Labour day

Week 9, Day One

It's hot, dry-hot. And the glare is astounding. Summer is officially here.

I try hard not to focus on the tiny, excessively rusted- and therefore creaking- pushcart I'm wheeling on my three kilometer trek from the lab to the greenhouse, but the stillness of the air muffles not an iota of the rasping and grating. To think this was the best of the lot of wheelers available. Empty carts go easy on the inclined planes, but thankfully drivers here actually adhere to speed limits. I get some respectful passes as the they let me take my noisy machine and wincing face across the street and up the next inclined plane. The last one goes up to the greenhouse, all the way behind the closed gate. No parking spot. Yay, windfall. I walk up, swing the noisy green gate open, block it with the massive boulder, and slide down to where I left my creaky companion. I haul it up, and meander it through the narrow paths with way too many right angles and park it in front of the tents housing the plants and tanks. I sniff around for aquariums. There is a mountain of dirty ones, brown-dust-and-dry-leaf dirty ones. I have no idea where to hold it without breaking it or collapsing with the sheer weight. After two minutes, I grasp two edges of one, pushing its entire bottom against my chest, secretly thanking the one stroke of luck I've had all day: my labcoat. I walk half inclined myself, reach the cart, and make another incline with my legs over which I slide the aquarium down onto the cart. Five more trips to go.

Another three kilometers and one more respectful driver later, I reach the lab. My pile of aquariums, all neatly balanced on top of each other with no edge sticking out, now poses another hassle. A little forethought, and I start manage to remove them without toppling the whole darn pile over. The aquarium just about fits into the sink where they're to be scrubbed and cleaned. I fold up the arms of my sleeves and dive in with a metal scrubber, dishwashing liquid, pure ethanol, and very, very hot water. Two hours later, they're all done. I squirt some ethanol onto a cloth, followed by a bout with distilled water as finishing touches. The clear, glistening aquariums are my pride and joy.

I wheel them into the lab, assemble them on the shelving unit, hoping they don't crash, now or ever. My back is as hard as a rock right now.

10-minute walks in the warm sun and dry warm breeze are never enough to satiate the back stiffening that comes from a combination of hard labour and excessive air-conditioning. And bending over aquariums for nearly three hours, netting tadpoles as little as 4mm long to those over 30mm and sorting them right after that, makes it worse.

Which is why you cover the connecting drains through which they escape and- if lucky enough to survive- enter other aquariums BEFORE you add them in the first place.

And despite desperate measures to prevent casualties, I killed two and nicked the tails of three others in the process. Between this, and my tadpole-prodding episode from two weeks ago, I have acquired a ticket to hell.