"As you gain experience, you'll realise that all logical questions are considered insubordination."
- Dilbert advises Asok the Intern
todays dilbert featured one of the most lovable indian geeks to inhabit cartoonspace....asok... check it out here
and the wikipedia entry has him as -
Pronounced "Ah-shook." A young intern. He works very hard but does not always get proper recognition. Asok is intensely intelligent but naive about corporate life; the shattering of his illusions are frequent comic fodder. Asok is Indian, and graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). He does not eat, at least, beef. The others, especially the Boss, often unwittingly trample on his cultural beliefs. If Asok mentions this, he is normally ignored. If Asok's reported test scores and college accomplishments are correct, he is the smartest member of the engineering team.
for some other dilbert quotes .... see this .
The bbc has a writeup about asok with one of the classic asok cartoon strips. see it here.
some more trivia about asok from http://www.triviaasylum.com/dilbert/diltriv.html
Asok - Summer intern [3/18+/96]
Graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology. [10/30/05]
PHB can't give him a raise because he's too young. [2/28/99]
Makes sarcastic remarks to the PHB via speakerphone. [12/8/96]
Alice threatens to launch Asok with the "Internapult". [8/23/96]
Tells the PHB about people using entire colons where semicolons would do just fine. [3/20/96]
...a lot of IIT ians get upset with what they see as stereotyping of the indian techie....but that just goes to show, even with a good college education, there isnt much difference between bearded mullahs and laptop warriors, when it comes to getting upset over cartoons. Its a cartoon for crying out loud.
one of my favourite asok things was when in one strip..the pointy haired boss (PHB)said that they were going to study if its possible to deliver the internet through the sewer systems and told asok to do a report. He would have to crawl through sewers holding a optic fibre cable between his teeth and breathing through a straw.
and Asok, his face lit up in the last panel, and he says...oh wow ..i get a straw.
my pal,parimal saw it in office...when it came out....and he came back laughing and told me, and for many a day, we would use this as our punchline...oh wow...i get a straw.
and to end...lets quote the bbc again -
In Dilbert, a comic character called Asok claims he is from IIT and therefore "mentally superior to most people on Earth".
In one strip, Asok says: "At the Indian Institute of Technology, I learned to use my huge brain."
"But I try not to frighten ordinary people with any gratuitous displays of mental superiority.
"For example," says Asok, "I no longer reheat my tea by holding it to my forehead and imagining fire."
Mr Adams, who began drawing cartoons in the 1980s while working in a telecommunications company, said he has several friends who graduated from IIT.
"I have known several IIT graduates over the years. The character Asok is named after an ex co-worker from my days in the tech world," he told BBC News Online.
"I thought it would be a funny contrast to have Asok come from the most competitive school system in the world only to find out that intelligence doesn't always help in the workplace."
Asked how IIT graduates differed from engineering graduates from all over the world, Mr Adams said: "They are smarter."
