Tuesday, December 12, 2006
CLEANING OUT THE CANAL
This probably won’t interest anyone except Rodger, but they’ve been dredging the canal for the past few weeks. Of course, I waited until the day after they finished to take a picture, so all you get to see is this lonely little backhoe sitting on its barge. The city of Keelung decided that the reason the canal smelled so bad was because of all the mud at the bottom. (I've had a love-hate relationship with this canal. I love being near it, but at the same time it thoroughly disgusts and horrifies me. I rarely get nightmares, but since arriving in Keelung I've had more, and nearly all of them involved this canal. Rodger has heard all of it, and has his own ideas about what they mean. I wonder what he'd say about this project.) Now the muck at the bottom of the canal is being dragged to the surface, poured into a giant floating Dumpster and towed away somewhere. For some reason, this work has fascinated me. They even had an accident a few weeks ago - one of the barges had tipped over and was hanging half-submerged in the water, in danger of going all the way down! I saw the workers leaning on the fence above, frowning down at it, watching all their work being undone and probably wondering what on earth they were supposed to do now. But later that day they brought a crane in, and as far as I know nothing (or no one) was lost. It’s over now, and even if the color of the water hasn’t changed much, the canal does indeed smell better. Maybe they could do the same thing to the harbor...? One can dream, anyway.
That's all for now. Have a safe and happy holiday season, and I’ll write more next year.
Heather ¶ 2:45 PM
This probably won’t interest anyone except Rodger, but they’ve been dredging the canal for the past few weeks. Of course, I waited until the day after they finished to take a picture, so all you get to see is this lonely little backhoe sitting on its barge. The city of Keelung decided that the reason the canal smelled so bad was because of all the mud at the bottom. (I've had a love-hate relationship with this canal. I love being near it, but at the same time it thoroughly disgusts and horrifies me. I rarely get nightmares, but since arriving in Keelung I've had more, and nearly all of them involved this canal. Rodger has heard all of it, and has his own ideas about what they mean. I wonder what he'd say about this project.) Now the muck at the bottom of the canal is being dragged to the surface, poured into a giant floating Dumpster and towed away somewhere. For some reason, this work has fascinated me. They even had an accident a few weeks ago - one of the barges had tipped over and was hanging half-submerged in the water, in danger of going all the way down! I saw the workers leaning on the fence above, frowning down at it, watching all their work being undone and probably wondering what on earth they were supposed to do now. But later that day they brought a crane in, and as far as I know nothing (or no one) was lost. It’s over now, and even if the color of the water hasn’t changed much, the canal does indeed smell better. Maybe they could do the same thing to the harbor...? One can dream, anyway.
That's all for now. Have a safe and happy holiday season, and I’ll write more next year.
Heather ¶ 2:45 PM
