Friday, April 01, 2005

Perfect Eyesight? Not for long...

I have perfect eyesight... and I'm very very proud of it. This considering that I am born and bred in a country which ranks almost top in the world as having the most number of myopic children (or it is it adults? or both?)... It's quite a surprising thing actually, I used to be quite a reader... just put anything with words in front of me and I'll read them, whether or not I want to... I have no idea why... I have this innate thing for reading maybe... (food for thought for gene scientists... is there a reading gene??)

Anyway, I have a bad feeling my perfect eyesight won't last beyond my uni years... been working a lot on these assembly drawings past few days for this project for MP2911 (Machine Element Design). For those who dunno what those drawings are, basically they're precise, hand drawn "blueprints" of how your machine components should be assembled to make the final product (which in my case happens to be the power transmission system which will allow a 100kg cleaning pod to be lifted vertically in front of windows)... Well I'm doing half-scale drawings so doesn't sound so bad right? unfortunately the dimensions vary from a shaft 14 mm thick and 100mm long, to another one that is 40 mm thick and 1500mm long... which means the small is really quite small...

So poor me has to squint at my drawing paper for hours at end, trying to make a "precise" drawing of this tiny gear hub... sometimes I wonder why my eyeballs just don't die on me, disconnect their nerves and plop on the drawing paper (honestly I hope that won't happen.. imagine the mess that would make on my drawing... and it means must redraw!!)

all the drawing and squinting, plus the reading of notes and texts accumulated over these 4 years of university will one day really have some toll on my eyesight... I just know it... add in the poor lighting in some places in NTU and the fog due to forest fires overseas...

the future "looks" bleak...