Harry Potter to replace me!!!

Days after I move out of Infosys, looks like they've found it tough going and have sought to replace me with the master wizard - the one and only Harry Potter himself.

Read this for proof.

:-)

Deathly Hallows

Let me put a disclaimer out first. I am not a big Harry Potter Fan myself. The mania around the time the fifth book got released pulled me into it. Read that one, Book 1 and Book 6 before this and took the easy path out with 2, 3, 4 - Watched the movie before I could get my hands on the book or at least that's what I tell all HP Fans/Friends before they start making fun of me.

About this book, it was enjoyable yet disappointing!!! A bit of a let-down for me!!! Great expectations that were belied. Don't get me wrong. Deathly Hallows was thoroughly readable, yet too predictable - very few plot twists that one has grown to expect from JKR. The death of XXX (Don't want to be a spoiler!!!) when it came was way too sudden.

Also quite a bit of the book (e.g. The trip to xxx, yyy) can just be thrown out of it without impacting anything. If a movie is made, the climax would probably be an hour before the movie ends. The last 100 pages was all about tying all the loose ends and ensuring that there is no scope for another book.

The last paragraph though may lead you to believe that the next HP book could be called "Harry Potter and the Deadly Dudley" now that Dudley too had become a wizard. :-)

Also, parents trying to encourage their children to read it (to improve their english as suggested by Deccan Herald) - Beware!!! You can expect a lot of questions from your Class V kid if you do let him or her read this book. Questions like "What is Snogging?" are bound to arise. I know Rowling had promised a lot of Romance in here. But when all of her previous books were readable by kids and adults alike, this one surely isn't. Wizardry might be something that the kids of today might not be able to duplicate. But this book might motivate them to do some other things HP and Ginny did. ;-)

Here I come HKUST

This post is for those still wondering, why would I quit Infy after all these years. :-)

I got an admit from HKUST, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology early June and sometime last week finally ironed out all the details (VISA/Schol/Finance/release date from Infy) and finally resolved the dilemna of "To go or not to go".

The overall first experience of the school has been that they are highly thorough and professional - everything from processing of the app, to the interview scheduling to the post-admit processing. And they gave me a decent schol, ranked in the Top50 per last year's FT Rankings. Can't complain. And the final driving motive to go for the HKUST offer was from the fact that another year in the IT Industry (at least delivery) was beyond me after seeing what my future (Lower to Middle Mgmt in a Services Co.) looked like these past few months. The other option was to go back to Hard-Core coding which for me was a backward step and I wasn't too confident that was what I wanted to do.

The admit from MBS was also tempting - but way too many negatives meant a rejection of the admit - expensive Course Fees (17L INR), the High Cost of Living (4-5L INR over 1.5 years atleast), general feedback about Aus Govt discouraging folks from working there post MBA. All in all seemed like an MBA from there would put me back by atleast a few years financially. And now in hindsight after the Haneef episode, it makes my decision look like a very good one.

I am sure it will be a life-changing experience and all excited about it. Started reading up about China, Chinese, HK and a lot of other things now that nobody dare give me work.