August 19, 2014

     It has been years since my friends that I hang out with are the age of five years on average. I have not met anyone from my new ward because yesterday was a big day for my aunt with a baby blessing and a return missionary. Work has been intense, but it is chill. I rarely get angry. I can probably count the incidents on my hands, but today was one of them at work. I am now designing a skylight for the my cousin. She really liked the fireplace. She was so excited that she showed it to her mother.  

     I have been hanging out with Ezra and Eve a lot. Some odd situations came up, and some hard situations came up. It is not hard for me, but for the children. Mostly it has been good fun. I am beloved by everyone. I was even invited over for a sleep over. This was after the hard situation for Eve. McKay, the brother of a child about Ezra's age, didn't play fair. It came naturally though. We were playing catch with a big ball about 2.5 feet in diameter. Monkey in the Middle was okay until Eve showed that she did not have skill in catching the ball. She eventually felt left out, and got emotional. That was hard for her. McGuire is the child about Ezra's age, and he has a huge white fluffy dog. They don't even know what it is, but they know that it will grow bigger, and it's only one years old! The dog was so cool that it played a game with me. I pet it and stuff; then, it started to hit the sides of my legs with her front arms. Since I broke the first trampoline that we played on, I have been banned from jumping on any other one. You may expect me to write about the odd situation, but it is too odd.

     On Sunday, we drove about an hour and half to Brigham City then to Corinne. Andrea's new child Ephraim Brian Grove was blessed. This Sacrament meeting was fun because I have not seen my cousins in a very long time. The bishop of this ward was fun. He taught that faith in Christ is a choice. This is an obvious doctrine of Christ, but the simplicity of it is easy enlightening because I feel many people like to follow the natural man to be compelled and forced to do things, giving up their agency to another being to be acted upon and not act for themselves. I think that this is partially why Joseph Smith was chosen to be the Prophet of the restoration. He was not acted upon by the philosophies of man mingled with scripture. He sought after what is true. After that sacrament meeting, we drove to Corinne for the sacrament meeting of my aunt Glennalee's ward, since Curtis, her son, returned from his mission.

He mainly testified of the atonement, and the ward seemed to be so small that he was open about the fact that he had a very hard time understanding a point of the doctrine of the atonement of Christ. I don't understand what he had a problem with, but I think that it had to do with the fairness of Christ, taking everything on himself. Christ alone can save the world from the Satan's chain of death spiritually and physically. He is the only Begotten of the Father, having power over death. He could have lived forever on earth. Maybe he could be created a kingdom during his mortal life, where he would rule forever, but he submitted himself to the will of the Father. He could not make a kingdom because he needed to learn how to resurrect from death, and he could not succor our every need; unless, he overcame everything them himself in the garden of Gethsemane. How could Jesus Christ be a perfect judge, if he did not have knowledge of everything human?

     I let Eve play with my tablet, and she took pictures on the way home from visiting the Day family. I had a bunch of pictures on my tablet from her, but I deleted it because I decided the factory reset my phone and tablet because the Facebook apps were not working well. Usually Google uploads all my pictures up to the cloud, but it doesn’t work for the tablet for an unknown reason. I do have one remaining video that Eve took. I think that it was inspired by the first day that we played together. On that day I played fishing with Ezra in the bathtub. Eve asked us to knock on her door to play something, but Ezra ignored her. I did what he did, and Eve came to tell us to knock on her door at least ten times. She acted like she got mad, but you can tell that she can’t. This video is her mad.

     My work place is very similar to my former workplace, Santa Cruz Nutritionals. I still feel like I am in a foreign nation at work, since most everyone speaks Spanish, and they don't know English. On Monday we had a safety meeting. I didn't know about it, but I was invited to join them. I was surprised to find that there are two separate safety meetings: one for the Spanish speakers and one of English speakers. I thought that we have done away with segregation. Some people might justify it because the Spanish people can't understand English. I think that everyone should learn a declared language of the United States of America, so the opportunities can be fair. My opportunities in my workplace is not as good as a Spanish speaking coworker because the supervisor can't communicate with me. I wish that I could start a campaign for this, but I don't have the time. I have my own life to live. Politics is interesting on this point. We are encouraged to serve in politics, but it takes a lot of time.

     The language other than Spanish in the shop is very hard to understand to. My supervisor basically shouts only one word. Bo! Another machine operator whistles like an eagle. The sign language after they get your attention is bad too. I think that there is common Latin gestures that I don't understand as an Asian. I don't want to say that they are Mexican because I am not sure if it. I formally met one coworker yesterday who is from Puerto Rico.

     I mainly lift stone packaged on pallets housed in wires. At first I was taught to break the stone in half, if it was longer than a foot. This is what I learned on one of the first days. A next day a largest rock that I picked up was two feet long; then, the next day I was lifting rocks about four feet long. These rocks can be as thick as 8 inches, and they are on average about 4 inches wide. I basically lift all day long at work. We make veneer. We load the stone into a machine that cuts it to be about an inch thick.

