Kindest Act of the Day

I had to go out of my nice cosy aircon office to go out into the hot sun to collect some samples.

I had to dig for the samples at about 40cm deep. Using the good old changko, we had previously been pretty successful. Unfortunately, with the drought the ground got drier and harder as well. So our faithful changko wasn't giving us the promising depth that it used to. After 30mins of hacking into the ground we only manage to penetrate 15cm! still a long way more to go..... & we needed 3 different sites! I imagine standing there with my two other collegues hacking and digging there for the rest of the week... :(

Next to us, there were a group of men constructing a resting shelter using concrete, rod iron and many other tough tools.

Feeling dejected by our changko, I decided to go and borrow more "professional" tools from these men (since they made holes of like 1m deep easily all the time). I returned happily with a huge hammer (that almost weigh as much as ME) and a few short iron rods. So we made slow but steady progress by hammering these iron rods into the ground to loosen the soil and deepen the hole at the same time.

After 10mins, we were happy to declare another 5cm that we've created!

*happy* (slow but steady remember?)

then, came a man with a huge straw hat on his head and asked (hands on his hips):"How deep the hole?" "How many hole?" "Where?" (in mandarin)

and he turned his head and walked off!

We thought that he was trying to jeer at us... for using his most simplest tool to create such a simple hole with SO MUCH EFFORT & TIME!!!

In 15secs, he returned with one of the men (Thai), holding a long metal rod with two flat ends and showed him 40cm on his measuring tape, pointing to the pathetic hole that we had.

Before we could comprehand what he was trying to do for us, the Thai men started to throw his metal rod into our hole and it churned up quite a lot of soil.... more than what we did in the last 10mins! With ONE action!

I was so thrilled!! I wanted to jump up and down in joy except that I had little strength left. So instead, I thanked them both profusely while still trying to absorb the shock of his Kind Act.

15secs later, the straw hat man returned with yet another Thai man with his metal rod and starting hacking new grounds for us!

With their help, we finished the "job" slightly over 2hours. Am super grateful for his Kind Act. Am determined to help more people along my way to Pass the Good Deed On.

:-)