“I tell you so many [university] students come to me before one… I tell you what to do…” -Boss of Bes-Gro Enterprise PTE LTD
Anita and I agreed to meet at IMM. But I was running late, so Anita had kindly already gone to purchase the 55L container from Giant by the time I arrived. Carrying the bulky box from IMM to the next bus stop under the hot sun got us drenched in perspirations by the time we arrived at the next stop: Bes-Gro Enterprise PTE LTD
the place was definitely any engineer’s dream, it had all possible tinkering supplies — from industrial scale torchlights and spades, PVC pipes and wires… and a buzz of truck drivers littered around the perimeter getting their pre-purchased goods. Everyone knew what they were doing there, they came with a mission and purpose — and honestly, so did we, but we still stood out like tourists in a sea of locals.
Sunlight filtered through the clouds, and it was all very idealistic and dreamy — until the reality of not really knowing enough engineering mechanics hit us. What to tell the person at the counter?
We didn’t have to grab his attention, because it was only a good 10seconds of hesitation before “Ah girl ah, what you want?” prompted us to speak.
Showing him the containers and describing the essence of our project as comprehensively as possible, he proceeded to prompt us further. Where will the pipes be? What are the pipes for? How are we planning to attach the pipes? What is the design like?
Bombarded and at a loss, we showed him the image of our model and the blueprints.
“Something like this-“
He ponders, and proceeds to reply:
“I tell you what; you do like that.”
The uncle whips out a pen and draws something similar to this design; describing how the PVC pipe will float if connected like a lifebuoy.
And thinking this is a great solution as well, we bought it. The idea, and the materials. He gives us 2m worth of PVC pipes, 4 elbow connectors and PVC Brian Glue to stick the PVC pipes together.
The following scene spelt an incoming problem: 2 short and blur students stranded in the middle of nowhere — ie. Jurong Industrial Centre — with a 2m long PVC pipe, a maze of large container trucks and previously struggling to handle 55L containers on the bus led us to one logical conclusion: Private Hire. (update: thankfully, Dr Ho was kind enough to allow us to claim the money from the transport back)
With that, our next destination was NTU; where the guys were busy cracking their heads coding and discussing software matters, familiarizing themselves with Blue Iris and the RPi module.
To be continued.
