Question : 2005 SPM English Paper 1 (Continuous Writing)
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR (NUMBERS IN AN OLD PHOTOGRAPH)
The clock on the wall showed the time
of a quarter to six in the evening. I was having my tea with Timothy, my old
colleague for the past eleven years. I kept my elbow on the table with my hand
holding my chin while I drifted into some deep thoughts. “Wake up short stuff!
What are you thinking about this time?” asked Timothy with a grin on his face.
“Nothing really. I was just thinking about some plans for the latest project.
That’s all,” I answered straight forwardly. “Really now? I thought you were
thinking about that favourite friend of yours. What is her name again?” replied
Timothy with a sarcastic manner. “I think you know quite well that people like
us don’t have time for...,” I answered incompletely due to an interruption.
Apparently, there was a knock on the
door that interrupted our conversation. I left the kitchen and headed for the
door without any presentable attire as I just wore a pair shorts and a jersey.
“That could be her,” stated Timothy. I smiled as a response and continued to
grab the door knob. After opening the door, I felt as though my heart sank and
I began to sweat due to nervousness. “You!
What are you doing here?!” I asked myself with the look of increasing
pressure on my face. “Hello Mr. Adam. I think you know who I am and I am here
to discuss about that new nuclear power system you designed,” answered the
unexpected visitor. Those words that came out of his mouth nearly made me faint
as he was the government’s top officer in the power plant department. I
realised that I probably made a huge mistake in that nuclear power system I
designed.
Immediately, I invited him into my apartment and I got dressed to look a
little more formal. We continued to have our conversation at the dining table
and I brought along my documents and presentations to be discussed. “Your
design was missing a few numbers. The magnitude of the force used to break the
atoms was strong, but the energy efficiency is not enough,” said the officer. I
felt puzzled as I remembered that I used all the suitable and efficient
technology to design my nuclear power system. “If the energy efficiency is not
enough, I am afraid I have to close your nuclear power plant and replace it
with another type of power plant,” stated the officer. He said that I had a
month to settle this issue, and he left my apartment.
For the next few weeks, Timothy and I
burned the midnight oil researching for the solution to the problem. We looked
back at our older blue prints to see whether there were any flaws in the
previous designs. Next, we used some of those blueprints to check for certain
specifications so that we could test them through some computer simulations. We
had to carry out complex simulated dismantling of the parts of the earlier nuclear
power plant designs through the computer simulations. This was followed by the
process of replacing certain gears in the generators and changing the settings of
the transformers to increase the voltage of electricity. However, as these
steps were only mere simulations, the exact and accurate measurements can’t be
obtained. Therefore, we could only test these upgraded designs based on
theories and no real experiments could be done.
After two long weeks of mind-twisting
and patience-testing work, Timothy and I decided to have an online conference
with the other mechanical engineers of other cities. We decided not to leave
our apartment because we needed to make sure that our documents, presentations
and blueprints are in safe hands. During the online conference, we discussed
about the issue and the other engineers gave some suggestions to overcome it.
They mentioned about using a specific set of measurements for the nuclear
reactor’s main source of heat. This was when I remembered that I did write down
the complete equation for the suitable production of heat in the nuclear
reactor. I went to my bedroom, opened the drawer of my bedside table and I found
the book that contained the equation. Unfortunately, it was missing a few
numbers.
It was the last Saturday of the
month, I went to bed and at the same time, I prayed to God that I would be able
to find out what were those missing numbers. Later that night, I had a dream of
something I did in the past. The dream was about me hiding a strip of paper inside
the frame of an old photograph. The next day, I walked out of bed to find that
old photograph which served as a memento of me and that favourite friend of
mine. That photograph brings back old memories, but then I remembered about the
dream I had. I removed the frame and found the piece of paper which contained
the numbers for the equation. With the numbers found, the equation was
completed and the officer from the power plant department eventually approved
my design of the nuclear power plant.
“So you hid the numbers inside that
old photograph of you and her?” questioned Timothy. “Yes, apparently I did,” I
answered Timothy. “I should have known this from the start. After all, it is a
little obvious to me that you would hide something so precious inside something
else that is precious as well,” said Timothy with a smile.
