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When you meet new people, a very typical question that is asked is what do you do, that is, what do you do to bring home the bacon or what kind of student are you?

I typically reply that I am an electrical engineering Ph.D. student at some school. The usual reaction is something along the line of, oh you must work very hard, to which I reply that I am actually a very lazy grad student.

If the line of questioning stops there, then good. But if it doesn’t, then I get into big trouble. Why? If I am such a lazy grad student, I must spend a lot of time doing something other than research, and the person is then interested in what I do in my free time. That’s where it gets ugly. If you read my previous post, you know what I do in my free time.

1. I cannot say that I trade because if I do, it opens up a big can of worms. On top of that, it makes me look like a big loser who stares at stock charts all day and you can probably imagine it goes something like this: click to buy, click to sell, haha I owned that stock for 30 seconds!
2. I also cannot say that I blog because if I do, they will want to read my blog. That’s no good because I try to restrict the number of people who read my blog and know who I am so that I am free to blog about things I otherwise would not blog about.
3. The ONLY thing I can say is that I spend a lot of time playing computer games because it is something they can kind of nod their heads at and say yeah a lot of people waste their lives doing that. And it gets funnier. Of course I would get asked what game I play and I would have to explain why I love Tribes 2 so much, which in itself is an awkward conversation. Somewhere in my explanation I would contradict myself by saying that I don’t actually play Tribes 2 that much and then wonder aloud where my free time really goes.

If the line of questioning stops there, then good. But it usually does not. Why not? Well, I just told the person that I spend a whole mess of time playing Tribes 2 to cover the time I actually spend trading or blogging because I do not want that person to know that I trade or blog. As a result the person looks at my age, pities my life, and then asks the next logical question which is whether or not I have a girlfriend.

Of course if you are reading this post, you are well aware of how those conversations go so I am not going to over those all over again. I will say this…The next time someone asks me if I have a girlfriend, I will say yes just to see what questions they ask next just so that I can blog about it. Stay tuned.

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