Chapter 26 · 9 min

Chapter 26

When remodeling a building in Australia, plumbing and electrical work were the zones under the strictest control of the law.

Touch them rashly like Korea, "watch YouTube and follow roughly and it'll do," and the whole house is branded an illegal structure, and later if a fire or leak happens a disaster breaks of not receiving a single coin of home-insurance compensation.

When selling the house later, if you cannot submit the CoC, the Certificate of Compliance, the legal construction certificate, to the buyer's lawyer, the deal itself is voided.

By the rules, to receive this one certificate you have to leave the work from start to end to Australian contractors with a formal license, and brace for thousands of dollars of vast labor breaking, but I decided to use a trick.

The hard labor of drinking dust, sweating, drilling holes in the frame, and laying heavy pipe, Dong-myeong and I do all, and call Uncle Billy, the formal license holder, and leave only the final connection and sign-off.

I don't know why they look for the certificate that strict while supervising this loose, but for now I put a request in to Uncle Billy.

Originally you would have to wait for a booking, but as expected, whether the connection was good, Uncle Billy looked after my convenience.

And so, while I was working at Crane Australia, Uncle Billy arrived in front of the Fairfield West house.

* * *

Vroom— squeak!

A time just past lunch, a big Australian pickup ute, plumbing tools packed in the bed, raising dirt dust, turned into the yard.

The door opened, and Uncle Billy, boasting a beer belly the size of Namsan, got out laughing hearty.

"G'day, mate! You're the big guy who works with Jeong-su?"

Billy greeted Dong-myeong glad, who had been pacing with a big build in front of the empty site.

"Uh······ hello! Welcome, Uncle Billy? I am Dong-myeong!"

Dong-myeong, not used to English, stammered sweating, and Uncle Billy laughed and tapped Dong-myeong's shoulder with a big hand.

"Hahaha! Relax, my friend. You don't have to do English. Just see the drawing and the pipe. The Jeong-su guy boasted he did the work incredibly all, shall we look once?"

Billy held out a hand to Dong-myeong, and Dong-myeong handed him the drawing of the inside of the house Jeong-su had left.

Then Billy, holding the drawing, put on a hard hat and walked into the house with long steps.

Inwardly there was a looking-down thought of how much Asian working-holiday people would have done, but looking inside the frame, Billy's eyes went round.

"Bloody hell······."

The look of red hot-water copper pipe and blue cold-water pipe passing the stud holes at exact spacing and pulled knife-sharp to the sink and basin positions.

The angle of the drain pipe matched perfect to the specified fall so sewage would not backflow, even the primer marks applied without a gap at the joints.

Seeing a rough-in state constructed more perfect than an ordinary technician, Billy turned to Dong-myeong as if he could not believe it.

"Hey, Dong-myeong. Did Jungsu do all this?"

"Yes! Yes! Jeong-su hard! Only Jeong-su do this!"

Dong-myeong shouted proud, mixing body language of drilling and fitting pipe with his hands.

Billy connected a pressure tester to the pipe and gave a hollow laugh.

"Good heavens, this isn't just a level of good hands? Better touch than a first-class plumber who properly rolled a site?"

Billy turned on a flashlight and examined every corner of the house careful.

But Jeong-su's work, you could not catch a fault even trying.

Confirming the chance of a defect was zero, Billy hummed and went into the finishing connection work of joining the pipe to the main water outside.

Finishing, checking even the drain connecting to the main sewer, all inspection and work ended in one hour without a drop of sweat.

"Perfect. Beautiful."

To Billy, who came out packing the equipment in a good mood, Dong-myeong handed one cold Victoria Bitter can just taken from the icebox.

"Oh, thank you mate! You've got sense."

While Billy downed the can refreshing, Dong-myeong took a thick envelope from his pocket and held it out.

Inside was 250 dollars cash.

Plumbing work that would have broken at least thousands of dollars easy if left whole to an ordinary Australian contractor ended at a mere 250 dollars, because Jeong-su did all the construction alone.

Billy, taking the money, took a thick receipt book with his license number from the passenger seat.

Scratch, scratch—

He signed large in a scrawled hand on the Plumbing Certificate of Compliance document, then tore the paper and handed it to Dong-myeong.

Now this house had become a legal house perfectly protected inside Australia's legal frame.

"Take this, Dong-myeong."

Billy handed Dong-myeong one card.

"A card of my friend who's an electrician. Later hand it to Jeong-su."

"Yes? Yes."

Dong-myeong could not understand all, but he understood the sound of giving it to Jeong-su, so he nodded.

"Damn. When Jeong-su finishes work, tell him for sure. Say I saw a skilled one like this after a long time. Tell him if there's work next, let's do it together."

"Yes! Thank you, Uncle Billy!"

When Dong-myeong bowed his waist 90 degrees, Billy burst a good-natured laugh, started the ute, and left.

This was a win-win deal for each other.

* * *

Crane Australia logistics center, second-floor management office.

Operations manager Michael furrowed his brow looking at the weekly logistics-throughput graph up on his monitor.

He clicked the mouse and pressed refresh several times, but the number on the screen did not change.

"Does this make sense······."

The place called the biggest headache even inside Crane Australia's yard was zone B.

Mostly large steel cargo and heavy things like H-beam, so between forklift operators and the loaders stacking goods on pallets, routes tangled at the drop of a hat and hands and feet did not match, a place where the load rate barely hung at 50 percent.

