Bikeless World Wanderings

Thanksgiving in India was a different sort of day for us here working this project. Obviously, it’s not a holiday that is celebrated here but the customer agreed to let us go a couple hours early to enjoy our dinner.

Before we left site, we were working toward putting the gas turbine on turning gear for the first time. It has been a long and arduous task getting to this point dealing with many obstacles that just kept popping up while trying to get there. Yesterday we had finally reached that point were we could give it a try. We did all our necessary check got all the oil systems working and were ready to start the turning gear motor when the customer said that they were not yet ready for us to do so. As it turns out, there is some sort of spiritual/horoscope calendar that tells Indians when the “best” time of day it is to do this or that, depending on what it is they want to do. Apparently the “best” time for starting the turning gear motor was after 5:30 pm and it was only 5:00 pm. Someone came up the area of the turning gear with a bag of bananas, a bag of coconuts some flowers and an anvil. Time for a puja again to pray for the turning gear god to look favorably upon us so at 5:30 they draped the string of flowers over a junction box, got out the coconuts and one by one they started breaking them over the anvil and some of them would throw the coconut milk on the turning gear. With that out of the way, Julia went down and pushed the button and the motor started right up and easily turned the rotor. Everyone was happy, shaking hands and congratulating each other. The turning gear motor ran for about 15 minutes then we shut everything down and left site at 6:00.

The hotel was preparing a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for us and we were to congregate at the bar at around 7:30. Adam and Julia had given them a list of things to buy and told them how to prepare the dinner. All in all, it was a good attempt. Nothing great, but not bad and we really appreciated there efforts. They got confused on a few things like the stuffing ingredients and instructions and it came out first looking like this. Actually it was a great tasting soup. The turkey was a bit on the tough side but tasty and it was stuffed with spaghetti noodles, onion and carrot pieces. Adam acted as the official turkey carver and did a good job considering he was using a pretty dull knife. They served us green beans that were cooked with garlic that was pretty good, some baby corn and mashed potatoes as well. Our plates, while not really like home looked like this. They couldn’t get the ham we wanted so they cooked us some fish that looked really good but had a very strong fishy taste so we didn’t eat that. You can kinda see it in a couple of the pics. We thought that they were going to make us an apple pie but that didn’t happen. Instead they brought out what they called Apple Toffee that was excellent.

There was Adam, Carlos- from Mexico, celebrating his first Thanksgiving dinner, Julia, Zac and me. We had a good time drinking and eating, doing it a little more, cutting up and talking about family and all sorts of other topics. It was a good night.

This morning I got up and called Stacey. Her Thanksgiving was beginning to wind down and was apparently a big success. Everyone was having a great time and I spoke to just about everyone there. Damn I sure do miss being home…

Things have gotten kind of comical of late.  Zac (the site lead) got bit by an insect a few days back and had a weird reaction to it.  It wasn’t like he was gonna die or anything like that but it ended up looking rather infected, kinda like a big boil on his forearm.  After a doctors visit and some local peoples home remedies, he had another doctor come to his room and got the thing sliced open.  He claims it’s getting better now and I sure hope so ‘cause it looked pretty bad before the last doctors visit.  At least now it’s all wrapped up and we don’t have to see it.

Julia (the controls TA) had to ward off a rat or two the other evening when she was working late.  Her story is kinda funny as she was sitting here in the office, in the dark, (no site power at the time) and heard them running around the office.  Being a female, she was scared.  They’ve been around a lot and I’ve seen them myself but hey, it’s only a rat and he ain’t gonna come jump in my lap or anything so let him be.  I don’t like them but it’s part of life here in this wonderful paradise I’m in.  I’ve even seen them scamper across the floor of my hotel room a few times…

The customer and site owners are all in a tizzy.  Seems some big boss’ from both companies are coming to site over the next couple days and they are scampering around trying to do the impossible and get thing all cleaned up and the turbine ready for turning gear.  Sorry guys but no matter how you try I just don’t see it happening.
Actually Zac put it best in his blog so I’m gonna quote him here;

