Best skills to have/learn

[gbrooks]

I'm curious as to what skills others find are most valuable to have during a recession.

For instance, I wish I were skilled in carpentry and am teaching myself. I'm reasonably well-skilled in growing a garden and am honing those skills.

I'm an unemployed chemist and am trying to think about ways to put my primary skillset to use without getting into trouble! I have extensive experience in water testing, but this is no good without $50k worth of equipment to actually do the testing. I can run an HPLC, a mass spec and inductively coupled plasma spectrometers, but what real good are those skills now that I don't have the equipment? I have experience doing process engineering and design studies and validations on industrial equipment, but what good does it really do me now?

I think I'm just a bit down right now and am not really thinking outside the box, so to speak. Perhaps I'll give myself a day or two to sulk and then get to work on thinking about what I can do and what I can learn. It's tough for us introverted scientist types to contemplate having to socialize a lot with other people. I just like disappearing into a lab and into my own head.

Okay, I'll end my ramblings. I'd love to hear other ideas and thoughts.

[futureoriented]

Water testing skill is great asset.

Make list of all labs you know.
Call them, relentlessly.

Ask to be able to use their lab at night and on weekends for free.

Set up water testing mail order service for regular people.

I can't pay USD 500 for a test.
But I would pay USD 30 to have my water tested.

You have valuable skills, try keep using them some how.

Jim Rodgers says water treatment in great need in Asia, btw.

[king lee]

in times of distress:keep ya head up

[billniece]

Hey you're not the only one man. I'm a mason, welder by my first trade. Also I have years of residential and commercial remodeling experience.(I used to rebuild burned out homes for insurence companies.) Coupled with all the management experience I have (I run crews with up to 60 men in them). Right now I couldn't buy a job. It's sad but true.