Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Topic started by: rabbit on 01 December, 2016, 10:15:44 am
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If someone could magically transform you into the top 0.001% of a profession and make you one of the best in the world, what profession would you chose?
Mine would not be cycling in any form!
If a genie could grant me a wish to be something spectacular, it would be a prima ballerina.
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Politician. :demon:
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Interesting question. I wouldn't. I'm temperamentally unsuited to that sort of commitment. I'd like to be a better artist, but that's not doing stuff for money (which is not the same as liking to be paid for stuff). This reminds me that I have some invoices to write.
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Ooh tough question. Probably musician, specifically acoustic guitar.
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Child law lawyer.
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I'm curiously happy being the 18th most influential Tidy Haired Thought Leader™ in east Surrey. Perhaps, I'd like to be number 17 for a while.
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Being Guy Martin.
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Flautist, or 10,000 metre runner (They're quite different, aren't they?!)
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Cosmologist, chef, cricket all rounder or wellie thrower.
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Sports reporter.
I would love to be able to make my wedge reporting on sport in all its wide ranging glory (and shame).
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Instrument making.
I did consider this as a career when I was at school but decided it wasn't for me. However, I've been lucky in all my jobs to have a large amount of work by hand (as well as by brain) so I haven't done so bad really.
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Astronaut. Seriously, what's wrong with you people, with your grown-up answers?
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Astronaut. Seriously, what's wrong with you people, with your grown-up answers?
I did actually consider that! But "Movie Astronaut" is what I really want. (Or possibly Buck Rogers)
The real ones spend too much time in confined spaces, eating shit, sleep deprived, training far too hard, getting blown-up in Florida ... etc ...
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Operatic tenor. Or maybe baritone, the pay's not as good but you don't have to hug La Dame de Too Much Chocolate.
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Astronaut. Seriously, what's wrong with you people, with your grown-up answers?
I suppose I could combine the two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM7XerPy2kY
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Astronaut. Seriously, what's wrong with you people, with your grown-up answers?
Kim, the question was what would I want to be in the top 0.001% of?
I would be happy to be at the bottom of the pile of astronauts!
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Astronaut. Seriously, what's wrong with you people, with your grown-up answers?
Astronaut is my answer too :thumbsup:
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I too would have said operatic tenor at one time, but I sing second bass these days. With T42 crowding me out of the top 0.000001% I shall have to plump for leg-spin bowler.
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Bowling some overs upon which I can report in a professional expert manner.
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Astronaut. Seriously, what's wrong with you people, with your grown-up answers?
Policeman.
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Classical pianist or free climber.
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Astronaut. Seriously, what's wrong with you people, with your grown-up answers?
At 18 I made some career decisions based on Astronaut or Explorer which have definitely affected where I ended up. I agree about the cycling. Any cycling biography I have read implies that to be really good you have to be seriously messed up. Is Gentleman Loser an option?
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Actually, if Wow wants to be the tenor I'll be David Attenborough. Just not his age, though.
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Billionaire playboy!
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Chef.
When I finished uni, I very nearly decided to go into catering. It's the one thing I'd do differently if I could have my time again.
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Rock singer. Or guitarist. I want to be Keith Richards.
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Rock singer. Or guitarist. I want to be Keith Richards.
And Keith Richards wants to be a pirate so there may be a vacancy if you asked nicely.
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Wildlife film maker
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Test pilot, New Yorker staff writer, chef, rare books dealer, bicycle framebuilder...
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Musician. Guitar. Electric. Rock.
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Metal working artisan! Including but not limited to bicycle frames and old cars
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Fly fisherman on a big river in British Columbia, fishing for Salmon in the rain.
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Test pilot, New Yorker staff writer, chef, rare books dealer, bicycle framebuilder...
Now we’re talking.
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Has no-one had pr0n star yet?
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Darts.
Assuming I didn't have to practise, it would give me the most free time while competing at the top level.
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It's interesting that a goodly proportion of the responses above list creative jobs (apart from Kim :demon:) but I'm guessing that those contributors are in professions with very little creativity. Were you steered in the wrong direction at school? Were creative jobs not portrayed as highly valued as those you ended up doing? I'd be interested to know the answers.