“it's funny when the customer comes in and the end-user comes in complaining of tension, much tension to get this job done. i'm telling them, what are you talking about tension? i don't know the word. they ask why and i say because i don't have a need to. things take as long as they take. just because you did the equivalent of telling the end-user you could give em minute-rice in 30 seconds. just because i come in and say "sorry, nope it takes 1-minute, and i know this because i'm an experience uncle ben's field chef. ain't gonna happen". no reason for me to feel tension, i know better how long it takes”  

Anyway, time for me is getting short.  I’m still not going to get to excited until I know that my relief has purchased tickets and is on his way here.  At least at this point I have a relief and a promise “of sorts” from my manager that he won’t be reassigned or diverted and will be here by Dec 1st at the latest.  If that’s the case, I could be on a plane on the 3rd and home on the 4th.  Hopefully sooner, like tomorrow, would be really nice but I know better.

Things here have begun to get busier so the days are going by a little quicker but still can’t get past certain things that just haven’t been done and should have.  Oh well, not my problem… I’ll just float along and get what I can done in the next 10-12 days.

I wonder what I’ll have for dinner tonight…hmmm…such difficult choices…damn I’m looking forward to a NY strip steak on the grill at home with Stacey sitting there with me.  One thing I will have, pretty much like any other night, lot’s of vodka so I can just sleep early and long as possible to get another day closer to home.

Things have been looking up for the last couple days, well at least from a work perspective.  The vendor rep from Braden got here and he has been doing lots of inspections of the various elements of the filter house.  He has confirmed many of the issues I had previously identified as problems and found a few others.  The customer is working toward resolving some of them but in typical Indian fashion, ignoring items they don’t want to do.  One of the 2 sets of hydrogen seals that have been out for repair (we only need 1 good set) came back yesterday so we began rebuilding the turbine end of the generator and everything was great until we took the seal measurements.  They aren’t to bad this time but still not in specification.  I sent the info to engineering to see if we can proceed as is.  If they accept them, we can finish that chapter and move on to other items this has caused delays with.  Basically, I can be rather busy (12 hours yesterday) for a while and knock out more of my required hours for the contract year rather than sitting around bored like I have been here lately.  The customer tells me the gas fuel system is complete (finally) so I can start auditing that as well.  Hopefully I’ll get to it this afternoon.

As for my return home, the news is not good as I have no named replacement as of now.  This is the 19th of the month so I’m not expecting to get home in November at all.  Still expecting to be home early December though.  Damn this job sucks.

I’ve been contacted by a couple of companies who seem more than just casually interested in speaking to me about some available positions so I may just find myself in a new job after the new year…  I’d love to settle down and be able to stay closer to home or always at home.  I know it means going back to a “regular” job, Maintenance or Outage Supervisor/Coordinator kind of job, and give up my months of off time every year but the travel really is getting old…

I talked to Stacey this morning (her early night) and she was getting ready to head out with a new friend of hers, Judy, for a night of partying.  I’m sure she’s more than ready for a break ‘cause she’s been really busting her butt to get everything ready for Thanksgiving.  She’s been putting some finishing touches on work that has been ongoing in the house, working her job and getting everything ready for the Thanksgiving feast as well.  She’s basically been doing double duty as I was supposed to be there helping get everything in order and that obviously ain’t happening… I’m really proud of the way she has stepped up to handle all this.  Baby, I hope you’re having a good time out there tonight (just not too good a time without me).  I love and miss you and promise I’ll be home soon…

It would seem that the customer has really botched this one. They have put us on 6/10-hour days. I was bored before today and now, until something happens that we need to do, I sit here really being bored. Think I’ll play some mahjong…

OK, a meeting with the customer and site owners to go over punch list items interrupted my mahjong game. What a joke that was, the site owners expect me to do everything tomorrow. Well, not everything, since we still don’t have parts but they want me to do certain inspections and checks all in one day, which would be entirely possible if I had a good millwright crew working with me but since it is here in India, I’ll be surprised to have the first inspection set up for me to start before lunch. If I’m lucky I might get to look at two things… we’ll see.
Went back to my mahjong game, lost, played another and won so I quit… for now.
First 10 hour scheduled day, I sure hope they start coming up with things for me to do since I’ll be really bored, maybe really good at mahjong, if things don’t start hopping here.

