High Ceilings

On a weekend, it is usually a nice thing to just sit at a coffee joint, read books, and just chill out. Saturday mornings are best because many of the places in the CBD are open, even until the afternoon, and no customers.

So it was with the expectation of whiling away 2 hours that I popped into the Starbucks at Capital Towers. Yes, I know I’m supposed to cut out my reading but this time it’s not some random book pulled out of a warehouse sale / library, but serious stuff, like how to write a compiler, or how operating systems work, or stuff like that.

So it was a good way of spending time when suddenly 4 gentlemen from the Indian subcontinent and 1 from the PRC (probably) walked in carrying a few pieces of scaffolding, and plonked it down 10 metres in front of me. So I had a great view of the interesting project that was about to unfold before me.

Now I think that Starbucks has a few places which are basically air-conditioned greenhouses. (Actually you could say that most of the CBD is an air-conditioned greenhouse). Glass and steel are OK in cold countries because they trap heat. But in a tropical climate they are just stupid. Luckily this particular air con greenhouse had a tall ceiling, so I suspect that would save a lot of air con costs – ie it incorporates cooling techniques that were designed for tropical weather.

So OK, on top of a large cup of overpriced coffee, and reading about how to handled left recursion while parsing computer code, I had the pleasure of watching them set up the scaffolding. 1 layer went up, then the trestle was fixed on. It’s like a farm, where the farmer is sweating his guts out, and the cows are just there, watching him, insouciantly chewing cud.

Another layer went up, and it was more interesting, because it looked a little dangerous: there were no safety harnesses (after all where are you going to hook them on, a skyhook?) and there was this dramatic suspension: what are they doing this for, and is anybody going to get hurt? Finally, with the rest of the building materials handed upwards to this brave guy teetering on a plank on top, the platform on top was built. By this time 2 Indian guys were holding the bottom part of the platform for support. Then the Chinese guy came up.

Then it hit me: this is the answer to the perennial question: how many foreign workers does it take to change a light bulb? The Chinese guy plucked the energy saving tube out from the socket (I suppose you don’t really bother about switching off the lights when it’s so much trouble to get back down). And then he just changed the tube. He did that for a few sockets. So that was entertainment.

I had another piece of entertainment when I went down to Orchard Central after work. It is a very strange building, on the site of the sadly departed Specialist Centre, on a narrow site, and 8 floors of shops. Moreover these floors have very high ceilings.

So I was chilling out at their gelato outlet, when I noticed that a few people were craning their necks. At first I thought they were just looking at this loud and garish giant LCD screen mounted on the opposite wall, when I realised that I was sitting right underneath what was “the highest indoor rock climbing wall (in a shopping centre)”. It’s like 4-5 storeys high, and overlooks Orchard Road, so you really feel like you are on some crazy rock cliff in – uh – Orchard Road. Now that was crazy. I was just chilling out and eating an ice cream and suddenly I discover that if somebody slips and falls, he’s going to land up in my banana split, or if his bladder gives way, raindrops will soon be falling on my head. Or if he craps his pants, I will have extra fudge for my ice cream.

Anyway it is great that the lonesome life of a wandering bookworm is broken by such interesting side distractions.