Without Engineers All Around

Disturbed with the sad realization of spending most of my time with engineers, this weekend I decided to try something else. So, on Saturday evening, I went to a gathering of people where I'd ordinarily not. It was a group related to private franchisees -- Quickstar and Amway. There I was sitting with a lot of people from different walks of life -- there were doctors, lawyers, businessmen, teachers/professors, students, and of course engineers. There was a speaker who was supposed to give a presentation on "something which would change your life". A good deal of people jumped up to the stage before the "real" speaker did, trying to pull excitement out of thin air with their broken English and miserably impersonated accent, and each of them claimed that this evening would "change your life forever". This phrase was being repeated with such liberal efficacy as if the intent purpose of "something which would change your life" was either understood or unquestioned, as if it had been globally accepted as a common ask. I hung on, not for an opportunity to "change my life forever" but for an opportunity to analyze what was going on.

The real speaker ranted about why everyone wanted to change one's life, how one could make life comfortable, how one could be happier, and it was shocking to see that each of these were tied with an idea of not having to work. It was assumed that to be truly happy in life, you needed to quit work and spend time with family, and he would have me believe that as long as I had to work, I didn't have "permanent" happiness. I'm accustomed to let such brag pass unabsorbed through my head but I wanted to see what the speaker would arrive at and how he'd drive the point home, so I lingered on. To my astonishment, he didn't. He didn't have a point to drive home. He spent all his talk motivating people that they needed to change their life but volunteered nothing as the means to it -- as if it was already well-established, unquestioned. He beat around for long about how he had "changed his life" and now he didn't have to work anymore, as if work were a punishment. He would make liberal use of metaphors that I care not understand, citing examples of how the richest people in the world had made money, as if he had decoded all of them.

In essence, the speaker spoke about everything except what the real point was. It was unnecessary. The audience was in applauses.

The speaker had taken 2 hours for his beating around the bush. If I had given the same presentation, it would last no longer than 5 minutes and all of it would contain the points of essence, nothing more nothing less, as if hitting the nail on its head.

Now that's the difference between engineers and others. Engineers try to make a point, others consider that it's unnecessary to make a point. Engineers tend to go by logic, others tend to go by ... well, I don't think they go by anything. (no flames please, by "others" I mean the crowd that was there)

I'm better off with engineers anyway, but I'll continue with my analysis at such gatherings. There's an awful lot you get to understand about the world and its suction.