…time ticks by…

Two days have passed and I still haven’t completed one of the inspections they wanted me to do “the next day”… They just can’t get anything done around here… Like I’m really surprised. Still not much going on. Oh, I did start one of the inspections they wanted me to do yesterday. Found problems that will probably take a couple days to rectify…

We are expecting our vendor representative for the inlet filter house today. Hopefully he can resolve some of the issues we are having there and we can move forward in that area. He is supposed to get here this afternoon.

At this point I’m still not sure on a replacement… It’s rather disheartening to think that I’ll still be stuck here into December but that is becoming an ever more prominent possibility. It seems that everyone they line up for this assignment ends up going elsewhere, getting personal time for this or that, gets pulled back for some other reason. So here I sit with absolutely no control of the situation, stuck in the rather tight sphincter muscle of all of India… Good news though, Progress Energy sent me an e-mail and they have a “very strong” interest in my resume and want to talk to me about a job. That would be awesome, depending on the job, money, benefits, etc of course. I really don’t mind the travel. I actually enjoy it but I’ve been on three assignments this year, all outside the US and only been home about three months all year. I like travel but also like to be home more frequently or close enough for an occasional long weekend or quick visit. We’ll see what next year brings…

Baby, I promise you I'll get home just as soon as I can so we can spend lots of quality time together...

It does no good for me to continue to focus on the negative aspects of being here so I am going to compile a list of the positive aspects of this trip.

The weather is always a good place to start. We’ve certainly had our share of rain and bad weather but for the past week and as best as I can tell, for the remainder of my stay the weather is and will remain awesome. Its mid 80’s every day with a beautiful blue sky and nice breezes and mid 70’s at night with no expected change in the forecast.

My co-workers are a definite positive. I’m the cranky old man of the group but they tolerate me quite well. I’m sure at times they want me to just go away but we are, for now anyway, all stuck together and get along just fine. I love Julia’s always-positive attitude, even when she thinks she’s getting negative she is more positive about life here than any of the rest of us. Zac is the funny one in the group always cutting up and very entertaining. He has a very unusual outlook on many things and it makes him a rather unique individual and then again at times he kind of reminds me of an overgrown 12 year old. Adam is closest to me in age but still a lot younger. He’s the one that seems the most stoic of the group. He’s an ex-navy nuke and it shows with loads of confidence and ability. Then there is Carlos and Dave who I hardly know as they don’t ever say much and don’t socialize with us much at all. As a group we all seem to survive and get through the days and nights here in India. Thanks guys for putting up with me like you have.

Food is another good topic for positives. While they don’t generally do a really good job on non-Indian food they are always willing to try and sometimes the results are pretty good. Adam can’t eat spicy food and they are always trying to accommodate him as well as the rest of us for our own culinary needs. The Indian food on the other hand is awesome. I really like the food here although as I have said just the other day, even that’s wearing off after the more than 3 months I’ve spent here. I’m looking forward to the next batch of large tiger prawns so I can have them made like the extra spicy chili chicken I had the other night.

The friends I’ve made, other than my co-workers, are only a couple, literally a couple, Ramesh and Srivani. An absolute gem of a couple, both lawyers and they have been very good to us. Who they are and what they are and how they live provides a different side to the culture than we are experiencing between the work site and the hotel. They keep me grounded in the fact that there are real, honest and good people here and that there is a lot to India that we don’t get to see/experience.

