Obituary

Dear Proof Reader,

I can’t begin to say how much I regret having to write this, for never had I imagined that anybody would have the heart to kill you. Nor has it been a quiet passing! You, the eternal guardian of quality writing, the unseen benefactor who has saved the jobs of thousands of honest middle-class reporters, the tireless worker who slogged day and night on a thankless job have been found murdered, brutally, in cold blood.

By those very people whom you sought to protect. Those vandals of the English language for whom a sentence well written has no great benefit; those savages who cannot appreciate a word well chosen even if their lives were at stake – the very people who would have benefitted immensely had they only bothered to look at your noble life.

But then, you should have seen your end coming. After all, headlines like “Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter” could not have been but a body blow to you. “Miners Refuse to Work after Death” should have made it amply clear to you that they were baying for your blood. If anybody had sought to reassure you, then “If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile” should have made you think otherwise. Alas! The eternal optimist that you were, you perhaps thought that these were but erring children, misinformed and misguided for sure, but who meant well and who would surely learn sooner or later. If “Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges” dealt a stunning blow, then it was “Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead” that killed you, as the post-mortem revealed later.

Yet, your life has not been for nothing. You’ve had the satisfaction of working with famous writers, excellent editors, and budding geniuses; of steering many an aspiring writer on the path to Correct Writing; of a job well done.

Thank you for the message that is your life: well begun may be half done, but it isn’t done until ‘tis done well. RIP.

(This was written after reading a forwarded email that I got earlier. Any errors in this article only further justify this post.)

Unlocking the secret to organisational success: Recruitment

A friend of mine had recently asked me to make a guest post on his up and coming blog. We'd had a discussion a few weeks back on how our company's recruitment policy was leading to a lot of problems at work (we were both working for the same company). Recruiting people may be only one of the functions of any firm's Human Resources Department, but it's one of the most critical as it has a direct bearing on the organisation's ability to not only become profitable, but also potentially become a household name. Google, anyone?

Anyway, the site is about helping young graduates with technical interviews in IT, and is worth a read. The link to my article is given below.

One month

About a month now since I moved to the UK, and there's been a bit, just a bit, of progress. Regular tennis, job applications, cooking, cleaning up, and a bit of exploring the neighbourhood by wandering around on foot and on a bicycle - these summarise my activities over the last four weeks of my stay at my friend's place in the UK. Precious little by way of progress, but more on that in a moment.

Tennis has been the most regular feature so far. While the quality of my game hasn't gone up greatly, I'm able to say with pride that it hasn't been entirely bad either. I even managed to take a set from M, and came close to doing so another time. No mean achievement this, since I couldn't do this at all during my college days, which, I think, were my best playing days in terms of agility and passion for the game.

Added a recipe or two to my fledgling, ahem, repertoire, the notables being an entirely ingenious vegetable stew (mail me for the recipe if you're interested), Wok noodles and pasta. Okay, all right, I'm yet to practise the last two recipes yet, but so what? You haven't practised skydiving either, so we're even! Besides, I also learnt how the English clean up their houses which you haven't, so I'm actually one up on you.

More important among these, shall we say achievements, is the improvement in my fitness level. No, I still can't leap tall buildings in a single leap and run faster than a speeding bullet, but hey, I can jog non-stop for about ten minutes and, after stopping for only a few minutes, start running again. That's not something to be ashamed of after just a month.

The most important thing that I'm happy to share with you all is the fact that I'm a little further along in my job hunt than I was a month ago. So what if I have given only one interview that may lead somewhere, I have managed to attract the attention of various recruitment agents who call me now and then. I'm confident that I'll definitely be working somewhere by the time I post next. (Or I'll make sure that I don't post before then ;-))