Household Sewer...

On a Saturday morning, supposedly our day when we go places and do things together... Other Half and I had made plans to go for lunch in Tanjung Dawai, see the beach. But since our gal had tuition, we decided to cook our breakfast of Maggi Mee with fried egg and salami. Trouble started while we were washing up. The sink got stuck and while I was using the plunger to unstuck it, water started coming out from the sink behind.

Being the handyman Other Half is, he got out his tools and tried to open up the drain trap for the sink. That didn't work. Water from the sink gushed out from the trap. Then we opened up our grease sewer trap. And to our horror, staring right at us was this mucky and thick stuff almost covering the overflow outlet which was supposed to drain into the sewer. Water couldn't flow out into the grease trap cos the muck had blocked the pipe. So, it had to back flow! Other Half took a stick and prodded the muck. The marker on it indicated that we were staring at almost 2 feet of emulsified muck. We were at a loss cos both of our kitchen sinks were all stuck! At that time we didn't know where the sinks' exit pipe into the trap was. A house without the use of its kitchen sinks is a crippled house!

So we did the next thing we could think of; which was to call our contractor. It was kind of him to come even though he was tied up somewhere. When he came, he said we needed to dig out the muck... So that was we did for half the morning - scooping up the gooey and caked solidified oil muck with all its foul stench. Pale roaches were going crazy in the sunlight too... and also the insect spray which we had applied. I was stepping on so many of them. My lil one, of course was squealing (in half horror) at the sight of them. Kids these days are so soft.... they forget that they're godzillon times bigger than the roaches. And with it came the usual foul smell from the sewer belly.... it must have stank into my neighbour's house.

The next thing was to cart all those mucky stuff to the dump.... All those fat, that had emulsified over the years. We must have scooped up about 400 litres worth of emulsified greasy muck. The task was made more difficult because we had to do it with more care so as not to leave too much mess in the yard. I think this is the closest to being night soil 'engineer' for the both of us. We scooped up almost everything from the grease trap... might as well, since we had already opened up the sewer and was already into the unpleasant task.

While doing this, I remembered the wisdom of my mom from years ago when we were still kids. Us, kids would always have to catch the rain water from the gutter pipe of our house and pour buckets of those rain water down our toilet bowl. It was a task assigned to us almost without fail each time there is a heavy downpour. Her reasoning was to keep flushing the sewer so that it doesn't get clogged. True enough our house never did get clogged up all those years we were there to pour the rain water.. even when Indah Water came and inspected, they were surprised by how clean our sewer was. I am going to try pouring water more often into my sink to get my muck flowing....

And a little lesson out of this too... in life we need some diluting sometimes too, to dilute our bad habits so that they don't emulsified and clog up everything else. Cos when it does, everything tends to overflow and create a mess. We need friends to dilute our wrongs, the bad habits, etc, etc. But people can dilute just the opposite way too... you always get 2 sides to a coin. 8) Just as in our contractor... who came and showed us the way before he left. Sometimes, we need those people to point us to the right actions.... who would imagine that my sewer experience can be so 'profound.'. LOL!!! And also my kids... I wonder too whether they can get their hands dirty without being paralyzed by squeamishness.

And of course, we made sure we had a good scrub down after that. 8) My bathing time must have been at least 3 times longer than my usual quick shower. I usually can force myself to be keyed-up about difficult and dirty tasks. But this surely is one which I would never imagine myself doing. But I've also learned that when there is no one else left to do it, we can rise above it if we can overcome ourselves (though of course, sometimes, there are limitations)... today, it was the thought of the gooeyness and stench.... but I am glad that we can still get down on our knees and get our hands dirty.... though I'd prefer not to.

As for the Tanjung Dawai trip.... we decided to give it a miss... dealing with emulsified muck is a tiring affair. And what else did I learned? The workings of the sewer grease trap... Plus,your chemosensory senses can be duped into bearing with the foul stench after prolonged exposure! In other words, we can be dulled into all sorts of conditions! LOL!