I’m feeling much better today although still not 100 %, but another day and I should be back on top form. I was laying on the sofa yesterday trying to find a position that would make me comfortable, the cushions are small and don’t give much support and I wasn’t going near our pillows when I remembered the cushion on my office chair.
It is a square covered pad with four buttons and unlike most cushion pads in Vietnam it is squidgy and soft. I tried it and it helped so I am now dragging it to bed at night like Christopher Robin clutching Pooh by one leg as he makes his way slowly up the stairs to bed or Linus with his blanket.
I need to use the pad because without it if the chair is in the correct position for me to comfortably use the laptop my feet don’t touch the ground. Another downside of having short legs.
My neck is feeling much better but I didn’t get a very good night’s sleep last night as the power went off again at about 10 pm, we can’t put the generator on at night, well I say can’t we don’t. It wouldn’t be fair to everyone around us to have that rumbling away all night.
So I was back in the sauna box, neither ML nor I slept well; I gave up about 3 am and ML managed to sleep a bit longer. The generator went on a 5 am so that ML could get ready for work and then he switched it back off. I waited until 7 am before I put it back on and we are still without mains power. That’s been every other day this week the power has been off for at least 12 hours. I wonder if this just happens in the rural areas or whether the cities suffer as well.
We should have been going to Singapore yesterday but someone in one of the offices thought somebody else was booking the tickets and by the time it was realised we couldn’t get a flight. In a way I am glad as they put the roof on the house across the road yesterday so I was able to see it. I will probably be offline until this time next week, we have to renew our visas again and ML needs one for Indonesia as well so we are going up to Hanoi tomorrow and flying to Singapore Sunday.
Yesterday I couldn’t look at the computer screen without it hurting too much so I was laying like a Victorian damsel on my sofa feeling sorry for myself. There seemed to be a lot of noise outside so I looked outside only to see the new build across the road a hive of activity. There must have been 20 people either on the roof or in front of the building.
At some time the day before more gravel, sand and a small pile of bricks had been delivered and two machines had been set up in front of the house. A cement mixer with a large hopper and an engine that I was to find out operated a hoist.
ML had been in over the last two mornings while he was waiting for his driver taken some photographs from inside and I now understand why there is a forest of stripped bamboo poles in the house.
Where the ceilings will be a framework of horizontal bamboo poles have been constructed and tied together with the same red plastic tape as the scaffolding. The frame is held in place by the forest of upright poles. This has been repeated across the whole house.
Next wide wooden boards had been laid over the framework and this was then covered with a white membrane of some sort, it could even be plastic. Over the top of this was laid a metal mesh to reinforce the concrete and all around the edges the shaped metal thingies (I wish I knew what they were called) were attached.
Which brings us too yesterday, the machines fired up and there were at least ten workmen on the roof, seven making concrete, one operating the hoist and a couple more milling around. The hopper of the cement machine was filled with gravel, sand, cement and water.
There were two men on the sand pile, one throwing the sand through a sieve attached to a bamboo frame and the other to fill the buckets. The gravel had two men, one to fill the buckets and one to carry them to the hopper. Two men were filling the containers that were being hoisted onto the roof filled with cement and one man kept the water barrel full.
On the roof I was glad to see some of the men had wellington boots on a couple were wearing gloves. There were men working all over but one man working on neatening the metal ends sticking out another was tying boards to the outside to contain the concrete, and another was watering the roof’s surface. Two men carried the containers of concrete on a bamboo pole supported on their shoulders and it was dumped out onto the roof where others were troweling into place.
The man on the hoist was in constant motion pulling the containers up and down and each time he started the hoist moving black smoke billowed from the engine into the faces of the men loading the buckets with sand. One of them was wearing a cloth mask across his face but I think he got too hot behind it and removed it after a while.
I watched for a while but it was very noisy and sunny and my head was complaining so I came away back off the balcony and back to my sofa. A couple of times in the day the engines stopped so the workman could have a rest, it was hot, dry, dusty and back breaking lifting all of the materials by hand. I went out during the quiet periods just to see how they were getting on, finally at the end of the day when ML came home we could see they had finished the roof and the men were tidying up.
The site is like the Marie Celeste today not a soul to be seen. One good piece of news as far as ML is concerned the tree next to the site has decided to rally and it is now full of bright green new leaves, which means no more dead leaves for him to sweep up off of the drive.
I should be back by next Friday but if I am able I may post from Singapore.
Blog from a Vietnamese Balcony 