     

     I was admiring a stone this past week. It is called honey ledge. I would imagine that it came from the bottom of the ocean. It has a dark blueish color mixed with a silver mineral. I got some fragments, and it looks shiny. Not all of the stone looks like the shiny minerals. I was impressed that this veneer exists. It is  the most beautiful stone that I have seen. When I design buildings, I think that I should consider the materials that I am building with first because buildings will look odd, if an architect designs a building; then, tries to choose the material after because materials have a natural feeling, nature, history, and design to it. This is what I was thinking when I was impressed by the stone. I loved the stone so much that I took a video of it. My coworkers thought that I was odd. Here is a picture and a video of the stone.

   One thing that I did not like about the work place is that the wires, holding the stone on the pallets, would cut you, if you are not careful. I have scratches all over my arms, but cuts bleed. I got angry this past week after cutting myself for the fourth day in a row. It annoyed me because I learned to cut the wire and set it in a way that my natural motion would not collide with the wire, but the supervisor clipped the wire this morning. I was walking along, and it sliced my arm. I was pouting for more than two hours. I am tired of cutting myself, and my grandparents gave me long sleeve shirts. I wore a short sleeve shirt on Monday because I have a traditional Thai shirt that I wear most Mondays.

     Since I rarely get angry, I was able to see the fruit of anger. It sowed fear at every sight of me. When someone fears you, they are not as open with you. They let you be your untamed self. I feel isolated now. My supervisor quit training me, and started working more closely with another person, training him as a machine operator. I used to not be open with my mother because I fear her anger. I am still unsure how open that I am with her. I think that I learned to be more open with her because I waited until I went to traffic school to tell her about my ticket. Her reaction was calm. I think if I told her about the ticket the day of. She would hold it over me for months. I don't know, but things has been different at work. I am opening up more to people, so it is not as bad. People think that I am shy, but I don't want to sit with a bunch of Latin people, who can't talk to me during lunch. I like sitting on the stone in the middle of the Heber Valley surrounded by mountains.

     Another day at work, I shattered a rock, not breaking it well. I felt natural anger slightly, and I smashed the fragments into pieces. Right when I did that, the operation of the machine stopped. I didn't know why. I felt a deepening isolating because of my anger. Observing the situation, I realized that we just finished the requirements for the order of the product. I felt like that moment of alarm was God, giving me a time out and telling me that any sign of anger limits human trust.

I have another concept to teach about anger that I learned. It may seem odd, but I made sounds to myself like I was a wild beast, since the shop is so loud people can't hear me, lifting the heavy stones, and throwing the waste in the dumpster. I learned that you may become what you make yourself out to be. I became a wild beast that lifts and throws stones, and that beast became untamed when it got cut. You should be careful of the thoughts that you make yourself out to be.

My reputation may be tarnished because I talk of anger deeply. It makes sense because that is what anger does. I realized that it changes relationships. I have been told that I am one of the most patient people, an entity of peace. I was talking to my little cousins, and Eve noticed that I was talking louder than usual. I wasn't talking in anger. Consistency is important, so people can trust you.

     I was sorrowful for a few days, seeing the consequences of my anger. I saw people were trying to cheer me up by communicating approval of my work. The feedback is less because how the relationships has changed. I was thinking of apologizing to my supervisor who I worked closely with, but as the days when by it seemed so awkward. Explaining apologies are awkward, when you don't seize the opportunity, and you think that they won't understand. I don't even know how well he speaks English. 

     I have been working on the skylight, but I need to fix it. I thought that it was good at 5x3.09016994 feet. I like using the Golden ratio. It is about 5x3 or 1.61803398875. After the designed the skylight, I decided to put a trim around it and the entire room. That was a little tricky because the fireplace is curved and the ceiling has a pitch. It's not a straight line from corner to corner on the curved service. I was trying to click on a 3D edge line, so the sweep could follow it; however revit did not recognize where the ceiling and the wall crossed as a line. I realized how Calculus would be useful. It took me a while to figure this out. I realized that I need an edge for the sweep to follow, and it could not come from the wall. I tried shortening the wall to make an edge. I created the edge by editing the boundary of the ceiling. I was so excited when I figured that out. I was not done though because I needed the trim to go around on the other side. That took a while, but when I completed that, I realized that my skylight is too small, and the roof is too high above the ceiling, making the skylight look bad. I need to redesign that now before I publish this journal entry. The skylight ended up being 7 feet wide.

     Today after church I met the in-laws in my uncle Allen's family. The unity of his family is great. I was able to meet Jeffrey’s wife, Jess, and I meet Hali Hicken’s fiance Daeson. They have many inside jokes, and their relationships are mature.

Oh. I forgot to say that I ran into a cowboy and a couple cowgirls, leading a cow herd on a run. I was literally on a run, when I passed them. Here are the pictures.