My house kinda looks like its a war zone now. All the furniture is out of position, some of it is covered by plastic sheets and everything is under a layer of fine dust. But for the sake of safety, it's well worth it... I guess.

The house that I'm living in belongs to my maternal grandparents, and it was the first one that they moved into after leaving the kampung. At present, this 3-room flat is already 30 years old, and has suffered its fair share of wear and tear. Being built in the age when there was no such thing as a circuit-breaker in the home, one was notably absent and this posed a fire/electrical hazard. As such, we decided to play it safe and install one, re-wire the whole house and replace and install some additional electrical sockets.

A team of 5 people, including the supervisor, arrived early this morning at around 10am and got down to work. What followed was a long, tiring day. The only place to sit down was at the kitchen table as everything else had been covered up by sheets. There was lots of noise as wires were yanked out, holes were drilled and old fittings and sockets were ripped off walls to be replaced by new ones. This generated lots of dust, and pretty soon, the floor was covered with bits of broken wall, plaster, random nails, screws and plastic fragments. We were hence told to wear slippers in the house as a precaution, so as not to hurt our feet

The supervisor left them sometime after lunch time, so it was just the 4 of them doing all the work. Meanwhile, me and my parents were marooned in the kitchen with no electricity. It was a hot day, and there was no fan to turn on or cold water to drink. It wasn't convenient to take a bath either, and the result was that I spent most of today sweaty, sticky and choking on my own BO.

This whole thing lasted till around 7pm in the evening, and was followed by the clean-up. Though the workmen had cleared most of the rubble, there were still small pieces of rubble lying around. I also had a relatively painful encounter with a screw and the dust was thick everywhere. How bad was it? Let's just say that when I ran a finger over a plastic sheet, the entire fingerpad was covered with light grey dust. As for my feet soles, they were dark grey with dirt as well. Meanwhile, we did our best to bring some order back to the house by mopping, cleaning and vacuuming until 9 plus. We've left the furniture covered and out of place, as a painter is coming tomorrow to fill up any dents and holes with plaster and paint over them. So, well, the walls look a little damaged right now.

Hpefully all this is well worth the effort and man hours. As for me, I think I'll be going off to get a damp cloth now. My keyboard seems to be dusty. =P