Random stuff...
All hands at the lab are required to take a series of training sessions. Some of them are interesting and contain good engineering. A few are boring beyond belief. I, like 20 others, suffered the torture of one of these classes this week. It was a lead safety training class:
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Other than the voice of the instructor who rambles on, silence in the class is broken only by the occasional deep breath drawn by an employee in semi-slumber.
Instructor: In early days, zinc welders drank milk before they went to work. The milk helps reduce the amount of zinc absorbed by their body...
Instructor: Are there any questions?
Nobody answers.
Instructor (insistent tone): I want questions, folks.
Bored lady in class whips: The milk... is it skim or whole?
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Dude in class: If a chunk of lead is injected into my body, how soon should I remove it?
Instructor: Do you mean a bullet?
Some of us laughed but neither of them was joking. I wonder what kind of people I work with.
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Maria Martinez greeted me with an infectious smile. I was not surprised. Afterall, she was a car insurance agent trying to sell her service for my Honda Accord. Most of the interaction was uninteresting but I was stumped by two facts:
1. If you are less than 30 and unmarried, you are considered an irresponsible adult, and the premium increases by ~15%!
2. The insurance on a new BMW 325i is less than that on a new Honda Civic EX, although the Bimmer(*) costs 150% of the Civic!
On the face of it, both these observations look ridiculous. Is there a deeper meaning to it all?
(*) BMW cars are called "Bimmers" and the bikes are called "Beemers"... This dates back to the early days of BMW when they built motorbikes and sent a few of them for racing. BMWs competed with BSA bikes which were called Beasers... And naturally, BMWs were called Beemers. When the cars came around, they were christened Bimmers to avoid any confusion with their 2-wheeled brothers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other than the voice of the instructor who rambles on, silence in the class is broken only by the occasional deep breath drawn by an employee in semi-slumber.
Instructor: In early days, zinc welders drank milk before they went to work. The milk helps reduce the amount of zinc absorbed by their body...
Instructor: Are there any questions?
Nobody answers.
Instructor (insistent tone): I want questions, folks.
Bored lady in class whips: The milk... is it skim or whole?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dude in class: If a chunk of lead is injected into my body, how soon should I remove it?
Instructor: Do you mean a bullet?
Some of us laughed but neither of them was joking. I wonder what kind of people I work with.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maria Martinez greeted me with an infectious smile. I was not surprised. Afterall, she was a car insurance agent trying to sell her service for my Honda Accord. Most of the interaction was uninteresting but I was stumped by two facts:
1. If you are less than 30 and unmarried, you are considered an irresponsible adult, and the premium increases by ~15%!
2. The insurance on a new BMW 325i is less than that on a new Honda Civic EX, although the Bimmer(*) costs 150% of the Civic!
On the face of it, both these observations look ridiculous. Is there a deeper meaning to it all?
(*) BMW cars are called "Bimmers" and the bikes are called "Beemers"... This dates back to the early days of BMW when they built motorbikes and sent a few of them for racing. BMWs competed with BSA bikes which were called Beasers... And naturally, BMWs were called Beemers. When the cars came around, they were christened Bimmers to avoid any confusion with their 2-wheeled brothers.
posted by littlecow at
8:41 AM
7 Comments:
Reminds me of my economics class, in which the entire class was sleeping during the lecture. The poor prof tried to crack a joke, nobody laughed as they we all asleep.
(BTW, this was told to the class afterwards by the only student awake: he was trying to sneakily reach for some khaini(tobacco) from his pocket! )
@
@@: please dont get me started on the sleeping stories! as for the measly khaini, let me tell you that iitm was famous for.... 100% home-grown marijuana! sadly though, before i joined ganga, my seniors had abandoned their cultivation and left for greener pastures! but for their premature departure, we could have struck an enterprising partnership and be proud owners of a fleet of ferraris now. :-(
@arete: your generosity is 'high'ly appreciated but i am too old to try drugs... but you sure are not! go ahead, give it a shot and let me know how it went!
Man, as some prof recounted to me their worst nightmare was that they were sleeping in a class they were teaching and then to wake up and see that it actually was happening ;)
@bal: this is hilarious! we had a hindi teacher who used to sleep all the time and the only time she was awake, she used to sell her husband's books from his bookstore - abhi samja hai kee kyoon mera hindi ithna bura hai, aat varshon seekne ke baath? (i better provide a translation: now do you realize why my hindi is so bad inspite of learning for 8 years?) :-D
LOVED this post. You know i have taken up this lecturer's job in an engineering college here for a semester. I have to teach Industrial Economics & Management to three classes. IEM is this subject not of the techie profs don't want to take up, since it is all theory-theory. I was new hence a good bakra to take this up :-@
Khair, we have this movie club in college and they were showing Dil Chahta Hai. In DCH, Akshay Khanna makes a semi-nude painting of his Economics teacher in the movie. The other profs were in splits. Luckily there weren't many students around. I just wanted to hide under the desk!
@evenstar: Industrial economics should be a very interesting topic for engineers. This is one course where a large number of real life examples exist and can be invoked. I wonder why it has become a boring job!
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