Bare bones

The reason why I went MIA for almost a week: the renovation of the building our office will be moving into. This is the biggest of the three rooms and the one that needs most work—so much that I think it's more correct to call it 'construction' rather than 'renovation.' All the interior walls had to be knocked down to be reconfigured into the spaces that we need. I took this shot on the last day of June when the carpenters were beginning the new rooms. The most awful thing about the project was the electrical cables. When they opened the ceiling to re-wire the rooms, the electrician was met with a mess: wires spliced and joined haphazardly with no PVC tubing or connector boxes—the result of various renovations made over three decades. I do not want any accident in our office during my watch, so I had them trace all the cables and get them connected properly. A sad fact of life here in the Philippines: carpenters and other construction workers are not well-protected from the hazards of their job. They come in T-shirts, shorts or jeans, and rubber slippers. No work clothes, gloves, masks or goggles to protect them—not in small projects like this.