Being a Civil Engineer rocks!
I love being a Civil Engineer! Designing floorplan and layouts is cool, drawing blueprints and figuring out how everything will fit and work together is fun...but the best part is seeing your drawings and specifications come into fruition! Seeing your dreams being tranformed from random ideas to pixels on a screen. Then seeing bulldozers pushing mountains of dirt, cranes lifting bundles of steel, welders and masons erecting structure...and a dream is a made physical!
I love the smell of fresh plowed dirt, the ozone from welders, fresh cut lumber, the belching of heavy equipment moving huge amounts of material in this orchestra of creation.
Of course things go always frustratingly wrong, concrete is bad quality, steel arrives late, the timber is warped, the contractor slopes the sewer lines the wrong way or not at all...if only contractor would read the blueprints or specifications :p
Oh, and the metric and language barrier is fun, "Mr. Contractor, I wanted 4000 PSI concrete, but I can crush this with my hand, I'm a rockclimber but even Chris Sharma isn't that strong...oh wait, we're in Afghanistan...what's 4000 PSI equivilate to in MegaPascals? And I want two 4 inch lifts of asphalt...how many centimeters is that? shoot, where's my TI-85, oh yeah...its broke."
But nothing truely rewarding is ever easy. Complications just make the end product even more rewarding...and its really funny sometimes, "No Mr. Contractor, you can't just add more water to the concrete so you can push it around easier" ..."Yes, Mr. Contractor, that is a old artillery shell you dug up...don't do anything and let me make a phone call..."
Fun, fun times :)
I love the smell of fresh plowed dirt, the ozone from welders, fresh cut lumber, the belching of heavy equipment moving huge amounts of material in this orchestra of creation.
Of course things go always frustratingly wrong, concrete is bad quality, steel arrives late, the timber is warped, the contractor slopes the sewer lines the wrong way or not at all...if only contractor would read the blueprints or specifications :p
Oh, and the metric and language barrier is fun, "Mr. Contractor, I wanted 4000 PSI concrete, but I can crush this with my hand, I'm a rockclimber but even Chris Sharma isn't that strong...oh wait, we're in Afghanistan...what's 4000 PSI equivilate to in MegaPascals? And I want two 4 inch lifts of asphalt...how many centimeters is that? shoot, where's my TI-85, oh yeah...its broke."
But nothing truely rewarding is ever easy. Complications just make the end product even more rewarding...and its really funny sometimes, "No Mr. Contractor, you can't just add more water to the concrete so you can push it around easier" ..."Yes, Mr. Contractor, that is a old artillery shell you dug up...don't do anything and let me make a phone call..."
Fun, fun times :)
posted by Mike at
5:59 PM
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