Of water tanks & of "service with a smile"

For the past few days couple of days I've been stuck at home during the day because some parts of my house needed to be replaced and touched up. FYI, this house is older than yours truly so one can certainly imagine the condition of it.

This time, some areas of the ceiling needed patching up (lest we suffer from leakage when it rains) and my dad has (thankfully) commissioned some professionals to handle the case. Then there's also the replacement of the God-knows-how-old water tank. No description of the water tank is necessary; I will include a tell-tale picture later on. Apparently my dad had intended for this operation to take place sooner, but the fact that no one is around the house during the day kind of got in the way. So what better opportunity than the time that the prodigal son is at home during his semester break? Bleh.

The men came yesterday to have a look and clarify what needed to be done, what items we would need to buy and so on. After looking at the ceiling from inside the house (which includes the nasty rupture line in the bathroom ceiling) and from on top of the house, they decided that they couldn't start work immediately due to the rain clouds that had gathered in the sky and left. However, they did drop by a few hours later to store the items needed for their work.

Today, they speedily patched up the ceiling, removed the old water tank (making a loud ruckus while they were at it) and fixed up the new one from 10am to 3pm. And all the while I was at the table fighting as Aragorn, hacking and slashing away Sauron's minions in EA's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. And after all the work's done (and the One Ring destroyed), here is what's left:

Now that I think about it, I can hardly believe we've been using water stored in THAT tank. Damn....

And as we can see here, the by-products of the whole operation. I bet the cats would have something to say about that.

..........................................................................

Earlier tonight, I rode my bike over to a nearby hypermarket (hint: its name starts with a 'T', theme color set = red, blue and white) to get some packs of soya bean, green tea and winter melon tea for the family. I loaded my basket with everything I intended to purchase and proceeded to one of the express lanes (supposedly 10 items or less). My turn eventually came.

Me: *nods and smiles at the cashier*

Cashier (a boy named "James"): *eyes fixated on the items, hands occupied with scanning and bagging each item*

Me: *visibly shocked by this lack of both eye contact and verbal interaction*

Cashier: *continues scanning and bagging*

Me: *waits expectantly for (at least) a "Good evening sir" which never came*

Cashier: *finished bagging the last item, turns the cash register screen to show amount to be paid without looking at the customers*

Me: *pays*

Cashier: *returns change and receipt, then starts scanning and bagging next customer's items WITHOUT A WORD*

Wow....talk about bonding with customers.

Phew, that was a long long post. If you have read all the way, I thank you for your patience (and subsequently applaud you for your diligence) :-D


Useless yet interesting info #1: The Guiness World Book of Records (Gamers Edition) record holder for the longest ever game title belongs to "The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II: The Rise of the Witch-King"