All right, there is another friend… He doesn’t speak much English, just enough to convey basic needs and such. Actually he is our driver, Nagaraj. This guy is just amazing the way he helps us get whatever we need, be it American cigarettes, canned tuna, booze, etc. If it’s available in India he can usually get it for us. He’s a hard working family man who makes himself available to us whenever we need him and we practically have to force him to take tips for all he does for us. Yes, he is a friend, maybe more, maybe less, but definately a part of our little family.

OK, enough already, I’m going to be in a good mood with all these happy thought and that’s going to really piss me off.

Well, today is starting out OK. Zac just got informed by the regional resource manager that my replacement would not be here as scheduled due to oral surgery that he must have done when he leaves Spain. What a surprise… If I hadn’t emailed my replacement directly and found out about it a few days ago and then bitched out my manager for leaving me stuck here, nothing would have been done about it until he didn’t show up as scheduled. I’ve raised enough crap over this issue so at least they seem to be moving in the right direction, they sent Zac 5 résumé’s to forward to the customer for approval. So now we wait and see what happens next. Still have no expectation of being home before the end of November but at least it appears that I’ll not be stuck here to far into December if at all.

Things are moving very slowly here at the site. I think the site owners and the site operators finally realized what the contractor was doing on site and really clamped down on them. There have been a lot of changes with the way things are done over the last couple weeks. There is not as much pushing to “get it done” quickly and they are paying a lot more attention to how they are doing things. There has been a lot of clean up activity around the site and things are beginning to look more like a power plant. Can’t wait to get some of the parts in that are holding us up. The hydrogen seals have been our biggest problem. We can’t seem to get a set that is properly made. We’ve had 2 sets now and both are out of spec. and both are currently in shops for repair. I sure hope they get it right this time. We could start moving forward from there and get busy again which would be really nice. Busy makes the days go by much faster…

Even the food here is starting to get boring and that’s been the only consistent high point of this entire visit. I’ve been trying to get stuff spiced up and that’s helped but it’s beginning to get old eating the same type of food every day. With all the curry dishes we’ve been eating, I’ll probably have that smell coming from my pores when I get home. Last night they had a nice special seafood menu but were out of the lobster everyone was planning to eat. I had fried boneless fish with tarter sauce and some fried shrimp. The tarter sauce was just a mixture of catsup and mayo, the fish was way overcooked as were the shrimp. It was definitely not one of their better dinners. We’ve all pretty much decided to stick with the large tiger shrimp and lobster when they are available and skip all the rest. I can’t wait to get home to a NY strip steak.

Last night, after breaking the news to Stacey, I got really trashed, really early and passed out about 9pm. I had started downstairs at Cheers but wanted to tell Stacey so cut it short and went up to my room to make the call. After I hung up, I polished off the better part of a liter of Vodka. I remember turning on the TV and waiting for a movie that was coming on. I got up to fix another drink and laid down on the bed. The next thing I knew it was about 7am, the TV was still on and the drink was still sitting on the nightstand. I poured it down the sink (now that’s alcohol abuse) and started my day…

OK, one thing for sure, the remainder of my stay here can’t get any worse than yesterday. That was really hitting bottom for me. That’s not to say that thing’s can’t improve and then return to yesterday’s low but couldn’t possibly get any worse, baring of course, serious illness or death or some similar catastrophic event that would make all my whining and bitching seem even more trivial than it already does.

I got an email from my manager apologizing all over the place for what has happened here. I guess I appreciate the gesture, but that doesn’t help my current situation. He did make a few statements about doing better next year when I get ready to go back to work to help “make-up” for the situation he allowed to happen. He is a rookie at the job so it could have been his lack of knowledge of what was happening and believing the GE resource manager was actually being honest with him. He also told me that my relief should be here ASAP and no later than Dec 1st. I’m not going to hold my breath on that one… When I get confirmation that someone is actually making reservations, has a visa and an arrival date, then I’ll start getting excited. When we have to send a driver to pick him up in Visag I will really get excited. Until then I’ll just keep chugging along from day to day waiting to leave and getting as much accomplished as I can here on site in the mean time.

