July 15, 2010.
At dawn, I woke up upon hearing the call for early morning prayers from the mosque nearby. Today is one important day where my team will move 132 boxes of PCs and 132 boxes of monitors from the temporary storage on the first floor of the academic building to the computer labs which are located on the first floor of the library. Good thing the school has a trolley which, from my initial sighting, could also be converted into a ramp to bring down those PCs.
The boxes will be carried through two staircases i.e. one going down to the ground floor at the academic building, and one going up to the first floor of the library. Since the trolley can be used as a ramp, moving the boxes down shall not be much of a problem. But carrying the boxes up to the first floor manually could really slow us down.
At 15kg each for PC and 4.5kg each for monitors, a total of 2.574 metric tons of weight will be carried by three men. That makes each one of us shall be carrying an average of 858kg throughout the process.
The process started at around 20 minutes to 9am. The plan was to move the boxes from the temporary store room at the office all the way to the last staircase at the east corner of the academic building. The distance is about 150 meters. Thanks to the trolleys, we were able to move the boxes by batches of 12 per cycle. Moving the PCs to the east corner of the academic building was not much of a challenge. We then used the trolley as a ramp to push down the boxes.
Just when I thought everything was okay, Bro suddenly fell when he was attacked by a muscle pain. Zali rushed to him and we could do nothing but to calm him down. He was in terrible pain, and from the looks of it, he seemed to be suffering of gluteus medius muscle strain. After battling with great internal muscle pain for about half an hour, Bro finally stood up and made his way back to the dormitory.
I looked at Zali, speechless.
“Allah, apalah nasib kita”, he griped. “Dahlah tinggal tiga orang, sekarang Bro pulak injured. Allah.”
I then stretched out on the tarmac. I just looked blankly to the ceiling at the pave way. Oh brother, life has got to be better than this! I wonder what’s going to happen next. I told Zali that we should bring down all the remaining boxes down before we take a break. But Zali has given up for that hour so we decided to stop for asar prayers.
Back at our dorm, Bro was still struggling to turn his body sideway. “Sakit, Yas”. I told him to relax while handed him a painkiller tablet which was given to me by Dr. Roslan. He looked up with puckered brows, “Yas, aku mintak maaf la. Aku rasa aku tak boleh nak join korang untuk habiskan kerja-kerja tu”. “It is okay, Bro. Get some rest”.
While waiting for Isyak prayers, I asked Zali about the rest of Ops SEMESTA. “Kalau ikutkan hati, aku pun benci buat kerja ni!. Kita kerja macam nak mati, orang lain dapat pergi Korea, team kita jadi kecik, kau pulak jadi kambing hitam… apa lagi?! Kalau tak kerana kau, aku memang takkan buat kerja ni. Aku akan senyum dan tengok je,” he complaints. I clearly understood his frustration. In this situation, who wouldn’t?
Right after Isyak, both Zali and I went back to the academic block to finish off what we started since morning. Zali didn’t talk much after that. We carried the boxes down one by one, until all the 132 boxes have been transferred under the stairs nearby the library. By the time I put the last box, it was already midnight and we finally call it quits. Tomorrow’s task would be to carry those boxes up the first floor to the labs. Zali had told me that he wanted to leave early because he had to drive down to KL for a family function. But he will assist me to bring those boxes up first before he leaves.
It looks like I’ll be disbursing the PCs to the labs on my own.