But this week zone B's throughput was nearing 98 percent, with the force to pierce the graph.

'A system error? Or did head office bring out some latest work machine without me knowing?'

Michael, who could not understand at all, put on a hard hat and went out on a site inspection to check with his own eyes.

A logistics yard vibrating with noisy engine sound.

When Michael stepped into zone B, the first thing that caught the eye was a blue forklift weaving the site as if dancing.

Weeeing— kung!

Unlike other operators reversing two or three times measuring the angle, Jeong-su stuck the load into a narrow gap in one go, without an inch of error.

Then he grinned toward Mick the loader standing blank, and sounded the horn short twice.

"Hey, Mick! What are you doing not clearing? Let's go fast!"

At that overwhelming work speed Michael opened his mouth without knowing it.

The forklift disappeared to the truck zone again, and Michael approached veteran loader Mick and young picker Jason, cooling sweat a moment, pretending chance, natural.

"Hey, Mick. Jason. Zone B's mood is tremendous these days? Logistics load nearly hit 100 percent. What's the secret? Did you eat something good in secret?"

At Michael's question mixed with a joke, bearded Mick and Jason looked at each other and burst a hearty laugh.

"We hung one engine more finishing than a special machine."

"Engine?"

"That new working-holiday Jeong-su over there."

At Jason's chin jerk Michael glanced at Jeong-su driving the forklift in the distance and snorted.

"Come on, joking? One forklift operator comes in and the whole zone's efficiency jumps double? Does that make sense?"

By the common sense of operations manager Michael, a thing he could not accept at all.

However well you drive a forklift, one working-holiday person cannot change the whole system.

Then Mick waved a thick forearm and got serious.

"It's real. That friend doesn't just carry loads. Originally our mind is let's just do our work well. But Jeong-su isn't like that. If a blocked part comes while working he steps in himself and helps, and before you even finish stacking goods on the pallet he pushes an empty pallet in ghost-like. Taking it out, he takes it out at the speed of light. So there's no time to stand blank holding a load waiting for the forklift. And seeing Jeong-su, the other forklift operators caught fire too."

"Right. Everyone's in a riot."

Jason too crushed the cola can and added storm praise.

"And Jeong-su's attitude from the start is art. Other new-hire bastards, when unloading heavy things flying dust like unwrapped cement sacks, all dodge with only tricks and try to avoid, but Jeong-su steps out first without talk and clears it. Smiling that agreeable and clearing even what others shat, how do we only play? Jeong-su opens the path like mad, so we run ourselves to death along, even from being sorry."

"And he's funny too."

"Heh heh. Right. Sometimes he says odd things, and that bursts."

The Australian blue-collar floor was a rough place, turf severe, and if you acted selfish you were ignored without mercy.

Especially loaders stacking goods and forklift operators often fight passing responsibility to each other, and unanimous praise like this pouring from the mouths of those stagnant workers was close to a miracle.

Michael looked with blank eyes at Jeong-su far off, face wet with sweat, waving a hand at ease to a truck driver.

'I thought he was only one gear, and he was the oil that makes the whole turn.'

The moment Jeong-su's category, which had been a mere short-term part-timer in Michael's head, was upgraded in one go to 'a talent good at work'.

Finishing the inspection and returning to the office, Michael headed straight for the desk of Simon, the HR manager.

"Simon, the Korean guy newly in at zone B, Han Jeong-su. Where on earth did you pick up a thing like that?"

At Michael's excited voice Simon, scanning documents, burst a short laugh and leaned on the chair.

"Ah, Jeong-su? The reaction from the site already that much? I had him marked as a person to watch anyway."

"How was he at the interview? Was there some special history?"

"Don't even say. I asked if he had a forklift certificate, and he said he got it in the Korean army and fumbled something from his wallet. Looking, excavator, forklift, bulldozer······ he spread heavy-equipment licenses like a trump-card pack. Said he came from cutting a whole mountain and making roads in the Korean army, or something."

"Hahaha! Really?"

When Michael clutched his belly and laughed, Simon shook his head and went on.

"But you know what's funnier? His sense is so fast it seems a snake is inside. Knowing plain he's good at work, he dealt me outright in the interview room. Saying give him a full-time job. A moment I nearly got tempted and went over."

"What!? Head office manages that?"

"Heh heh. That's why I nearly went over. And the words he said, that he would prove it. Whether he's a person to give a full-time job. So these days I've been watching."

"Ah. So······."

Michael grinned and said.

"But it seemed we really should give it?"

"What!? He works that well?"

Simon asked back, startled.

Michael nodded.

"If the cargo-movement trend doubled only in zone B, we have to recommend full-time."

"Haha. That friend's skill seems sure. For now, got it. If it's enough for you to come, I'll put up a head-office recommendation document. You sign later too."

"Haha. Of course. Miss a friend like that and it's obvious we'll suffer again."

"Huh, really! In my HR years, a working-holiday person that bold and that skilled, I see for the first time."

The two managers smiled pleased, looking beyond the window at Jeong-su's back in the middle of the yard, handling the blue forklift like his own limb, carrying pallets without rest.

Jeong-su was only quietly sweating, sunk in the thought of fixing the Fairfield West house after work, but inside Crane Australia his standing and reputation were rising vertical, not knowing the sky was high, without him knowing.