So Teachers day eh !

[Editors note: The Author is somewhat er um youth challenged and as such all of his memories harken to an era and age prior to the internets and what not , things may have changed somewhat . The author is not optimistic though ]
It's teachers day <traditional assorted salutations and congratulatory observances here>

I have to say during school ( std I - X ) I can count on my fingers the number of teachers who I have any respect for whatsoever .

Most of them sucked ass at their jobs with zero interest in teaching ( the bishops school to this day, on a per capita basis if I may, or the ratio of excellent teachers to not that great , remains leaps and bounds ahead of other institutions I have been in or heard about . It really has been in my own experience the one bright spot. Its position on corporal punishment continues to remain barbaric and outdated but you know nothing is perfect )

College (XI XII and FYBsc) its not fair to judge on my part since I attended a sum total of maybe 8 to ten lectures. Each and every one of those was an hour or so of my life I am never getting back . They all sucked uniformly

The next step in my journey of ha-ha learning was six years in Indore getting an MCA

Barring hmm 3 or four professors (over 11 semesters with six odd papers in each semester) the rest were truly abysmal like so bad that its hard to describe precisely in words how incompetent they were both at teaching and subject matter

I have often wondered how do you fix this . I have no kids so this is unlikely to directly affect me in anyway but lets say for a movement I am thinking about the general good ( yes I know I had to practice twice before I could type it with a straight face )

One obvious issue is that we are clearly ( in the past at least; I have no idea if anything has changed) attracting the wrong kinds of people to teaching .  The biggest difference between good great and lousy teachers has always been to me , very obviously, that the good ones are interested in teaching like genuinely interested they don’t see their job as anything but . Also a deep love of what they are teaching and an ability too impart a little bit of that to their students .
I have no idea what the free market solution to this is .

Currently teacher salaries suck. In general. I am going to assume this is a simple supply and demand problem . Too many teachers . And I am really not sure how you fix that

The other real issue IMO is the paying customer aka the parent has like zero insight into how awesome teachers are especially when the kids are around 13-14. First as a parent the only real metric you have are grades
If student grades were the only way to evaluate teachers it drives terrible incentives ( you teach to the test ) and also when I hit teenage I cannot imagine any scenario where I was discussing my teachers with my parents , like its not even close. No idea if kids have changed that  much today but I mean come on …

So what does the customer do then in this case?

And finally the really tough one… I have been in spite of thinking about this multiple times unable to come up with a  way to decide who good teachers are on a metric based basis.
If was a principal and I had to do performance reviews how do you even start  where teachers are concerned

There are no bottom line metrics you can measure

There are no 360 degree reviews that would make sense and peer reviews are also meaningless since teaching is not a team sport

You could solicit parental feedback but again kind of brain dead

There are no  commitments based ratings that make sense

So we are left with a very very high degree of subjectivity at the hands of the principal.

The one thing I would love to see is schools identifying great teachers and paying them extra to train incoming teachers or current teachers who are not that great but again subjectivity abounds

There is a class of profession where if you get better it means very little to anyone and so getting better will not result in any rewards for you from your customers or your boss

For example a barista who makes better coffee… no one cares Starbucks cannot set pricing around it  or salaries

A server who typically averages 10 to 12 % tips gets twice as good at his / her job sorry you are not going to magically start averaging 25% tips

A personal trainer who suddenly gets much better can raise their rates but its doesn’t line up neatly with their skill level market pressures around a variety of factors will start interfering .

even jobs where you can rewarded more as you get better ( software developer  for example ) start hitting all kinds of barriers no matter how much you keep improving

My biggest fear and sneaking suspicions is that teaching is one of those areas in a very strong way.

Where as long as you are not a total fuck up and sometimes even then , there is zero incentive for you to improve as a teacher especially if you really don’t love or hate the job, its just a job ( and don’t even get me started about teachers unions )
I have no idea how you fix that  so to sum up the kids are all totes screwed but it will probably come out ok in the end ( or not which is always the hallmark of a good drama )

Schezwan oops Swan Lake !

The wife( blessed be her name and blessed be her works ) has been through many a subtle and some totally non subtle ways , been pointing out for a few years now that Seattle has quite the decent cultural scene and we really should go watch some ballet or something .

So finally decided, last Saturday  what they hey , you never know , broaden horizons blah blah blah and we decided to catch Swan Lake

To paraphrase Jim Hacker ( if you don’t know who that is well , I mean that is to say hmmm) it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening , great music , people desperately trying to be taller than they were on stage, delightful food , yummy bubbly , all very well dressed folks it was very cool

We did the whole box seats things only to discover that next time stick to the orchestra level . Place was really really packed had no idea this was so popular

 

 

Here are two important fact about the ballet dancers which I picked up all on my own

i) If you are a ballerina you are not allowed to have a pair of boobies. Apparently cup size is something that you don’t mention or bring up at all

ii) If you are a male ballet dancer then it is considered unacceptable to have a gluteus Maximus, instead you are obliged to posses a “GLUTEUS MAXIMUS MAXIMUS”. It is almost impossible to describe the ahem costume( s ) . Yeah no, no pics!

