Allotment 51B

i was sleeping when i read the text from Donal last night.it was sent at 10:08pm and i was already slumped on the couch snoring my way through the night.

Final cost of greenhouse = gbp537.15, cost of manual labour =gbp0, countless days of agony in the rain =priceless!

yerp i only noticed the text this morning when i was setting off my alarm. i had a good laugh at it. yeah agony.tell me about it!

hello people!i havent been writing much have i?hehe pardon me for not finding time to update.oh well it doesnt really matter i guess because i officially dedicated this blog to some close friends who'd been bugging me to update how ive been doing.and yeah especially to you!so ive not really upset anyone right.

okay cool.

now,now that i have been back to school,i guess i have more interesting stuff to write.hmm let me think yeah oh yeah.i have got words pouring out of my head now my fingers couldnt cope with its pace.i probably need to improve on my typing speed because to be honest i think im pretty slow at typing,oh well compared to the speed jeff is typing.sometimes when i look at him typing emails or comments or his reports,i was always amazed at how fast he types and i kinda gave him that stare of a superhero.you know,the kind of look that you are staring up above at a superhero saving the world from the bad people,fighting the dinosaurs and dragons,and you have that sparkling eyes admiring and secretly whispering 'oh save me superhero!i love you!'.hahah i guess i had too much tv when i was small but hey,after all,jeff is my own version of superhero.forget batman and superman.ive got jefriman! how cool is that!

see i talks craps most of the times.back to the topic,or rather the text.for the past few weeks i had been some sort of cheap labor on the site working on constructing a greenhouse that my group had designed.the project was just amazing i think we combined few elements into our design and actually got it built!the site is an allotment site at N17 and we were supposed to build a greenhouse to a certain requirement within the budget of gbp300.but as always,being architecture students who always want to impress others,our group had designed a greenhouse that has got a shed attached to it and an incredible rammed earth wall!(imagine there is actually other group working on experimental rammed earth wall but we have already integrated it into our design and built it within the same time frame as the other one.arent we amazing!lol)

so yeah put the three big elements together and aint it obvious from the text that we blew the budget by almost 100%.n we didnt finish it on time.infact,it was dragged for almost a month until it was finally completed last sunday.no,before you start judging us as being lazybums,let me tell you how hard we had worked on it.

we have only got one week before we have to present our work.the group is made up from 8people and was split up into two i)do the timber work in the workshop at school ii)build the rammed earth wall!!and hooray the weather had been harsh on us that we had a wet week to work with.so yeah it makes sense when we were unable to finish on time because mind you,building rammed earth wall in the rain was not an easy task!and because the timbers were too long,the guys were not allowed to use the workshop and had to work in the rain,sawing the timbers manually.pity us?better do!

and yeah we were due to finish by friday which was not the case obviously.the coming weeks we couldnt come on the weekdays because the classes and unit works had kicked off leaving us no free time to be wasted on the site.and so it was dragged to the weekends and hmm let me see,for the past 4weekends,i dragged my feet out of the bed to the thought of going to the site and having to be cheap labour working in the cold.blerrrgghhhhh~

anyhow,we had fun.i had fun.haha no seriously,i had fun!perhaps i should share the fun i had with you so you could also see what the hell was i trying to say up there.jeff,this particular blog is especially dedicated to you.now dont nag at me saying i dont make friends with people.(i love u still :P)

Donal and i were assigned to find materials for the greenhouse and so we hop from one reclaim yard to another for the price comparison.

Donal checking out the timber we need for the post.these posts were priced at gbp19.hell expensive it was!!

timbers at reclaim yard.they were selling each piece of these at 50p!isnt it obvious we would go for this one instead? :P
our site.well i dont really have the site picture but these guys were having discussion on the site.
ok this is the grave we dug to bury ourselves in case the project didnt go right.haha!andy vee and hee (and me) were digging the soils to be used as rammed earth wall.
the framework for our rammed earth wall.
we had to put up a tent from the dpm avoiding the wall to be wet.rain oh rainn
i had a go at this but it was waaaay harder than how it looks.toby and hee ramming the earth in the framework.now u see the idea of our rammed earth wall?
yeay we've got one nice sunny day and the wall was halfway up!
yerp.im a girl but that was no excuse from the hard labor!after digging the earth out and mixing to a certain consistency(macam nak buat kek laa), we had to scoop it up into the framework for the guys to do the ramming.
the wall is done.time for framework!
thats right!we worked till late night and even in the dark!

and i havent got the rest of the pictures because i simply had forgotten to snap anymore.but anyhoo,this is how it had turned out to be!

tadaaaaa
our shed+rammed earth wall+greenhouse.it sure was a lot of effort putting these things together.look at those claddings!vee and i had to saw it out from pallettes manually!crazy work but yeah we had equal fun too!(sorry the group photo was with andy otherwise i would post it here as well ;)

i am glaaaaaaddd that i dont have to drag my feet to the site this weekend.in fact,ide be happy to because we are having bonfire night at the site to celebrate our completion!yippie!good job guys!

ps/i was working hard too!i wasnt in the pictures wasnt because i tuang kerja but because i was the one who snapped the pictures.makes sense? :P