Went to school at 7.45, met up with my fellow interactors, which includes Kevin, Elaine, Vivian, ben and 5 others. Departed to SMK Megat Khas (a school for those of you who do not know) to pick up 6 interactors from their school.

 

The Megat Khas people are quite “special” as Mr Raj will put it. One of them even wore sunglasses in the bus when it was nowhere near sunny! :P

Do you notice that he even had his curtains closed? What a poser…

Elaine decided to follow suit and wore hers as well!

Anyway, we reached the first destination, which is a palm oil mill in Changkat Jering at approx. 9. We were greeted by the Manager and brought to the loading area where ripe oil palm are separated from the unripe ones. They are then weighed and graded.

That man there was Mr Vijay, the Chairman of the Greentown Rotary Club. Very cordial man and treats us very nice too. There were heaps of oil palm there and they were hauled down a ramp.

Then, the oil palm will fall onto the huge trolleys like the one below. It was like a huge chain of train carriages, carrying oil palm, not people.

They are then inserted into the sanitizer:

 

There are tracks for the trolley to follow and cranes are used to put it on the right track:-

 

After they are on the right track, a rope will pull it into the sanitizer and the huge vault like doors will be shut. The oil palm will be heated for 90 to 120 minutes, depending on the grade of the oil palm.

Unfortunately, after it is sanitized, it also produces the below by-product. It stinks like hell and the smell is truly revolting. It smells of rotten eggs+shit!

As you can see after its brought out, it has alot of smoke rising out of it:

Then we were brought to the oil extraction part of the factory. The gigantic train carriages after being sanitized are lifted up by very risky and wobbly metal chains. They are to be overturned and the contents will go into the oil extraction plant.

All the below thingamajig does the extracting:

There’s also a ton of buttons and we were warned not to press any even if it looks attractive. I was so worried that Elaine will pull a “Didi” move from Dexter’s Laboratory.

 

WHAT DOES THIS BUTTON DO?

Then the kernel and the fibrous skin is left after all the oil is extracted from the fruit. The kernel, itself containing oil will be sold to other mills who will do the extraction from it.

Thats the kernel. The bigger piece is the seed before its cracked open while the black one is the kernel which is inside the seed.

As I was saying, the fibrous skin is left over and nothing goes to waste in this factory other than those smelly drainage water. The fibrous skin is scooped up and throw into a gigantic furnace like the one below:

The fire will engulf the fibre and generate steam, enough steam to power up the whole mill. The power generator like the one below can generate up to 1.1 megawatts of electricity and the entire mill is entirely self sufficient in terms of electricity.

The guy said that the above machinery aka the power generator was the heart of the plant and without it, the whole mill will cease to function.

The oil which is extracted are then filtered off and the disgusting byproducts are as below:

It looks like shit, tbh…. Then, the oil will be stored in the huge metal tanks as below. Apparently, each tank can store up to 1000 tons of oil and it has to be kept at 50 degrees centigrade at all time or else it will solidify and turn into chunks of margarine.

Educating eh?

After that, we had some light refreshment and took off to a rubber plantation. Elaine decided to bring out her friend, Elmo, during the bus trip.

On the way there in the estate, we say young naked children running around, bathing. I ain’t no paedophile, so don’t even think of asking me for photos.

The estate is quite remote tbh. But I HAVE MADE AN ASTOUNDING DISCOVERY.

I HAVE FOUND THE HOME OF THE STREAMYX MONKEYS! ITS IN A RUBBER ESTATE!!!!!! They even trim their lawn and keep it neat and tidy!

Anyway, When we reached the rubber plantation, apparently we can only go to a small part of it. The manager there explained to us how the rubber tree was tapped and the chief tapper, who controls how much latex is tapped demonstrated it:

Anyway, it was kinda uneventful and boring. However, we kept on asking questions about how much latex can be produced and etc. The manager was more than happy to answer us. In  the end, the rotary club gave him a token of appreciation:

Yep, the manager is some fat malay bumi, just as you might have expected.

Then, we went on a side trip. Apparently, the plantation is separated by the North South Highway, so a tunnel was cut underneath the highway to allow people to commute over to the other side.

Elaine freaked out in it. After that, we went to have lunch at the Perak Riverside Resort.

 

Stay Tune for the Part II!!!

Labels: Daily Happenings In My Life

9:37 PM