Some people remark that I know a bunch about a bunch of makes and models of brass and woodwind instruments, and attempt to label me an "expert" on their fb pages.
I'm not really an expert, because I didn't make any of those instruments.
If (??) I know a bunch of stuff "about" them - and know about "fixing" a bunch of them...
...very few models of instruments made (since mass-producing has been a "thing") have been "extraordinarily fine"...
...so it's a bit like being an "expert on ketchup" - whereas even some of the best is "ok".
Last edited by bloke on Wed Jun 23, 2021 6:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thought Criminal
Mack Brass Artiste
TU422L with TU25
1964 Conn 36k with CB Arnold Jacobs
Accent (By B&S) 952R with Bach12
The Fourth Estate is the Fifth Column
Part of being an expert is knowing the limits of one's knowledge, so a real expert is more likely to tell you what they don't know as much as what they do. I used to, for a time, consider myself pretty knowledgeable about one fairly limited area of software engineering, but I was also pretty clear about what I didn't know. That was not always to my benefit from a career advancement point of view, but at the same time I spent much less time having to clean off any egg on my face.
When my uncle, as a VP of Farmer's Insurance, went to China decades ago as part of an envoy to bring their insurance up to the 20th century as one means of interacting with Western economies, the company, of course, translated his business card. His official title with the company was "Claims Specialist." There was no direct translation for "Specialist" into Chinese, so the translation ended up being "Claims Expert." Oh, did that garner him respect worthy of the emperor from his Chinese analogs!
Bloke, you are a specialist in brass repair. If the rest of the world doesn't know or can't decide what that means, then take the moniker "Expert" as a compliment, and probably just as descriptive, and say thank you.
I have - not often - been called an "expert", usually in something obscure. When that happened, I always recalled the tongue-in-cheek etymology of the term. It is from the Latin "ex" - out of, "spurt" - a little drip under pressure.
iiipopes wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 7:28 am
When my uncle, as a VP of Farmer's Insurance, went to China decades ago as part of an envoy to bring their insurance up to the 20th century as one means of interacting with Western economies, the company, of course, translated his business card. His official title with the company was "Claims Specialist." There was no direct translation for "Specialist" into Chinese, so the translation ended up being "Claims Expert." Oh, did that garner him respect worthy of the emperor from his Chinese analogs!
Bloke, you are a specialist in brass repair. If the rest of the world doesn't know or can't decide what that means, then take the moniker "Expert" as a compliment, and probably just as descriptive, and say thank you.
3D5F8292-05CF-46DC-94CF-0DE6B9C249C8.jpeg (65.21 KiB) Viewed 646 times
iiipopes wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 7:28 am
When my uncle, as a VP of Farmer's Insurance, went to China decades ago as part of an envoy to bring their insurance up to the 20th century as one means of interacting with Western economies, the company, of course, translated his business card. His official title with the company was "Claims Specialist." There was no direct translation for "Specialist" into Chinese, so the translation ended up being "Claims Expert." Oh, did that garner him respect worthy of the emperor from his Chinese analogs!
Bloke, you are a specialist in brass repair. If the rest of the world doesn't know or can't decide what that means, then take the moniker "Expert" as a compliment, and probably just as descriptive, and say thank you.
Similarly a friend of mine tells of giving his job title in Canada as an Engineer, and feeling he received instant and perhaps undeserved respect.
Rather than “expert“, I would admit to being “experienced“.
With a somewhat inflated ego and not much talent, I’ve spent time and struggles getting to where I can play the tuba well enough that others usually rate my playing prowess as “better than bad“...
...and the same goes for straightening out beat-up horns and sticking them back together, as - inevitably - customers are going to talk to others and say, “yeah, bloke did/fixed that…“
Further, I am “experienced“ - and not really an “expert“ – because I’ve played so many more models of tubas than (probably) most people - having repaired so many.
Customers and potential customers can’t hear the silent words spoken to myself in my head when they show me their imagined projects and goals related to their instruments whereby I’m thinking, “damn, fella… What you want me to do - there - is hard as hell. I’m not sure that I can even do it, and - if I gave it a shot - I sure wouldn’t want to try it on someone else’s instrument.”...
...but I’m often talked into trying in anyway, in the same way that when people call me for gigs and ask me arcane questions such as, “Could you bring a trumpet and a trombone, and fake harmony parts to the melodies on a klezmer gig?“ ...I’m likely to respond (against my better judgement) in a positive, because - just like everyone else – I have bills, and I need to eat.
This thread makes me think of the gag from "The Big Lebowski" with the German nihilist who doubles as a porn actor with the screen name of "Karl Hungus" and his scene in the "porno" where he plays a cable repairman…
These users thanked the author the elephant for the post:
