THE NEXT ACT

I accept the fact that I cannot stop people from contributing to the fall of mankind. I should stop ranting at people who do bad things to good people. These are people who have so many wicked ways under their sleeves whose mission is to annihilate the good guys specially those who are getting in their way in serving their self-centred ego. In my mind I thought they should not do that and it’s wrong. Now I have a clearer understanding that our minds wired differently. It seems that they don’t care if they are certified a-holes in the site of whoever has the right senses. I guess I was brought up differently valuing more on giving and find happiness in it rather receiving, focusing more on what I can do and how I can harness it and finding achievement in working on a task rather than claiming credits on what I did not work on. People on the opposite extreme of me may not understand my concept of happiness, focus and achievement and may find it odd for the reason that they a...

We’ve discussed about fish passage in river controlling structures in the meeting.   This one of the free flow permitted activity conditions one should look at in installing dams, culverts and weirs in the river.   As a river management engineer fish passage is one of those I almost neglect in the designing river controlling structures. I am more on the flood control scheme, managing flows, improving hydraulic efficiency, decreasing roughness of the channel. And then I was given a task to come up with public information to be published region wide and online about the awareness of fish passage.   I was given a task to enlighten the community about something I need to be enlightened about as well.   On the brighter side, I begin to know better.   The migration of fish is part of their life cycle.   Culverts, dams and weirs that are not designed the right way would disrupt the life cycle and become hazards to the whole ecology.   I am imagining that ...

In my last blog, I mentioned about a dead snake behind my office computer.   It happens to be that I have so many cables around it.   I thought of figuring out how I arrived with this messy predicament.   I have two dongles for two delicate software I am using and once in a while I am plugging them in and out at the back of the computer the endeavour which is too tedious consisting of leaning, squeezing and back aching thus arriving in a strategy of installing two long cables plugged at the back serving as the insertions of the two dongles that is reachable in front. I got two external hard drives which incidentally need cables: one serving as back up and working area for the modelling programme and the other is my personal where I keep my music that I listen to while working: we were told by the head of IT that I we should not use the our personal network drive for keeping mp3s – so there.   Right now, I am listening to the Christmas songs by Christina Perri. ...

I dread phone calls every time I see myself not in a conversing mode. You know, there is a moment that you want to be alone and just doing your own thing. And in that anti-social pace, the job calls for you to get to talk to people as soon as possible. There is this instance that I have been so enjoying preparing the expenditures for my management plan in a spreadsheet with all those math ( Ooh I love math!) when I got a letter from the winning contractor which states his intention of making variation to the contract which doubles the cost we have agreed upon together with all the reasons blah blah blah. I emailed him first and gave him a couple of hours to reply so as to allow me to finish the interrupted spreadsheet. 1, 2, 3, 4 hours and there has no reply. I got to call. Looking at the bright side, I get to exercise my listening to skill to kiwi accents. Whadyaknow.

A few weeks ago, I went through a Media Training. The council thought that I got to undergo such training in order to prepare me for what might set me on the difficult spot. As a council staff who got to be on the field, I can be subject to the brutal unsolicited, inescapable and uncomfortable interrogation. “Don’t worry about the question,” mentioned the trainer. “Worry about your answer.” My first reaction is “phew” I told myself that as long as I am true to myself and I am not doing anything wrong and I have nothing to hide, I should not worry about my answer. As the training progressed I found myself putting my money where my mouth is. Being true and not hiding anything is obviously the least of my worry but how the media turns your answer around is what I should keep an eye on. There is such thing as fishing for dirt, putting words to my mouth and hitting my vulnerability. “This is how media works most of the time,” trainer from the public relations commented. This trai...