Winza

Don’t know why, but it seems that I have frequent mood swings. At one point, I can be positive, happy and lively but for the next moment, I can be very quiet, moody and become bothered with things for no particular reason. Ever since I have reached my previous goal two weeks ago (which was to get an answer about whether or not my contract would be extended), I have lost the motivation to chant and read Buddhist texts. And as a result, I think I started worrying again about unnecessary things and have doubts in my life again.

I know that acceptance of reality, happiness, perseverance, determination and courage are fundamental things in a meaningful life but I am finding it difficult to put it into practice. It’s like climbing up a mountain. It takes a lot of time and determination to get to the top of the mountain but once you reach it, you feel a short moment of relief and satisfaction. After a while, you tend to forget the hard work you have put in towards your goal and you become lazy. Laziness and the lack of motivation can be a very deadly thing and they are part of what is known as the earthly desires, an obstacle in Nichiren Buddhism.

So to get rid of such earthly desires, I would need to set a renew my goals after I have achieved one. This would allow me to face challenges constantly and to maintain consistency in my Buddhist practice. If I give myself a break from goal setting and working hard towards a goal, I would drift away from the Buddhist philosophies I have learnt and let myself filled with negative thoughts again. I must be able to think of a new goal soon. A new goal that should motivate my chanting and allow me to become hopeful again.

Today I was going through a bunch of new jobs (mostly new developments) to be inputted into GIS. As I was going through them, I found two sewer pump stations that were way too advanced, a couple of water main renewals that had already been done and some other random bits and pieces. And then there were three more that I had to put on hold because the prerequisite data are not on the system yet. Two hours later, I managed to find something that I could input. So I was happily importing files until I encountered an error in the GIS software, which I didn’t know how to solve. I sought help from the person who sat next to me and he inspected the raw data which was in ascii format. Thirty minutes later, we discovered some coding for the pipes were incorrect and we fixed it. Then we ran the importing process again and it worked. We opened up the development area in GIS and found the sewer features had been duplicated. And guess what? The job has already been put it but it hasn’t been marked as done in the job recording database.

This was stupid. But I did learn another lesson: It was to check the area before importing and adding new features into the system. As simple as that.

On Saturday, I was hanging out in the city alone as usual until I was confronted by several Christians, who tried to talk me into believing in God. I told them I was a new SGI Buddhist and that I am willing to listen what they have to say about their religion but I had no intention of converting into Christianity. I was at the tram stop in Bourke Street at the time, heading off to the DFO to do some shopping. One of them followed me on the tram and into the DFO and she would not stop talking. She spoke to me how Satan was an angel who was rebellious against God who then created hell because of him. And then she said Adam and Eve were the first humans and humans had to die because they sinned like Satan and every subsequent human had to die because of that. To me it did not make any sense. She then wanted me to say prayers with her and accepted Jesus into my heart. She reasoned that if I had accepted God and Jesus in my heart, I would not have to believe in Buddhism, go to discussion groups and chant because they would give me anything I wanted as long as I opened my heart to them. When I finally had the chance to speak, I told her about Buddhism, why I believe in it and why I chant and go to all the discussion groups every week. When I told her that Buddhism is about overcoming challenges, transforming one’s self and facing reality, she challenged me and said we are already in reality. Yes, we are in reality, but if we are in reality, then why would you rely on your faith in God to get what you want? If we assumed that God will provide us anything, then why do we work to earn money? It didn’t make sense at all. In the Buddhist teachings I have read, it says that everything is interconnected, so that our thoughts, words and actions cause an effect on the environment and therefore we are responsible for our own actions. This is probably the one of the differences I have noticed that lies between the two religions. In Christianity, it assumes that God created the things we have and provides us with the things we want and we decide if we want to accept it. Buddhism on the other hand theorises that we are part of one entity. It is a bit like the Gaia hypothesis. Everything is interconnected and therefore whatever we do will have a response in our situation and in our physical world. This is what I choose to believe in. It has worked for me because I am seeing actual proof from chanting (which acts my driver/motivation), applying the Buddhist philosophy to the situations I encounter and most importantly, having faith in myself. I just hope that believers of Christianity (whatever the branch they are in) would respect believers in other religions.

Edit: Typos

Some people just don’t deserve to get behind the wheel. I was with my parents at Glen Waverley today and just after we pulled out from the parking space, we saw a girl in her twenties, driving an Audi with a Learners permit sign stuck in her rear window. Her car stopped right in the middle of the driveway and she got off, opened her boot just to answer her phone. Her car was parked right in the middle of the car park lane and no cars were able to overtake. After ten seconds or so, she went back to the driver’s seat while she talked on the phone and drove off the again, as slow as a snail. What the hell was she thinking about? Even if it’s an urgent call, she could have just pulled over to the left and left enough space for us and others drive through. And she should know that talking on the phone behind the wheel is not only illegal, but it also puts herself and other drivers and pedestrians at risk. Maybe there should be another slogan that says “If you use your mobile while you drive, then you are a bloody idiot”.

I was invited to join a webmap training session at work today. It was the same GIS software used at work but repackaged into a query read-only web application. I was fascinated with the range of features that it had, including all the water and sewer attributes and the mapbase stuff from VicMap. There was also a biodiversity layer (provided by the DSE) that is essentially a layer showing the spatial features of important and endangered flora and fauna and its attributes. We can also use webmap to display and annotate the maps and exported into autocad, microstation and pdf files as well as printing them out. This nifty web map tool is just so great that I just wanted to play around with it for the whole day. The maps are just so cool to work with!!! I wish I did more GIS related subjects at uni..