My Batam Trip

It had been a long time since I last blog. For the past month, I had been to occupied with work in my new work place. Things had been pretty good for me. I have good colleagues and a good boss. Had been enjoying my work since.

Ok back to the topic, My Batam Trip.

From this Batam trip, I realised that staying in Singapore is really luxury. Cannot really imagine that the comdition in Batam, just a 45 mins ferry from Singapore, can be so different. People in Batam does not have proper housing and needless to say, no clean water or electricity (those staying in Kampung). Therefore, life in Singapore is really great as compared to Batam.

Day 1 (07 Dec)

Day 1 starts with us gathering at MacDonald in HarbourFront for breakfast. By 0750 hours, we were on the first ferry to Batam. After changing and leaving our bags at Harris Resort, we were off to the work site. Soon after we got a briefing from the locals there, we began our hard day at work. For our 3 days there, we are supposed to do the foundation of the house. This is really no easy task. We got to dig a small hill for soil to fill about 30cm above the ground level. This hill is about some 50 metres away from the house and is on a slope. So transporting the sand to the house is really hard work. After transporting of the sand to the house, we got to flaten and spread out the sand. Things is not made easy by the hot sun. But well, all the 12 of us there did enjoyed ourselves. There were so much laughters throughout the day. We got to create laughter to make our tough work more enjoyable. Work stop at 5pm and dinner is provided by the resort. The food is not too bad. During the night, I can't really get to sleep as my hands are aching away. Had not done such manual work in a long time you see.

Day 2 (08 Dec)

Another long time awaits us. After breakfast at the resort, off we go to the work site again. We continued the task that we did on day 1. This time round, we go abit slower than day 1. We are already tired from the day 1 work you see. But well, we did managed to go ahead of schedule. We were given 2.5 days to complete the foundation of the house but by 3-4pm on day 2, we had already compeleted it. So our team-work is really great. Everyone of us really work hard to complete our work. So, after completing the foundation, we went on to construct the wall of the house. This is considered a much easier task as compare to laying the foundation. Constructing of the wall is fun actually. But in order that the wall will not collaspe, we got to be careful on the placement of every single brick. Hmm.. very good experience.

Day 3 (09 Dec)

This is the last day on the Island. Just a half day work and we will be going back to Singapore. The day starts with a slight rain. We all thought that the rain will do us some good, but we are so wrong. Things started to go wrong while our van was making the way to the work site. As the rain make the road slippery, the van was not able to go up a gentle slope. Thus, we had to take a big detour and ending up 30 mins late. More bad news awaits us. Today, we were supposed to help in the construction of another house. We were supposed to lay cement on the roof of this house. However, because of the rain, the cement truck was not able to reach our worksite. So, a change of plan and our group got to dig drainage system for the small village. This drainage would be able to drain all the rain water and thus would make the cement truck a easier route. Digging this drainage is another tough job. Every dig would have water splasing all over you.. haha.. although it was tough, it was pretty enjoyable to see everyone gets dirty......

Overall, this trip to me is enjoyable. We had a great team with great people. Tough trip but is fun. Looking forward to meeting my team mates again.......