The other like cool thing was every once in a while you would hear something in the music you were you sure you had heard in some popular Hindi song of yesteryear , some of the musical pieces really were quite excellent

I am hesitant to say this in a public forum but yeah we probably have to do this again , had an awesome time !

In which we meet a MSFT Technical Fellow

The other day I was at the MSFT store ( it happens ) and I buying a phone ( see here why this actually was a good idea ).

The salesgirl ( assuming that is still the politically correct term or are we doing “economic stimulus facilitator “ now , who can tell ) was your usual bubbly, fake smile till it hurts , completely technically illiterate person( we’ll just call her Tiffany/Amber or T&A it makes things easier ) but it was’nt that bad, I knew what I wanted and there was very little um scope for her to screw anything up

Regardless T&A somehow managed to get something wrong and next thing I knew she was like “Can you wait for about five minutes,they’re getting the phone out from back”

So we waited chatted and as is often the case ( without sounding like an ass ) I had her laughing out loud ( not the emoticon the real thing) in pretty quick order

The phone arrived and it turned out getting ATT to do the right thing in terms of a discount was somewhat beyond T&A’s training . So naturally Bob or Dick or Jim or some such dude “the one somewhat technically aware fellow” ( oh so that's what Technical fellow at MSFT means eh !) was summoned with batted eyelash and heaving bosom .

Next thing I know the  MSFT technical fellow was battling furiously with the ATT website ( it was like watching gladiator with better lighting and even better music ) while me  and T&A  were still making giggleworthy small talk

At this point enter the white pasty MSFT uber geek from stage right . He walks up to us and well in about a minute establishes himself as a total asshole which really was quite impressive.

During the whole time he would like say something to t&a then look away stare at his phone etc and then he finally bought something . At this point we moved into the truly “can you actually behave like this in public” scenario

The girl asked him a series of questions (annoying ones to be sure like “Do you have an email address with us “ ) to which this guy replies in the most rude way possible without being actually rude BUT the whole fucking time the guy is like glued to his phone and typing away furiously .

Does not even look at her once; like not even close and his answers get shorter and curter till it feels like he is exclusively talking in acronyms only .
I’m watching the whole thing ( while making encouraging noises to the technical fellow)  and the girl is getting redder and redder and more upset by the second while the guy either through sheer cluelessness or pure deutschbaggery continues to treat her like a very boring piece of furniture that should be in a garage sale soon

The idiot leaves. My TF wins the battle with ATT does some sort of victory lap and leaves to fetch my phone

The girl and I are looking at each other and she is clearly so fucking pissed that she is close to tears, undoubtedly she wants to say so much but this is her job I am a total stranger and you know whatever!

I commiserate with her “They can’t be all that bad yeah”

Note to self : always be prepared that people will answer a rhetorical question

She gives me like a half smile and goes “Most are”

“I’m a person you know!  just look at me when you talk to me how hard can that be”

and she ranted for a while, boy did she rant, and it was not angry it was just fucking sad !

I got the phone and left

Like everyone else I am absolutely certain I have been guilty of prioritizing my phone screen over the person I talk to . I’ve tried very hard to be mindful of this since then ( almost definitely like every other resolution to be a better person in my life it won’t last )and have caught myself twice doing this twice since, once at the  gym ( well I was there for the Jacuzzi) with the person checking me in  and once at the bank while depositing a cheque ( in my defense in both cases someone was wrong about something on Face book and it was clearly critical that I respond instantly )

I am not even going to count how people behave around people they know,  with their phones. Its just baffling how insanely rude most of us are about this and how we just accept it . How is that damn screen more important than a real human being trying to interact with you . I am not trying to be all holier than thou here I am as guilty of this (more so probably )as everyone , but if you step back and think about it , it is pretty amazing and not exactly in a good way

Like everything else on this blog there is almost no point to be made here, but I did get to see how someone, who deals with people, who just don't even bother to hide the fact that they ( people) don’t care about said person existing or not ( or at least behave like it ) everyday actually feels about it . WAS NOT PRETTY !

er although if you are reading this on your phone please don’t stop :-)

<insert joke here to end on happy note>

Todd Starnes is an asswipe and that’s OK

There is a parallel universe (in the sense however that it is the same one as mine) where beauty Pageant type things keep happening with monotonous regularity (and hilarity). For those (who rightfully) have no clue about this world,  recently someone called Nina Davuluri  won the Miss America thingy and a bunch of Americans got to show the world  why

• Twitter will never make any money
• they should never breed and produce offspring
• how cruel evolution is
• why geography and fiction are interchangeable in the minds of many
• some idiots think how Ms. Davuluri is not “American” enough

Todd Starnes  (some sort of moron on fox in some way) on the other hand is unlikely to be as completely ignorant . And predictably Indians hither and thither have all gone on and on about how ghastly racist and self-centered and ignorant the Americans are.