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Creative jobs require innate talent, rather than just hard work and/or luck, and people are wishing for the talent that goes with it rather than the job itself?
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Maybe carpenter making bespoke furniture out of wood. Or potter. But I think I'll settle for being in the top 0.0001% of people who aren't too fussed about being in the bottom 99.9999% of anything.
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It's interesting that a goodly proportion of the responses above list creative jobs (apart from Kim :demon:) but I'm guessing that those contributors are in professions with very little creativity.
You guess wrong. But if you've already spent over half your life in a profession why not choose something different? Choosing the same profession , would not be particularly creative me thinks.
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Creative jobs require innate talent, rather than just hard work and/or luck, and people are wishing for the talent that goes with it rather than the job itself?
I'm sure that applies in some cases (perhaps most) but surely not all? I could have been an instrument maker if I wanted to but everyone told me that I was good at TEH SUMS and TEH SCIENCE and therefore should go to university to study something related. Mrs W is very creative but ended up being a lawyer, a choice she simultaneously regrets and applauds ::-).
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It's interesting that a goodly proportion of the responses above list creative jobs (apart from Kim :demon:) but I'm guessing that those contributors are in professions with very little creativity.
You guess wrong. But if you've already spent over half your life in a profession why not choose something different? Choosing the same profession , would not be particularly creative me thinks.
That's sort of my point. People dream of being in creative jobs but could they have pursued that dream earlier in life with different guidance?
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Creative jobs require innate talent, rather than just hard work and/or luck, and people are wishing for the talent that goes with it rather than the job itself?
Being "Top Flight", or the best in your field, usually requires innate talent, no matter what the field.
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Yeah, rock guitarist. Unoriginal, but hey ho.
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Cook or historian (or possibly both at the same time)
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It's interesting that a goodly proportion of the responses above list creative jobs (apart from Kim :demon:) but I'm guessing that those contributors are in professions with very little creativity.
You guess wrong. But if you've already spent over half your life in a profession why not choose something different? Choosing the same profession , would not be particularly creative me thinks.
That's sort of my point. People dream of being in creative jobs but could they have pursued that dream earlier in life with different guidance?
Your point about people not already being in creative jobs is incorrect.
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Travel writer. Imagine getting paid to go on holiday!
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Darts.
I see what you did there... ;)
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It's interesting that a goodly proportion of the responses above list creative jobs (apart from Kim :demon:) but I'm guessing that those contributors are in professions with very little creativity. Were you steered in the wrong direction at school? Were creative jobs not portrayed as highly valued as those you ended up doing? I'd be interested to know the answers.
I followed the paths that I did due to lack of academic ability. My intelligence was in the common sense arena and 'that looks like it goes in there that way round and connects to that bit' ability. Not to be sneezed at but, travelling the world going to sporting events as a paid endeavour would have been a choice were I of a more academic bent. I would love to be Ned Boulting......
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It occurs to me that I want to be ruler of teh world. In this capacity I can rid the world of all tyranical evil and become the benevolent dictator.
As I am a compassionate, good and altruistic person the world will inevitably become a better place for all. :)
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If I couldn't be a very picky gigolo, I quite like the idea of being a sought-after architect.
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Not cracked that one then?
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Trapeze artist. Or astronaut. Or biochemist. How could one combine these I wonder.
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Performing experiments in a gravity free environment?
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I quite fancy being a BBC Commisioning Executive. The opportunity to shape our culture, and the salary, are attractive.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/articles/who-we-are-how-we-commission
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUTFm55I_9g
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Captain of a submarine
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Captain of a submarine
Wouldn't that be boring in the extreme most of the time? I suppose the captn is the only one who doesn't have to sleep in a torpedo tube.
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Tbh, I wouldn't want to be top flight of anything. It sounds far too much like hard work. I mean it's surely super being an astronaut. You get bossed around all the time and then blasted into space on top of a big dangerous firework to spend a brief period being sick through your nose before risking being burned to a crisp coming home. If you don't die at some point, which is quite likely. I'll pass. My idea of risk is the top on my caution-contents-may-be-hot Caffe Nero latte being imperfectly sealed.
