this is probably what the Amazon.com user DB looks like (guessing, simplified for example):

AccNo   FName LName EMail Password
111-000 Rajat Ahuja raj@bar.com hash(pwd1) -----> Acc A
222-555 Rajat Ahuja raj@bar.com hash(pwd2) -----> Acc B


May 2007-Jan 2009: Months go by and Rajat doesn’t notice any issue. He continues to use Account A for all his orders, logging on with credentials (raj@bar.com,pwd1)

Jan 2009:  Rajat accidentally enters the password pwd2 (raj@bar.com,pwd2), causing him to logon to Account B instead, which he had stopped using way back.

I finally remedied the issue for now by doing this:

1. Logon to Account B (raj@bar.com,pwd2). Change e-mail address to raj@xyz.com, password to pwd3.
2. Logon to Account A (raj@bar.com,pwd1). Change password to pwd4.

Finally, this is probably what the DB looks like now:

AccNo   FName LName EMail Password
111-000 Rajat Ahuja raj@bar.com hash(pwd4) -----> Acc A
222-555 Rajat Ahuja raj@xyz.com hash(pwd3) -----> Acc B


Also, I found that when I changed raj@bar.com (Acc. B) to raj@xyz.com, an e-mail is sent to both. However, no verification (by clicking a link etc.) is required.

In any case, I think this is very, very messy.

One can argue that the e-mail address need not be a unique field, only account number needs to be unique, as long as the set (EMail,PasswordHash) is unique.

However, what if two users  accidentally or deliberately end-up creating accounts with the same e-mail address and end-up in a loop of accidentally changing password so that it conflicts with the other? Probably unlikely because new accounts must verify the e-mail address. Nonetheless, not a very good software system design I must say.

Ideally, if you are going to implement a system which uses an e-mail address to authenticate/identify users, you should treat the e-mail as a unique field. Force the user to not change the e-mail to one that already exists in the sytem. Or, keep two different fields: a unique username (e.g. “raj”) and a not-necessarily-unique e-mail field, and make users logon with the (username, password) combo, so that they may change the e-mail any time but not the user-name.

Then again, I don’t work with user-authentication on a daily basis, and am by means no expert on the matter. Comments from industry experts (or people have done this or who do this for a living) are welcome.

“Bryan had no idea what he was talkin’ about. I mean, if I were 18 ’til I died, when would I legally drink?”

“Human life is a series of events, and to every event, there are inputs. It may seem that humans have a choice, a choice to choose what input they want to apply to the events, but the appearance of the choice is an illusion. An illusion where there is actually no choice, and what the human will choose is predetermined and driven by the circumstances, which are the outcome of some previous event.”

This note has been quoted with permission, and original copyright lies with Amit Ahuja.

“Humans should try to understand that every event in life is the output of a black box – a function of several inputs, only one of which is your own action; and then again, your previous actions themselves were the results of several such functions. The interesting thing is that this function, or the weights associated with its inputs, can never be determined for certain. So the best humans can do is use some empirical results, some heuristics, to determine their future course of action; bearing in mind though that these heuristics are imperfect, and there will be uncertainties and randomness. I think that’s pretty much what Krishna was trying to say.”

– Myself

Why do I bother about it now, when I know that I don’t intend to run marathons, and have actually quite comfortably walked in my lugs (not comfy sneakers) for as much as 6-7 miles (home to campus) on several occasions? ‘Cause recently, I started feeling a bit of tingling or pain on the soles, even on days when I have barely walked half-a-mile to lunch.

Now this could be a pure coincidence, and this could be because the insole of my Skechers has probably become less soft over time. Or, as I noticed on couple occasions, it could be an immediate effect of smoking.

I wasn’t able to find any conclusive evidence, nor was I willing to pay a visit to the doctor over this, but a quick Google search did result in some articles which vaguely suggest of a possibility that the restrictions of arteries due to nicotine, in an effect similar to what is known to cause heart problems, may cause tingling, numbness or pain in the extremities. Heck, it can actually hurt your bones, especially slowing the healing if you are recuperating from a fracture. This could even cause what’s known as a a Peripheral Vascular Disease. Believe me, the descriptions were scary enough for me to throw the pack in the bin.

