Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to....flush the toilets!!!

"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink,

Water, water everywhere and how the boards did creak."

Daniel Defoe [Robinson Crusoe]

The ship is falling apart...well sort of.


A couple of days ago, while me and a friend were in the middle of deep cleaning some toilets, we heard a paige over the intercom that went, "Attention ship's company, the salt water will temporarily be cut off now." Great, we thought as now we can't flush the toilets. But it wasn't so much of a bother to us. Later we found out that a couple of people had diarrhoea and poor them couldn't go to the toilets. I definitely would not have liked to be in their shoes.

That same day, the air-conditioning broke down. We were literally dripping sweat as we cleaned the walls. Whenever we got to a part of the staircase wall near the doors that were open, we would take our own sweet time to clean the walls 'cos we wanted to stay as long as possible near the drafts of wind passing through those doors.

Later that night, I found it very hard to fall asleep because it was just too darn hot. It was kinda frustrating because at home, you have this automatic urge to do something about the heat like increase the fan power or reduce the air-cond temperature but you just can't do anything about it 'cos there's no fan in your room and the air-conditioning is central. You feel so powerless.

Makes one think how dependent we really are on machines and technology, and when they fail us, our lives "fall apart". It's a bad sign.

One thing I learnt from this incident is to appreciate the people who work round the clock in the engine room to make sure our ventilation system is working well.