Boy this is one crappy day. Sorry for the negativity but that’s all that you’ll get here today and probably for the rest of my stay. My manager or someone between him and the resource manager for this region included is a fucking liar. I finally contacted my supposed replacement and got a reply from him this morning. He said he had a report date for here of November 27th and that he probably wouldn’t make that because he had to go home after the job in Spain to get the dental work completed that he was supposed to do before coming here. Apparently it’s something that has to be done and I sure don’t blame him… If I am to be home by December 1st I’ll have to quit to do it because they have me stuck here with no one to replace me. I wonder how the 3rd week of November suddenly became the 27th???? I can surely kiss Thanksgiving goodbye and who knows when I’ll get home… I’m really just sick over all this and am considering just packing up and leaving the job. I’ve never even considered doing that before but I’m so fucking mad right now that I just don’t care anymore….but I’ll probably stick it out and just be a miserable person to be around and get even more serious about finding another job fast (I put in for 2 jobs back with FPL today) and just might get lucky. Hell, my luck can’t get any worse. I remember when you could count on your manager to be honest and straight forward with you. You didn’t always like what you heard but at least you knew the situation. This crap they have been feeding me is really getting old.

To my family and friends that are coming for Thanksgiving, I’m sorry I can’t be there. I miss all of you and wish I could be there. Stacey is going to handle everything I’m sure but it won’t be easy on her and certainly not as much fun with everything that needs to be done. Ya’ll take it easy on her, OK…

To my darling Stacey, I’m really, really sorry about this and wish there was something I could do but my only option at this point is to quit my job and even though right now that’s what I want to do, realistically I need to just suck it up until I can find another job.

Last night the bar had tiger prawns. Nice big tasty shrimp. Damn they were good. Usually they only offer the small prawns but they brought these in special for us. The other day they brought in some lobster but they were so small, hardly worth the effort and I wasn’t there that night so I missed them anyway. Toward the end of the evening I was talking about getting something really hot for dinner tonight, one thing led to another and the chef came out to talk to me about it. As you know from previous blogs I really like the Indian food here and while many dishes are hot, generally they are not really hot, or maybe I’m just getting used to it. Anyway, I spoke to the chef and told him I wanted something with chicken that was just a notch up from what they normally do and gave him free reign on what I will eat tonight. Looking forward to this, just to see what I get.

Things have slowed down a great deal here at site due to numerous problems that cannot be worked around. We are awaiting some parts, awaiting some part repairs, awaiting the arrival of a vendor rep for numerous problems with their section of the unit and the customer is having fits trying to show progress. They say the only thing left is the Gas Turbine and we are holding up the whole show. I wonder what all those other people I see working on the steam turbine and HRSG are doing if they are all done and what are all those big items for that are laying around the area, uninstalled. Anyway, makes for long, boring days without any overtime.

Still looking forward to getting out, maybe a couple days later than planned but maybe not. We’ll see… When I get some positive news I’ll restart the countdown but for now it can wait. I’m still hoping to be home before Thanksgiving. If not, Stacey will never forget it…

Yes, this job is probably going to be longer than even I thought when I first got here. I had said First Fire would be in February ’06 and everyone, even the other TA’s on site thought me a little nuts and exaggerating the situation. At one point I backed off to January with some progress that had been made at the time. Now, after recent customer screw ups that have occurred, I’d say February again and maybe even March, although that month might be just a little pessimistic. The way things are going though…

Fortunately I’ll be gone in a couple weeks and it will be someone else’s headache. Still hoping to make it home prior to Thanksgiving but a re-routing of my replacement for an emergency in Spain has thrown a small cloud of doubt over the situation. Not a big cloud as they still expect him to be here prior to my anticipated final day so I’m still counting the days and hoping for the best. Even if I get delayed a couple more days I can get home in time for the holiday.

