Sterotyping

I claim that I hate stereotyping, though I catch myself doing it at times. Frankly speaking, I do get nervous when I pass a couple of black teenagers while going for my walk. And to strengthen my point, once I was teased by a 5 year old and was afraid to retaliate as I was not sure of the protocol, especially when it comes to black kids. It could be interpreted as racism just to admonish the kid… Would the kid have teased me if I were a white woman? Would a white kid have teased me? Will it be considered racist if I shout at the kid? With all these thoughts, I just walked and made sure I ignore him and his friends, just a bunch of 5 yr olds.

A couple of months after joining linear, an engineer from the Singapore plant visited us for some training on a particular tester, of which I was supposed to be an expert and was hired for the same reason. I was sitting at a station debugging some board, when this guy walks over to me and asks about some operator setup. Firstly, I was new to the place and had no clue about what he was asking and secondly, I was not an operator. I looked at him and said that he needs to ask that question to an operator. He just blurted out, “Oh! I thought you were an operator”. Apparently, in Singapore, lots of srilankan and Indian women are operators and he had never seen a female test engineer till then. Go figure!! That was just the beginning. I have been mistaken for an operator a few times ever since just because I am female and it is very rare to find women in my area of expertise. I tend to laugh it off or give some smart-aleck retort, which usually forces them to laugh or blush.

If you watch sitcoms, you can see the Indian stereotyping. Any sitcom based in New York such as “How I met your mother” will see an Indian taxi driver, which can be quite annoying. But a sitcom based in CAL will usually have an Indian doctor or an Indian scientist,aka Raj from “The Big Bang Theory”. I don’t mind the Indian accent though as I think almost 95% of Indians have their Indian-American accent, in slightly different flavors. When watching discovery channel, it looks like we have snake charmers in every nook and corner of India. People are too busy catching snakes for dinner, to be had along with Monkey Brains(thanks to Indiana Jones) while making phone calls to American customers, with a cow standing just outside the door( Have you seen the movie “Outsourced”?)..Just yesterday, a colleague was talking about catching snakes to explain to me about something as if talking about snakes will make me understand it better and no, I am not making this up. When a junior Indian guy joined our team, which was a rarity in our firm, people came up to me and seriously asked if he was my brother, 'coz we look alike you see..:-) I could go on and on..

Talking about the upcoming elections, I am yet to see a single Indian who supports the republican govt. Is it just because of Bush and the Iraq war or is it just because we like to be democrats? Most of the Indians in the bay area will have an increase in tax cut if Obama gets elected. He has given the limit as 250K. Obama always talks about the middle class, well, I can guarantee you that most of the Indian engineers , especially with a two-income household are not middleclass. The average salary for a middle class family in SanJose is 70K. Is it because we associate Democracy with freedom back home , that we like to vote for a democrat , if we were citizens? Yes, Bush can be hated and you can be against the war, but are we stereotyping here?
Be it race, gender, country of origin , government , I think our brain has some association for certain words , which triggers a set of actions. Maybe, that is stereotyping and it may not be easy not to.
Have you ever been stereotyped or have you found yourself stereotyping someone when it was otherwise?

WHY MEN ARE NEVER DEPRESSED

I got this post as an email. Thought it would be better to post it here.


Men Are Just Happier People--
What do you expect from such simple creatures? Your last
name stays put. The garage is all yours. Wedding plans take
care of themselves. Chocolate is just another snack. You can
never be pregnant. You can wear a white T-shirt to a water
park. You can wear NO shirt to a water park. Car mechanics
tell you the truth. The world is your urinal. You never have
to drive to another gas station restroom because this one is
just too icky. You don't have to stop and think of which
way to turn a nut on a bolt. Same work, more pay. Wrinkles
add character. Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental-$100. People
never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.
New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet. One
mood all the time.Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds
flat. You know stuff about tanks. A five-day vacation
requires only one suitcase.. You can open all your own jars.
You get extra credit for the slightest act of
thoughtfulness. If someone forgets to invite you, he or she
can still be your friend. Your underwear is $8.95 for a
three-pack. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough. You
almost never have strap problems in public. You are unable
to see wrinkles in your clothes. Everything on your face
stays its original color. The same hairstyle lasts for
years, maybe decades. You only have to shave your face and
neck. You can play with toys all your life. One wallet and
one pair of shoes -- one color for all seasons. You can wear
shorts no matter how your legs look. You can 'do'
your nails with a pocket knife. You have freedom of choice
concerning growing a mustache. You can do Christmas shopping
for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes. No wonder men
are happier. Send this to the women who can handle it and to
the men who will enjoy reading it.

Security & Me

I appreciate security. I appreciate the notion that I can go about my business dealings in a secure, risk-free manner.

Nobody can access my Pre-tax savings. I have been accumulating reserves paycheck to paycheck. I sit like a mother hen and imagine it grow. Considering imagination is the only course of action open to me now, it is a pretty good occupation to indulge in. Nobody can access my Pre-tax savings, not even myself.

I have been slacking with reimbursements and claims. As I groggily started my day, I decided to attack all of the 'Pending' items on my to-do list. Transit claims, expense claims - the works. I enter the site with determination. The site believes in security and so do I. It prompts me for a user id and password. Determination slowly turns to trepidation: This is where the trouble usually begins - each one asks for a different userid/password combination. I try to keep the passwords along the same lines, since there are atleast 8 different systems in the company I work in, dealing with different aspects of my life. The problem comes when each system requires me to change my passwords at varied intervals.

System 1 determines changing passwords once every 3 months is good enough, while system 3 wants it to be on a monthly basis. System 2, on the other hand, does not really care whether I change my password or not, as long as it is 32 characters long and has atleast 2 numerals irregularly spaced every 13 characters, and has atleast one special character to boot along with a rather simple requirement that the letters used cannot all be lower-case or upper-case. And it really only asks that you don't start the password with a capital letter.

I finally hit upon something - I appeased all the password Gods and dutifully complied with all the rules. I saved the passwords cryptically in my drafts folder. And for somebody to get to my drafts, they had to plunge into the very depths of my brain, and use advanced data mining techniques for connections and links to mundane details in my life, before they could find the password.

I had the system under control. Till it was determined that keeping one's email for too long is risky business too, and implemented a 30 day rolling deletion policy on email. One fine day, my drafts which contained the goldmine of information was deleted, without a trace of retrieval!

So, here I am enjoying a perfect day mailing random system administrators about my imperfect memory, and requesting system resets. They comply and remind me: I must only remember not to use any of the last 8 passwords I have ever used on the site. Given that I don't remember any of the passwords, is there a way to tell me which are the 8 I previously used, I ask innocently.