Saturday, March 05, 2005
Early Mornings and Late Nights
I'm feeling exhausted right at the moment. I'm pretty sure that it's to do with the 5AM starts that I've been having since I got here, and the amount of mental energy's I'm having to expend with these calculations. I'm not sure why, but mental stress seems to take more out of me than physical labour.
Sometimes I just need to get up from my seat and go for a walk around the plant. Check that the wobblers are still spinning, and that the pump is still pumping, and that the liquor is going where it's meant to.
Today is the 3rd day without rain since I arrived in Turkey, with the second being yesterday. Most of the rivers are still swolen, and the ground around site is still muddy, though it has dried up a lot in the last 24 hours. With overcast skies and a seemingly neverending drizzle, the mood around the office has been pretty drab. The climate coupled with the continuous power failures and general failing of anything local has taken some tempers to breaking point.
The two other aussies who are here at this plant both seriously need some time off. The younger of the two now has the opportunity to take some time off while I'm here to help the older, more experienced one with the final throes of construction on the plant and the plant commissioning. It's not a job that one person can do, particularly as out of this site, I'm the only one who's ever actually run a mixed hydroxide precipitation plant before.
The local engineers that we have got here are nice enough people, but they seem to have a problem with following instructions. When hard work is pushed their way they want to find someone else to give it to, usually a Turkish laborer with little to no experience in the minerals industry. This leaves the engineer with nothing to do except watch, and puts additional pressure on the laboring workforce.
Yesterday I had a discussion with one of the Turkish professionals from another department, and he was explaining how the engineers had been complaining that we wouldn't teach them anything. I had to bite my tongue and then calmly explain to him that it's difficult to trust them with complex tasks when they don't finish the simple tasks, such as keeping a single pump running, or calculating the volume of a heap of dirt, or completing their assigned testwork on time, or even the project brief.
I explained that they need to learn to walk before they can run.
We're trying to ensure that we give them tasks, and responsibilities for things, such as asking them to do a mixing procedure for the reagents. It's not a difficult task, but one that is essential. It would take us aussies about 20 minutes to write this, but so far none of these engineers has attempted the procedure in nearly 3 months. In a week they need to start the plant, and they need to have those reagents mixed.
The reason that we ask them to do tasks like this is to get them thinkikng about the practicalities of doing the job. What's involved. We don't necessarily expect them to get it correct, but they have to at least attempt it.
Another example is the acid mixing plant. Concentrated sulphuric acid is a very hazadous chemical, and for this reason we went to great lengths to get locks on the valves so that it wouldn't be accidentally released. The engineers were tasked with getting a set of keyed alike locks to keep them locked, and keep the site safe. Four months, and not so much as a quote, a phone call or an order has been place.
How, I ask you, can we trust people like this to do complex jobs where they are responsible for millions of dollars of equipment if they can't even arrange $100 worth of padlocks?
In the meantime, I'm back to spreadsheets again. This blog is actually forming the basis of my procrastination at the moment, and it's helping take my mind off the message that I received earlier from Jodie. I'm not sure if it's a threat or whether she's just seriously pissed off at me, but she said that she'll think about seeing me when I return.
I have to trust in the feeling that I think we have for each other, and that I certainly have for her, that they are strong enough to get through our latest communication breakdown. I don't really want to think of my life without her, particularly right now. She's been a tower of strength for me and someone who I can talk to and listen to, as a diversion from the stresses of working here. Maybe I don't show how much I appreciate her or something, I'm not sure, but I do know that I've come to rely on her strength to spur me on to greater things.
Just yesterday, she was the one that I relied on to listen to me, when I had to vocalize the frustrations I was experiencing dealing with our Mongolian associates. I'd had some troubles with some calculations, and was getting a lot of grief about it. I needed to have a whinge about it, and she was so understanding and supportive about the experience.
This trip has been particularly hard for a number of reasons, and it is forcing me to question whether I really want to continue on in this line of work. Continual stress, long hours, ungrateful customers, heavy responsibility and difficult working conditions are beginning to take their toll on me, and while the money is good, the inflexible work regime and lack of time off is difficult for me to take.
Each day I'm up at 5AM for a 7AM start. We rarely leave before 5PM and get back to the flat at around 6:30 in time to have some dinner an intense talk about what went wrong on that day and what we are planning for tomorrow before retiring to bed at around 8:30 to 9PM. Then the sleep is very restless due to the continual traffic noises, honking horns and raised voices on the street directly outside of our windows, before we rise to do it all again. Seven days a week.
I dunno, I don't really mind I suppose, but every now and then I just need to get it out of my system. This industry isn't the glamourous hi-tech industry that everyone assumes. It's dealing with dirt, people and large sums of money that are never large enough to do the job asked in a proper manner.
Blah... I'm doing lots of whinging, but I guess I'm just trying to say that I'm feeling exhausted and need some sleep.
