Re: Census jobs and navigation - Gilly -- Scottish Ex-Pat's Blether Bar & Grill

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Date Posted: 02:03:28 02/08/11 Tue
Author: BB
Subject:

Re: Census jobs and navigation - Gilly
In reply to: Gilly 's message, "Re: Census jobs and navigation - Gilly" on 19:21:06 02/07/11 Mon

Good to hear you've got some work Gilly, even though it sounds like bedlam! It's better to be frantically useful than doing something just to be doing something. I hope I can find a bit of local work to give some structure to the loose collection of other (highly enjoyable) things that I'm doing.

I feel an anecdote coming on about the purpose of work:

Three years ago I went to a paint company about a hundred miles north of Moscow to try and solve a chemistry problem they had. To my great delight I solved the problem, the full story of which I will recount in my memoirs(!?). But this detail from that story concerns my arrival at the paint factory on a winter morning. The buildings were old and "distressed", with trees lining the roadways between them. I saw two Russian women, probably in their sixties, whitewashing the lower parts of the tree trunks, up to a height of about four feet. I can't think of any reasons for this being done other than an attempt to make the place look a bit tidier, or to make the trees more visible (lorry drivers and vodka?). It seemed pointless work and I suspect it was a leftover from the Soviet times when everybody was guaranteed a job. I know from conversations with other Russians that the state pension was about two quid a week so I admired the paint company for providing work that served no real purpose but allowed people from the town to earn a bit more. The image of those women in their headscarves, heavy coats and boots, sloshing the whitewash on the trees with big floppy brushes reminds me of women scrubbing their doorsteps when I was a boy. I couldn't see the point but the energy that went into it was certainly purposeful.

I'm a big fan of the census. I think it reveals rather than conceals and in that sense is Big Brother's litle brother telling his secrets. A supermarket loyalty card is a sneakier collector of data (though I use them).

It I get a census job I hope I don't meet the Welsh equivalent of Hannibal Lecter.

What a ramble!

BB

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Replies:

Re: Census jobs and navigation - Gilly -- Ani, 10:28:05 02/08/11 Tue