This one is bitchy!

Alternate title: Blowing my own trumpet

When I meet someone, I never feel the need to give them a re-run of my educational and professional qualifications. I prefer checking out what they are wearing, what unexciting stuff is happening in their lives and maybe how much they pay their maids (yeah, a sign of domesticity fully setting in).

I understand when people have nothing more to say once the weather and pollution stock has been exhausted, they ask you which city you are from and what you do. Since I am not a MBA(which a lot of people in Hong Kong are)and few from outside the cow belt and even within it show a flicker of understanding when I tell them where I studied and what I studied, I just let it go.

But it is not just my own laurels that are inquired about. I have met women who (without saying so) want to know which MBA institute my husband went to, and have even proceeded to tell me or him with some degree of incredulity they did not know he was from IIM A. Consider the following nuggets:

Women A & B: Within the first minutes of our conversations they let me know their better and trophy halves are from an IIM and an IIT respectively.

Woman C: Once the niceties are over, she asks me if my husband is from any of the IITs or IIMs.

Woman D: Looks at my husband and tells him with a smile, she did not know he was from IIM A. She has a trophy husband too.

Woman E: Tells me she did not know that P was from the IIM of A.

Yeah, P happens to be from IIM A and of course I am proud of myself for having snapped a sone ka murga. But that is between him and me. His qualification is not an achievement that either he or I, and especially me, carry like a plaque around our necks. I am not sure about the tone of my rant if he was not from an IIM, but women and the kind of criteria they choose to judge could be painful. I do not claim to be above the many failings of my gender, but I do not approve of such parameters of either conversation or comparison.

But men are not far behind when it comes to such vanity. We meet random people who unfailingly, casually drop the IIM or IIT word.

Probably this whole rant is pointless and there is nothing wrong with this type of behaviour. But frankly, it does not interest me and it is rankling. When I meet someone, it is their honesty, their nature, how they talk and how easy they make me feel is what is important. There is no doubt that qualifications and what you studied make a big difference to what you do, but please do not make it the yardstick for who you or the others are. And remember, there will always be someone who is one step ahead of you.