Think about this Guy at your next tech interview
I saw this in John Tierney's column in the International Herald Tribune for today, May 22nd. Here is the BBC version of the story.
Although "just" a taxi driver, Ugandan Guy Goma had a business degree and was at the BBC for a tech interview. A flack saw him and asked him "are you Guy", because the flack was looking for Guy Kewney, the editor of newswireless.NET, to appear on-air to comment on the Apple v Apple dispute (British music company Apple, formed in the early 1970s by the famous Beatles, is suing Steve Jobs now that Steve has entered the music business, using the Apple name: which Steve selected almost the same time as Apple music was formed).
Innocently, Mr. Goma went on-stage even as I sallied forth in March to be in a commercial for the Mandarin Oriental. Guy was asked several questions and gave excellent replies in perfect English, making, according to Tierney, all the proper noises in context about the "Internet changing things" and the need to "accept" today's Realities.
[Something which, if you ask me, there's entirely too much of: both reality and its (undt seinem) acceptance. The acceptance constructs the reality in a feedback loop. But, I digress].
So, the next time you go looking for a job, look sharp. White shirt (cotton or blend does not matter), regimental tie (I suggest the New Ashmolean Marching and Chowder Society's regimental stripes), shined shoes.
None of this nonsense about "yo, I am such a technical Studly Dudley, I know HTML (ooooooo), that I can show up in black blue jeans and a T-shirt with imprecations on it". Mr. Goma was as a member of the international proletariat a man of dignity who'd dressed soberly and as such he was locked and loaded, either for an ordinary technical interview with questions such as "is a Form a Control in .Net" (yes, dammit, and serves that misbegotten Object right: it needs to learn its place), or softball questions, much easier to answer, such as "do you foresee a technical convergence between the music business and software where they enjoy synergy".
[Answer yes and say "my take is that the consumer wants to listen to music on the same goddamn platform, not so much because he enjoys music, like Yogi Berra, but because music is a legal drug which shuts out the City, as Adorno said", or answer no and say "the two industries have radically different business models. For one thing, you can't code stoned, while Jim Morrison composed while he was like totally whacked out".]
[Just kidding, but you get the idea. String the buzzwords in a Chomsky Type 0 regular expression and you are "slinging the bat" and "talking the talk". Remove my digressions on Adorno. No, they aren't academic buzz words: Adorno meant what he said and I've read Aesthetic Theory and I don't got no tenure.]
[Dammit. Where was I?]
You never know, at least if you are at a media company, whether you might have to face Elizabeth Vargas or Katie Couric. You won't have to face Dan Rather. He got fired for speaking truth to power. You won't have to face Peter Jennings. He died of lung cancer.
I haven't found out if Mr. Goma got the tech job. He should since he has such grace under pressure.
Uganda or the Congo?
Tierney identified Guy Goma as being from Uganda, but the BBC Web story has him coming from the Congo. The problem is that there are TWO Congos, and Zaire (to which the original Belgian Congo was renamed, and which was the site of a fight by Muhammed Ali called the Rumble in the Jungle) is no more.
Dammit, we owe it to Africans to identify their country properly. To many Americans, including me, Africa was always Darkest Africa, until I met a variety of people from the REAL Africa including a sardonic sysadmin who'd been jailed in South Africa under apartheid and who dragged me to demonstrations against South Africa, a coworker from Ghana who was pleasantly surprised when I said, when learning of his country, that "oh, yes, that is where Kofi Annan comes from", and a fellow Lamma Islander who looks like the Queen of Sheba.
My father grew up on tales of H. Rider Haggard wherein Africa was a setting for rugged white men to discover King Solomon's Mines, or to avoid the Clutches of She Who Must Be Obeyed. Following Rumpole of the Bailey, my Dad called Mom the latter, but Mom was Not amused. It was unga bunga and ooga booga land to him but to his credit, through his dorky habit of philately, he knew far more about Africa than most American white men.
I now realize that his ambivalence towards the utterly Other was a genetic trait, for I too have Gazed upon the Other with wistful knowingness and longing, as does the Student Prince in the operetta gaze upon Die Siegourner, Rosa von Stamboul, or Jungle Jim is ravished by the barbarian princess. All these themes, today, are of astonishing antiquity, dating to before the Second World War, and it is high time for deconstruction-o-rama.
I had a dream about my father when I was a little kid that he was a cannibal king, Ubu Roi. The logic of racialism (as implied by but not implying racism) is that at any time, if the white man loses his grip, the racialism (of ineluctable difference) can be turned against him.
The black man becomes the successful king and possessor of many women (wunga!) that the white man had convinced himself through racialist theory and the contradiction causes the hatred, even as southern white men, who after the American civil war longed for a return to being old Massah, saw, in the newly bespoke suited black Congressmen elected courtesy of Reconstruction, only their own fundamental apishness and desire.
Which is why I tried to get my kids to acknowledge their own fundamental apishness and desire as a sort of fundament. I did so by random catchphrases like "bugna!" (the name of a lost city in Ethiopia) and "junglee".
Of course, the African fellows themselves did not help after decolonization what with forming and reforming nations but given the artificiality of the borders this is understandable.
For example, it's not "NigeriAN" yellow cake that Saddam Husayn did NOT get from Niger, since Niger != Nigeria, Niger being Francophone, desert and to the immediate north of Nigeria, Nigeria being Anglophone. It's Nigerien based on the place being Francophone.
So I am jiggered as to where Mr Goma comes from except I know it is Africa.
"A foutra for the world and worldlings base,
I speak of Africa and golden joys"
-Ancient Pistol, Henry IV pt 2, William Shakespeare
Grace under Pressure
That is hilarious.