The Lighter Side of Engineering

These are jokes; so please do not get too serious over them. Credit is hereby due & saluted to their authors ....

Please enjoy. For soil engineers, do not miss out on the "Tower of Pisa" cartoon!

The Lighter Side of English     Click here to sample some Malaysian English [Manglish]

                                            Click here to sample some NON-English English

Click here to sample some Local English for foreigners (to survive)

You might be a REAL engineer if you : click here

The Engineer's Dictionary - The Exact Definition

Major Technological Breakthrough - Back to the drawing board.

Developed after years of intensive research - It was discovered by accident.

Project slightly behind original schedule due to unforeseen difficulties - We are working on something else.

The designs are well within allowable limits - We just made it, stretching a point or two.

Client's satisfaction is assured - We are so far behind schedule that the customer was happy to get anything at all from us.

Close project coordination - We should have asked someone else; or, let's spread the responsibility for this.

The design will be finalized in the next reporting period - We haven't started this job yet, but we've got to say something.

A number of different approaches are being tried - We don't know where we're going, but we're moving.

Test results were extremely gratifying - It works, and are we surprised!

Extensive effort is being applied on a fresh approach to the problem - We just hired three new guys; we'll let them kick it around for a while.

Preliminary operational tests are inconclusive - The darn thing blew up when we threw the switch.

The entire concept will have to be abandoned - The only guy who understood the thing quit.

Modifications are underway to correct certain minor difficulties - We threw the whole thing out and are starting from scratch.

Best Type of Engineer:

3 engineers (mechanical, electrical and civil) were discussing what the best type of engineer was. The mechanical engineer said, "Well, God must have been a mechanical engineer. Surely if you look at the human body, what with all the joints and pounding the body takes, it's clear he was a mechanical engineer."

The electrical engineer speaks up, "but if you look at the nervous system, with all its intricacies, one must admit that God had to be an electrical engineer".

The civil engineer finally speaks, "God must have been a civil engineer, who else would have run a water and sewer system right through the middle of a recreation area?"

Engineer required:

An engineer dies and reports to the pearly gates. St. Peter checks his dossier and says, "Ah, you're an engineer - you're in the wrong place." So the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in.

Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After a while, they've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and the engineer is becoming a pretty popular guy.

One day God calls Satan up on the telephone and says with a sneer, "So how's it going down there in hell?" Satan replies, "Hey, things are going great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer going to come up with next."

God replies, "What??? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake - he should never have gotten down there; send him up here." Satan says, "No way! I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him." God says, "Send him back up here or I'll sue." Satan laughs uproariously and answers "Yeah right. And just where are YOU going to get a lawyer?"

GOLF (the bad side):
One day my wife inquired, "If I died, would you remarry?" I said, "Maybe."
She asked, "If you did get married, would you let her wear my mink coat?" I said, "Maybe."
She asked, "Would you let her wear my diamond ring?" I said, "Maybe."
She asked, "Would you let her use my golf clubs?" I said, "No, I would never let her do that!"
She said, "Why not?"
I said, "She's left handed."

Understanding Technology

Feet Falling

It was a rush hour and Leong was rushing to a train. As he neared the gate, a plump, middle aged woman sprinted up from behind, lost her footing on the smooth marble floor and slid onto her back. Her momentum carried her close to his shoes. Before he can help her, however, she scrambled up. Gaining her composure, she winked at him and said, "Do you always have beautiful woman falling at your feet?"

Five Surgeons

Five surgeons were taking a coffee break and were discussing their work.
The first said, "I think accountants are the easiest to operate on. You open them up and everything inside is numbered."
The second said, "I think librarians are the easiest to operate on. You open them up and everything inside is in alphabetical order."
The third said, "I like to operate on electricians. You open them up and everything inside is color-coded."
The fourth one said, "I like to operate on lawyers. They're heartless, spineless, gutless, and their heads and their butts are interchangeable."
Fifth surgeon said, "I like engineers...they always understand when you have a few parts left over at the end..."

The Rules of Bureaucracy

1. Preserve thyself.
2. It is easier to fix the blame than to fix the problem.
3. Information deteriorates upward.
4. The first 90% of the task takes 90% of the time; the last 10% takes the other 90%.
5. Experience is what you get just after you need it.
6. For any given large, complex, hard-to-understand, expensive problem, there exists at least one short, simple, easy, cheap wrong answer.
7. Anything that can be changed will be, until time runs out.
8. To err is human; to shrug is civil service.
9. There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time find it wrong or to do it over.

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