At this point we take a little detour in my tale before I may end up making a point (Editor’s Note: You don't get paid unless you make a point, you do know that yes)

So way back in 2002 ( ish )  I was in  a meeting at MSFT. Present were about 7 to 10 people and like many meetings at MSFT they were all Indians.

So naturally this struck me as funny, and I cleverly made some spectacularly witty quip ( as I often do ) about everyone being an Indian . After the laughter and applause died down, one of the people in the meeting cleared her throat and with considerable vim and vigour pointed out the she was an American, thank you very much!!!! (I think she was born in jersey and yes even though snookie has ruined it all, to be fair yes jersey is technically American)

<Back to the present now yes, yes almost certain to make a point now >

As such the story has no meaning to it (one person did not find something I said funny, it’s not like I am keeping score or anything hahaha) on the other hand it has always stuck with me and even though I am hardly the first person to realize and point this out, all it means to be an American is to want it and say it . That's it!!! (ok fine immigration will get involved once in a while, yes ok more than once in a while, yes fine a lot !!  ) which if you think about is just amazing. I am not aware of any other country where this happens. You can stay in India as long as you want as a white person but you will be gently laughed of the stage (while some kindly stranger calls the local asylum) if you start insisting you are Indian.
I am fairly certain my chances of being Japanese or Chinese or Papua New Guinean are slim to none irrespective of how long I stay there or how much I integrate into their societies . Every once in a while it behooves us to marvel at this sociological thing this amazing amazing fact of life about the US.

Nina Davuluri would be hard pressed to be Miss <insert country here > anywhere except the US. It could happen once in a while I suppose but in this case I am genuinely not surprised, Ms. Davuluri is an American and she convinced some people she was best qualified for a competition. That's all there is to it.

Rather than bemoan the twitter chatter from people clearly stuck in Darwin’s waiting room we should be really happy that here in this country something like this is possible. I have zero interest in pageants and yet I find this pretty uplifting all in all

As for Mr.  Starnes and his ilk, ironically by insisting there is an archetype for “Americans” (cough Christian and white ), they are in fact being the very thing the oppose viz completely Un American

Besides this is nothing new, a 100 odd years ago people like him were screaming “the Irish need not apply” or “who wants these damn Italians” and so on and so forth. Asswipes will be around forever and you know what that’s ok asses need wiping after all !

This India Part 5

Just back from Bangalore , in pune now

So far Bangalore has been a clear winner on this trip weather wise, also whilst I am sure the traffic sucks ass I was lucky not to  get into any jams as such. But of course as we all know by now Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat.

One of the greatest pleasures in this trip for me personally has been the ability to pay someone to shave me , man I miss that in the US. I found one guy in Bellevue who dies a straight razor shave and it costs $50. well I mean …….

Cheap labour equals awesome barbers, waiters and what have you …hooray for overpopulation. Also a couple of weeks ago someone we know has a resident nurse to take care of them. Nurse had a cardiac incident and then folks in the house were trying to hail a cab/rickshaw and four of those bastards would not stop even when told there was a medical emergency. I guess overpopulation does reduce the intrinsic value of life as well. Damn!!

Begging is still an art form/valued skill clearly, and I had  this totally surreal moment in my head recently. I was at a barista and as I was coming out  this  lady\women\girl child with kid in tow was going

<Editors note: in orders to preserve the thematic integrity and narrative cohesion of this piece in place translation has been provided, any loss in intensity and impact is of course as per the Patna convention considered the readers fault”>

Her: Please Sir some money sir very hungry sir baby also hungry Sir

IN my head I am going “ Well Steve Doug James Paul Peter we really would welcome some extra offshore work you know”

Her: Have not eaten for a long time sir a little bit of money is all we need

Me: Yes we are six sigma lean agile extreme MSFT TLA JAVA HAHA certified

Her: Sir Sir Sir please Sir

Me: Certainly we can finish in 4 weeks what you want it localized for Pashtu and Swahili yes well then 5 weeks my dear fellow

I don't know for whatever reason looking at her all I could see  was every BPO software services blah blah blah company with their arms outstretched( this is not to ding anyone I am trying the same damn thing to make a living , it just popped into my head that's all ) . speaking off when I was growing up the phrase du jour was body shopping . Apparently that was too much high praise as it indicated someone was willing to pay for  ahem our bodies so now we have <cue drum roll>  “staff augmentation”. Neat no?

Back in pune now winding up vacation ,sad to go home but on the flip side my doggies :-) hooray.