Friday, November 25, 2005
Thanksgiving in India
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…
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…
