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Contaminated Water: You experienced failure. How did it affect you?


trilam153 9 / 21 3  
Apr 25, 2013   #1
Need 50 words cut
The new commonapp increased limit to 650 words.
Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?

This is the new version that combine both of your contribution to the essay. I wonder if dumi willing to look at it again. I like your writing style. I know there are many unnecessary details but i was going for funny - i hope i have achieved it.

i think my ending definitely need work on but i've been thinking for days now without new details to add

For as long as I can remember, Vietnam's water supply has been contaminated with pathogens from daily uses, insecticides and herbicides from agriculture rich central regions, and VOCs from commercial manufacturing. At eleven, I was carefree innocent lad who drank water from the first tap in vicinity despite my parent's constant warning about the danger. This habit often got me on hospital bed and at every such time my mother used to tell that loafers have built a chocolate house in my stomach. Only now that I understand what she meant.

I was sent to Singapore that year as an au pair. The Singaporean family prided themselves with "a drinkable toilet system." I thought they were just teasing me until one of them flushed the water and drank from it. My friends had a loo dedicated solely to drinking in the corner of the house. They said the first and most important lesson of coming to Singapore was the daily water supply is drinkable. Young Tri had found gold! I'm going to be rich, I naĂŻvely thought to myself.

"Why do you bother with that?"
"Because I'm going to change lives."

Over two weeks of repeatedly telephoning the Public Utilities Board (PUB), and after two irritated call receptionists, I familiarized myself with the water supply system. Singapore had the so-called "four national taps," an abbreviation for four different water supplies: rainfall, seawater, reclaimed, and imported water.

"Its main goal was to reduce reliance on supply from Malaysia."
"Which one is going to make me rich?"
"Ah. Pardon?"
"Which one can I bring to my country to make clean water?"
"I think you're talking about the NEWater."

And I hung up. A minute later, the phone at the PUB office rang again
"What's NEWater?"

After the prolonged phone call, I felt like all the English vocabulary I learned was knocked out of me. The new language was difficult, listening to those scientific terms was even more daunting; but it did not stop me from seeking my fortune. The next day I found myself reciting the NEWater process while enjoying a mouthful of clean water during in shower.

"Reclamation starts with used water going through microfiltration to, ah, remove suspended solids and disease-causing bacteria. Then during, ah, reverse osmosis, a semi-permeable membrane filters out, ah, contaminants such as heavy metal and pesticides..."

Of course, there was no way I could have understood any of that, so I called again, this time asking for an appointment. Probably because of the frustrations I caused the receptionists over the past two months that PUB accepted my request to see the Kranji Water Reclamation Plant (WRP) without question. Little did I know that I had arranged the end of my ambition.

It was peculiarly cloudy for non-monsoon season day. I was at the Kranji MRT station at 8 a.m. and my appointment was at 10 a.m. Success was near. My first glance at the plant was much different from my imagination. Water pipes were carefully hidden underground and the purification process happened inside the factory, leaving only sixteen enormous water tanks in sight. Deeper in the bowel of the WRP were pipelines of all kinds. Everything was too overwhelming for a thirteen year old boy; and my bubble burst.

It started with me understanding the process of water reclamation, then the meeting with the director of PUB, showing me how the water plants were built. Unless the Singaporeans used Zimbabwean dollar, there were no way I could had have five-hundred millions dollars, the one flaw to the otherwise perfect plan.

Even now, my friends from Singapore still ask me how rich I am now or if I am drinking toilet water. The toilet experience probably is the most embarrassing memory I have. I will never forget it for it has taught me the most important lesson of life: I was blind because I wanted to be blind.
dumi 1 / 6,925 1592  
Apr 28, 2013   #2
What's the prompt? It's always better to include the prompt in your essay so that we can provide you with more relevant feed backs.

Some help for your word count;

When I was eleven, I spent most of my days playing with friends outside the house, innocent and carefree. Despite my parents' constant reminding, I always drank from the first tap in sight, unaware of the danger dwelling inside.

At eleven, I was a carefree innocent lad who drank water from the first tap in vicinity despite my parent's constant warning about the danger.

Then came the next three days I spent not outside, but inside the hospital, following a violent stomach ache. My mother told me there was some kind of loafers made a chocolate house of my stomach - not until two years later that I realized what she meant.

This habit often got me on hospital bed and at every such time my mother used to tell that loafers have built a chocolate house in my stomach. Only two years later I understood what she meant.
dumi 1 / 6,925 1592  
Apr 30, 2013   #3
I wonder if dumi willing to look at it again.

... Yep... dumi's here :D ...LOL

Only now that I understand what she meant.

Over two weeks of repeatedly telephoning the Public Utilities Board (PUB), and after two irritated call receptionists, I familiarized myself with the water supply system.

... this needs improvement with the flow;
I was successful in familiarizing myself with water supply system with my repeated calls to the Public Utilities Board (PUB). I remember how irritated the two telephone operators with me at the end of this process, but I did not give up.

"Which one can I bringtake to my country to make clean water?"

Which one I can take to my country to clean water there?


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