It has seriously been a long and mobile month so far. Went to Sydney for the Caltex TAR, what an emotional experience. Someone was ment to meet me at the airport but did not show up, so there I was in a strange city, the airport about to shutdown for the night (I got in at 11:30PM), tired, no idea what hotel I’m staying at, no idea where or what time I had to be anywhere the next day, oh and no one answering thier phones because it’s late. I managed to get some help from an ex supervisor who does not work for the company, who was staying up late (remember 2 hours time difference) plus a shed load of taxi fares. Lesson learnt, if told some will meet me with the work work pack and all the information I need, just get it emailed to me before I go anyware.
On the plus side after all the crap was sorted, the job was shorter and easier then expected, about 12 days, I think someone over estimated on thier fudge factors. At least I got to go home earlier then expected, a good thing for Tanja.
I spent 12 days just operating consols, tooo easy. We have a special machine to extract the heat exchanger tube bundles from thier shells, when you have something that wieghs over 20 ton, you let the machine do all the work. Not all peaches and cream though but I think all that time playing xbox helped. Once we had these suckers out (some of them pyrophoric…abit of a head fluck trying to stop them bursting inot flames while we got them out) I went down to the wash pad and operated the external and internal bundle cleaners giving my thumbs a workout while a sat in a console cabin. Did not have to make a single HazMat entry the entire job.
I had a day off in Sydney so I rode a train into the city and got hopelessly lost and wasted the day trying to get to the sights. I gave up and went back to the hotel (near Cronulla) tired and sore from all the walking.
Kicking and Screaming 