Two days ago I was at an International technology related seminar. For some reason, the planned keynote speaker wasn’t available but somehow, fortunately (?) someone else called Dr. Tan (??), stood in.
Dear lord it was a painful 30 minutes or so.
Just quickly: One thing I’m quite good at, is reading people. I don’t mean in the Mistic Meg (or more accurately, Mistake Meg) fashion, but rather ‘sussing’ them out very rapidly. If there talking lobbox, lying, being insincere/fake etc. If I try and see through them consciously, it is even easier.
In communication, people intermittently don various psychological masks, by far the most common, is the one to offer total concealment/give cover, or to obscure something. They obviously believe their mask will be ample enough to afford that concealment, yet I can usually see straight through it. From which I infer they only put on a mask as strong as they themselves would find it hard to see through, therefore their mask is ineffectual to me, I must have much better powers of looking/analysing into people than they do. With regard to people deliberately put on a transparent mask, this is less common. The most devious people (often, but not always these are ‘clever’ people in the maniplative sence) adon a semi-transparent mask, a mask of ambiguity.
I more than suspect ‘skepetic-by-default’ people, also have similar X-ray vision like I mention above, dare I say conspiraloons?
Anyway…
Dr Tan, A Singaporean guy of Chinese ethnicity (if you hadn’t already guessed!) who worked for IBM as a technology consultant for East Asia got up to give his replacement for the keynote address. Smartly dressed – black suit, stereotypical ‘young techno geek’ stickky-up hairstyle. He said a few words into the mic when getting ready. The mic levels were quite loud. He then “started”.
I can’t remember the exact sequence of events ‘cos I was having an on-off chat to some Canadian participants (saying things like how Canadians don’t like to be labelled (incorrectly) as USans due to similar accents to the untrained ear – take the opportunity to try and push a little division in there LW – heh heh heh! ). So Dr. Tan said something like his name and his position, but then said “by the way, can you hear me at the back. If you can’t please put your hand up”
Now normally this is a perfectly valid question BUT he already knew the answer to that question as the mic level was quite loud, having already spoken it. And were weren’t at Old Trafford either! So I raised an eyebrow.
I could see he was following the opening chaper of “presentation methodogy”. Hummmm…
Soon afterwards he almost did a Rumsfeld. He was going on about graduates and that how they are trained to “do things right, but often do things rightly is not as good as doing the right thing” Oh God! FARTSPEAK! It’s not going to be one of these kinds of tosh-a-munga addresses is it?
With pictures of Donald Bumsfelt now cashiering up in front of my eyes! My inner voice said
No, PLEASE NO! Don’t start going on about known unknowns please!,
Help! He starting to do it. NOOOOO!
“Its not who you know, but you have to know who you don’t know…”
AAAAGH!!!
so and it went on for about a minute. End result of the Rumsfeldian? Well, unsurprisingly perhaps, when trying to explain it to the people who didn’t instantly get what he was saying, he made an error in his explanation somewhere and ended up contradicting himself and talking lobbox. Not that the audience seemed to care, most of whom I guess gave up shortly after the first neo-Confusesism a minute or so earlier and just happily waited for the guy to stop his waffle and actually state his point.
Groan!
At this point, I was just waiting for him pull out a cassette recorder, press play and then have the words “Your simply the best” start blaring out. A song sung incidentally by a woman that will surely have to be buried in a Y shaped coffin, and actually, I really did feel like one the new staff in one of the first episodes of “The office” with Ricky Gervais, when he does his motivational speech. Perhaps Mr.Tan has watched at episode and misunderstood it, taking it as some kind of masterclass or something?
An so it went on. A few more personal tales partly designed to impress us with facts that he did some vague “project” with the Chinese Railway authorities who had 20m people working in that sector and contrasted it with 100+ man Google, and if you can’t see any validity in his comparison, don’t worry, there wasn’t one!
I’m not going to tell you that Mr Tan said about YouTube or Google suffice to say it is absolutely stupidity to put forth as something to be repected, a company that makes nothing, could replicated at the drop of a hat on a shoestring budget (like how it started out in the first place), especially after buying another etherial company which made nothing and didn’t really do anything, and was known to be being sued for $1 bn US. Well, $1 bn US may well at the end of the court proceedings only cost £4.27, so maybe that’s not such a big deal after all?
