1) Music - Must profess a love for Pink Floyd, Bob Marley or Leonard Cohen. Denver is too pedestrian and Billy Joel is too 'whatever'. Britney Spears and her ilk is definitely a no-no. Though Eminem will do if you can say something suitably clever about his lyrics. To be truly eclectic you can say jazz. But pure classical rules as always.
2) Books - non-fiction - Must have read all of the following books - selfish gene, blindwatchmaker, nobel dreams, tao of physics. Reading them means being able to discuss them or trash them with sentences that begin with "looking at it like a scientist........"
3) Movies - Must have watched (and enjoyed in an explainable, virtue extolling kind of way) a movie in a foreign language - Russian sci-fi, French romance, Irani social commentary, Japanese anime, or Spanish fantasy.
6) Books - science fiction - Terry Patchett, Isaac Asimov or you might want to say Ray Bradbury just to show your predeliction for the dark side of things. Non-science fiction - late 19th century fiction if you want to be differently different, or something dense like Nietzsche, Chekhov or Chaucer. Say "I like Rowling" and you will be wandering in the dreary desert sands of MEI social wilderness for years.
5) Graphic novels. They are the IN thing these days. Persepolis is a good start though Sarnath Banerjee is a close second due to his bong connection.
7) OS - "Never judge a book by its cover, a man by his shoes or a geek by his operating system.", so said a wise man. but who listens to wise men anyways? Be warned, you WILL be judged by your OS. You must know UNIX/LINUX or at least pretend to use it even if you cannot use the command terminal and prefer a mouse. OSX is a close second. Mention Windows XP you will be summarily eliminated from the conversation. Vista and you might as well jump into the sea.
8) Dress - dress is everything. This has to be carefully casual. A hopelessly crinkled kurta or shorts. Just to show the world that you are so fracking devoted to your science that you dont have the time to dress properly. Maroon is currently very much in style, replacing black as the t-shirt colour of choice. However, at any given time in MEI there will be at least one maroon or black shirt in a gathering of 5 or more people.
9) Must espouse some social cause, which is a good thing.
10) Must be a blogger or a blogger to be. The latter mainly means reading blogs.
11) Should be able to discuss the pros and cons of the iPhone versus the Blackberry versus any other PDA, even if you have never seen them. All this within hours of their release. Time is critical. If you discuss it before release you will be labelled jobless, if you discuss it the next day it will be yesterdays news. Literally.
This combined with a healthy dose of the relevant recent research in your field of interest and there........you are all set to tackled the behe'mouths' of MEI.
The very idea of 'grepness' involves refusing to be defined. So these very things might just be non-grep tomorrow. You have been warned.
10 comments:
Nice post, although think about it and you can write a similar post on almost any bunch of people - whether Investment-Banker (think a faux penchant for quantitative economics, Broadway plays, collectible art...) or Social Worker (Think Khadi, Marx, Chai and ciggies...). Everyone can be put into nice labelled boxes in a similar fashion. What is interesting is that you have managed to point out the right fetishes.
Although on a personal note, I don't relate to the last point (No.11 on the list) and to SF ...
What is MEI anyway?
I love The IT Crowd! :-)
Good observations especially on the movies and OS bits. Came here from Abi's blog.
grep - Now if you were really geeky, you'd know that's a UNIX program to find a given pattern in a file.
Also, are we into self-critique now? ;)
dress had to be 'carefully casual'--good post
Why is 5) after 6)?
@above noobie
BAIT
BAIT?
@Basu
Right, as always. but I like this because it concerns ppl we meet everyday.
SF on the other hand is an acquired taste.
@Anon
MEI stands for My Esteemed Institute - the place where i work. but the finest tradition of best kept secrets everyone knows which insti it is.
@GGOP
thanks for coming by! I cant wait for the next installment of IT crowd. but i wish there were more IT references.
@oook
you got the joke! :) i thought no one would.
@kaustabh
thanks! come to MEI to see the real thing.
@novice academecian
pure oversight. :)thanks for dropping by.
@Wise guy
whatever.
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