Water – it’s in my blood

“I googled your name before our interview last year”, my team lead at Alberta Environment unexpectedly confessed, during the water team’s weekly ritual of Friday steak sandwiches at the Highrun Club.

“You did? Did you find anything incriminating?” I replied in my characteristic teasing manner. I was not concerned; after all, this was 2006 and pre-Facebook. Even now, he wouldn’t be able to find anything more questionable than unsolicited shots of me displaying some very unbecoming facial contortions, or snoozing on a bus ride with mouth agape – perhaps accompanied with a string of drool running down my chin, annnnd other zany poses (you know – smooching cows, and biting babies, nothing unusual really)

“I didn’t find any dirt on you. But I did come across a website that explained the origins of your last name. Did you know the name ‘Hong’ originates from a tribe of people living along the Yellow River, well-known for their irrigation and flood control expertise?”

“No… I didn’t.” I felt remiss to learn that he knew something about my heritage that I didn’t. “BUT, I do know that the character ‘Hong’ is associated with water and flood.”

“Well then it’s very fitting that you’re now a hydrologist isn’t it. Obviously, it’s meant to be.”

So I only lasted as a hydrologist for nine months – the length of the maternity leave that I was covering for. During that time, I learned a lot and had an amazing mentor. I enjoyed assessing the return periods of precipitation events, developing naturalized river flows models, reviewing the hydrology sections of the Environmental Impact Assessments of oil sands projects, and relished in the luxury of attending all sorts of watershed management and hydrology seminars and conferences. It was a great first post-graduation gig, and at the time, I don’t think I truly appreciated how good I had it as a recent grad.

Since then my work experience has scattered in every which direction – oil sands, public health and now, municipal solid waste. Yet, I find myself often reminiscing with fondness about working in hydrology, or of my other short stints with water, like in water treatment at EPCOR, or building water filters in Cambodia.

I think water must be my first professional love, akin to some people’s first meaningful romantic experience that didn’t last, like how some would refer to it as, “the one that got away”. Fortunately, for me, water is not a person, and I don’t think there will be much emotional baggage from this on-again-off-again relationship. But it would sure be nice to commit to an area professionally, to stay put long enough for in depth growth and to see one's work make a lasting impact.

Today is World Water Day, and once again I’m reminded of my past love. There is so many pressing and emerging issues to be tackled in this field and its many subspecialties (i.e. climate change mitigation, integrated watershed management, transboundary policy, privatization, water treatment for removal of pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors, water and sanitation development in resource-poor areas, so on and so forth).

However, nostalgia is different than conviction, and I do not feel compelled to chase after it and to rekindle the affair. Someday the stars might align that our paths cross again. After all, great opportunities have been known to serendipitously fall out of thin air. Even still, they will amount to nothing if not actively pursued. Nothing great happens by living on default mode.