Not made to live like an owl

I woke up pretty late this morning. This is unusual for I consider myself quite an early-riser, at least when I compare myself to most of my peers.

Please allow me to account to my readers what has led me to miss writing a post on 18 Feb 2005. It is all because of me having a long and tiring day yesterday.

It may be rather unbelievable that I could still get tired from working in the office even though I did not schedule to see any client yesterday. Yesterday, I was the staff-in-charge of handling all enquiries that the centre has. All professional staff, social work assistant and programme coordinator of our centre will be rostered to handle enquiries. The task is simply to attend to all walk-ins, phone calls, letters and so forth that enquires about our centre's services.

On a few occassions, people with suicidal tendencies may walk-in to our centre. On those occassions, the professional staff will attend to him/ her and offer the necessary consultation and counselling. At the same time, we will assess the degree of risk that he/ she may commit suicide, and try to explore possible support and resources to provide him/ her with support through the difficult period.

Yesterday was considered not-too-busy a day for there were only two enquiries. However, I still found myself quite bogged down with lots of work. That was because I found myself swamped with paper work. I had at least a few social reports to write. A social report basically gives an overview of the background of a client and a family, the strengths and risk factors present in the case, the social worker's assessment of the situation and the social worker's recommendations. This kind of report is written usually when social workers wish to refer a client to an external organisation for services and assistances. To address any resistance from the client, I find it helpful to discuss the nature of the referral and seek consent from the client before I make the referral.

Social reports can be quite demanding but I quite enjoy the process of writing. I type the social reports for I do not have the luxury to engage a secretary. Anyway, typing is fine for me. The only thing I have to be aware of is to ensure that I get reasonable breaks every now and then from the use of the computer or else I will start to feel drained very easily.

Anyway, perhaps the more demanding thing was that there were some system issues to be resolved with the new case-management application system that our professionals are using. We have been given directions to switch to the use of this new system, and I must say we are among the pioneers in the industry to use this new application system. One of my colleagues and myself have been tasked to implement the use of the system. Apparently, there are still areas of improvements, and I found myself spending a large part of my entire morning yesterday on discussing with my colleague to explore ways to rectify the problems and on writing emails to give feedback and suggestions to the system provider. We had to resort to writing for no one was available to answer our calls.

Here, I shall put an end to describing my long and tiring workday. Work can drain one if one does not find ways to recharge. I am glad that I have found relief in playing music. Doing so helps me recharge. In the evening, I went for orchestra rehearsal right after work.

We only rehearsed the first movement of the Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony last night. I sensed that we are becoming more aware of what is actually going on in this movement. The conductor tried to highlight the musical themes that exist at various parts of the movement, and I found it to be helpful in helping me to better appreciate the relationships between various instruments.

At the same time, I did not quite like the lighting at the rehearsal theatre. There was limited light shone on my scores, but there was light glaring at me from the other direction. It made reading of the scores rather uneasy. Things got rather bad at one point in time, for I misread and played a F sharp for one of the notes when it was actually a G sharp. Thank goodness that after hearing myself sounding out of tune with the rest, I realised my mistake and corrected. Maybe I will need to get myself a reading light?

After rehearsals, it was unusual that I went for supper. I supposed I was more open to go for supper because I did not have to work the next day. Emily and Dinah, the other double bassists in my section, initiated the supper and we had supper at the Mac Donalds restaurant at Clementi. Guanyu, the trumpeter was also part of the "supper team".

I was rather impressed, and quite amused, by the outward expression of spontaneity by these three gals, particularly Dinah, during the supper. These witty young ladies sure have interesting ways to keep themselves entertained during supper. Dinah greatly amused me with her very literal (possibly an intentionally one) translation of English texts to Mandarin.

Even if my world is a spontaneous one, it is a private one. While I do experience many moments of spontaniety, I do not usually express them out. In addition, I realised that by that time of the night, I have withdrawn to my inner world and would appear to be quite unparticipative. I would not be surprised if I had looked comparatively out of place with the three young ladies in the supper team. By 11 p.m. last night, I was feeling so tired to truly participate with the outside world. I could merely muster patience to wait for the other ladies to finish their supper.

After supper, I took a bus home. By the time I reached home, I was too tired to do anything constructive except for sleep.

I think I am not made to live like an owl for I realised that I do not function well at late hours of the night. Owls are nocturnal birds. Yet, for those who have known me well, they would never have associated me with the word "nocturnal".

This has been a long post. If it has made you feel a little tired after reading, it was intentional. In that way, you may better experience how tired I would usually feel by the late hours.