Quarter To Six

"Kumika (Excuse me in Thai) What time is it?"

"It's quarter to six", replied the expatriate sitting beside me.

I paused a while. Cleared up my mind. Launched some Maths brain cell.

1 hour                  = 60 minutes

1/4 of 60 minutes  = 0.25 x 60

                           = 15 minutes

Quarter to six        = 15 minutes before 6PM

                            = 5 hours 60 minutes - 15 minutes

                            = 5 hours 45 minutes

                            = 5:45 PM

I smiled and told myself.

"Why can't he just replied, 5:45PM?"

We are just making other's life difficult by giving such answer. You might argue that it makes people use their brain. True but when you are using more of your brain on something that is unnecessary,and unimportant ,it only make things complicated. If you would like to use your brain then why not give an answer like:

"It's quarter of 3600 seconds to 6"

I've been to Bangkok for almost 3 months now. Going through thick and thin with this country. From Red Shirt bombing, curfew, soldiers with live ammunition on the street, working non stop for a week and eating the same breakfast for 21 consecutive mornings. And writing some complicated Excel spreadsheets.

Have you ever wonder how many rows are there in an Excel spreadsheet. Never put a thought on this, right? Let me tell you. If you are using Excel version 2003 and below then the maximum row is 65,536. But, if you are using Excel 2007 then it's 1,000,000 rows. That's the amount of data I've been working with.

One Thai engineer once told me.

"Those day, if we don't have finite element analysis software, then we are never going design even a toilet, right?"

Engineer's best friend in the older days was calculator and one stack of calculation paper.s New generation engineer's best friends is computer analysis software and Excel spreadsheet. Initially, I championed the concept of computer making human smarter and more efficient. But my view changed when I noticed that I'm doing more and more of those unnecessary data crunching because I know my computer are capable to allow me to perform it. If the computer can't do it (hanged) , my first reaction will be my computer is not fast enough without me reflecting on my wrong approach.

However, someone reinstated my initial belief. Computer really makes our life easier by eliminating the repetitive task. The problem crops up when we the human makes things complicated. The computer doesn't make thing complicated itself. We instructed them to do it.

A clever person solves problem. A wise person avoids it.

It's good to be clever but when we are too clever, this advantage might turn against us. We are simply making our skill to be our shortcoming.

So, what the time is it if one says half past six?

1830.

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