Better late then never

I had a bad experience yesterday travelling to work. I have a meeting with my boss at 8am and I left my house at 7am, an hour's allowance. Usually, it takes only 30 minutes to reach my office but I was shocked when the road leading out of my housing estate was jam pack and hardly moved. It took me 50 minutes to move one km and I could do nothing about it. The cars hardly moved. There is a Chinese saying "Human being's planning is better than Heaven's decision". Yeah, I did plan for time allowance, a buffer of 30 minutes. In this case, the heaven won.

There were three factors which caused the massive jam, it was a school day, it was raining and the road was under repair. The contractor closed off half the road. I known it was a shcool day and there is usually a jam but the other two factors was unpredictable. If it is only the rain, then the jam will be slightly worse but the last factor was man-make. If only the contractor announced the closure of hte road, I would have added another 30 minutes as buffer in my travelling time. This factor was the least expected of the three factors and the main reason for my delay.

I was late for 15 minutes and when I entered the meeting room, I immediately apologized for the delay, Before hand, I have sent an SMS to announced my late arrival due to the jam. I have expected the scolding as my boss told me straight into my face infront of my colleagues. Why was I late when he can reach on time? I was speechless and it was actually my fault. I should live in a less congested area and I should give more allowance to my travelling time. My boss have advised me to move to another housing area because of the frequent traffic jam in the area. I have continued to stay in the area because of my own reasons. I have to learn from this experience in order not to embarass myself any more. It was a "cat's noodle". A Chinese idiom.

Life is like that. It is unpredictable but I have learned that there is no such thing as "plan to fail but fail to plan". We have to consider the impossible or the unpredictable events as we can never know what will happen. If we can predict what will happen next, we will be GOD. So, live well in uncertainties and strange happenings. It is always man-make events which is normally out of our calculations. Another allowance for unpredictable events would be the best bet.

Learn from my experience to avoid the pitfalls inour lives.

Namaste.