And why am I writing this? Because like me, there are plenty smokers who know of the ill-effects of smoking, and are willing to ignore the possibilities of long-term damages such as heart attacks or cancer, in order to buy into the pleasure now. And there are some like me (you know who you are), who are not really addicted to nicotine, and use cigarettes only as a way to give themselves (or others) company, and think of it as a good socializing tool.

Well today, the effects are no more far-fetched – they could be right here, right now, staring in my face. And while I’ve never been afraid to die, whether it is the possibility of a bullet from a street-mugger or “tar”-induced-lung-cancer, the possibility of a severely-damaged foot makes these psychological crutches look like a sure a path to real ones someday, and something I must admit I am scared of.

“Thank you for not smoking.” – Your heart, lungs, and now your feet.

For those of you who didn’t know, two years after leaving my first real job, I’m back on the job market, as I get closer to graduation (hopefully). And the first thing that hit me as I got my first on-campus interview scheduling notification e-mail was – “I need a suit!”. Whether or not I admit it, at times I think I really am fortunate to have some great friends who always come along with timely help whenever needed. So here’s a real-life scenario, a la the MasterCard ads:

Bulgarian-made Perry Ellis Wool+Teflon Charcoal w/ Pinstripe Blazer: $63
Matching Perry Ellis suit-separates pants: $27
Red & grey stripes “power” necktie: $24
Black Perry Ellis leather belt: $21
Basic white dress shirt: $21
Total damages: under $170

Having friends and roommates to drive you down 15 miles to a mall, spend gas and four hours of their own precious time, help you buy your very first suit and ensure that at least the “I have nothing to wear!” part
of your upcoming interview is taken care of: Priceless

There are some things money can’t buy – for everything else there’s … you-know-what (OK, actually I used my American Express – but I guess it still counts).

Thanks guys – I sure couldn’t have done this without you!

But the musical summer doesn’t stop or even start there. It started with hearing Pearl Jam live at the Verizon Center, Wash. DC, my first ever concert in the US, the first concert I paid for (i.e., I’m not counting Euphoria at Thomso 2001 and Thomso 2003), and first concert with the freedom to drink beer and enjoy the music simultaneously.

Now I’ve to admit that I’m not a big PJ fan, I don’t even listen to them actively (most listening is passive since Amrit has played it a zillion times on the stereo/radio/his guitar), I don’t know any of the lyrics (which isn’t surprising, knowing the way Eddie Vedder sings) – heck, I don’t even know the names of most of their songs! But when you have a roommate who almost worships the idol (Vedder, not any idol) and the ability to convince you that it’d be fun – you go! Too bad that work obligations kept him from enjoying the show (though he had seen them last year in Toronto), but half the fun was the hundred of fans singing along and most notably, Anu jumping in her seat. Meanwhile, I pretended to know the lyrics and hummed along. And, yes, Beer kept the mood set for it from the moment we left from home by playing PJ in his car on the way to the Metro.

The most pleasant surprise was that the opening band, My Morning Jacket, played some really good stuff. It isn’t often that you hear some band you have never heard before, heck, never even heard of before, and instantly their tunes get stuck in your head enough to go and look for the music online. I particularly liked Gideon, Wordless Chorus and One Big Holiday.

And now, almost two months down in the summer timeline, we had the opportunity to see 4 rock bands perform for around $40, at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD. Opening for Nickelback, perhaps my most favorite (despite the well-known and often criticized and ridiculed fact that they copy their own tunes) Modern Rock band, were (in order) Hinder, Three Days Grace and Hoobastank.

Despite the time wasted due to the rush-hour traffic and me forgetting the tickets home, we made it just in time to hear Hinder perform their most popular Get Stoned (I guess some fans did) before they signed off, followed by TDG playing all our favorite numbers. And then, not diferent from what we had expected, having seen their on-stage performnce once on TV, Hooba stank, giving us enough time to walk around, attend to nature’s call, buy some Sangrias, and be back in time with the crowd. You know a band doesn’t have a lot up their sleeve, when it has to resort to churn remixes of Another Brick in the Wall (Pink Floyd wouldn’t have been happy to hear how they played – I sure didn’t!) and Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer and then finally sign-off with their solitary hit. Yes, Hooba, we know you are not a perfect person band.

