The past few days have come and gone like fleeting seconds. It feels rather unnatural to experience that time somehow speeds up when you work (well, the quantum physics theory of the relativity of time is valid after all). The preoccupation with clearing plates, wiping table, pouring coffee, and preparing Japanese rice set has, in a way, detached me from the sense of time. All the sudden in the midst of a hectic moment, you turn around, steal a glance at the clock and realise two hours have passed unknowingly while it feels like a few minutes.
When I first put my hands and feet to rigorous, blue-collar work in Singapore, I held a naive assumption that the faster you work, the slower time will pass since you are able to carry out and completed more tasks in a given space of time compared to when you are working at a slower pace. It didn't take me long to realise that I was wrong. Somehow, by a certain unseen mechanism that manipulates the human perception of time, time itself becomes the direct function of the rate of work. In other words, the faster you are at your job, the quicker every minute will pass (no wonder hardcore workers develop white hair; accelerated aging has taken a toll on them!).
Harking back at the old school textbooks in JC, the second last sentence in the previous paragraph is a clear defiance of Newtonian mechanics, in which we have learnt that the rate of work, or power, is inversely proportional to time. In light of that, I think it's quite funny that something we have acquired in education, which is supposed to equip us with vital knowledge for our career, cannot agree with a phenomenon that occurs in the working environment. No wonder I often hear that 80-90% of academic jargons garnered in university is reserved for mental disposal when one starts working.
Anyway, so much for now. Work calls and I'll leave this post at this juncture. Chao!
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4 comments:
eh must tell me how to prepare japanese rice
eh please wirte something relevant to the post la. like japanese rice has something to do with work and time, sigh.
aurelius?! where the heck did you come up with that name?
i didn't know it was you initially, thought it was someone else being so condescending towards me.
ok work and time, how's work? now that that's over with, how to prepare jap rice?
You should know better about preparing japanese rice. I only work as a wiater, not a chef, in a japanese restaurant for a maximum of 7 hour in a given day. You, on the other hand, are in the Land of the Rising Sun for 24 hours, surrounded by more Japanese than I can ever find in the restricted confine of the restaurant. Ask the locals - they should have a more original recipe than I can find in the commercialized restaurant menu. Plus, waiters inhabit a separate class from cooks in the social strata that defines the service industry here.
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