I'm happy being in the middle. Achievers are tiresome. Aspiration is exhausting. I like where I am, I have a job where I'm paid a lot to do mostly whatever I feel like when I like doing it, my main exasperation is corporate nonsense caused by those achievers who at the end of day are still answering email while I drink some gin (it's ginvent!), I'm married to a woman I love, with two cats of doubtful loyalty, writing books that no one other than me would read (and I don't have to care because doing things for the hell of it makes them completely worthwhile). And I've got good tunes on my iPhone. Pffft to the top flight, they can have it. It's better down below.
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I've just learned that Japanese Combat Swimming is a thing. Not quite sure what the options are for career progression, but recognition should be fairly easy to come by.
(https://www.insidejapantours.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/swimmer.jpg)
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I want'd to be a cycling professional in the late 70's early 80's.I was fast on the right day, some days unbeatable - but was gutted at the time that I never was. In hind sight I just didn't have it mentally tho'.
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i'd want to be a top classical music composer, like the greats of baroque :thumbsup:
(i wanted to be an astronaut when i was a kid)
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Tbh, I wouldn't want to be top flight of anything. It sounds far too much like hard work.
Call me perverse but the hard work is part of what appeals to me about the idea of being a top chef. I had a few kitchen jobs when I was young and I loved the heat and pressure and permanent sense of imminent violence.
I'm not sure if I really ever had what it takes to get to the top, but I think I could have made a decent career out of it - especially when I look at some of the numpties on Professional Masterchef, I just know I would have been better at it than a lot of them.
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Operatic tenor. Or maybe baritone, the pay's not as good but you don't have to hug La Dame de Too Much Chocolate.
Her.
La Dame de Too Much Chocolate.
Or maybe a poker player.
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Travel writer. Imagine getting paid to go on holiday!
Chief taster for Walkers crisps!
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Real world? Wheel builder, frame builder.
Fantasy? Helicopter pilot.
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Apollo Flight Controller.
Or a photojournalist in the 70s onwards.
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Swordsman
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It's interesting that a goodly proportion of the responses above list creative jobs (apart from Kim :demon:) but I'm guessing that those contributors are in professions with very little creativity.
You guess wrong. But if you've already spent over half your life in a profession why not choose something different? Choosing the same profession , would not be particularly creative me thinks.
That's sort of my point. People dream of being in creative jobs but could they have pursued that dream earlier in life with different guidance?
Not in my case. I can't sing a note.
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Brewer or winemaker
I'd say I'm already up there (maybe not top 0.001%) of the profession that chose me (not quite the one I had intended).
I always wanted to be an RAF pilot when I was growing up, but I don't think I'd have been good at taking orders
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Or a photojournalist in the 70s onwards.
Oooh yes! A Don MCullin or Tim Page type :thumbsup:
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...
Not in my case. I can't sing a note.
I've often wondered how many people would have had voices like Pavarotti if they hadn't been tone-deaf.
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I've just learned that Japanese Combat Swimming is a thing. Not quite sure what the options are for career progression, but recognition should be fairly easy to come by.
(https://www.insidejapantours.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/swimmer.jpg)
Yes, we recognise this character.
Swimming? Check!
Combative? Check!
Horned helmet? Check!
And all this time Torslanda has never let on that his wife is a Japanese Combat Swimmer! :D
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Swordsman
Get thee to California, it's not too late
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The bestest violinist there ever was.
Given my musical talents this is similar to wanting to fly, without artificial aids, to the moon (and back preferably).
Other than that, I'd like to have been Jacques Cousteau. I can actually swim quite well although my French would need improvement.
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Another one for me- animal conservationist.
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I am already there, somewhere between top 0.0001 and 0.005 depending on the metric used. It's OK but I am really looking forward to retirement in a year or two so I can ride my bike more. ;D
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On reflection, I might have to change my vote to side with Ron Nasty of The Rutles:
I wanna command a squadron of tanks!
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On reflection, I might have to change my vote to side with Ron Nasty of The Rutles:
I wanna command a squadron of tanks!
Tanks are massively impressive during the 0.00001% of the time when they are actually moving and looking warry instead of languishing in a shed being fixed, polished, fixed again.
