Convenient Inconvenience

Last Tuesday was just like any other ordinary day except for some people busy laying pipes for underground electric cables on the outside of the west side of my home. The pipes that they were laying have to go across the main road and the were equipped with state of the art underground boring machine to minimise the inconvenience to the public which is very convenient for them. WOW!!! what great technology, passerby did not even notice that a pipe was crawling across under the road as they pass by. The machine is compact and only need to be parked on the road shoulder to carry out the whole process.

I actually stood at my wall fence to watch them feeding the pipe into the ground ....... suddenly water started gushing out near the boring machine where the pipe was supposed to come out. The workers were running here and there trying to contain the leak. At the same time a large tourist bus full of tourist was passing by but was abruptly stop on its path. The rear wheels had sunk breaking the tarmac at the weakness point where the water is gushing out at great pressure making a big hole.

The tourist bus was immobilised for a while because the rear left side wheels were trapped in the hole and was resting on its chassis. That was when I rushed into the house to alert everyone at home to watch the greatest excitement of the day ....hehe!!! When I got back to my strategic location to watch the excitement of the day, the bus already managed to pull itself out of the mini trench created by the power of the gushing water. From then on it looks like a geyser?...a fountain?....or a natural gushing spring? I left my camera in the car and my son had taken the car out so I was not able to catch any of the excitement on err ...... I think it is now called digital code, no longer on film. Luckily my eldest daughter managed to catch some of the excitements with her handy cell phone camera.

No it was not underground water but an underground water supply pipe that was punctured. I don't think it was the boring machine or the large tour bus fault ...... your guess is as good as mine.

After the excitement was done the inconvenience set in, yes the taps were dry and it was just about dinner time with a whole load of laundry to be done not mentioning all of us have not had our bath yet. GRRRR!!!!!! Ooo that nincompoop!!!

The morning after the burst pipe was already replaced and the taps were flowing again but the water pressure was worst than Manneken Pis, more of a trickle. Half of the road had to be closed so that the huge hole can be covered and the road surface repaired. The photos taken in the morning of the big hole were all lost due to some problem with camera. I had to take it apart to repaired it and is now working perfectly again.

The damaged done was major and heavy machinery's had to be brought in to do the job. Lots of lorry loads of sand and stones were needed to fill up the hole.

Finally by evening the road was completely repaired and the traffic flow was back to normal. What a big mess for a simple job.