Stop me if you've heard this...

Three engineering students were discussing the possible designers of the human body. One said, "It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints."

Another said, "No, it was an electrical engineer. The nervous system has many thousands of electrical connections."

The last said, "Actually it was a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?"


My point?

I'd just come back from dinner with the missus. Yes, again we say the time stamp is correct. She'd only left work at about 2100 hours. Sometimes I wonder if she'll become an alcoholic before I will.

But I digress.

Anyway, the floor of the corridors and stairwells of my block had recently been given a new treatment (think dry plaster wall, but horizontal). They were washed this afternoon.

My gripe?

They're retaining water like a son of a b*tch. And the people who have to live with the mess are forced to track dirty footprints all over the place. If this is an improvement, I want my old floor back. Any civil engineers (sorry, "structural engineers"... why can't we call a spade a spade anymore?) reading this? What's the point of 'improving' something when it causes more distress and inconvenience?

Hmm. Wait a minute. Is it...?

Hey, it is. It's the good ol' Singapore approach: why keep something that works (and well too, might I add) when we can make cosmetic changes to it and cause it to lose half its effectiveness immediately?

Case(s) in point? Haw Par Villa and Sentosa. I mean, seriously, Volcanoland?

Thank you, Mr Civil Engineer. Add this to your impressive resume of car parks with lots too small for modern cars; highways with the on-ramps that join the thoroughfare before the off-ramps, and only fifty metres' difference between them, so drivers coming off the highway will have to jostle for space with drivers coming onto it -- more fun things to do in a limited space; and roads in public housing estates that would confuse any mouse in a maze.

Well done. ISO 9002 for you. World-class stuff.

I'd credit you for EMAS too, but that's not your department.

I could be wrong though. It may not be the engineers employed by the builders-of-public-housing-sold-at-private-home-prices who did this, but architects employed by the Town Council for improvement works. If so, I wonder if it the same architect employed by my previous school who designed the indoor basketball court that's too small even for a volleyball game, the tennis courts that face east-west so some poor sap always gets the sun in his eyes and the library that floods every time there is more than two inches of rain -- I hear there are plans to use it as a white water kayaking venue if the Olympics ever comes to Singapore. And the kids keep wondering when the school will build the swimming pool they had been promised since they were in the primary section and collecting bucketfulls of money for the building fund every year.

And they say management doesn't care.


Another note: People who use the ATM should realise that there is a line behind them and not hog the damn things for more than two transactions.