Working from home during Covid-19

[Atithee]

Talking about HIIT, read this Special High Intensity Training memo:

The S.H.I.T. program

In order to assure the highest levels of quality work and productivity
from students, it will be our policy to keep all students well taught
through our program of SPECIAL HIGH INTENSITY TEACHING (S.H.I.T.). We are
trying to give our students more S.H.I.T. than anyone else.

If you feel that you do not receive your share of S.H.I.T. on the course,
please see your lecturer. You will be immediately placed at the top of the
S.H.I.T. list, and our lecturers are especially skilled at seeing that you
get all the S.H.I.T. you can handle.

Students who don't take their S.H.I.T. will be placed in DEPARTMENTAL
EDUCATIONAL EVALUATION PROGRAMS (D.E.E.P. S.H.I.T.). Those who fail to
take D.E.E.P. S.H.I.T. seriously will have to go to EDUCATIONAL ATTITUDE
TRAINING (E.A.T. S.H.I.T.). Since our lecturers took S.H.I.T. before they
graduated, they don't have to do S.H.I.T. anymore, and are all full of
S.H.I.T. already.

If you are full of S.H.I.T., you may be interested in a job teaching
others. We can add your name to our BASIC UNDERSTANDING LECTURE LIST
(B.U.L.L. S.H.I.T.).

For students who are intending to pursue a career in management and
consultancy, we will refer you to the department of MANAGERIAL OPERATIONAL
RESEARCH EDUCATION (M.O.R.E. S.H.I.T.). This course emphasizes on how to
manage M.O.R.E. S.H.I.T.

If you have further questions, please direct them to our HEAD OF TEACHING,
SPECIAL HIGH INTENSITY TRAINING (H.O.T. S.H.I.T.).

Thank you, BOSS IN GENERAL SPECIAL HIGH INTENSITY TEACHING (B.I.G.
S.H.I.T.)

[Atithee]

This has many forms; usually it circulates as an HR memo.

[suresh]

[jai_in_canada]

^^^ That S.H.I.T. memo is funny! It's going to be even more famous when S.H.I.T hits the Featured Advertisement in Newspapers (FAN)!

[jaydeep]

Cool Atithee ... Really funny one this S.H.I.T. memo ...

[jayakris]

That reminds me of myself and another Malayali friend of mine (later an engineer in New York) getting ragged in IIT Madras back in 1980. I had studied in Malayalam medium schools, so I was among that very rare breed of students who got to IIT from Kerala; only about 3 of us were there that year, of that kind... I had never spoken a word of English in my life when I reached IITM (my first sentence in English is still in my mind. It was "where is my room" at the hostel office, when we went for counseling to select the major, and they had given us a hostel room to stay). I was from a village (call it a small town), and not a soul spoke English or Hindi anywhere in Kerala even in towns. English medium schools used to make students try to speak but generally even there the instruction had a lot of Malayalam, I am told. Kerala had no TV, and all the English I had ever heard was news on the radio, "This is Brihannal Dutt for All India Radio". So English learning was completely from library books and all the cricket stuff I used to read in Indian Express that did come to my village home! AIR cricket commentary also, of course.

Okay, anyway, on the first day on campus, a bunch of seniors came looking for the most country-looking Malayalees because we had the longtime reputation for being the most rural kind of guys who were fun to rag. They started ragging us with all kinds of put-on US accent and we had no clue what they were saying. My friend turned to me and said "shhe, ithenthavaada?" (extremely rural Malayalam - "shoot, what the heck is this?"). The "shhe" is just a Malayali exclamation. The raggers thought he said "shit". Oh boy, were they mad! They came down like a ton of bricks on us -- "WTF did you say? You said shit?"

Now starts the fun part. Neither of us knew what the word "shit" meant. I know, it sounds unbelievable, but we just did not know. Mind you, I probably had the highest score in English in my whole district in the SSLC exam and had read every Charles Dickens novel in the village and college libraries. But I don't think Brihannal Dutt on AIR or Charles Dickens ever used the word "shit". So I didn't know. It went all the way to the ragging seniors spelling the word out, and making us write S H I T fifty times on a piece of paper (still not knowing what it was) and then one of them finally figuring out that we actually did not know the word. They felt pity on us and let us go, as they were piss-drunk and dying laughing!

[jayakris]

To add to the above. One of the malayalam magazine's had an "ask the expert" or whatever column where people would ask about life's problems. Sometime later, after the above "shitty" experience, I saw one of the readers ask on what to do about her depression, coming from the name the parents had given. That was a period when Malayali Christians did not like the traditional names (Maria, Philomena, Thressia, etc) and had not yet started using the Indian language names like Usha, Leela, Maya, etc, much. So names like Laloo, Lalee, Jijo, Joji, etc would be invented. Hindus also did their part with names like Shaji, Shiju, Shyju, and all that. The parents used to love to come up with rhyming names. Apparently the above teenager was one of three sisters named Litty, Mitty, Shitty. I think the magazine could only console her and ask her to change the name. But I was happy to see that we two Changanassery college guys weren't the only ones who didn't know the word.

The moral of the story: Malayalees don't know shit!

[jai_in_canada]

Really enjoyed reading these stories, Jay.
But, question: how did you score so well in the JEE without knowing English?

[jai_in_canada]

The moral of the story: Malayalees don't know shit!

Reminds me of a French Canadian guy who moved to Toronto to work at the company I was at. The other workers mercilessly made fun of him - partly because of his poor English, and partly because he was super sensitive and would get mad. One day he had had enough. (No he didn't pull out a gun. This is Canada, not 'Merica.) He yelled out "You think I know f**k nothing?! I know f**k ALL!!"

All this fun is sadly lost in this work-from-home pandemic.

[jayakris]

^^ Haha, thats funny!

Really enjoyed reading these stories, Jay.
But, question: how did you score so well in the JEE without knowing English?

Oh I knew English very well. I just didn't know shit .... I had never had a chance to speak the language or hear any casual conversation, though I had learned it in my 5th thru 10th grades and for 2 years during my pre-degree (college). Very high score in SSLC exam and all that. I had read all the usual classic novels but still didn't know shit ... The word doesn't appear in print very much you know.

[jayakris]

Talking about HIIT, read this Special High Intensity Training memo:
The S.H.I.T. program...

Forgot to reply with what we in academia consider our degrees to be.
BS - Bull Shit.
MS - More Shit.
PHD - Pile High and Deep

[jai_in_canada]

Really enjoyed reading these stories, Jay.
But, question: how did you score so well in the JEE without knowing English?

Oh I knew English very well. I just didn't know shit ...

The word doesn't appear in print very much you know.

It does now! If you were learning English now that would be the first word you'd learn. Especially if you underwent the Special High Intensity Teaching method.

[prasen9]

Hey, I thought your bachelors degree was B.Tech.