A holiday for most people, means to relax or play tourist. Sharon Cheah, however, goes off the beaten track to build houses in the global village of generation projects.
Day 1: laying bricks. The movement and break the rocks. Soup for dinner. You better be dropping a kilo less!
Day 2: Critters found @ construction site. So far, a nest of scorpions, earthworms fat and long-term, two edible crickets, a small frog and a water eel longkang/cool! Crickets grilled and eaten by a member of the team!
These entries are just Facebook that one expects to read in the newspaper of someone accustomed to covering the jet set life of the rich and famous.
As a lifestyle writer with an executive of the prestigious business publication, Sharon Cheah Ui-Hoon, 42, has visited the most luxurious homes and resorts, revised first-class gourmet restaurants and transferred to the world's most expensive cities.
But it is a breath of glamor or name-dropping in his FB. Instead, the Penang-born journalist gives friends with stories of his "work" on vacation last housing for rural residents from around the world.
During the recent Hari Raya break, Cheah led 10 volunteers from Malaysia and Singapore - eight women and two men - Puok Thmey village in Siem Reap, northwestern Cambodia, where they built a brick house of two rooms for Vichet Pitch, a 25 years old, construction worker, and his wife Chantrier, 23, who are expecting their first child in November. The couple had been living with his mother and sister in a shack Chantrier covered with palm leaves.
Cheah's team - which includes a digital animator, a lawyer, a sub editor Dow Jones, two experts in IT, coach, official, a human resources officer and a "response" with an oil company spill response - was as excited as Pitch and his family when the house was completed in four days.
"To Pitch and Chantrier, is a big leap to go from a hut in a brick house with a ceiling height of 3 m," says Cheah champagne in an interview in Penang after the trip.
It helped that the tone had borrowed a cement mixer and brought along two friends, and accelerates the work considerably. Communication is done primarily through sign language and pointing.
Work began on Monday and Friday, a grand opening ceremony took place home. The team put the bricks in the walls, climbed scaffolding, putting in windows and doors, hit the rocks and sand compacted before pouring the cement for the floor. That is the end of the monsoon season, he endured the hot sun from 10 am to noon, and heavy rain after 2pm.
"There were some minor incidents - one staff member lost his voice and a boy had food poisoning," shares Cheah. "Another had a large cut on his bad leg as he had entered on a rod protruding from the land and sell it."
With the house finished ahead of schedule, the volunteers found time to visit the other villagers, the donation of clothing to poor families and groups of forms for 543 primary school children Puok. Before the expedition ended, there was a visit of the sunrise in the famous temple complex of Angkor Wat.
Cheah is no stranger to housing, having participated in a project in South Korea in 2001. Since then, under the Global Village Construction, an initiative of the international nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity, Cheah has led groups of volunteers to Sri Lanka twice - in 2002 and subsequent tsunami two years later - as well as he joined a trip to Batam, Indonesia, in 2004. In 2009, he led a project to build the Global Village in Mongolia, before his recent stay in Cambodia.
"As a lifestyle journalist, I do not lose touch with reality. I also like the idea of ??volunteering time and effort and not just giving money," says the humble Cheah, explaining that Habitat homeowners and their families or relatives should be built along with volunteers and do not stand outside waiting for the charity.
"It's a great policy, since even with the language barrier, you can communicate, as they have a common goal. Many families are thrilled and break when receiving the keys to their houses because they need no longer have to endure the leaks or dilapidated conditions."