Night Construction? Anyone?

There are 4 construction sites around our apartment building. I have been documenting the progress since our arrival. They are pretty much working 24 hours a day. At night seems to be when they really get swinging. I have been told this is because it is easier to get the concrete trucks in when there is no traffic. Last night I woke up at about 1:30 and there was an excavator going crazy on the foundations at one site. I think they have failed to grease any of the joints ever. Every scoop is like some crazy lurching screech... excellent. The impressive thing is how quickly some of these projects get put up. I guess when there are no real codes, LOTS of cheap labor and the fact that they work 24 hours a say is great for finishing projects in a timely manner. Here are some pics...

This is the first one I took in September. The far building is only 2 stories and the closer one (bottom right corner) is only 3 stories.

This is the closer on and they are getting ready to pour some concrete for the 4th floor

This is about 9:30 at night... working hard. They have the 4th floor poured and the walls are getting formed up.This was a tough shot to get. I had my mini-pod velcroed to the railing. Long (1.6 seconds) exposure for the ambient glow and x-mas lights. You can see a dark area on the right which is my arm: I had to cover and uncover the two large spotlights so that they would not blow out the picture. Took me 3-4 tries but it was worth it.

Love this shot. The guy in yellow must be some sort of foreman as he is just checking it out like he owns the place. 5th or 6th story of the far building.

Up to 8 stories and no end in site!

Keep in mind this guy is 9 stories up. Work shoe of choice? Leather sandal. Safety harness? We don't need no stinking safety harness!

Close building: working on the 9th floor

Lucky Lucky Lucky!

Garment Factory

One of the 7th grade field trips at AISDhaka is to one of the garment factories in Dhaka. This was all about expectations and I was expecting the worst. After seeing how a lot of Bangladeshis live and that the majority live on about a dollar a day and all the news about sweat shops the picture in my head was not pretty. While I am sure that something close to what I was thinking is out there in Dhaka, what we actually saw was not so bad. The factory we went to made only bottoms and they make clothes for JC Penny, Walmart and Diesel among others. They employ about 2,000 workers that earn 4,000 taka a month. To put this into perspective that is about 47 US dollars a month for 6 - ten hour days a week. The environment was clean, well lit and cool. Here are some pictures:

One of the hundreds of pallets of fabric

This is one of those lucky shots where I just happened to be taking a picture at the right time. She is smiling at all the students walking by.

This is the cutting station. Fabric is layered on top of itself many times and then all cut at once. The cutter is a pretty tool machine. You can see it on the left hand side of the picture.

Here is a close up of the fabric being cut. You can see how precise the cutter is. The guy running it wears a steel mesh glove on his left hand and pushes the cutter with his right.

Ironing station:

There was an entire floor dedicated to seem checking. Each table is dedicated to a certain area of the garment.

This was one of the coolest parts to see. This machine sews the buttons on. The worker slides a button into the machine, lines up the shorts and then turns on the machine. It takes about one second for the  machine to sew the button on. The needle moves around precisely through each hole.