Field Trips with My Disciples

In the morning of last Friday, October the 5^th, 2007, I brought my students of the "Prestressed Concrete Design" course for an educational visit to the construction site of the Sungai Kuap bridge extension project. After the briefing given by the consulting engineer Engr. Dominic Chong, we were all set to roam the construction site.

Some of the students are paying attention to the explanation by the consulting engineer, and some are just posing for me.

I have four female students in my class, but you can only see two with umbrellas. Some girls are tough enough to work on construction site!

I jokingly said to a girl student: "If you wanna be an engineer, you gotta do away with that umbrella."

This is how the bridge pier is constructed. The steel reinforcing bars are first tied up inside a coffer dam.

Then concrete is cast into the coffer dam to form the bridge pier.

This is how a bridge pier look like after concreting.

Some of the bridge girders are already lifted into place on the bridge piers.

The bridge girders are precast on compacted ground. The steel reinforcing bars are tied up first. Then the steel mould is erected for casting. Once the concrete is hardened, the bridge girder is formed. The bridge girders are then prestressed by tensioning the prestressing tendons/cables.

It is a lot of hard work tying up the steel reinforcing bars.

A completed girder waiting for the process of prestressing, that is, tensioning of the steel tendons/cables. Once the tensioning process is done, the girder is ready to be lifted into place on the bridge piers.

During the evening, I brought a different group of 'students' out for a field trip. I call this group of 'students' the Jedis, and they have to address me as Yoda! Derbe and Gordon are sister and brother who are interested in photography, so I was asked to be their 'sifu' and I am honoured to be one. I brought them to the Pending bridge to photograph the night scene of Kuching this time.

The Jedis in action! Derbe looks so serious about her composition.

The 'sifu' needs to showcase the shot of the night, the Tun Salahuddin Bridge, or more commonly known as the Pending Bridge.

The Kuching night scene as viewed from Pending across Sungai Sarawak.

The 'dungeon' without a dragon. This was shot under the bridge.

This is the bridge shot by Derbe using her Coolpix P&S. It doesn't matter whether it is a DSLR or P&S, as long as one knows how to take control of the camera, good results can be achieved.

Another work by Derbe: Jedi and Yoda in action as shadow puppets!

The 'Penguins' by Derbe.

CK and the two disciples, photo courtesy of Derbe.

Gordon's take of the Pending Bridge.

Gordon's take of the Kuching night scene.