I'd probably want to be a top linguist. The sort of person who is genuinely fluent in multiple languages. Or maybe just has the gift of tongues. I could travel everywhere and talk to everyone.
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i could be infinitely prolonged and spend eternity travelling through space and time, insulting the whole of creation in alphabetical order.
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I still want to be an astronaut. I have (mostly) accepted that this will never be. Glasses and asthma not ideal.
However, I'm eighteen months into a new job and provided I clear the medical I should be getting to go on a plane that simulates micro-gravity next May. Which is closer than I ever thought I'd get to space.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee, so excited.
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Watchmaking
I want to be Roger Smith (www.rwsmithwatches.com)
And if I couldn't be him, I'd like to be the next watchmaker down the list of the best. I would love to be able to make a watch from scratch.
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Glassblower specificly a Scientific Glassblower. I've always regarded lab. glassware as decorative as well as functional. Its something I've always wanted to try but never had the oppertunity.
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On reflection, I might have to change my vote to side with Ron Nasty of The Rutles:
I wanna command a squadron of tanks!
Try Grangemouth Petrochemical. They have lots.
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Astronaut. Seriously, what's wrong with you people, with your grown-up answers?
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The Jackal.
There are several hundred people in power who the world could do without. Thus, I would be happy to offer my services for a reasonable fee to remove these people from the gene pool.... but only if I agreed that their removal would be good for humanity.
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Chess. Super GM.
Mr 0.0001% Magnus Carlsen is reportedly nett worth of "only" a couple of mil but he's young, plays a game for a living and likely to be able to do so for many years yet.
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Glassblower specificly a Scientific Glassblower. I've always regarded lab. glassware as decorative as well as functional. Its something I've always wanted to try but never had the oppertunity.
Speaking as someone who works in academic chemistry labs, I've rarely met a glassblower who isn't miserable as sin.
They are all into the decorative thing but have their lives and aspirations destroyed by us lot who only ever ask them to 'please unstick this joint' - please repair this Liebig Condenser.... please repair this thing that I've left covered in something that is going to flash fire in your face (or explode) when you get your oxyacetylene torch on it.
Back in the day, I am informed by the very senior people left over from ye olden days, if you wanted a flask you had to blow it yourself. I guess that led to more appreciation of the potential dangers...
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Glassblower specificly a Scientific Glassblower. I've always regarded lab. glassware as decorative as well as functional. Its something I've always wanted to try but never had the oppertunity.
Speaking as someone who works in academic chemistry labs, I've rarely met a glassblower who isn't miserable as sin.
They are all into the decorative thing but have their lives and aspirations destroyed by us lot who only ever ask them to 'please unstick this joint' - please repair this Liebig Condenser.... please repair this thing that I've left covered in something that is going to flash fire in your face (or explode) when you get your oxyacetylene torch on it.
Back in the day, I am informed by the very senior people left over from ye olden days, if you wanted a flask you had to blow it yourself. I guess that led to more appreciation of the potential dangers...
I find that amazing. I'd have assumed all lab glassware was moulded by machines and that when it breaks, you just sweep up the pieces and order a new one from "laboratoryhardware-dot-com-all your lab needs at the lowest prices, next day delivery guaranteed".
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Well if the 'all your lab needs met at the lowest prices' bit was true we would.
Sadly Sigma-Aldrich sell a box of pencils for about 20 quid last time I checked which gives you a ball-park figure for how expensive lab-stuff is. It's not like we're a mass market.
Having said that, you kind of can, but it depends on what it is. If it's a round bottomed flask, yeah don't worry. A double Schlenk-line will cost several thousands of $$ for a new one so that's when el glassblower comes in (though that would be a task met with some enthusiasm).
Even run of the mill glassware with universal (Quick-fit) ground glass joints is kind of pricey though - something like a tenner a piece.
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I have vague childhood memories of SCIENTISTS molishing pipettes from stock glass tubing with a bunsen burner when needed. Not sure whether the traditional rubber tube in the mouth was used instead of a bulb. That always struck me as a Mk 1 bad idea when dealing with infectious organisms.
