A Singaporean In Australia

Uncle Lai came over to Eugene's place last weekend. We fixed up some sun shade at the house and sat down for a chat. The topic strayed to work. Both of them were elders of my trade. They knew what shit I'm going through at work everyday.

They started to joke about them being 'First Class' grinders, making a shot at welders who are graded by class. The bragging went on and I began to wonder if there were any truth in their cool stories.

Apparently, both of them were once ship builders and accordingly to them, buildings grind metal in an entirely different method than steel works tradesmen. I had heard Eugene described the difference before.

"When we grind, sparks shoot away from us instead of towards."

I have absolutely no idea what he was trying to say. The grinder had to be held at angles that work required of it. Sometimes we do change the way we hold it for more comfortable handling but that's about it. I didn't took notice of Eugene's words.

Uncle Lai however, was very serious in letting me understand what they were driving at. With hand gestures, bodily movements and all, if Jen looked at us from a distance she would have thought these old punks were teaching me Chinese Kungfu.

Finally, I gave up and went to the boot of Barry White and retrieved a grinder. I brought it back to Uncle Lai and he held the grinder in a strange way and told me that was how they do the work. I was finally intrigued.

Grinding is supposed to be letting the grinding disc on the machine touch the surface of the metal horizontally. Everybody does that though sometimes people do it at an angle to produce more cutting edges. The way Uncle Lai was holding the grinder, he was suggesting they did it by aiming the disc perpendicular to the surface!

"Everyone told we were from a different planet and they reckoned we would get ourselves killed in a week's time," said Uncle Lai. "But we finished our work an hour faster than anyone else each time." Then both of them joked again calling it 葵花寶典，the skill used by eunuchs in those chinese novels.

All these while I had been lagging behind the Koreans in work because I am still not coping with the physical demand yet. I have become much stronger since I started work but I'm still nowhere as good as them and my muscle aches just never seem to recover.

I was teamed up with Dave Cho again. The same man and the same job that got my eye hurt previously. The previous work arrangement was that Dave felt I was too slow in grinding. So he wanted me to polish his grinds behind him. This time, he changed his mind and told me that we should both grind. A challenge. By the strongest and fastest South Korean in the team. I never won a single one because I didn't bother to push myself to death as I know I'm not up to it physically and technically yet. I didn't take this one seriously as well but I decided to put 葵花寶典 into use.

It was awkward at first, I had a hard time adjusting to an entirely different way to hold the equipment. 葵花寶典 required me to hug the machine so close to me and find a pivot point while I used any part of my body, depending on my position, to exert strength on the grinding motion. Aiming the disc perpendicular, I was shocked that once I began to control it properly, the speed that I was shaving welds off the surface was devastating. Uncle Lai was right! The method was actually safer than the normal way of grinding because it allowed me to have a full view of what I am doing. Most importantly, it was extremely effective. I did a mental calculation while I worked through joints after joints of the rake arm, moving away further from Dave each time to avoid his mindless splatters again. I  was at least 3 times faster using 3 times less energy for the same amount of work.

Dave looked up occasionally and noticed the speed of my work but he didn't catch the method I use or he would definitely stop me. (because it was unorthodox) At first he was surprised, then he turned frustrated. At one point, he went for a short break after throwing his visor on the ground. The night ended like this: