Love an engineer

On the threshold of a half-century of existence and 30 years after my father effectively killed any debate on possible career choices with, “Be an engineer or be a jholawalla!” this post is probably outdated even before I write.

Am I a good engineer? Was I ever? A long lost friend writes it best on his LinkedIn profile:

I am not a practicing engineer, but i strongly believe that engineering is the best educational stream that i could have opted for. I am not sure what i learnt from academically. But what i did learn was a way of thinking. Structured, process & time oriented working.

I think it is prudent to not link to his profile. But, my batch-mates would surely know who he is. He, as we used to dismissively say in college, has spent a lifetime “selling soap” and otherwise finding ways of cross-selling, up-selling, enticing customers to come to his stores as so many flies to the spider’s web. Bravo! 30 years on, my admiration is not even of the “sneaking” variety.

A story of 2 journeys

On a flight between Seoul and Taipei, I settle down in my aisle seat and wait for the flight to take-off before opening my laptop. A man settles down to the right; an Indian?

I am not really in a mood to strike up a conversation; I have a presentation tomorrow for which I am using slides that I have not even seen before. Is this man the talkative type? Does a familiar brown face make him open up? It does too, for me. But, not today.