But all the wait was worth it. Nickelback started with a lot of energy on the stage, in the audience and a lots of on-stage special effects (pyrotechnics). Opening with Photograph, they played almost every single one of their most popular tracks – Someday, Savin’ Me, How You Remind Me, Figured You Out – and for most of the time, I was singing along rather than listening. For some reason, their latest Far Away’s initial lines are reminiscent of Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time, but I chose to ignore that one song I didn’t like anyways. And I was mildly entertained with the screams from a high-school girl to my left at the end of every song, and Bandy to my right trying to make fun of the all-so-similar tunes by trying to sing along fake lyrics. And yes, I got a chance to use my new Zippo as it is supposed to be.

Frankly, I didn’t like the fact that all the screens (cameras) focused on Chad 90% of the time, the ex-3 Doors Down drummer Daniel Adair 9% of the time (who, by the way, was awesome), and the others almost by chance. Oh yes, Chad did introduce “my brother Mike” in the middle of the song. At least Daniel got a better intro, playing solo. But then what about Ryan? – the dude sure deserves better footage. And for some strange reason, Chad used the same “Thank you so much!” in the exact same tone to thank the audience after every song they played. I guess Rockstars are far from perfect (yes, I italicized that ’cause it actually is a song in their latest All the Right Reasons).

Would have been almost perfect had Blue October played instead of Hoobastank. Still, all in all, an evening worth spent – I’m not asking for my nickels back.

The view from my friend’s apartment in downtown Detroit was pretty cool – I could see all the tall buildings, including the GM Tower. I could also see the bridge that connects Detroit to the Canadian city of Windsor across the Detroit river. And of course, I could see a few buildings from the very small (compared to UM) Wayne State University campus.

Later that evening we drove down to Belle Isle, an island in the middle of the Detroit river, from where you can see both the US and Canadian sides of the skyline (although it was freezing cold outside to actually stand). I was also fortunate to meet-up some people from my hometown whom I’d never met earlier, and drive down with them downtown Detroit.

The thing that really amused me and and inspired the name of this post was the fact that the roadsigns for road and street names have, well, you guessed it, no last name. For example, a sign would read “Cass”, when it really means to say, “Cass Avenue”. And no, the “Avenue” is neither abbreviated to “Ave”, nor superscripted, and defintely not written in a smaller font – it’s just not there! Frankly, I found it quite amusing. I mean, I sure have heard of people in other towns using similar conventions – for example, something like “the restaurant is located at ‘49th and M’”, but even there I’m sure the road signs actually read “49th St.”, besides alphabetical and numerical numbering almost always follows “Street”. In Detroit’s defense, who needs the last names anyways, as long as there aren’t two people roads with the same first name . It’s perhaps a more friendly way of addressing in an otherwise (from what I’ve heard) cold and harsh town.

The “first” names of the roads weren’t any less amusing. At one particular intersection, a left turn would take you to Chrysler Highway, and right would take you to – that’s right – Ford Highway. Don’t forget that the most prominent building in this town is the “GM Tower” – more signs of the motown.

I wish I had outdoor pictures to complement this post – but (a) I didn’t have a camera, and (b) it was too cold to look at the camera with a normal face anyways.

The next day was perhaps the coldest day of the year, and after a series of events leading to me not being able to go to Lansing to meet another friend in Lansing and my friend not being able to get to Detroit, we finally braved the winter, got some good desi food, booze, watched (live, on TV) the Washington Wizards “piston” Detroit’s ass – in Detroit – leading obviously to a mini fan-fight between me and my pal. And then, we hit the 8 Mile (did you notice I skipped the “Road”?) – not because I was too keen on visiting the road made famous by Eminem’s often-called-”biopic” – but because the road that separates the black-majority Detroit from its White-majority suburb is home to – um, what some of my friends once referred to as “cheesecake factories”.

I don’t think you should have a hard time guessing. I mean, the name Boobystrap is pretty self-explanatory – which BTW, reminds me that there was actually was a sign hanging on their wall right where you check-in your jackets, which said “Awarded Best/Most Creative Name for …” – I think it was well-deserved. Anyways, so we had couple drinks, enjoyed the “show”, which somehow really didn’t do much for me. For some reason, I wasn’t too keen on going for the “dance”, so for the most part I sat, enjoyed my drinks, saw them move to hip-hop and even punk (Boulevard of Broken Dreams!!!), and like some other people who also seemed more intrigued by sports, partially watched the Wizards-Piston OT.

We were soon back to “Cass” (who needs to call it an avenue?), and before I knew it I was all set to take the 4am cab to the airport. All in all, a trip totally worth it!