The house of Sampoerna Surabaya.

Tracey took a personal day from work to take us on a small tour of a part of Surabaya. The House of Sampoerna does hour long tours around a part of the city so we signed on. The tour leaves from the House of Sampoerna which is a renown cigarette factory in Surabaya. While waiting for the tour to start we wandered around the museum part of the factory. From the plate glass windows we could view the workers in action either rolling cigarettes, cutting cigarettes or packaging the  cigarettes. In the muesum they have videos of the actions on each particular station. We had to slow the video down to slow motion  just to see how each person did their job with matriculious precision. I have never seen hands move so fast. On average a cigarette roller can roll 320 to 500 cigarettes an hour. I watched the cigarette cutting lady and the way she flicks the cigarettes around. It wasn't until we studied the cigarette packing lady in slow motion we could see how she glued the packs down with metal inserts to keep the glue from the cigarettes. Think I will stick to teaching.

The scarey thing is that this factory must produce zillions of packs of local cigarettes a day, they weren't packing a known brand. So these cigarettes are flooding onto the market. There seems every which way you turn there is a male with a cigarette in their mouth out on the street, and for a minimal cost smoking is affordable even on the small wages the population earn. There is really no incentive to stop or not start. No one seems slightly interested in the cancer rate, they just shrug and carry on.