Still or sparkling?

Two litres of temporary water have been delivered to site. This has enabled the tiling of the toilet walls to commence.

If you are ever curious to know what expensive water looks like, here's a picture of said commodity.

The tiler methodically goes about his work. By the end of the morning, he has covered one face of the toilet wall. Progress is unhurried, as he gently taps the tiles to ensure that they are level and square to one another. A true artisan.

In other news, we finally get real plumbing people doing actual plumbing work.

This chap drills around the stump of the old water supply pipe, happily pausing to point out various service pipes and trunkings that are uncovered by the hacking. The dire condition of the stump section meant that he had to drill deeper and deeper into the ground in order to uncover and remove the entire joint.

By the end of the day, the section with the stump has been removed, and a new pipe welded into place.

Working concurrently, directly above, is this other guy, perched on a ladder and going about his work in various contortionist positions in that tiny space. For the whole day! He works quietly but occasionally glances down to assess the work going on below. Clearly the senior in the two-man hierarchy. His job is to clean up the small pipes in preparation for welding.

A spectacular transformation by the end of the day. Really top-notch work especially under such cramped conditions.

Of eskimoes and ice

All is quiet on the western front. There is still no water supply.

It's said that the NASA Mars Odyssey probe "took 10,000 separate actions to go right to get there." Applying for water supply is not quite on the same scale in the annals of human achievement, so it makes it all the more staggering how many ways we can get the first step wrong. One day it's a wrong form submitted, next it's a wrong account type requested, and thereafter a wrong procedure taken. It's a blessing that these people did not decide on a career in astronautical engineering.

Besides that problem of the gap in the main pipe, we found that there is another breakage in the connection that distributes water from the main supply pipe to the individual floors.

This pipe that is intact is, unfortunately, not a water pipe, but the existing gas supply pipe that we don't intend to use. Now, just beside this pipe, lying innocently on the ground...

...is what remains of a metal pipe, which appears to be where water from the main pipe will emerge. Notice that it's not connected to anything useful.

Looking up, there is a cluster of smaller pipes, dismembered in similar fashion. These are the pipes which will presumably send water to the individual floors. And for that to happen, they need to be joined back to the pipe below.

At the start of each day, we waited in anticipation for someone to turn up to fix the water meter. And at the end of the day, we leave hoping that it might happen the next day. Meanwhile, with Chinese New Year looming, the contractors and their tradesmen will soon be leaving for the long holiday break.

That leaves us with no choice but to call for the water truck. Joe orders 2 cubic metres of non-potable water, so that the wet works can commence. This will cost us a hefty sum of money, but hopefully allow work to continue until the water supply issue is resolved.

The good people who thought up this business model with water must surely rank right up there, alongside those selling ice to eskimoes.