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I presume those must be very special pencils or you'd just get them from Rymans. Anyway, I googled "sigma aldrich pencils" and didn't find anyway, so I reckon you're making that bit up. :D (Or more likely, my google-fu is lacking in the area of lab pencils.)
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Top flight criminal barrister (making sure any wealthy punters pay heavily for my services).
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I think avoiding having people with less talent but more power complaining at me would be a significant aim. So sportsperson is probably rules out, along with politician, businessman etc.
Research scientist might be interesting.
Doctor would be altruistic.
I dunno, it's too hard to choose! :)
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I presume those must be very special pencils or you'd just get them from Rymans. Anyway, I googled "sigma aldrich pencils" and didn't find anyway, so I reckon you're making that bit up. :D (Or more likely, my google-fu is lacking in the area of lab pencils.)
I once looked them up in the Sigma-Aldrich catalogue for a laugh and it turned out to be even more hilarious than I had imagined - trust me I'm not making it up. To be fair I think they are there so Pharms company sections can buy them at the end of April to spend their surplus budgets* - I don't think anyone would ever actually buy them otherwise.
I think you need to be signed up to them to see their prices.
*If you don't spend your budget then it gets cut next year type thing.
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And yes we do really just buy them from stock suppliers.
I just had a look and sadly it appears they have removed pencils from their catalogue since last I looked - which was a decade or so ago.
An Erlenmeyer ACE style round three necked bottomed flask... 129 quid thobut.
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If you can't find the price on google ... you probably can't afford it.
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An Erlenmeyer ACE style round three necked bottomed flask... 129 quid thobut.
Yeah, I needed one of those for my A level project and there was only one left and no budget to replace the 2 broken ones by the time my group did lab projects. It was a constant scrounge to get access to it when it wasn't in use by others so I didn't get as much data as would have been handy and I spent half my life scrubbing someone else's insoluble organic shite out of it.
I would have been less hacked off if the tutor hadn't assigned the best projects to potential medics and given me and some others really duff and boring ones with annoying kit.
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I have vague childhood memories of SCIENTISTS molishing pipettes from stock glass tubing with a bunsen burner when needed. Not sure whether the traditional rubber tube in the mouth was used instead of a bulb. That always struck me as a Mk 1 bad idea when dealing with infectious organisms.
About a gazillion years ago when I was in my first year of Microbiology, we were given lab rules, top of which was "No Mouth Pipetting Ever." The last (added by hand) was Inoculate is spelled "Inoculate".(Dr. Smith got all twitchy if variants on this were used)
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As an undergrad I once mouth pipetted some 0.1 M H2SO4 and got it wrong.*
I learned my lesson. :facepalm:
*Was interesting that it tasted juuuust like vinegar. That's about as interesting as it got.
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Glassblower specificly a Scientific Glassblower. I've always regarded lab. glassware as decorative as well as functional. Its something I've always wanted to try but never had the oppertunity.
Speaking as someone who works in academic chemistry labs, I've rarely met a glassblower who isn't miserable as sin.
They are all into the decorative thing but have their lives and aspirations destroyed by us lot who only ever ask them to 'please unstick this joint' - please repair this Liebig Condenser.... please repair this thing that I've left covered in something that is going to flash fire in your face (or explode) when you get your oxyacetylene torch on it.
Back in the day, I am informed by the very senior people left over from ye olden days, if you wanted a flask you had to blow it yourself. I guess that led to more appreciation of the potential dangers...
I did some rudimentary glass blowing when I was quite young. I had a chemistry set one Christmas, probably when I was about 11. In one experiment, you had to sacrifice a test tube by heating up one upper portion and then blowing into it to create a hole in the glass. The experiment was then to half-fill this test tube with coal, heat the coal with a bunsen burner and then set fire to the gas that came out of the hole you had previously blown in the side of the test tube. Other byproducts from the coking process went up the tube plugged into the top of the tube.
Also there was the simple bending of glass tubes so that one could make fermentation locks for wine making. This was not long after Reginald Maudlin had decriminalised beer making in a 1960s budget but before home brewing and wine making had taken off commercially. I was in my mid-teens (I think) when I did this sort of thing.
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IRTA "decimalised beer making"