comics and other books.

not sure how many of you have been able to view this blog, but it is something that makes me wish that i had not thrown away all my comix...i had a trunkload full of them and i gave them away to kids who were interested in them...the list was awesome...nearly all the amar chitra kathas published...nearly all indrajal comix published from 1979 onwards, 7 years worth of chandamama, 5 years of tinkle...a year of children's world...a dozen asterixes...

anyway, the comicproject blog is amazing....theyv'e published over 50 titles giving people like me a chance to catch up with the past...great work man...i only wish i could contribute too...

while on the subject of books, i have recently ended up reading a bunch of fiction series...well the parts that have been published anyway....these include ...the harry potter series, the bartimaeus trilogy, the artemis fowl series and of course inheritance.

the funny thing is...i found a common trend across the series...in harry potter and artemis fowl, the magical world (fairy world in case of artemis fowl) is completely hidden from mankind, though j.k. rowling makes a number of comments of how things are changing between the muggle and non-muggle world. she said in an interview (i think), that the breach of the muggle and non-muggle worlds is final and the worlds are coming closer to each other or something like that...in one of her books in the series, one of the characters says explains the reason that the worlds are different...the muggles (regular guys) will want to use magic for all their work...in a later book, she brings out how the minister for magic begins participating in the work of the muggle prime-minister by planting a wizard as his secretary...the prime-minister admits that the wizard gets through the entire work in half the time...the overlying theme of the evil in the book is how how a certain"dark wizard" (voldemort) wants to gain control of both the magical and non-magical world...so, far so good...have you begun spotting the trend...

isolated worlds --> muggles want easy way out --> magical world intrudes into non-magical world slowly.

now let's move on to the bartimaeus trilogy...here, magicians rule countries which have both magicians and non-magicians....so, looks like voldy won at some point of time.

now, even better...the second book of the trilogy delves deep into how everything happens in cycles...how magicians, so sure of their power, begin overlooking the fact that non-magical humans begin developing resistance to magic (shades of x-men here ;-) )...so, if i were to connect the books, soon the number of humans able to resist magic increases, thereby forcing the magicians to stop having absolute power...soon, they start living side by side and fighting side by side..."inheritance" and "lord of the rings" ha ha ha...

so, if i were to connect the various series....

"harry potter/ artemis fowl" --> "bartimaeus" --> "inheritance/lord of the rings"

(except for the timelines, this is nearly plausible).

beginner's end

dunno how many of you have this problem...but while blogging is ..well..blogging...registering a new name requires a lot of ingenuity and imaginative powers...akin to wizards of yore...this is my third attempt at creating a blogspot for myself and i am finally successful.

actually, the second time i tried to create a blog was because i was absolutely upset with the 10-10 of the blogosphere...the treatment being meted out to gaurav sabnis and varna and of course rashmi bansal rankled and i decided to create a blog in support of them...later realised that the best course of action would be to wait and watch how things unfolded....unfortunately, it looks like it will die it's own death just like a million other happenings around the world....the only seriously affected person being gaurav sabnis...i wish him well and hope that the right company hires him and gives him the respect that he deserves...which brings me to a rather interesting point...

how are the industry's HR teams geared up to handle crises like this for their employees....what the IBM HR team did or did not do seems quite blurred at this point of time as no one has brought it up...but isn't HR supposed to take charge of such situations and help the employees out? looks like most HR teams nowadays focus on hiring and exit interviews after the employees resign...hope we begin focussing on it quickly before employee retention policies become a thing of the past.

my experiences with various HR teams have been rather interesting...a curious mix of the good, the bad and the ugly...and am sure that i will have more of these experiences before i can put together a 9-commandment list of what employees should not do with HR and vice-versa.