At the end of 2020, we drove on the I-90W highway to Niagara Falls to celebrate 2021 New Year Eve. It was during a rainstorm in the dark, and as a passenger I thought we were going downhill.

I asked my daughter, the driver: “Are we going downhill now?”

My daughter replied: “No, we are not going downhill.”

I trusted my visual sense and said: “I saw we are going downhill now.”

My daughter who was concentrating on driving in the dark rainstorm didn’t reply to me immediately. After a few seconds, she said: “Mommy, If I don’t push the gas, the car slows down. If we were going downhill, the car would not slow down while not pushing the gas. Therefore we are not going downhill.”

This conversation solved one of my long-time mysteries: as a passenger riding in the dark, I often felt I was going downhill, but I never got an agreement or explanation until now.

While traveling with a driver who is good at driving and speaking, passengers can gain joy from both the sceneries and the knowledge of the driver in a relaxing pleasant way.

While traveling with my daughter who is good at driving and speaking, I, the mother and the only passenger, enjoyed this unspeakable pleasure, because of my daughter’s ability to explain things clearly based on her own logic while driving a car. This solved a long-standing mystery for me instantly.

I remembered last week I saw a school security guard was good at using language to convince a group of very excited young people who were snowboarding on a handrail to stop playing without any conflicts.

I also remembered a story about how important speaking skills were in the workplace in 1996, while I was a software engineer working on AWIPS (Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System).

“AWIPS is a complex network of hardware and software systems that ingests and integrates meteorological, hydrological, satellite, and radar data in realtime; it also processes and distributes the data to 135 Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) and River Forecast Centers (RFCs) nationwide. Weather forecasters utilize the capabilities of AWIPS to make increasingly accurate weather, water, and climate predictions, and to dispense rapid, highly reliable warnings and advisories.”

1996, my first job as a software engineer was at PRC in West Virginia, I was working on developing the backend workstation system for AWIPS.

In 1996, AWIPS had five big software systems: satellite and radar communication system, database systems, meteorological and hydrological system, graphical user interface system, and backend workstation system. Each system had its own dedicated development team. At that time AWIPS had lots of very strong and sharp software system engineers, a few of them were very tall and very strong.

I attended a few cross systems design sessions, where lead architects presented designs of their systems and discussed ways to integrate all the systems. During discussions, I saw more than once that some very tall architect would stand up and shout: “You stole words from my mouth.” Those incidents led to me realizing the importance of speaking clearly and accurately in design discussions. The blame of “You stole words from my mouth.” is still in my memory.

At the beginning of 2021, the story about my daughter, a school security guard, and software engineers of 25 years ago came together, letting me realize the power of spoken words. On the highway of speech communication, may I not overpass others, nor crash myself. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to practice and improve my ability to communicate accurately, share immediately, and response pertinently.

Little Episodes

12-30-2020， Before the rainstorm and the night: snow piled on the side of I-90 highway, sunset on the edge of the sky.

AWIPS on wikipedia:

Merdith Meyers, my close friend and coworker at PRC, who was born 1970s and came from Florida, once described one of the new software engineer to me: “Jing, we just hied a new guy, he has Alan’s width (Alan was chubby) and Gordon’s height (Gordon was super tall), he is David.”