Winza

It all started last night when mum decided to have sichuan style hot pot for dinner since it is good for a cold night. We originally ordered the clear soup base but mum wanted the spicy soup base for an additional $3. We then ordered 8 cold dishes so we can dip it into the boiling soup, similar to a fondue. The spicy soup base was very oily and it was more spicy than I had expected, but I kept having it because it would warm me up. The dinner was great and my parents and I had enjoyed it.

Two hours later at home, I started to feel the urge and had diarrhea. I thought I was alright and went to sleep thinking I would be able to work the next day. Eight hours later, I got up and again, felt pain in my stomach and got the urge again. I insisted going to work despite the pain because I didn’t want to get bored at home. When I got to work, I had cereal for breakfast thinking it will make me better if I ate something. Things became worse the next hour, when I started getting abdominal cramps again. Not long after I was assigned another task at work, I felt the urge again and the pain became quite intense. It was like back in year 9 when I suffered from really bad diarrhea and had to stay home because of that. So I gave up and told my manager that I need to take the day off. And I got back home and slept for the next two hours. I drank lots of water and I no longer had any diarrhea in the afternoon. I still feel pain in my abdomen, but it’s a lot less intense.

Cramps are no good. They inhibit my thinking abilities and my movements. And they are bloody annoying

Up until early this year, I’ve never made it into the real world. Stuff learnt at uni was all theoretical except for the occasional geology field trip - they were mostly theoretical stuff shaped by historical events. At Steph and Tennessee’s big lunch today, I (the GIS officer in the water industry) had a long conversation with the civil engineer and the urban designer/architect. I wonder if we worked together on a major project and focusing on our primary goal, it is very likely that we will have major argument. The engineer’s goal would be to achieve functionality; the architect’s main goal would be to create a comfortable and aesthetic living environment and I as the enviro geek would aim to maintain a consistent water supply/develop infrastructure in an environmentally sustainable way. If we are to work on a major development - eg: a bridge, there would be so many conflicting ideas and the more people involved, the greater the complexity. This is very much like the Buddhist philosophy - that everything is interconnected. And this is reality.

I was going to stay at work till 7 tonight to make up for the lost time due to the hour an a half data upgrade yesterday. So I started doing valve insertions at 4, hoping to get them done by 7 tonight. Everytime I put in a valve and created new shutoff blocks, I saved my workspace but didn’t post because it takes 5 minutes to post after adding new valves into the system. So I was working happily for the next hour and as I hit the save button, it crashed on me. Ok, fine - I waited for ten minutes to see what it was doing. Ten minutes passed and nothing had happen. I then pressed ctrl-alt-del to open up the task manager and hit the End Task button, which had got me out of the program. I opened it up again and opened up the Display Job Edits tool and the stuff was still there. When I tried to discard a pipe I had broken accidentally, the whole pipe was gone. I then tried to validate my work and I got a message that all my edits were gone. They did not exist in the workspace that I had been saving on. The old shutoff blocks were still there, the valves and hydrants that I put in did not exist and even the pipes that I broke were still intact. It was 5:20 and everyone in my team had already left so no one was there to help me. I felt hellish and my eyes were in tears. That was two hours of work lost. I had no mood to keep going and I went home instead.

Maybe I was too impatient. I knew the system was slow at updating features that I put in because of its automation but since I liked to do things as fast as possible while aiming for perfection, I tend to get a lot of frustration when I don’t like the outcome or the pace that I am at. As a result, I don’t wait for the system to slow down before I do the next click and as a consequence, it crashed on me. Impatience and frustration can be a harmful thing - but without giving myself high expectations and challenges - I won’t get as much satisfaction..

I always thought I have patience - that I can wait for people who are late to meetings and that I can wait for food at a restaurant. I even tell the interviewer that I have patience. But I am quite the opposite in other situations such as driving, where I tend to speed up when there are no speed cameras around me and I overtake when a car in front of me is slow. Last evening, I was giving the opportunity to pay for the price my impatience, which has also risked the safety of me and others. Last night as usual, I finished work at about 5:30 - peak hour time and drove down Springvale Road. The traffic was quite heavy and I went on the right lane (the first right lane) to turn right on High Street. I was rushing to get home so that I could take the train to the city to have dinner (I was very hungry at the time). As soon as the light was green, I sped up hoping to get through the lights to turn right. When it was my turn, the light turned amber and I didn’t stop. I should have stopped, but there was an urge for me to press on the accelerator a little harder and go on. Two seconds later, the lights turned red as soon as I crossed that line. Then guess what? I felt a flash on me and that was it - $200 lost to the government because of my impatience. I lost it - I was angry for the next hour or so.

This is probably another example of the cause and effect and other things I have been learning in the Nichiren Buddhist discussion. To me, I think of it was a chain reaction. I was hungry, tired and wanted to get home as soon as possible after work. This has led to my impatience and it was manifested by my actions - running through the red light. And the effect was that flash on me and the $200 (plus the three demerit points) that I will have to pay when I receive the fine. If my state of mind was positive at the time I was able to overcome the obstacle of earthly desires, then I was able to be more patient at the light, hence I wouldn’t be snapped by the red light camera.

I consider this to be an important lesson. A lesson which I will analyse and I will need to work on myself. I have experienced my weakness manifested in a way that it forces me to remember it and learn from it. There is a favourite quote that says to Learn from mistakes. I have learnt from my mistake and I shall work on it.

All the laughter, all the interesting conversions in the office are now gone since I moved positions. Instead, I experience this:

Person A on my left: What the f**k? What the hell? Ahh. shit!

Person B on my right: F**king shit.. blah blah (mumble, mumble). God damn it!

Me: Bugger. Ahh.. What the (I was about to say the f word, but I was able to avoid saying it out loud)?? Oh.. shit!! Right click, left click, right click. Argh!!!

The new GIS system at work is based on relational database rather than CAD. So every time I have to delete/add or modify a pipe or a branch, it takes 10 seconds for it to update and sometimes it can’t get retrieve information from other databases. I must admit that this is the most annoying thing when working with GIS but I see this as a challenge - a challenge I must overcome to achieve my ultimate goal. I must have perseverance to do the job and I need to do the best in every thing I do. There are hundreds of water and sewer records I have to update and it takes a week for me to update them all!!