The Quito construction up-date.

Since Brendan is giving a summary of Japanese construction techniques I thought (seeing as they continuously disrupt my sleep) I would also give a wee description of construction here in Ecuador.

First of all, in contrast to construction in Japan where Brendan describes this as being very cramped, space is not an issue here in Quito. I don`t know if it is only because there is a lot more room, or if people just care less here about imposing on other people. They clearly aren`t very concerned about me sleeping well. I have been waken up twice now at 4:30 in the morning. Both times the sounds "beep, beep, beep" accompanied by a man yelling "dale, dale, dale" (lit= "giv'er, giv'er, giv'er") have worked themselves into my dreams. But then comes the reason for these sounds, a gigantic crashing noise as they dump the boulders from the dump-truck onto the work site right... RIGHT outside my window. Everytime I jump out of my skin thinking they are going to accidentally knock my building down or something. FOUR-THIRTY IN THE MORNING!!!!! I caught them on camera this morning. They were dumping the rocks on to a fire.
Here are some other pictures of the project. Word on the street is that they are building a grocery store. The original pile of dumped rocks. The holes in the picture were all dug by hand. All the metal things sticking up were cut and welded by hand, and were also erected by the workers. The workers. Building grates to place at the bottom of the wholes to anchor the tall metal post things. They will eventually cover the tall metal towers with cement. Some lady brings the men plates full of breakfast and lunch, the guys in the bottom left are eating lunch.

Sunday morning I was awoken to the sound of a radio blaring rather than hammers banging. The men weren't working Sunday but some how the women had managed to get a washing mashine back there in the corner and were doing their laundry. They then proceeded to hand the laundry on the ropes supporting the metal towers. There were more before I took this picture. While the women were doing the laundry the kids were chasing these cute little pups around the site, throwing them into the holes, then tying a measuring tape around them to pull them up again!!

Anyway, that's all for now. Here's Brendan's link: http://brendansboringblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/housing-in-japan.html