An interview

Questions from bluechromis.

1. What do you think of this statement: "Money is the shortest route to freedom."

Heh heh heh. I think it's charmingly innocent... though it's pretty close once "Knowledge of" is appended at the beginning. Did you know that the majority of lottery winners end up in debt within a year (or some other short timespan, don't remember) because they don't know how to handle their money? Perhaps infinite money could be the shortest route to freedom. Perhaps money is the shortest route to temporary freedom. But we carry most of our prisons with us.

Knowledge of money, on the other hand, can dig most people out of most kinds of servitude-to-others, given time. What people really need is both... knowledge of money plus actual money. That'd be a short route to all kinds of fun. :)

2. What do you desire to achieve but aren't sure you can?

I greatly desire to work at a job that is personally and intellectually satisfying, and which in some part also serves a greater good. I thought this would be easy in engineering... I don't have to save the world, working on something cool & useful like e-paper would make me happy. However, somehow it turns out not to be easy. Now that I'm disturbingly comfortable in the scene of my current failure to find such a job, I am semi-paralyzed at the thought of trying and failing again. I keep being told that so many of the business practices that disturb or disgust me here are pervasive throughout the industry (or all industry)... and that I may as well stay here. Yyyyyyipes. :(

My idea for a startup isn't really a way out, by the way--I'd be happy with the ethics there, but I want to stay in a technical job for a few more years too, and I haven't thought of anything original and technical worth starting my own business over, and I don't even want to. Bloody hell. What a good question, but nasty to answer. I feel so trapped sometimes!

3. Where in Boston do you feel most at home?

Newbury Street... perhaps having lunch at the Other Side, then wandering through Tower Records Virgin Megastore to scope out the indie books... going into Victor Hugo to find and pet Blue the cat and scope out more books, then walking on down Newbury, looking at the people & expensive shops and just savoring the feeling of knowing where everything is. (Or isn't... rest in peace, Milano's.)

There's the library too--and damn it, what has happened to my every-3-Saturdays library visit? That's another piece to add back to my life. But the library tends to smell bad and it usually gets its own trip anyway. So I'll stick with the street. I haven't actually done such a wander as I describe in a long time... I shall surely plan one in a few weeks. Want to come?

4. How would you like to picture our friendship in 5 years?

Ummm... strong, challenging & mutually supportive? I expect we'll still be friends, maybe even still LJ'ing. It seems rather likely you'll have had a baby and been pretty distracted for a while, but if so we'll have gotten through that reasonably well. I'm not worried. ;) So if you're still in town we should still be seeing each other fairly often... and since the question is how would I like to picture it, yeah, I like to picture you will stay in town, and buy a nice little place on the Cambridge side of the world, and let me help paint it. :) See, I don't mind long-distance friendships, but I have enough of those, so my picturing tends to picture the close people staying close, at the moment!

I like to think we'll have done some slightly more adventurous things like travel together sometime... and in general have shared five more years of life, love, angst, books, food and all that.

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The interview meme is simple: if you want to be interviewed and/or have interview questions for me, leave a comment.