Friday, November 11, 2005
Another day closer to home
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.
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.