I know that Stacey is expecting me at least a few day’s before Thanksgiving to lend a hand at getting the house and dinner ready for the throng that is expected to show up. She’s really excited about the prospect of having some of our family and friends join us for Thanksgiving and I’d really be upset if I had to disappoint her and stick her by herself during that time with no help. God bless her and I really love her but she just can’t seem to handle to many things at one time. She gets way to stressed. Hopefully I’ll be there and it will be no problem…

Snake Festival today. They have a festival for everything in this country. Heard about it last night from Nagaraj, our driver, but can’t get any real details since his English is sooo very limited. From what I gather though they put out milk and eggs around areas where snakes are known or thought to be, to feed them but beyond that all we saw this morning was a bunch of people gathered at every bushy area or under a tree apparently trying to flush out the snakes.

Update… OK, just read an article in the paper and without gong into the details, the people actually catch the snakes and force feed them milk and eggs to appease some god or another from way back when… Ironically, this usually kills the snakes since they don’t drink milk and it actually suffocates them. Go figure… Indian logic at work… Kill the god you are supposed to be honoring and worshiping.

It’s the biggest festival of the year and is celebrated throughout the entire country. It’s somewhat like our Christmas as they exchange small gifts and sweets and then again, it’s much like our Independence Day because all day they are lighting off firecrackers and such. After dark the firecrackers got bigger, louder and much more frequent. At the famous “3 Star” Anand Regency, our residence of choice while visiting lovely Rajahmundry, they had a display of sorts and were apparently waiting for us to come downstairs to get started. Zac, Julia and I were enjoying a bottle of Merlot that I had brought back from my last trip through Hyderabad a few weeks back and the phone kept ringing. One of the bar managers wanted to know if we were coming down and Julia told them we would be down in a little bit. A few minutes later he called again and Julia told them we would be down in a couple minutes. A few minutes later, a third call so we killed the last of our wine and headed downstairs. I guess we were considered important enough to warrant them waiting for us. We were all handed big sparklers and played with them like little kids… Then they brought out a large box and set it in the middle of the lawn. Someone lit a fuse and everyone backed up a bit as it started to go off. It was a whole series of fairly nice fireworks, much like you might see in someone’s front yard only bunched together to go off in series. Not really big but nice anyway. Since they were going off in rapid succession and not very high, the spent pieces started dropping on our heads so everyone backed under the covered entrance to the hotel for protection. After that, a few more sparklers were passed out and then they brought out another big box. This one had a huge roll of firecrackers, they said there were 5,000 of them. They stretched them out snakelike on the lawn and lit the fuse. It took a few minutes to get through them all. They brought out fruit juice and sweets for everyone and that was it.

Julia, Zac and I went into the bar for dinner. No one was there because of the holiday and the staff crowded around us for quite a while talking about this and that and then got down to business getting our drinks and dinner. It was a quiet dinner with no DJ there to shake the walls with his music. That was a nice change since, by the time we usually get down there, you can’t hear anyone talk over the music volume.

Now that I know my remaining time here is short, I’m really getting back into eating Indian food at dinner. Rather than try to get more Americanized versions of their food, I’m trying to find the best tasting and hottest Indian dishes I can find. Three nights ago I told Trinad that I wanted something with chicken that was spicy, hot and wet. What he brought me was definitely temperature hot and almost soup like rather than a sauce but not really spicy and not something I’d try again. Two nights ago I had Chicken Chettinadu with mashed potatoes and that was really good. Very spicy, hot, thick sauce and went well with the mashed potatoes. Last night I had Prawns Do Pyaza with rice and it was as good as what I had the night before. Tonight I’ll try something else maybe some Mutton or Chicken Vindaloo or maybe Chicken Tika Masala. I’ve always been a big fan of Indian food and some of the best I’ve ever eaten has been right here.