went to batu aji, batam today together with a group from the company for the batam build project under habitat for humanity int'l.

I started this day super early by waking up at 5am. meeting point was at harborfront ferry terminal, 6.45am. the 7.50am ferry was so crowded they changed the vessel into a bigger one and yet it was still so packed. luckily the sea was really calm.

arrived at sekupang jetty in 40 minutes time. met up with the rep from habitat and then went to the work site by minibus provided by harris.

the house that we helped to construct today had walls and roof already done, but the rest was still untouched. our agenda today: levelling the floor, bending & tying wire for column, and mixing cement. we started the day by bending & tying wires for column, while some of the guys did the levelling of the floor. cement mixing and pouring was done in the afternoon.

we made square-shaped rings from the thick metal sticks provided, put some of them around other 4 metal sticks (about 25 cm apart) and tied them using wires. these columns were then used as skeleton of the outermost layer of the floor. cement was then mixed with water and gravel - this was one really tough work - and poured on top of the columns before being left to harden.

columns making and cement mixing were done outside under the sweltering heat of the sun. floor leveling and cement pouring were done inside the stuffy house. my goodness, it was like having a sauna while baking a cake (cement as the mixture). hot, hot, hot!

lunch box was provided, consisted of rice, mixed vegetables, chicken, fried fish fillet, prawn cracker and banana. I had my breakfast before leaving home, and then had another muffin in harborfront, but was already hungry way before normal lunchtime.

finished our work at 3pm local time, and went to waterfront jetty for return trip to singapore. harris had again demonstrated their professionalism by helping me taking care of my tax clearance, and even filling out my departure/arrival card nicely. superb service!

bought 1 litre box of teh sosro, fish crackers (krupuk bangka) and a few packets of indomie with new flavour I haven't seen before (soto medan).

all in all, it has been a tiring but yet enriching day. literally doing construction work was an eye opener to all of us, although frankly speaking, the amount of construction work a group of inexperienced, physically unfit people could accomplish in less than 1 day was really not much.