I love digging! I didn't care about the see-saw or swing during playtime when I was still <5 yrs old. I always had my little spade and pail and I just dug and dug and dug...as far as I could remember .
At NUS, I often told everyone how much I'd love to be a sewer engineer, constructing sewer pipes that will carry everybody's shit. I think that's the point when I started to get so much shit in me (or was it earlier???) A twist of fate (I'll elaborate on this in the future, maybe) got me into the Civil Engineering Department and that was the point of no return.
I started off with
L&M Geotechnic working on this
underpass project in downtown. It goes underneath Pickering Street connecting to the Great Eastern Building. I don't think nobody uses it anyway. White elephant.
Highlights of this job:
1. Fucking tunnel collapsed! Caving in 2 lanes that serve traffic into the CBD from Chinatown. Not forgetting the massive bundles of fibre optic cables coming out of the Singtel building right next to the site. I was scared shit-less. I could have been buried if I had stayed in the shaft longer that day, I swear.
2. Company was going down and my pay was delayed for a month. So I left.
Next on to
Tiong Seng Contractors. Here's where people started calling me Engineer Ah Lee. Here's also where i fulfilled my prophecy of constructing shit pipes.
Highlights of this job:
1. Working on the
Deep Tunnel Sewerage System for Seletar Link Sewer Contract 1 & Kim Chuan Link Sewer Contract 1. Managed to get into the bad book of PUB for polluting their drains and sinking houses along along Katong Rd and Fort Rd. Just kidding!
2. Seconded to Kajima to work on the prestigious
St. Regis Hotel & Residence. If only I can own a piece of that property too. The hotel has part of me in it. I concreted a bag of my shit in one of the foundation structure. Just kidding again! ;P
In 2006,
Parsons Brinckerhoff dangled a big carrot and I was naive then. It wasn't a big carrot after all. So now I am, seconded to
Land Transport Authority, working on the
Circleline Stage 4&5 project as a Tunnel Engineer. Woohoo! My destiny calling...
Now I get to dig tunnels with
a. big ass equipment like the
TBMb. good old way of mining employing this technique known as
NATMNext time when you take MRT to NUH for checkups due to any of the following reasons:
a. Unfilial kids
b. No $$ to take cab etc.
Think of me and may your heart be filled with gratitude (towards me). I am (was) part of the team who brought Circleline to you! :)
I still cannot forget the carnival-like atmosphere for Tiger Cup 2005. Check out our contingency. :)
Let me talk about my trip to National Stadium last year to catch Palmy 'live' in Singapore!
Wah lau! the whole stadium was almost empty. Only people around were the helpers and police. The poor Thai early-bird supporters were at the East gate. And there....Palmy and her band set up on the shabby grass patch right next to the track. And guess, what? The "soundcheck" songs we heard earlier were actually part of her gig!
The Royal Kingdom of Thailand is very pissed with Singapore for allowing Thaksin onto the island for Bah Kut Teh breakfast.
Another Ministry of Foreign Affairs boo boo after the Donald Tsang's fiasco. Looks like heads are rolling in the MFA due to our national favourite food.
The walls of a working shaft for a new subway station in Brazil's city of Sao Paulo collapsed, creating an enormous crater. Reminiscent of Nicoll Highway Collapse? I pray for safe tunneling for the rest of my project. The workers have wives, kids and families to go home to.
