GTalk Chronicles : On Professions - Part I

Random chat conversation, a result of a status message. Good topic, slightly conflicting points of view. Interesting in parts, dull in the middle. Can't be arsed to format this further.

Jimmy: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2947772,prtpage-1.cms

Badrinath: interesting article
but he gets a bit defensive about his choice of career
free to chat?

Jimmy: (I am waiting for a machine to get free, so until it does, me are jobless)
True, he paints his choice of career as far more "pleasurable" universally

Badrinath: yeah, that is quite silly, my guess is defensiveness
anyhoo,
the world is quite full of mediocrity
this one guy laments that people spent so much time for JEE

Jimmy: but still, it's not that he has nothing to say.

Badrinath: what he fails to see is that people who score higher, generally tend to learn faster, hence on average are more talented
and places like the IITs are where such people congregate
you learn a lot, LOT more from competing with people like this than you ever would if you were content in a BA in what-ever-he-was-doing
he also seems slightly bitter, at times - " Some days, I think of those boys from another time. They are mostly bankers in America now and, I imagine, partly responsible for the subprime crisis."

Jimmy: true, and yet, it shows that the IITs are the only place where "the best" would congregate. For so strongly have we ... hard coded into our minds the notion that science/engineering alone is the only outlet for "true intelligence"

Badrinath: most of those guys probably lived a "fuller" life than he did, just because money can buy you so much
"true intelligence" means you can do well at a lot of things

some people may have a specific talent in say, a musical instrument, or an art form
that doesn't make them "conventionally" intelligent
they are just talented in their sphere of activity
(which means if you have "real intelligence" you SHOULD be able to do well in science/maths)

Jimmy: Oh, but that is EXACTLY what I am trying to say: you think that doing well in music / sports does not require intelligence, but mere skill. However, to understand music / take quick decisions during sports / to create art requires a different kind of intelligences.
There are, as far as I rem, 7 kinds of intelligence(s)

Badrinath: hmm, i have no idea on the 7 types

Jimmy: and we have been thought to accept only one of them, the mathematical/problem solving kind as intelligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences

Badrinath: one vital thing - before we begin to talk about "doing well" in a field, we need to realize that the world on average is quite mediocre. a fair amount of hard work and a rub of the green will, regardless of talent, get you quite far
as important as talent is, in world as chock full with mediocrity as this one, talent is still second to hard work

Jimmy: yes. But while hard work etc may take you far on the road, what is lamentable is that there are no choices of roads, and there is a hierarchy of roads .

Badrinath: that is inevitable
professions like engineering and medicine are the ONLY way moderately talented people can make money
the percentage of artists (out of all artists) doing well and the %percentage of engg-ppl doing well (out of all engg-ppl) is VERY different
TCS will pay a talent-less but moderately hard working guy 3-point-something lpa to do work
unless you are REALLY lucky, art will NEVER pay as much to a mediocre artist
why?

Jimmy: why, indeed?

Badrinath: because having a painting hung from your bedroom wall is considerably less important than, say, re-tooling the database of a company

Jimmy: To answer this question, we need to ask a far more philosophical question: Is the entire existence of software, or databases, or even telephones, "necessary"
Let us recurse backwards in time, and ask,
(btw I agree with you, but I am just arguing for the sake of it)

Badrinath: ah
at the end of the day, we all want money. full stop. some of us delude ourselves into thinking that we don't care about money. but we do. when we don't have enough, we feel the pinch

Jimmy: let us recurse to the time when there was no money :D
Ah money.,

Badrinath: paintings hung on walls look nice which is a lot less important than cold, hard cash for a company
ah, money indeed

Jimmy: no one contests that we need money

Badrinath: the root of all evils and the cornerstone of "a good life"
listen, we are all human. there is something eerily human about greed, avarice, what-have-you
just like there is something eerily human about xenophobia and violence
so, while we may need less money, we WANT more

Jimmy: see your comparison to a painting on a wall to a bridge-across-the-river is unfair: that painting can be seen as a rich indulgence, so its equivalent in technology is .. I don't know.. a super fancy cell phone.

Badrinath: analogy is slightly unfair, i'll give you that :P
but there is a lot more demand for the engg profession that there is for artists
(i count film people, animation people, etc ALSO as artists)
when demand is more, "good" companies try to pick out the talented ones
how do you lure them? money

so, average incomes are higher in the engg/medical streams
PLUS there is space for LOTS of people
in other streams highest incomes are good, but average incomes are terrible
so, the average person is drawn toward the former professions
still there?

Jimmy: just a bit busy
so I'll reply later :D

Part 4 (of 4) : Flora

Fuck!

Alright. My mistake.

Saala kamina.

[Jimmy's note for the uninitiated: Smiley was lying. (see post below)]

Ye baat Smiley!

For some reason I feel incredibly happy about your decision. I was thinking about it for a long time yesterday and thought that this should be recorded on the blog.

[Jimmy's note for the uninitiated: In a heroic event yesterday, T.Prasanna Srivatsav, on his way to his first day's work at an lucrative-but-unappealing-company, suddenly decided to get off the bus, and join his beloved Pramati instead. ]

Part III: Tsonga and Ice

Tsonga (chonga, Changu, Chongo) is a sacred lake up, up above Gangtok, quite close to the China border (4km). Berrryyy cold and foggy. And the road is crumbling and sagging all year round.(yes, sagging: the rocks below just begin to give way and the roads sag.) For most of the journey, I just buried my head in my lap. :D

p.s: the first photograph is of a river at the base of the mountains. No wonder, there is vegetation around.

Part II: Gangtok & Rumtek

(Part I, 'Shillong', can be seen here.)
Cameras weren't allowed inside the main complex of the Rumtek Monastery (below). Neither were tourists, but we were cold and wet, and a boy-monk who was rushing towards the hall (because the prayers had begun) parted the green curtain on his way inside, smiled and beckoned us in.

The hall was a bloody red; the walls were a bloody red. Rows upon rows of monks, in their maroon robes and golden shirts, were chanting in low, deep voices. Slowly, our eyes adjusted to the dim light inside, whose chief source was an old, majestic chandelier, hung low in the middle of the hall. Beautiful, but quite useless: the monks had to read by candlelight.

We noticed that the walls were covered with rich, intricate murals: fat kings, monsters and demons, queens and tigers and gods, forests and palaces, all depicting the stories of Buddha's lives and reincarnations.

All of a sudden, the monks put their manuscripts down, and began to play. Not a quite, soft music, but a roaring, rousing music that would drive the chill out of anyone's bones. Drums, conch-shells, brass-bells and heavens-knows-what. Faster and faster they played, faster and louder, till it was impossible for us to sit anymore; and then, they just stopped.

The whole thing was over in less than a minute. Putting the instruments aside, the monks went back to their manuscripts.

WTF.

p.s: The last photo is not of the monastery, but of a wayside store.
















(Part III and IV tomorrow)

Part I: Shillong

Some days ago I toured the north east for a week - a trip much shorter than I would have liked. Below are some of the photographs I took. They are a bit dark, but that's because rain and cloud followed us almost everywhere we went - across mountains, cities and monasteries. Good thing then, that I like rain :D .

Unfortunately, however, almost none of these images contain any people in them. And it is the people that were the most astonishing thing about that land. (May be I'll write about them some day.) If you ever find time, do visit that part of our country. You'll be pleasantly surprised.


PART I : Shillong.