Well it's 3:46 PM, so I'm going to try to get this little chunk of the spreadsheets done, and then I'm going to go home and try to get an early night.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Jodie will speak to me tomorrow. I really miss hearing her voice and feeling her in my arms.
Sometimes I just need to get up from my seat and go for a walk around the plant. Check that the wobblers are still spinning, and that the pump is still pumping, and that the liquor is going where it's meant to.
Today is the 3rd day without rain since I arrived in Turkey, with the second being yesterday. Most of the rivers are still swolen, and the ground around site is still muddy, though it has dried up a lot in the last 24 hours. With overcast skies and a seemingly neverending drizzle, the mood around the office has been pretty drab. The climate coupled with the continuous power failures and general failing of anything local has taken some tempers to breaking point.
The two other aussies who are here at this plant both seriously need some time off. The younger of the two now has the opportunity to take some time off while I'm here to help the older, more experienced one with the final throes of construction on the plant and the plant commissioning. It's not a job that one person can do, particularly as out of this site, I'm the only one who's ever actually run a mixed hydroxide precipitation plant before.
The local engineers that we have got here are nice enough people, but they seem to have a problem with following instructions. When hard work is pushed their way they want to find someone else to give it to, usually a Turkish laborer with little to no experience in the minerals industry. This leaves the engineer with nothing to do except watch, and puts additional pressure on the laboring workforce.
Yesterday I had a discussion with one of the Turkish professionals from another department, and he was explaining how the engineers had been complaining that we wouldn't teach them anything. I had to bite my tongue and then calmly explain to him that it's difficult to trust them with complex tasks when they don't finish the simple tasks, such as keeping a single pump running, or calculating the volume of a heap of dirt, or completing their assigned testwork on time, or even the project brief.
I explained that they need to learn to walk before they can run.
We're trying to ensure that we give them tasks, and responsibilities for things, such as asking them to do a mixing procedure for the reagents. It's not a difficult task, but one that is essential. It would take us aussies about 20 minutes to write this, but so far none of these engineers has attempted the procedure in nearly 3 months. In a week they need to start the plant, and they need to have those reagents mixed.
The reason that we ask them to do tasks like this is to get them thinkikng about the practicalities of doing the job. What's involved. We don't necessarily expect them to get it correct, but they have to at least attempt it.
Another example is the acid mixing plant. Concentrated sulphuric acid is a very hazadous chemical, and for this reason we went to great lengths to get locks on the valves so that it wouldn't be accidentally released. The engineers were tasked with getting a set of keyed alike locks to keep them locked, and keep the site safe. Four months, and not so much as a quote, a phone call or an order has been place.
How, I ask you, can we trust people like this to do complex jobs where they are responsible for millions of dollars of equipment if they can't even arrange $100 worth of padlocks?
In the meantime, I'm back to spreadsheets again. This blog is actually forming the basis of my procrastination at the moment, and it's helping take my mind off the message that I received earlier from Jodie. I'm not sure if it's a threat or whether she's just seriously pissed off at me, but she said that she'll think about seeing me when I return.
I have to trust in the feeling that I think we have for each other, and that I certainly have for her, that they are strong enough to get through our latest communication breakdown. I don't really want to think of my life without her, particularly right now. She's been a tower of strength for me and someone who I can talk to and listen to, as a diversion from the stresses of working here. Maybe I don't show how much I appreciate her or something, I'm not sure, but I do know that I've come to rely on her strength to spur me on to greater things.
Just yesterday, she was the one that I relied on to listen to me, when I had to vocalize the frustrations I was experiencing dealing with our Mongolian associates. I'd had some troubles with some calculations, and was getting a lot of grief about it. I needed to have a whinge about it, and she was so understanding and supportive about the experience.
This trip has been particularly hard for a number of reasons, and it is forcing me to question whether I really want to continue on in this line of work. Continual stress, long hours, ungrateful customers, heavy responsibility and difficult working conditions are beginning to take their toll on me, and while the money is good, the inflexible work regime and lack of time off is difficult for me to take.
Each day I'm up at 5AM for a 7AM start. We rarely leave before 5PM and get back to the flat at around 6:30 in time to have some dinner an intense talk about what went wrong on that day and what we are planning for tomorrow before retiring to bed at around 8:30 to 9PM. Then the sleep is very restless due to the continual traffic noises, honking horns and raised voices on the street directly outside of our windows, before we rise to do it all again. Seven days a week.
I dunno, I don't really mind I suppose, but every now and then I just need to get it out of my system. This industry isn't the glamourous hi-tech industry that everyone assumes. It's dealing with dirt, people and large sums of money that are never large enough to do the job asked in a proper manner.
Blah... I'm doing lots of whinging, but I guess I'm just trying to say that I'm feeling exhausted and need some sleep.
Well it's 3:46 PM, so I'm going to try to get this little chunk of the spreadsheets done, and then I'm going to go home and try to get an early night.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Jodie will speak to me tomorrow. I really miss hearing her voice and feeling her in my arms.
# posted by The Puppeteer : 9:48 pm