But suddenly it very worse bit for a very interesting reason.
Some network connectivity charts showing lines between countries on a global map were shown, which pulled me out from the somewhat indulgence in the self-enacted nightmare I was going through.
Then up popped the next relationship slide.
Now you, being familiar with my blog and not having your cognitive punch-bowl spiked with Mr Tans ‘interesting’ quips and jokes (which incidentally, he had to explain on more than one occasion, saying the immortal words “that was a joke by the way”) wont have had your eyes seeing the slide in the same manner that the catpured audiece would have done so. We were scanning the latest slide for information about these global relationships and other boring social-science fartspeak concepts that I was forcing myself to hunt out on the projected screen, to which seconds later after realising it was fruitless, I began “see” it. My spidey-loonsence kicked in.
the pic is the barebones of the slide shown.
The blue and white bit was the trigger really.
That’s the star of David I said to myself. What’s that doing there? And look, it’s at the CENTRE of a ball with a cloudy blue outer circle around it. WOAH! Alert Alert! Possible subliminal implantation going on here! Israel is the centre of the earth through which all of the globe must pass through.
I was frowning. Unhappy at that symbol being rudely displated in my eye-scan. A symbol that represents one of the most long-running open wounds on the earth. An open wound whose instigators and parasites inside it, maintained the status quo. To me, the graphic was very much contrived and very unnecessary, suggesting therefore it was intentional.
I should have looked around at the rest of the crowd (many Muslims were there) but I think I only had a quick flick of the eyes towards them before activating “FULL SCAN MODE” on Mr Tan.
He was almost finished and I must admit, now FULLY alert, I didn’t detect any other subtle symbology or wording from Mr Tan. I saw no mal-intention by Me Tan, but it was clear that most graphics were not his, but from IBM corporate slides.
So Mr Tan, and his presentation, got a clean bill of health for the short scan I gave him. He was obviously not conscious of what I regarded yet another instance of the ongoing “beam Israyhell into the back of your brain” campaign.
Continuing with Mr. Tan for a second, actually, I’d say he’s likely a very nice guy and smart enough not to bore you if I quickly add he wasn’t in a non-seminar type situation doing an extended advert for IBM. He did display charisma which was massively begated out by a rather formulaic presentation theory. And I hope someone tell him re his humour that ‘it’s all in the timing.’
Diverting from the core of this post, I just want to let you know there was an IT lecturer there who managed to develop a system of teaching people C++ on a PDA! Can you image how difficult that would be to plan and achieve? I tip my hat many times to that very young smart sharp and articulate lady Riaza Rias who, given an unhindered path, is I am sure will achieve many good things.
There was also a sharp minded presenter from India, Dr. Senthilnathan who really showed how much effort India is putting into driving India forward not only in terms of application of technology but also/in addition to/coupled with the education sector. India is already THE worlds strongest centre for applied computing (my words, not the good doctors). They are the only country in the world to have a satellite totally dedicated to education. Wow! It’s cost is billions of rupees and the satellite wont even last that long, but it shows a fantastic drive for technology use for a worthwhile cause – eduation. In act I don’t think I have ever had any feelings other than strongly positive ones for delegates from India at a sumber of conferences and Seminars. It’s quite extraordinary.
India and it’s immediate neighbours is the worlds service station. You name it, kidneys, people, polymorphic lethal drugs trials to unfairly name a few of the least savoury of them. What an astounding country. It’s got little or no gas/oil too which raises HUGE questions about India’s future, but becasue they have so many subsistence wokers when the crap hits the fan, thankfully they are least likely to suffer. By consequence of the lack of oil, Indias nuclear sector is going to be MASSIVE and I utterly HATE EVERYTRHING to do with nuclear power. I heard an intelligent man on the radio saying that Uranium may well hit peak in about 50 years, and we are already post peak w.r.t. oil. What on earth is going to happen to nuclear power, nuclear weapon India? What an enigma.
Digression over, returning to unknowing subliminal Isreal propaganda conduit, Mr Tan…
There was no Q&A but I would have deliberately have asked a question in some way including a reference to the symbology. Sitting here and typing out yet another example of my paranoia out for all and sundry to see, I’ve thought of the perfect opener
“Just one point, On that Israeli star of David at the centre of the earth kind of diagram…..”
Damn!
But next time… I’m ready and waiting.
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